Facebook plays host to more than 250 billion user photos

Facebook recently published a white paper concerning Internet.org, the social network’s plan to get the rest of the world online with the help of Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung. In it, the company shared some rather interesting statistics related to the amount of media shared on the site.

Twitter files for IPO, analysts value company at $10 to $20 billion

Twitter is kicking into motion one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in the tech industry since Facebook. The popular microblogging service yesterday announced -- via a Tweet, no less -- that it has confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. Details are still scarce on how many shares of the company will be offered, the timing of the offering and the price of the shares.

Company executives had long dodged questions about going public, claiming they were more focused on the long term and creating lasting value than near term optimization of revenue. The Guardian speculates it is likely that Twitter was forced to file for an IPO because it had enough private investors that regulations required it. Under the Jobs Act a company in the US has to go public if it has more than 2,000 private investors.

This Act, which stands for Jumpstart Our Business Startups and became law in 2012, also provides a vague hint at Twitter’s revenue, as only companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue are allowed to file IPO plans confidentially and keep financial data under wraps until three weeks before marketing its stock in a “road show”. The road show is one of the final steps in the IPO process, in which the company gives presentations to potential investors, and is typically followed by pricing of the shares and the first day of trading.

For what it’s worth, the service is known to have over 200 million active users and is believed to have generated more than $100 million in revenue in the final quarter of 2012. Twitter makes its money primarily by selling ads, and is increasingly becoming an attractive venue for advertisers due to its timeliness and topicality, with people actively tweeting alongside specific events such as TV shows, concerts, and breaking news. According to eMarketer, Twitter will rake in in $583 million in advertising revenue for 2013 and hit $1 billion in 2014.

Twitter is currently believed to be worth between $10 billion to $20 billion. That’s a far cry from Facebook’s $100 billion valuation last year, but going public at this stage leaves them more room to run up revenue and valuation, which is very important when it comes to Wall Street. The timing is also noteworthy as investors are recovering confidence in mobile and social, with Facebook’s shares hitting a record high this week at $44.75.

Facebook testing auto-play for videos, precursor to video ads

Facebook is in the process of testing a new mobile feature for Android and iOS users that will automatically play videos embedded in a News Feed as you scroll through it. The clips will initially play silently and if you don’t want to watch it, just keep scrolling. Tapping the video will take it full screen and enable audio.

The feature is only being tested with a small number of users at first to help iron out any bugs. It’s worth noting that auto-play videos will be limited to those posted by individuals, musicians and bands – no YouTube embeds or the like are allowed. Brand pages are also being excluded for now, we’re told.

Early feedback on the new feature is mostly positive as videos are said to load quickly, even over a wireless signal. Clips played seamlessly while being moved around in the feed and once a video dips off the screen, it stops playing to avoid excessive data usage. Overall, the experience is said to be smooth and natural.

Facebook is clearly peddling this as an easier way to watch videos on the social network but the obvious takeaway is that it’s simply a precursor to video advertisements.

Back in July, it was reported that Facebook was planning to launch 15-second television-style ads that would sell for between $1 million to $2.5 million per day. That would translate into an additional (and likely significant) revenue stream for the social network with companies like YouTube paving the way.

Facebook shared albums allow multiple users to upload photos

Facebook has unearthed a new feature that lets multiple users contribute to a single photo album. The creator of the album can choose to add up to 50 contributors who can each upload up to 200 photos of their own to the album. If granted permission from the album creator, contributors can then invite others to the album as well.

8.7% of Facebook users aren't real people, jury's out on the other 91.3%

In its first public earnings report last week, Facebook revealed that its active userbase increased 29% on-year to 955 million people, with about 552 million using the service daily, up 32%. However, according to information released in its 10-Q filing this week, approximately 8.7% of active Facebook accounts (83.09 million) don't represent real people.

That figure has sharply increased from March's pre-IPO estimate of 5 to 6% accounts, though CNET says this is likely the result of Facebook adjusting the way it calculates bogus profiles. The site also adds that someone can qualify as an "active" Facebook user if they use the service to login on other sites, but don't necessarily visit the social network.

The document shows that 4.8% of Facebook's monthly active users (MAUs) are duplicates or an extra account someone created in addition to their main profile, whether by mistake, to cheat in social games or for various other reasons. This violates the site's terms of service and Facebook says it's constantly trying to detect and suppress such behavior.

Another 2.4% of the MAUs are said to be "misclassified," meaning someone created a personal profile for a non-human such as a pet or business. These types of entities are permitted on Facebook, but only as "Pages," which differ from standard profiles. The remaining 1.5% of MAUs are deemed "undesirable" for nefarious activities such as spamming.

This news follows days after a small startup publicly withdrew from Facebook, claiming that 80% of the site's ad clicks were from bots. The social network's $38 share price has seen a steady decline since its public debut in May. Shares fell below $20 for the first time Thursday, though the market closed at $20.04, down 4.02% from Wednesday.

Facebook "want" button coming soon, says developer

Facebook already allows members to express themselves in a number of different ways, from posting basic status updates and liking things to sharing what songs you are listening to and even sharing your organ donor status. But according to developer Tom Waddington, the social networking company has added a new “want” tag to their Javascript software development kit.

Inside Facebook points out that the button is not publicly listed on the company’s Facebook developer site alongside other plugins. Waddington says that the button will be a part of Facebook’s Open Graph, only showing up on items that are marked as a product. For example, you could “want” a new car but you wouldn’t be able to “want” your favorite band or movie star.

A similar function already exists as a third party app but users have to authorize them to create stories on their Timeline and News Feed. Many tech savvy users shy away from installing any third party apps on the social site out of fear that an app could end up compromising their account. Getting rid of the third party app and implementing the feature directly into Facebook will no doubt result in greater participation.

Adding the feature will allow Facebook to collect even more data about a user’s interests, something that could be used for advertising purposes. The move would also assist e-commerce fan sites as those companies would no longer have to create their own apps to accomplish the same goal.

No word yet on when exactly this new feature is scheduled to roll out.

Microsoft purchases corporate social network Yammer for $1.2 billion

Microsoft has pulled the trigger on a deal that will see them acquire corporate social network Yammer in an effort to keep pace with other similar offerings. Asrumors earlier this month suggested, Microsoft has agreed to pay $1.2 billion for the four-year-old start-up founded by former PayPal chief operating officer David Sacks, who will remain with the company as chief executive officer.

Yammer, sometimes referred to as the Facebook or Twitter of the business world, was originally conceived with the idea that employees could post a short description of a project they were working on for others in the company to follow and offer ideas. It has since evolved to include a wider range of social networking features to facilitate file sharing, knowledge exchange and team efficiency. The service boasts around 5 million users spanning more than 200,000 companies worldwide.

Salesforce.com, Google, Oracle and SAP all have extensive corporate social network offerings and it’s clear that Microsoft wants to compete. Trip Chowdhry from Global Equities Research believes that Microsoft is too late to the social party, noting that it’s impossible to get into a leadership position by imitating the leaders. He feels that Redmond will have a tough time trying to catch Salesforce.com and Oracle, both of which have beefed up their offerings in recent years.

Regardless, Jive CEO Tony Zingale feels that the acquisition solidifies the idea of corporate social networking and will likely lead to it becoming a must-have business tool.

Facebook buys facial recognition technology company Face.com

Facebook has acquired facial recognition technology company Face.com for an undisclosed amount of money. Such a deal was rumored to be in the works last month for around $100 million, making Face.com the first post-IPO acquisition by the social networking giant.


Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Face.com was created in 2007 and specializes in facial recognition using photos. The company’s KLIK app for smartphones allows users to automatically tag their friends in photos uploaded to Facebook. Third-party tracking software AppData reports that KLIK has 40,000 active monthly Facebook users.


Face.com claims to be serious when it comes to user privacy as they require customers to feed information before they can use the software to recognize faces. Furthermore, only contacts that are on a person’s friends list can be recognized and tagged.


“We love building products, and like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph,” said Face.com CEO Gil Hirsch. “By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers — that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do.”


Since Face.com already works closely with Facebook, some feel that the purchase was more of a staff acquisition than anything else. What still remains unclear is how this will affect Yandex, the Moscow-based search engine that purchased an 18.4 percent share of Face.com for $4.3 million in late 2010. They weren’t mentioned in the blog post on Face.com regarding the buyout.


Stock in the social networking company is up $1.54 as of writing and nearly $3 since opening trades on Friday. The deal is still pending but is expected to close in the coming weeks.

Facebook's Timeline feature goes live worldwide

Facebook has officially begun rolling out the new Timeline feature to its entire 800+ million user base. Announced in September, the move represents a complete reconceptualization of profile pages, where instead of just the most recent updates, users will see a timeline of life events containing photos and other updates that stretches back to when you joined Facebook. As Zuckerberg puts it, Timeline is the story of your life.

Anyone viewing your Timeline can click back to any year where there are updates and see what was going on at the time. Facebook automatically selects the most important updates and highlights them on your profile page, though users can of course remove certain updates and highlight others that might be important to them.

As you would expect, the idea of reviving old -- and potentially embarrassing moments -- in their profile pages hasn't sat well with some users. In an effort to appease critics, the social network is giving users a seven-day review period to tweak their Timeline before it goes public for viewing by others on December 21st. (Update: Facebook's PR people wrote to clarify that December 21st is not a deadline for everyone to review and set up their Timeline. The seven-day review period starts counting whenever users opt-in to the new Timeline profile. There's no announced date for when Facebook will make the change mandatory but the opt-in period will apparently last for a few weeks.)

Users can get the new profile page now, by going to the Introducing Timeline page and clicking "Get it Now".

Facebook first rolled out Timeline in New Zealand last week in order to monitor speed and performance before a global rollout. Before that it was also available to developers -- as well as faux developers interested in trying out the feature early. According to Facebook, over one million people signed up for the beta.