Tech Readers » Facebook

Facebook Hires Ex-Apple Executive

Mikey Mell — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:15:52 +0000

AdAge reported that the social networking giant has brought a big change in its marketing department to improve the way company markets itself to customers. The change comes in the form of hiring an executive. Prior to this, the company has not done much in this area, so the hiring of an executive is company’s attention to focus on this area as well.

According to reports, the social networking giant has hired Rebecca Van Dyck as its Head of Global Marketing. Van Dyck worked with Levi’s for about 11 months and also she remained a vital part of Cupertino-based tech giant during the release of iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes. So, it won’t be wrong to say that Van Dyck is well aware of consumers.

If we look at the history of Van Dyck working environments, it is pretty impressive and remarkable. Let us has a look at her professional life:

SVP, Chief Marketing Officer at Levi’s (11 Months)

Senior Director, Worldwide Marketing Communications and Advertising at Apple Inc. (3 years)

Sr. Director, WorldWide Advertising at Apple (4 years)

Global Account Director, Nike at Wieden+Kennedy (12 years)

On the assumption that the social networking giant will be traded publicly in coming three or four months and the social network need to put itself on show to entice more and more users, developers and above all, businesses to publicize on the platform. Looking at Van Dyck as the head of marketing at Facebook, one can assume that the social platform will soon become more user-friendly in future.

We have approached Facebook to confirm this report and one of the spokesperson from Facebook confirmed the report and said:

We can confirm that Rebecca is joining the marketing team and we are thrilled she’s decided to join us.

Facebook Files for $5 Billion IPO

Mikey Mell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:59:06 +0000

Facebook has finally filed for a long awaited $5 billion initial public offering (IPO) of stock in the US with the SEC. According to Facebook, it will trade with the stock symbol of ‘FB’.

It was predicted earlier that the social networking giant will file initial paperwork for its IPO, looking to raise $5 billion in its public offering bid. The lead bookrunner role is taken by Morgan Stanley, while Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merill Lynch, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan ended up with six another initial bookrunners.

Facebook’s public offering has been on slate for mid-May due to its new Timeline feature. The company has now entered into a mandated quiet period. It means that the company won’t launch any new product or feature during this period. It is therefore Timeline is the last new product introduced by Facebook.

If we look at the major figures claimed in the filing by Facebook, it has over 845 million active monthly users. In revenue, the company managed to generate $3.71 billion with $1 billion in profit last year – doubled from what it had in 2010. Currently, Facebook has $3.9 billion in cash on hand.

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of the social network, owns 28.4% of the company, earning $483,000 as salary. He also got a bonus of $220,000 last year. Interestingly, the social network also praises Zynga for providing 12% of revenue in 2011.

The social network is hoping to focus on mobile and it has some solid reason for this:

“We had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011. We anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile users will continue to exceed the growth rate of our overall MAUs for the foreseeable future, in part due to our focus on developing mobile products to encourage mobile usage of Facebook.”

Facebook also explains that the company depends heavily on the interoperability of mobile operating systems with its app:

“We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS, and any changes in such systems that degrade our products’ functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices.”

Facebook Up to Celebrate its 8th Birthday on Heels of IPO Announcement

Mikey Mell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:07:14 +0000

If you can recall, it’s been eight years since Facebook was first surfaced on the world of web. Back on February 04, 2004, it was initially launched as TheFacebook. It is going to turn eight on coming Saturday. Interestingly, the social networking giant is apparently celebrating its birthday week with the filing of an initial public offering, which could value the company at almost $100 billion.

The public offering will make the Facebook, the largest social networking site, four times the value of the search giant, Google at the time it went public in 2004 with a valuation of $23 billion.

Facebook has traveled a long way since it first launched in the dorm room of Mark Zuckerberg. Initially, the site was just restricted to the Harvard University undergrads. Later, it was opened up to some other schools and within a period of two years managed to collect 5 million users. As of today, the site has over 800 million active users all over the world. In other words, we can say it has 40% of all Internet users. The site is expected to hit 1 billion users mark by August. After Google, it is the most visited site all across the globe.

Since its very start, the social networking giant drew the attention of investors, but refused bids from several companies from NBC and the Washington Post Group to MySpace and Viacom. Back in 2008, several reports surfaced claiming that Mark Zuckerberg was in dialogue with Yahoo for Facebook’s potential sale. However, later he turned down the offer for $1.6 billion, saying that the bid was too low for his interests.

Now four years have passed and the company could be worth as much as 100 times that numbers.

Facebook still has long way to go. We cannot say at this time where will it be in the coming ten years or so. We have to wait and see whether it has the potential to stay on the top in future.

Facebook’s Display Ads Share Reaches 28%

Mikey Mell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:47:40 +0000

comScore revealed data on Monday claiming that the social networking giant’s share of US display and impressions rose to 27.9% during last year. It is a significant growth as the display ads growth for Facebook recorded to be 21% by the Reston, VA-based researcher, in 2010.

According to comScore, Yahoo is on the second spot with 11% of the market, while Microsoft, AOL and Google followed by less than 5% each. Since 2009, the social networking giant, Facebook, is placed on the top in the display and impressions category by comScore.

Facebook, which is assumed to file for a public offering somewhere this week, has managed to grab over 800 million users all over the world; hence brands have gotten on board with verve. It is worth noting here that the Menlo Park, CA-based digital giant has effectively courted Madison Avenue during the last two years in general.

Andrew Lipsman, a representative of comSocre while talking to ClickZ News says, “Any time a site becomes so influential to the full digital landscape, advertisers are forced to pay attention. There was a time when brands thought of Facebook as a place for kids and teenagers. That’s obviously not the case anymore.”

Angry Birds Coming to Facebook on Valentine’s Day

Mikey Mell — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:47:10 +0000

The name Angry Birds won’t be new for you as this is one of the most popular games played by massive number of people all across the world on several gaming platforms. What if you have this popular game on your Facebook? Yes, the game is on its way to its launch on the largest social networking site on February 14.

Rovio is the company behind this popular game. It has released a teaser video on YouTube which gives us several hints that the game designed for Facebook won’t be exactly same to its mobile equivalent. The CEO of Rovio, Mikeal Hed said that the game will be launched with an entirely new theme and features. Also, the game will put more emphasis on the hapless pigs.

The video clearly shows that the company has managed to keep a viral sensation of the game alive in this version as well – flinging birds across the screen to knock out pigs and build high scores. Being designed for the social network, you can expect to have social posts and friend challenges to play a role, however, Rovio has not yet disclosed about the collaborative features of the game.

We assume that launching a game on Valentine’s Day won’t seem a good idea, but with a repo Rovio enjoying with its Angry Birds, it can opt for anything. Angry Birds along with its spin-offs have been downloaded over 500 million times, encouraging CTO of Rovio, Peter Vesterbacka, to claim that company was worth over $1.2 billion.

Unsurprisingly, the game has been developed for nearly every major mobile platform or device, but it is the first instance of game coming to a browser on the social network. The company is trying to open more doors to expand its operations. Open new doors for its game will help raising its profits for sure.

Let’s see whether the game will show a similar sort of popularity on the social network as it has shown on a number of mobile platforms.

Facebook Ready to File for IPO

Mikey Mell — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:17:02 +0000

Tech world is anxiously waiting for the tech IPO of the year or perhaps of the decade. The Wall Street Journal has recently reported that the social networking giant is ready to file its paperwork regarding an Initial Public Offering on coming Wednesday.

If this IPO manages to pass, it would be the first largest tech IPO in history, producing about $10 billion for the social network. The previous largest tech IPO was by a German company that raised $5.9 billion back in 2000. Google’s IPO of 2005 failed to make any impression as it didn’t even manage to raise $2 billion.

We haven’t enough details available about the IPO as Faebook isn’t disclosing any details and WSJ’s source is also anonymous. However, looking at the track record of the Journal, one can hardly consider this report a rumor. The $10 billion share offering will bring a total valuation of $100 billion for the company, according to the paper, which is perfectly aligned with what we expected to be.

The evidence that gives us a hint of the approaching IPO is the halting of its trading in secondary markets for three days earlier last week.

The IPO is a clear evidence of why the social networking giant has been showing keen interest to get its product offerings in place. The company has also announced recently that it has started rolling out its new profile template, Timeline to the world. In addition to this, the company has also unveiled 60 applications that are tightly integrated into Timeline and also launched a process for developers to develop more Timeline applications.

Whenever Facebook will file its S-1 paperwork, it will be forced to enter a ‘quiet phase’ – with no product announcements, interviews or any other public statements.

Moreover, the Journal also says that the Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley will manage the offering Goldman Sachs will be “intimately involved.” Certainly, a shock for Goldman that managed a billion-dollar private share offering for the social networking giant at same time in 2011.

We have to wait and see when exactly Facebook go for its IPO and being a public company it would bring any positives or negatives.

Facebook Killing Local Social Networks Around the World

Mikey Mell — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:30:57 +0000

An Italian digital strategist, Vincenzo Cosenza, known for his social media research has once again shared his new work World Map of Social Networks.

The maps published by him offer a closer look at the global popularity of various social networks. Without any surprise, Facebook appears to be on the top of the list as the social networking giant managed to secure top spot in 127 countries out of total 136 countries.

If we look at the map closely, it will give us a great image of the Facebook’s supremacy all across North America and South America, part of Asia, most of Africa, Australia and Europe.

Already having 800+ million active users, the social networking giant is growing at a fast speed throughout the world map, overcoming the place of local and international competitors on its way. Facebook managed to beat Hyves to become the Holland’s most popular social network back in June 2011. While it recently managed to surpass Orkut to show its dominance in the Brazil. Moreover, the social networking giant has already managed to beat Japan’s popular mobile social networks, including Gree, Mixi and Mobage.

As for Europe, it has the most number of active users for Facebook, to say, 223 million, ahead of North American 219 million and 202 million users in Asia. With such massive numbers, Europe alone has the most number of active Facebook users than any other continent.

Russia, on the other hand, has shown a bit of resistant than other countries when it comes to Facebook. In Russia, two local social networks, including V Kontakte and Odnoklassniki, are fighting hard for users’ attention.

When it comes to second and third position in the social networking, the results vary from one country to another. In Australia, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US, Twitter and LinkedIn are up to catch up Facebook, whereas Badoo is a popular choice in various European countries, such as Italy, Austria, Belgium and Spain. Orkut has become the second choice in Brazil and India.

On comparing the current figures with the figures recorded last year, we will come to know that the number of dominant social networks has gone down from 16 (in 2009) to 11 (in 2010) and then to 6 at the end of 2011.

Facebook Timeline Feature Coming to All Users

Mikey Mell — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:28:13 +0000

Facebook, the social networking giant has announced through a blog post on late Tuesday that its Timeline feature is coming to the entire world within next few weeks.

The blog post published on Tuesday suggests that once the Timeline feature became available to users, they will have seven days to preview their Timeline so as to hide the content they don’t want to share on front. The seven-day trial period will also help you to learn different aspect of the Timeline before it goes official.

According to Facebook, users will receive a notification at the top of their home page when Timeline has launched in their accounts. It is important to note here that the seven-day trial period is the same for those who activate Timeline and for those whose accounts automatically receive this feature.

Interestingly, the new features and interface is opt-in and will remain so until the feature starts rolling out worldwide. It was back in December 2011 when users were given the option to activate the new feature with a single click and publish their Timeline to their friends.

Even the users who were keen enough to have the new feature were given the option to get access to the Timeline by creating developer accounts in September of last year,

Many users find the new Timeline feature confusing at their first instance. For them Facebook has described its new product as “Timeline gives you an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect your most important moments. It also lets you share new experiences, like the music you listen to or the miles you run.”

The Introducing Timeline page setup by the company gives users a through look into the features of its new product, including covers, app integration and stories.

Facebook Reportedly Launching New Open Graph Apps, Gestures on Wednesday

Mikey Mell — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:22:59 +0000

Last week, Facebook sent invitations for press event that is going to be held tomorrow. Reports suggest that the social networking giant is going to launch its app based on its new Open Graph and Gestures platforms at the imminent press event Wednesday.

AllThingsD, while citing sources close to the company, reports that the apps will let users effortlessly share content based on actions apart from ‘like’, ‘read’ or ‘watch’.

Facebook representative, however, could not be reached for immediate response.

The upgrade to Open Graph was announced by Facebook back in September at f8 conference in San Francisco. Facebook defended its move by making a statement that the ‘Like’ button restricted sharing due to an indirect support of content. The social networking giant like the idea of sharing everything that users do, if it is watching a show or hiking a trail, hence the company thought of creating an “express lightweight activity.”

Since the announcement, many apps from different companies including Hulu, Spotify and The Washington Post have been introduced based on ‘read’ and ‘watch’ buttons. Facebook is now making plans to reveal a host of apps that use Gestures other than mentioned.

The New Open Graph

The idea to introduce new Open Graph is not just limited to expand the range of Gestures to application developers, but open new doors of experimentation. There are three distinctive points that make this new platform unique compared to the old Open Graph, including:

Apps no longer have to ask for permission to post content to Facebook over and over again. Instead, a new Facebook permissions screen explains exactly what type of stories will be shared the first time you give an app permission to post to your Facebook. Once completed, it will no longer have to ask for permission.

Updates through the new Open Graph appear in the ticker automatically, but do not appear in the News Feed unless it’s an important event. This makes it easy to discover new content from your friends in real time.

Users can share experiences, such as listening to music, through the new Facebook Open Graph and the ticker.

Facebook Advertisers Get Discount for Linking Back

Mikey Mell — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:32:09 +0000

All Facebook reports that the social networking giant is busy inspiring advertisers to link back to Facebook pages instead of their own sites by offering them a 50% discount on the ads, which is a major source of earnings for the social network.

It has been noticed that auction-based pricing is much more effective to encourage users to Like Sponsored Stories or install a Facebook app than linking to a site outside of Facebook.

Considering the Google’s recent concerns over the newly launched social search and antitrust issues, Facebook is much more careful in its approach to keep the users’ interest alive within its social networking site.

Facebook itself has experienced a tough time for its different approaches to ensure that users won’t leave the social network, while Sir Tim Berners-Lee describing the social networking giant as a “Walled Garden”.

TBG’s Chief Executive Simon Mansell while talking to the Financial Times says that the recent move of the Facebook is aggressive, but “If brands invest money coming up with campaigns that are social by design, Facebook gives them some money back in lower advertising – that feels fair to me.”

While analyzing 326 million impressions from 266 clients in 205 countries, TBG described how the recent changes were met by its audience, the Facebook user. It has been reported that the click-through rates on ads gone up to 18% from the first to fourth quarter. For instance, in France, click-through rates doubled in the last quarter after seeing an increased use in Sponsored Stories. This clearly suggests that users are taking keen interest in clicking ads that are more of Facebook than web.

In the United States, on the other hand, Sponsored Stories don’t actually manage to impress the users as the click-through figure lowered by 2% in the region. Where linking back to Facebook might actually help advertisers earn some discount, the cost per thousand impressions rose by 23%.

Furthermore, the recent move from the social networking giant to drop Sponsored Stories in users’ news feed will most probably help the social network to increase click-through rates in the coming quarter.

Facebook Evidently Looking to Go Public in Late May

Mikey Mell — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:01:34 +0000

It’s been quite a time that we are hearing about the Facebook’s IPO. It all started back in the mid of last year when rumors began surfacing and till then we have seen mixed reports about the IPO. However, All Things D has reported recently that the social networking titan is planning to go public in late May this year.

The online technology publication quotes different sources claiming that if the social networking giant wants its IPO late in May, then it has to submit its S-1 filing before the end of next month, considering the “Securities and Exchange Commission usually takes about three to four months.”

It was reported back in June 2011 that Facebook was planning to file S-1 towards the end of the year in preparation of IPO in 2012. However, CNBC indicated that the social networking giant would look at the valuation that surpassed $100 billion, with share prices standing at $100 million mark.

COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg said earlier few weeks that the social networking giant’s IPO was ‘inevitable’ and it was certainly “a process that all companies go through.”

It is speculated that the social networking giant will hit the mark of 1 billion users by the summer this year. The company expected to hit revenue of $4 billion by the end of third quarter of 2012. Facebook’s forthcoming IPO may possibly entice the next crop of angel investors, making it the one of the biggest public web offerings ever across the globe.

Facebook Announces Press Event in San Francisco Next Week

Mikey Mell — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:41:51 +0000

Facebook is planning for a press event next week on Wednesday. Facebook has sent invites for this press event that is going to be held in San Francisco. However, no further details have been given as yet about the event.

No the question arises, will the press event bring some announcement from the social networking giant? A similar kind of event was held last year as well in New York City, where Facebook announced the team behind the development of Timeline feature, and it seems that this event will also bring some similar sort of meeting or announcement; perhaps the focus would be on the forthcoming launch of Open Graph that company announced at f8 conference.

Facebook has recently launched its “Listen With” feature, giving us a hint of how the upcoming Open Graph will actually operate. It brings new way of chatting with your friends that you had never experience on the social network before. The idea is pretty clear that Facebook wants to keep the interest of its users alive in the site and doesn’t want to lose its precious users at any cost or in hands of other services or content available on the web.

We will bring more updates straight from the event. So, stay tuned and expect something interesting from the Facebook

Facebook Expected to Gain 1 Billion Users by August 2012

Mikey Mell — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:48:44 +0000

The status Facebook is enjoying at the moment certainly points to the hard work of Mark Zuckerberg and his entire team. Their hard work has made the social network a juggernaut.

It is the matter of only few months when the co-founder and CEO of Facebook announced that the social network has reached the milestone of 800 million active users. But the current trend shows that the networking giant will soon be enjoying the milestone of 1 billion users as soon as in August.

Although, the prediction of Facebook hitting 1 billion users is eye-popping, it is however more than expected, considering the growth of the social network. Since its launch in 2006, the site has shown a remarkable growth.

A senior analyst at iCrossing, Gregory Lyons says that the growth of user-base has slowed down or even stopped in the regions including UK and US. Undoubtedly, the site has a massive user-base in both these countries, but the noticeable thing is that the popularity of Facebook is growing rapidly in Brazil and India as well.

With only 3% of India’s population on Facebook and 16% of Brazil’s (compared to 49% of America’s population or 47% of the UK’s population) countries such as these will clearly contribute heavily to Facebook’s continued growth.

In start Facebook was not as popular as it has become over the recent couple of years. It has seen many ups and downs on its way to become the world’s largest social networking site.

Like many other tech companies, Facebook has also met with various litigations on its successful journey. Mark Zuckerberg along with his team was dragged to courtrooms on a number of occasions to get a share of huge swathes of money as compensation over different issues.

The range of Facebook’s popularity can be judged through the fact that a movie named The Social Network was made with a theme circling around the historical background of the developing of the social platform.

Facebook is working hard to keep its status intact through implying different tactics and introducing news features and partnerships with other companies to further improve the users experience on the site.

Facebook Introduces New ‘Listen with Friends’ for Real-Time Music Sharing

Mikey Mell — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:04:45 +0000

There is currently having more than 800 million active users all over the world. If you are one of the active users of the world’s largest social network, you must be aware of the changes appearing on the social networking site. One of the biggest makeover is the redesigned profile known as Timeline that offers a unique way of viewing the history of a specific friend. This feature has met with variable reviews until now from users.

It is through the f8 conference held last year that the social networking giant introduced a host of new features and improvements of which many of which are still to be rolled out to users. F8 conference is used as a platform by the social giant to reveal new features and technologies which the company intends to incorporate into the website.

It was back in September when the last f8 conference was held by the social networking giant. The event brought with it several major announcements. In that event one major announcement made was related to digital music. Facebook in that event announced that it is going to include in its social networking site an integration of Spotify music service. With this integration, the existing Spotify users need to have an account on Facebook as well to login into their accounts. As the partnership grows, its instances begin to appear in the ticker notification showing what friend is listening what through Spotify.

The social networking giant has now moved a step further where it now allows users to keep chatting with friends while listening to the same music at the same time. This new feature is known as “Listen With”, and the company while explaining it says:

Look for the music note in the chat sidebar to see which of your friends are listening to music. To listen with a friend, hover over their name, and click the Listen With button. The music will play through the service your friend is using.

When a new song plays, you’ll come along for the ride, discovering new music while your friend DJs for you.

This new feature will bring some more versatility to the social networking site. This will allow you and your friends to share music with each other while chatting. Considering the release of standalone windows chat client, the new feature will improve the users’ chat experience along with the music service.

Internet Explorer 7 Doesn’t Display Faebook Timeline

Mikey Mell — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:12:39 +0000

All those Facebook fans who dislike the Facebook’s new Timeline can only keep themselves away from it by using Internet Explorer 7 while using Facebook. However, be prepared for a buggy experience. According to ZDNet, Facebook’s latest profile makeover is not displayable in IE7, and the social networking giant will soon entirely remove the support for the aging browser.

It was back in August 2010, when the social networking giant announced the end support for Internet Explorer 6, saying that its chat will not support IE6 anymore along with many other web services that gave up on the aging browser. Now it seems that IE7 is going to get some similar treatment from the company.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 currently has a market share of 4%, according to data provided by StatCounter. If any user attempts to open his/her Facebook profile with the new Timeline feature enabled, he/she will get nothing more than a buggy, old version of the profile.

Facebook has time and again announced to their users to use the “most up-to-date” version of browsers including IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. However, the company has not yet said anything about the support for older versions of these browsers. It is important to note here that almost all the browsers are on automatic update for users. But still it is unknown to under stand what is the use of sticking to a browser which is five years old.

It is not yet cleared whether it is deliberate move from Facebook to not to include support for Timeline feature in the IE7, because support for older versions of browsers for popular web services was a vital accomplishment in the past.

We are still not able to understand the fact that with automatic update included, what will be the reason to keep using the older version of a browser.

Almost 40% of Facebook Users are Mobile App Users

Mikey Mell — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:55:24 +0000

Benedict Evans for Enders Analysis releases a new data that claims that the number of monthly active users of Facebook’s mobile apps surpassed the 300 million mark. The major reason behind this lift is the heavy usage of iOS and Android apps along with the apps used on BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Phone, iPad and other feature phones.

According to available data, the figure associates to about 40% of Facebook’s massive 800 million active users.

Back in September, the social networking giant said that more than 350 million active users access Facebook via their mobile devices. These numbers not only include web users but also users of its mobile apps. Evans elaborates that one can track the number of app users by visiting the Facebook Page for each app and then adding them up to get the results. One can also opt for services like AppData to perform the same task.

When the social networking giant announced 350 million mobile app users, there were actually 250 million mobile app users. This implies that over the course of recent few months, the social network has gained over 50 million+ active mobile app users, which is pretty amazing.

It has been reported earlier that Android has managed to surpass iPhone in terms of daily active users. However, on weekly and monthly basis, iPhone and iPod touch are still on the top. According to Evans, more than 100 million users are using iPhone and iPod touch on monthly basis.

Besides these, BlackBerry handsets and feature phones also have their role to play. Symbian and somewhat insignificant Windows Phone are just behind the number of iPad users whether you talk about daily, weekly or monthly active users.

There raised an interesting question here whether how many users access Facebook only on their mobile phone, never visiting the desktop site. It is extremely hard to answer this question unless the company provides us with any clue. Evans believes that the numbers are certainly high, but counting the exact figures is a bit hard at the moment with available data.

Facebook Adoption in Top 10 Countries

Mikey Mell — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:26:53 +0000

Facebook has become really popular in the recent few months. However, when it comes to rank the countries in terms of Facebook adoption, it becomes really difficult to figure out. But, Pingdom has made this task easy for us by providing us with a new list of countries contrasting the number of Facebook users as percentage of the population.

Here we are not talking about raw number of Facebook users, where the United States is still on the top. This studies ranked countries according to what percentage of the population (online and total) is on the social network. In layman words, we are trying to know how popular Facebook is in that particular country.

According to Pingdom, 95% of the online population on the island of Cyprus is on Facebook and is on the top of the ranking. Chile is on third spot where there are more Facebook accounts than Internet users. You might be surprised how it is possible to have more accounts when there were fewer number of Internet users. Perhaps the reason for this is people have multiple accounts, i.e. one for business and one for personal use.

The red bar in the table above represents the number of Facebook users in each country as a percentage of Internet users, while yellow bar represents the percentage of the population.

Pingdom while contradicting its previous claim that Philippines was the top country on Facebook based on similar rankings. According to Pingdom, only 28.76% of the population in Philippines is on Facebook and the previously claimed 93.9% were not true. Note that the reference of Philippines is in accordance with “The Ten Nations Where Facebook Rules the Internet” through 24/7 Wall Street.

India and China are considered as the largest untapped markets for the social network for outside growth. Surprisingly, only 3.42% of the population in India use Facebook. China, on the other hand, trying to block the Facebook from the country still managed to register 530,000 accounts on the Facebook despite government’s efforts to block it.

In the past, Facebook announced that 70% of its growth results from users outside United States. However, Pingdom says that the figures are somewhere around 80%. The total population on Earth is 7 billion+ out of which 800 million users are on Facebook.

The methodology used plays a vital role during generating any such rankings. According to Pingdom, it collected data from different sources and compile them up in the form of a chart given above. For instance, the data about how many users are in actual use Facebook in different countries across the globe is taken from SocialBaker; data regarding Internet users taken from the World Bank, while the population data is collected from Wikipedia. Countries with population over 500,000 are included in the research.

Now Use Anyone’s Face as a Facebook Chat Emoticon

Mikey Mell — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:01:34 +0000

If you are a regular Internet user, then you must be aware of a range of anonymous smiley faces known as ‘Emoticons’, representing different emotions. Going a step further in emoticons, Facebook Chat now enables you use the profile picture of any user or your friend, official Page, or event on the service as an Emoticon. This simply means that you can create one from your best friend, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Chuck Norris, or anyone else you want to. This will help you express complicated emotions in a smart way.

Follow the instructions given below to create emoticons out of profile pictures:

Visit any profile, official page, or event whose profile picture you want to use as an Emoticon.
On the URL, try look for a username or profile ID at the end, e.g. ‘VinDiesel’ from http://www.facebook.com/VinDiesel. Or any other URL ending with different username or profile ID, such as ‘JoshConstine’, ‘cocacola’ or ’45197362282′.
Put that username or profile id within double brackets, for instance: [[VinDiesel]].
By entering this double bracketed text into your Facebook Chat or Message field, hit the send button and that will appear in the chat as person, Page or event’s current profile picture.

It is worth noting here that although these custom emoticons can be sent through mobile or web, but they will only appear as a profile picture on the web, while on mobile or Facebook app they appear as bracketed string. It is also important to note here, these cannot be used in status updates, wall posts, or in comments. Although, these emoticons appear to be small enough, but hovering over them will give you a username or profile ID they belong to. Similarly, Pages which are not owned by anyone can’t be used to make an Emoticon.

Many of you may not like the idea of other people using your profile picture as an Emoticon. You can’t even complaint about this as profile pictures and usernames are public and technically doesn’t violate privacy. So, no way possible to keep your profile picture from being used.

Prior to this, Facebook had only one custom smiley – the code: :putnam: that shows the face of Facebook engineer Chris Putnam. But now you can best replace verbs, nouns and/or adjectives with the faces best represent them.

The emoticon has finally evolved out of something real.

We have compiles few codes from the people and Pages that can be used as emoticons. What you need to do is to copy the bracketed code and paste it in your Facebook Chat or Message.

Badass – (Chuck Norris) [[46637413257]]

Eloquence – [[WilliamShakespeare1]]

Pirate – [[CaptainJackSparrow]]

President, leadership – [[barackobama]]

Bro – [[DJPAULYD]]

Male attractiveness – (Ryan Gosling) [[246631252031491]]

Boyishness – [[JustinBieber]]

Relaxation – [[BobMarley]]

Condescension, judgment – [[simoncowell]]

Adventure, auto theft – [[VinDiesel]]

Brilliance, controversial brilliance – [[Zuck]]

Loudmouth – [[theuncrunched]]

Greed – [[DonaldTrump]]

Drunk – (David Hasselhoff) [[123670240998921]]

Santa Claus – [[TheMagicOfSantaClaus]]

Terrible art – [[Nickelback]]

Winning – [[CharlieSheen]]

Disapproval – Fry from Futurama [[[278104690058]]

TouristEye Offers to Store Your Gowalla Data

Mikey Mell — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:54:07 +0000

Facebook has acquired the travel and check-in service Gowalla earlier this month. Analysts see this acquisition as a positive step from the social networking giant. It is also considered good for Gowalla, when it came to its rivalry with Foursquare. The acquisition also appears to be a breakthrough in owning mobile developers by Facebook.

Where both the companies are happy with the deal, users that count over one million are in trouble with Gowalla announced to close its operations at the end of January. Taking the advantage of the situation, a company known as TouristEye has decided to let Gowalla’s users to import all of their data into its own system. It is a smart move from the company for if it manages to get even quarter of Gowalla users, it would be enough to boost its travel services.

Smartly enough, TouristEye enables Gowalla users to effortlessly import their check-in history and the service promises to automatically complete their Passports and make all the trips they have done earlier in an “intelligent way.” However, for diehard Gowalla users, this is of course a no-brainer for them. In one of its recent statement, the company announces that thousands of Gowalla users have already shifted to this service.

Easy Migration

A migration page has been set up by TouristEye through which Gowalla users can log into their accounts and import their data. There are many users who are not a big time user of Gowalla, but do have some check-in data from the past, which they won’t mind keeping somewhere, despite the fact they don’t even use it.

For instance, given is an image of Gary Arndt’s profile, who visited over 100 countries while using Gowalla. He is pretty much pleased with the fact that his information remains intact by importing it to TouristEye.

However, it is worth noting here that ToruistEye is not similar to the services provided by Gowalla as it is not about check-ins. Contrary to this, the service is dedicated for suggesting locations for trips based on places you have been. Still, you will get a smooth and better looking profile, but don’t expect to have similar social features offered by Gowalla.

This is your last chance to migrate your data to the TouristEye rather than wandering about the Facebook’s acquisition of Gowalla, otherwise you will not but see your check-ins deleted from Gowalla’s system.

Facebook Persuades Users to Play More Games

Mikey Mell — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:49:54 +0000

Through a recent blog post, the social networking giant announced that it has launched a host of improvements to its platform placing greater emphasis on gaming with a view to encourage users to play more games via the social platform.

The most noticeable change made by the company is to include news items regarding games in users’ mobile timelines. It means that the users will be able to see notifications related to games their friends have played, while they use Facebook on their mobile handsets.

It is further described on the Facebook’s Developer blog:

We’ve recently begun testing aggregated game stories for mobile platform apps to drive traffic from mobile devices to games. Gamers and non-gamers alike will see stories for the games their friends are playing the most.

As we gather user and developer feedback from this test, we’ll continue to iterate on the feature as we focus on making feed a strong acquisition channel for developers.

The company has also enhanced the games categories and more features to offer simple navigation to users to discover new titles easily:

We’ve added new categories for “Casino”, “Family”, “Sports”, “Strategy” and “Word”, “Role Playing” is now “Adventure” [and] “Virtual World” is now “Simulation”.

Furthermore, to increase the visibility of games, the company has increased the number of bookmarks appearing on the top right of the browser from four to six. The feature has already been tested by the company, which is an encouraging fact for developers for it has “increased referrals from canvas bookmarks to games by 20%.”

To conclude, Facebook has merged the notifications regarding games and apps within the dashboard. Users have the ability to rearrange the apps and games in the list.

Last but not the least, the social networking giant has also included a game development guide to assist developers and support the growth of the games inside its environment and also usage of them.

Tech Readers » Facebook

Facebook Hires Ex-Apple Executive

Related Posts

Facebook Files for $5 Billion IPO

Related Posts

Facebook Up to Celebrate its 8th Birthday on Heels of IPO Announcement

Related Posts

Facebook’s Display Ads Share Reaches 28%

Related Posts

Angry Birds Coming to Facebook on Valentine’s Day

Related Posts

Facebook Ready to File for IPO

Related Posts

Facebook Killing Local Social Networks Around the World

Related Posts

Facebook Timeline Feature Coming to All Users

Related Posts

Facebook Reportedly Launching New Open Graph Apps, Gestures on Wednesday

Related Posts

Facebook Advertisers Get Discount for Linking Back

Related Posts

Facebook Evidently Looking to Go Public in Late May

Related Posts

Facebook Announces Press Event in San Francisco Next Week

Related Posts

Facebook Expected to Gain 1 Billion Users by August 2012

Related Posts

Facebook Introduces New ‘Listen with Friends’ for Real-Time Music Sharing

Related Posts

Internet Explorer 7 Doesn’t Display Faebook Timeline

Related Posts

Almost 40% of Facebook Users are Mobile App Users

Related Posts

Facebook Adoption in Top 10 Countries

Related Posts

Now Use Anyone’s Face as a Facebook Chat Emoticon

Related Posts

TouristEye Offers to Store Your Gowalla Data

Related Posts

Facebook Persuades Users to Play More Games

Related Posts