LG's New G Pad 8.3 Tablet Will Fit in Your Pocket

Ahead of the IFA 2013 trade show in Berlin this week, LG announced that the pocket-sized G Pad 8.3 tablet will be joining its lineup of mobile devices. The device will be the first 8-inch tablet with a full HD display on the market.
Although the G Pad 8.3 will officially debut at the conference next week, the company unveiled details about the device this weekend. It also created some fanfare last week with a trailer video posted to YouTube. The clip placed great emphasis on tablet size, and how more people would use the devices if they fit in their pocket.

Available in both black and white, the sleek tablet weighs less than a pound, and runs on Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean). It comes with 16 GB of memory, 2 GB of RAM, a 5.0 MP rear-facing camera and 1.3 MP camera in the front. The device weighs in at 338 grams — the weight of a newspaper, according to LG — and boasts a 1.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor.
LG didn't elaborate on the price, or exactly when the G Pad 8.3 tablet will hit stores, but said it will roll out in international markets — including North America, Europe and Asia — starting in the fourth quarter of 2013.
This is the first time in a year that LG is launching a new tablet. In a statement, the company said the G Pad 8.3 complements its recently launchedG2 smartphone, which aims to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S4.
What do you think of the G Pad 8.3 tablet? Tell us in the comments, below.

Google's Ad Campaign for Moto X Touts Customization

When Google introduced its first ads for the Moto X at the beginning of the month, we were told they were not part of the "real" Moto X ad campaign that was coming later.
This ad may be the first component of that campaign. Unlike the previous executions, which showcased features like the Quick Capture camera and Always Ready voice control, these are a less specific branding pitch for the phones. As a techno tune plays, the visuals display the multiple color choices for the back, front and accents on the phone plus the case. It also underscores the phone's "Assembled in the U.S.A." boast, which may cost an extra $5 per phone.
While Apple is going head to head with the Moto X on the latter claim, Google is wise to play up customization since it is a unique selling proposition vs. Apple's iPhone, which has much less wiggle room for self expression. With Apple's next iPhone release likely coming in a few weeks, though, we'll soon see how well the message resonates with consumers.
Update: A Moto rep says the ad above is "not new," and is an "informational video from a few weeks ago."

Your Facebook Antics Outshine Your Resume

So you've just graduated with a Ph.D. in neuroscience from an Ivy League university, bought yourself an expensive suit and have polished up that resume so it shines like the sun. You are clearly ready to conquer the job market.
Oh wait, you forgot to change your Facebook privacy settings. Epic fail.

In this comic, Manu Cornet of Bonkers World reveals what matters to employers these days — a squeaky clean social networking presence.

The Governments That Want Facebook and Twitter to Hand Over Data

 
Facebook, for the first time, has detailed how many user data requests it receives from each country. And since Twitter does the same thing, we can compare the two rivals by a curious but revealing metric: how much governments want their data.
Overall, data about Facebook users are much more coveted: The social network received at least 25,607 government requests in the first half of this year, compared with 1,113 for Twitter. That makes sense since Facebook is bigger, and Twitter stores less sensitive information about its users. There are simply more secrets hiding on Facebook.com.
But the comparison gets more interesting when you look at specific countries and think of government data requests as an indicator of the social network’s perceived importance. For instance, Japan requested data from Twitter 87 times in the first six months of 2013; the country asked Facebook for data only once in the same period. Japan is one of the only developed economies where Facebook adoption is weak, while residents regularly set new records on Twitter.
The United States requests more user data from each company than any other country — by far (43–45% of requests to Facebook and 78% of Twitter’s). The same is true for Google, which has published data on such requests for a while.
Putting the U.S. aside, here are the top 10 countries requesting information from Twitter, by percentage of requests, and the corresponding figures for Facebook. In addition to Japan, Mexico stands out for Twitter:

​​ And here’s the same thing for Facebook, still excluding the U.S. India is the second-most frequent requestor of the company’s data, but the country barely registers for Twitter:

​

Facebook Fan Pages Spam Is a $200 Million Business

Spreading spam on Facebook Pages is a booming business of at least $200 million a year. And a single post that contains a spam link is worth from $13 to $58, depending on how many likes the Facebook page has, according to researchers.
Independent researchers found 30,000 Facebook Pages (which used to be called "Fan Pages") advertised on underground spam forums. Then they analyzed the Pages, looking for posts that contained keywords like "click here," "free," "wow," or "join," followed by shortened links.

In two days in July, using two servers, the group of Italian researchers, led by Andrea Stroppa, Carlo De Micheli, and Danny Di Stefano, went through almost 700,000 posts and found out that almost 37,000 of those were spam.
"We've seen that every day there are at least 20,000 posts of wild spam pointing to e-commerce, fake news, affiliations, porn and often scams," Stroppa told.
The six researchers, who months ago shined a light on the fake Twitter followers business, studied various underground spam forums and found that for Facebook Pages with less than 30,000 likes, spam posts can be sold for as much as $20 and as low as $8 (the average is the aforementioned $13). For pages with more than 100,000 Likes, posts can cost as much as $100 dollars, and in some instances, for pages with millions of fans, the price is more than $200.
Facebook bans Pages administrators from posting advertisements. In fact, according to Facebook's Pages terms of service, "third-party advertisements on Pages are prohibited without our prior permission."
Facebook spam, while not as pervasive as email spam, is a growing problem, according to experts. Facebook said in 2012 that only 4% of the content shared on its network is spam, according to The Wall Street Journal, while more than 70% of email is spam.
"Social media spam isn't yet quite seen on the same level as email spam." said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Labs. "The problem will continue on growing until there's a bigger crackdown on businesses that are offering services to spam Facebook."
If spam keeps spreading on the social network, it could eventually hurt its business, not only because there are people that effectively advertise on Facebook without paying the company, but because users might be annoyed by spam and leave the network.
"There's a financial incentive for Facebook to address the spam problem. For one, people may stop using the service if the spam problem is too severe," explained Schouwenberg. "Secondly, as Facebook is looking into further ways to better monetize the platform they'll want to have the least amount of spam possible. Otherwise users will start grouping the legitimate ads together with the spammed ads, which will reduce the value of the legitimate ads."
Stroppa and the other researchers included a statement from a Facebook spammer they spoke to on Skype who explained how he's benefited from Facebook spam without ever being caught. (Stroppa declined to identify the spammer.)
"Facebook doesn’t ban us simply because we generate the content on Facebook itself. Everyday I materialize funny and interesting content full of phrases and so forth that is shared and liked by thousands of users," he or she reportedly said, according to the researchers. "Without the Fan Pages Facebook would be an empty place. Tell me, how many links do you see shared by your friends on your timeline everyday? You see? The answer is simple."
According to Stroppa, though, Facebook isn't doing enough in fighting this problem and might actually be turning a blind eye to it because, in the end, it might not bother them that much.
"Facebook doesn't have a couple of 100 Euro servers like the ones we have, and can monitor in real time. Facebook could fight these if it wanted," he said.
Facebook declined to comment on the research, simply sending the following statement:

"Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam is a top priority for us. We have developed a number of systems to identify spam and stop it from spreading, and we have mechanisms in place to quickly shut down Pages, accounts, and applications that are found to be in violation of our terms of service. We also offer tools for people to report Pages and posts that might be spam. We will continue to improve our spam-fighting systems so we can to ensure that the overall level of spam on Facebook remains low."

Facebook Introduces More Business-Friendly Promotions Policy

Facebook unveiled a new promotions policy on Tuesday, updating guidelines for businesses that run contests and sweepstakes.
The update is designed to help business create and manage promotions on Facebook. Among the amendments: The social-network giant no longer requires promotions to be exclusively administered through apps; now, they're allowed to be administered on Pages, as well.

In an official blog post, Facebook explains that businesses can collect contest entries by having users message the Page, post on the Page or like and comment on a Page post."
What's more, if a small business wants to launch a contest based on the number of likes a post receives, it can do so directly on its Page, without requiring a third-party app.
A Facebook representative told that its new promotions policy "makes it even easier for smaller businesses to help build awareness for a new product, promote the opening of a new location, sell inventory or advance other business objectives."
Facebook's update also includes stricter regulations on tagging.
"Our Pages Terms now prohibit Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in," according to the blog post.
Businesses, what do you think of Facebook's policy update? Is it helpful, or a hindrance? Sound off in the comments, below.

'Social Fiction' Brings Characters to Life via Facebook and Twitter

A former Nickelodeon Animation storyboard artist and a Facebook employee have teamed up to create a new form of entertainment: social fiction.
Illustrator Steve Lowtwait and writer Michael Smith are telling a fictional story through social media that's centered around a protagonist called "Hawk Funn." They have set up real social profiles on Facebook and Twitter for fictional characters in the story, and they post about the characters' lives just like real people would. If you follow Hawk on Facebook and on Twitter, you can track the plot and learn about his life as a suburban dad in Colorado and his fear of the indoors.

This social fiction story gives anyone a chance to interact with the plot and characters in real time.
"When someone interacts and comments, the characters will comment back," Lowtwait told Mashable, adding that he and Smith — a California-based Facebook employee — are currently writing the characters' posts.

Instead of yelling at the television screen when your favorite TV character makes a silly mistake, you can post your feedback directly to a social fiction character. But Boulder, Colo.-based Lowtwait says even if people are screaming at Hawk to do something, some of the story drama will remain intact.
"In some sense, drama is when the characters do things you don't want them to do or you see them doing things that hurt other characters or themselves," said Lowtwait, who used to illustrate for Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold! TV show and movie.
Hawk Funn is the first project in Lowtwait and Smith's push to encourage social fiction. That's why they're trying to raise $116,000 on Kickstarter to turn this project into a viable business. With 22 days left to go in the Kickstarter campaign, backers had pledged about $3,750, as of Tuesday afternoon. Backers can vote to shape the direction of the story, receive authentic production drawings and be characters in the story.
Lowtwait said they'd eventually like to hire a social media manager to portray characters online: "That's going to involve somebody who's part community manager, part writer and being mindful of what you can say in the story while you're talking to the audience without giving anything away, but also being able to be the characters."

Social Fiction: A New Industry?

The idea for Hawk Funn was inspired by a marketing concept Lowtwait was working on for another project. He told Mashable that marketing for social fiction is innately viral, since it is told on the Internet and through social media.
"

Social fiction kind of spans the entire Internet

Social fiction kind of spans the entire Internet: It's got to have the websites and other social accounts that support the story, blending fiction and reality to create a whole world. And I think there's possibility for an industry to grow up around storytelling like that," he said. In addition to online presences for the characters, the team has created a website for Hawk's fictional business in the story. Lowtwait said they even made a Twitter account for a fictional magazine that is critical of Hawk's product in the story.
A Facebook spokesperson told in a statement that fictional pages like this do not violate the social network's rules: "As long as the Page accurately reflects [that] the content doesn’t mislead users about the voice, it’s in compliance with terms."
But since reading social media is free, how would social fiction make money to sustain itself? Lowtwait said this approach brings opportunity for brands to sponsor and tell stories about their products. In a purely hypothetical example, he said Nike could produce a story about someone who starts running and people could follow that character. The story wouldn't necessarily be an explicit ad, but could incorporate products and tell more about the active lifestyle Nike might want to promote.
Further down the line, Lowtwait said they could offshoot merchandise, characters could be franchised and fictional products from the story could even be manufactured.

Analog to Digital

When Lowtwait worked for Nickelodeon, he said the prep work for his illustrations were all hand-drawn on paper — despite the final output being digital. For his illustrations on Facebook in this new social fiction story, he is using an iPad.
"The development of it is, in a way, a lot like animation ... you have to create characters and design them," he said.
Lowtwait added he is using Facebook's Timeline dimensions as a guide for his illustrations.
Experience the story yourself by following Hawk, his wife, kids and best friend on social media.
What do you think about the future of social fiction? Share your thoughts in the comments

Facebook to Pay Users $20 Million for Sharing Personal Data in Ads

If you're one of the 614,000 Facebook members who appeared in a site ad without permission, you may have some cash coming your way.
Facebook was granted final approval on Monday for a $20 million settlement stemming from a 2011 lawsuit involving "Sponsored Stories" ads.

The ads, which were posted on both the right-hand side of the site and in news feeds, used member names, pictures and details about the brands and interests they Like on the site. Members whose details appeared in the ads will now receive $15 each.
The five people who led the lawsuit claimed to represent all user and said the company violated their privacy by highlighting personal data without permission.
"We are pleased that the settlement has received final approval," a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable in a statement.
The company did not comment on when users would receive their payout.
Although the lawsuit reached a settlement back in early 2012 — and again later in the year — both were rejected. According to a BBC report, the judge acknowledged the payout was small for users. It was not proven that Facebook "undisputedly violated the law" and that the plaintiffs could not show they were "harmed in any meaningful way," per the report.
Now, Facebook is required to update its Statement of Rights so users can retain more control over their personal data.

Facebook Consumer Marketing Head Goes to Twitter

Twitter has poached Facebook's head of consumer and mobile marketing, Kate Jhaveri, according to a report.
Jhaveri will join Twitter as senior director of consumer marketing, according to AllThingsD. Reps from Twitter and Facebook could not immediately be reached for comment. A Twitter account purported to be Jhaveri's but not verified tweeted the following Friday afternoon:
Jhaveri, pictured below, joined Facebook in August 2010 and stopped working at the company sometime this month, according to her LinkedIn profile. She had previously served as consumer and online marketing director at Microsoft.

Twitter's General Counsel Alexander Macgillivray also announced he was leaving the company. Macgillivray tweeted about his move after a story in AllThingsD appeared.

Facebook Hacker Breaks Into Zuckerberg's Timeline to Report Bug

If you're a hacker and you find a bug in Facebook, you have the chance to submit it through the company's white hat disclosure program and get a reward.
But what if you've found a bug, and Facebook ignores you?
A Palestinian hacker took the inadvisable step of posting on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's Timeline, taking advantage of the very bug he was trying to report.

 

Khalil Shreateh, a Palestinian developer and hacker, discovered that there was a way to bypass Facebook's privacy settings and post on anyone's timeline — even users who are not your friends.
He first reported the vulnerability via email to the bug bounty program. But the social network failed to recognize the vulnerability in his report, according to Shreateh's blog post.
Before reporting the bug, Shreateh successfully tested it by posting on the wall of Sarah Goodin, Zuckerberg's former college classmate. He included a link to this post in the email, but the Facebook security employee who received the email — identified only as Emrakul — couldn't see the post, since he wasn't friends with Goodin.
That's what Shreateh tried to explain in a follow up to Emrakul, warning that he could very well post to Zuckerberg's wall if he wanted. He added that he wouldn't "cause I do respect people privacy," he allegedly wrote. His second email, however, was ignored.
Shreateh then sent another official report, explaining the bug again. This time, Emrakul allegedly answered: "I am sorry this is not a bug." To which Shreateh answered: "ok, that mean [sic] I have no choice other than report this to Mark himself on Facebook."
And so he did.

  

The exploit got the attention of Ola Okelola, another Facebook security engineer. Okelola commented on the post, asking for more information on the bug. After a brief discussion, Shreateh's Facebook account got suspended "as a precaution," as another Facebook security engineer named Joshua explained to Shreateh by email.
"Unfortunately your report to our Whitehat system did not have enough technical information for us to take action on it," Joshua wrote. "We cannot respond to reports which do not contain enough detail to allow us to reproduce an issue." He added that Facebook would "unfortunately not able to pay you for this vulnerability because your actions violated our Terms of Service."
By posting on Zuckerberg's wall, Shreateh also violated Facebook's responsible disclosure policy — which prohibits people who discover bugs to take advantage of them and demonstrate the bugs on people's accounts without their permission.
"The more important issue here is with how the bug was demonstrated using the accounts of real people without their permission," explained Facebook's Matt Jones on the site Hacker News. Facebook has confirmed to Mashable that Jones is indeed an employee.
"Exploiting bugs to impact real users is not acceptable behavior for a white hat. We allow researchers to create test accounts here to help facilitate responsible research and testing. In this case, the researcher used the bug he discovered to post on the timelines of multiple users without their consent," Jones added.
Facebook declined to comment further. Besides, the bug was fixed on Thursday, according to Jones.
Shreateh won't be rewarded for his finding, because he violated the disclosure policy.

Facebook launches free voice calls in UK via mobile app

Facebook has launched free voice calling as part of its iOS Messenger app in the UK.

The service debuted in North America in January this year but has now been added to the UK versions of Facebook Messenger on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

To use the service, navigate to the required contact and select the "i" icon in the top right hand corner and then click on the Free Call option. If the person is unavailable or not using the service the option is greyed out. The system supports international calling, meaning a UK user can now freely chat to a US-based friend.

"When you call, your friend will get a notification and hear a ringtone if they have their phone's volume on," said a Facebook representative. "They can swipe through the notification or open Messenger to answer your call. If they miss the call, they will see a note when they return to the conversation indicating that you tried to reach them."

Free Call is a VoIP service, similar to Skype, meaning that the app uses your device's internet connection to route the call rather than a traditional telephone network. The service is reportedly only available on iOS devices. There is no official information regarding the rollout of an Android version at the current time.

Palestinian Finds Facebook Bug, Hacks CEO Zuckerberg’s Page

When Facebook ignored Khalil Shreateh's first two reports, he took his message to the top - and hacked into CEO Mark Zuckerberg's personal page to prove his point.



YATTA, West Bank (AP) — After discovering a privacy bug on Facebook, unemployed Palestinian programmer Khalil Shreateh said he just wanted to collect the traditional $500 bounty the social network giant offers to those who voluntarily expose its glitches.
But when Facebook ignored his first two reports, Shreateh took his message to the top – and hacked into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal page to prove his point.
“Sorry for breaking your privacy,” he wrote the Facebook founder, “I has no other choice to make after all the reports I sent to Facebook team … as you can see iam not in your friend list and yet i can post to your timeline.”
The stunt cost the 30-year-old Palestinian the bounty, but earned him praise – and numerous job offers – for being able to get to the boss of the world’s most ubiquitous social network.
Shreateh, who lives near the West Bank city of Hebron and has been unable to find a job since graduating two years ago with a degree in information technology, told Facebook that he found a way that allowed anyone to post on anyone else’s wall. “I told them that you have a vulnerability and you need to close it,” he told The Associated Press. “I wasn’t looking to be famous. I just wanted to make a point to Mark (Zuckerberg).”
In a message posted to the Hacker News, a user-driven security news site, Facebook software engineer Matthew Jones said the initial report was poorly worded, although he acknowledged that the company should have pressed for more information.
“As a few other commenters have pointed out, we get hundreds of reports every day,” Jones wrote. “Many of our best reports come from people whose English isn’t great – though this can be challenging, it’s something we work with just fine and we have paid out over $1 million to hundreds of reporters. However, many of the reports we get are nonsense or misguided, and even those … provide some modicum of reproduction instructions.”
Nevertheless, he said, “we should have pushed back asking for more details here.”
He went on to say that Shreateh would not be paid from Facebook’s bounty program because he’d violated the company’s terms of service – namely by posting items to the Facebook pages of users he should not have had access to.
“The more important issue here is with how the bug was demonstrated using the accounts of real people without their permission. Exploiting bugs to impact real users is not acceptable behavior for a white hat,” he said, using an industry term for ethical security experts.
Jones added that the bug was fixed Thursday. Facebook declined to comment beyond the post.
The bug – and Facebook’s response to it – has become a talking point in information security circles, with many speculating that the Palestinian could have helped himself to thousands of dollars had he chosen to sell the information on the black market.
Shreateh said he was initially disappointed by the Facebook response but that after being inundated by job offers from all over the world he is pleased with how things worked out.
“I am looking for a good job to start a normal life like everybody,” he said. “I am so proud to be the Palestinian who discovered that exploit in Facebook.”

Facebook founder Zuckerberg hacked to highlight bug

A screenshot of the message left on Mark Zuckerberg's wall

A Palestinian programmer has highlighted a flaw in Facebook's security system by posting a message on Mark Zuckerberg's private page.

Khalil Shreateh used a vulnerability he discovered to hack the account of the Facebook founder and raise the alarm.

Mr Shreateh said he had tried to use Facebook's White Hat scheme, which offers a monetary reward for reporting vulnerabilities, but had been ignored.

Facebook said it had fixed the fault but would not be paying Mr Shreateh.

Mr Shreateh found a security breach that allowed Facebook users to post messages on the private "walls" of people who had not approved them as "friends", overriding the site's privacy features.
'Not a bug'
He wrote to Facebook's White Hat team to warn them of the glitch, providing basic details of his discovery.

After a short exchange with the team, Mr Shreateh received an email saying: "I am sorry this is not a bug".

Following this rebuttal, Mr Shreateh exploited the bug to post a message on Mr Zuckerberg's page.

In the post, Mr Shreateh, whose first language is Arabic, said he was "sorry for breaking your privacy and post to your wall" but that he had "no other choice" after being ignored by Facebook's security team.

An engineer on Facebook's security team, Matt Jones, posted a public explanation saying that although Mr Shreateh's original email should have been followed up, the way he had reported the bug had violated the site's "responsible disclosure policy".

He added that as Mr Shreateh had highlighted the bug "using the accounts of real people without their permission", he would not qualify for a payout

Facebook Claims Mobile Ads Cost More Than Desktop Ads

CANNES, FRANCE — Bucking an industry trend, the price tag on Facebook's mobile ads are higher than those for its desktop ads, according to Carolyn Everson, Facebook's VP of global marketing solutions.

Everson says CMPs — the prices for ads to reach 1,000 customers — are higher on mobile than on desktop, though she declined to specify the difference. The higher costs for mobile may reflect the fact that right-hand column direct-response Marketplace ads that appear on Facebook desktop don't run on mobile. CPMs on mobile overall are $0.75 compared with $3.50 for desktop, according to a presentation from Wall Street analyst Mary Meeker in 2012.

Greg Stuart, the CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, says he doesn't know of an official CPM figure and feels any number would be misleading, anyway. "There just isn't good benchmarking," he says. "And I'm not even sure it's a good question because at the same time you have people selling dollar inventory, you have other people selling $80 inventory. There's no such thing as an average CPM. It's a complicated concept for me."

Despite the seemingly good news about mobile ad pricing, Stuart acknowledges that the average marketer spends just 2% of her budget on mobile advertising. To help remedy this, the MMA recruited former Procter & Gamble CMO Jim Stengel to work on a pitch to marketers. The tagline: "Every moment is mobile."

Everson, a member of the MMA's executive committee, says that some of the resistance from marketers comes from the erroneous belief that geo-targeting is critical for effectiveness. "Some marketers still say 'I haven't gotten mobile right,'" she says. "And the translation is they want it to be location-specific, highly specialized and the example we've talked about for 10 years which is I walk by a Starbucks or a McDonald's and I get an offer. The truth is, forget all that fancy stuff. It might come, but what mobile is right now is a mass medium."

Would You Trade Your Location Information For Free Wi-Fi From Facebook?

Would you trade information on your location in exchange for free Wi-Fi access? Facebook is betting that the answer is yes.

Wired reports that Facebook expanded a test of what it refers to as Facebook Wi-Fi from its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., to cafes in nearby Palo Alto and San Francisco, and even to a line of Cisco Systems routers.

Facebook users who check in at locations offering Facebook Wi-Fi will be granted free access in exchange for doing so, according to Wired, which added that the initiative began at Facebook headquarters in May 2012, spreading to local businesses in Menlo Park last November, and to some Philz Coffee San Francisco locations a few months later.

On the hardware front, Cisco announced the integration of Facebook Wi-Fi as an optional service for its Meraki line of routers last month, Wired reported, adding that the social network is in talks with other router manufacturers.

Ryan Tate of Wired even added another component to the speculation about the new product Facebook will announce Thursday, writing:

Where Facebook Wi-Fi goes from there remains to be seen. It was impossible not to wonder if a major expansion might be in store last week, when Facebook sent out java-stained invitations to the press, inviting reporters to “Join us for coffee and learn about a new product … a small team has been working on.”

The Facebook Wi-Fi initiative could also be part of Facebook’s efforts to gather as much local information as possible for its Graph Search and its advertising offerings.

Could Facebook add Vine-like video features to Instagram on June 20?

Rumors are circulating that Facebook may be adding video to Instagram at its June 20 product announcement. Many news outlets suggested that Facebook would be introducing a news reader prior to this speculation.

The introduction of video to Instagram would be a direct response Twitter’s video sharing service, Vine. Since its public release for iOS in January, Vine has grown significantly in popularity and its release for Android earlier this month has only bolstered this following.

There are several clues suggesting that video may be the next step for Instagram, which now boasts of 100 million active users. For example, Facebook has prevented Vine from using its friend-finding feature. By doing this, Facebook looks embed users into its platform first, rather than a service like Twitter.

Another instance of Facebook protecting its brand is how it is preventing Instagram uploads from being posted directly onto Twitter. Users can still share Instagram photos on Twitter, but users need to click the link to see them. By directing users back to the Instagram platform, users will spend more time in the photo sharing application. It also helps with ubiquity for the Facebook and Instagram brands.

From another perspective, it would also be strategic for Facebook to introduce short video sharing to its ecosystem. With talks of adding auto-play video ads into the News Feed, Facebook could be looking to familiarize users with the concept. With more users sharing short videos, video ad units may not seem as intrusive.

For the June 20 product announcement, Facebook sent snail mail invitations with the outline of a coffee mug. Though this motif would suggest that Facebook would be announcing a news product, some have speculated this as simply a diversion to the actual announcement. With the introduction of hashtags last week, it is also possible the social network may be introducing an improved blogging platform made more powerful with Graph Search. Though it may be one of these assumptions or the other, it is likely that Facebook will add all of these features in the nearby future.

Developer finds video code in Instagram

Even if it’s not part of Facebook’s big announcement on June 20, it appears that video is a possibility for Instagram. Developer Tom Waddington posted on his blog that he dug deep into Instagram’s code, finding hints the photo-sharing service may add video soon.

Waddington wrote that he found video code when he was going through Instagram’s application programming interface, as well as images for play, pause and volume control. This gives more weight to the recent rumors that Facebook will attempt to compete with Twitter’s popular video-sharing program Vine by adding similar capabilities to Instagram.

He noted that the mute button stored in the code for a photo-sharing app is the big giveaway that Instagram is working on adding video — if not now, then definitely in the near future.

Here’s what tipped off Waddington to the potential for video within Instagram:

Despite this, Waddington doesn’t think that the June 20 announcement is about video on Instagram:

I’d be doubtful that the event invitations sent out could be anything to do with Instagram. Facebook needs a strong launch for their next product. I can’t see a coffee-cup stain connecting with video features.

My best guest would be a Flipboard competitor – Facebook wants to get a coffee-cup’s worth of time each morning. Monthly Active Users is a tough metric to keep growing – the next most important measurement would be Time On Site. A Flipboard-style section, with top social articles, content from RSS feeds and stories from sites you’ve Liked could easily become a daily destination to catch up on the web. And, it’d be sure to push up Time On Site, and, in turn, possible revenue from advertisers.

How to lose $14,980 on Facebook with one click

Be careful with the way you use Facebook’s tools. The minimum age function is great for filtering out teenagers from pages about adult topics like alcohol, but this is something you should decide when you first create your page and then never touch it again. For example, if you raise the minimum age of your page, you instantly wipe out your young fans.

 

Simply raising the minimum age cost this page 14,000, valued at nearly $14,980 (an average Facebook fan is worth $1.07, although some fans are worth more). Sure, they could buy more likes, but there’s no substitute for strategy.

If you change your minimum age, make sure you want to change it for good, because not only do you prevent new people below the specified age from liking your page, you kick off existing ones too, and changing the minimum age back to normal doesn’t add them back again.

All the Facebook news you may have missed this week.

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You can barely keep up with your own Facebook News Feed, so it’s okay if you’ve fallen behind on the network’s updates – because we’ve summed it all up for you. This week, Facebook takes on hate speech and killed your iPhone, among other things.
Facebook gets strict with hate speech
Facebook has an algorithm that detects hate speech and automatically takes posts down, but with so much content coming in, the social network has been pressured by feminist groups to do a better job of identifying and removing Facebook pages that encourage violence on women.
The New York Times reports that Women, Action & the Media, the Everyday Sexism Project, and activist Soraya Chemaly started a campaign urging Facebook to “ban gender-based hate speech” on Facebook. In fact ABC News says that 60,000 tweets containing the hashtag #fbrape and 5,000 emails were submitted to Facebook in solidarity.
In addition to the petition nabbing Facebook’s attention, Nissan also announced that it would discontinue advertising to make sure that Nissan ads wouldn’t pop up next to the Facebook pages that publish content that these feminist groups want to have taken down. Companies including Down Easy Brewing and eReader Utopia, The New York Times reports, joined in on discontinuing ads.
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Note that Facebook doesn’t have a policy against controversial and offensive content, as long as it abides by its community standards.
The social network eventually acknowledged that its algorithm hasn’t been up to the task of sorting through content well enough to find hate speech. Although, aside from Facebook’s algorithm, it’s has also been up to its users to flag inappropriate content. To act on the matter quickly, Facebook says that it has agreed to work closely with feminist organizations to remove hateful content directed at women.
Ads promoting lie-for-hire service are against Facebook rules.

Forbes writer Jeff Bercovici discovered something peculiar in a Facebook ad – a lie-for-hire service. Long-story short, someone at a company called Paladin Deception Service will pose as anyone you want and lie for or on behalf of you to whomever you request – with the exception of lying to someone from the law enforcement and healthcare industries. 

Well, Bercovici dug a little deeper as his curiosity was piqued at that point, and wasn’t too surprised to find that a sketchy business like this might not have been legitimate by Facebook’s standards to merit a space on the ad sidebar. It’s suspected that this pay-for-a-lie service broke the “unacceptable business model” guideline, which frankly is rather vague. Regardless, Facebook has confirmed that the ad has been removed entirely.


Blame Facebook for iOS battery drainApple gets a lot of bad rap for its battery life. If you’re an iOS user, you know you’ll be lucky to get through half the day on a full charge. A potential culprit, Hagga.net has found, quite possibly might the Facebook app that you probably have on your phone right now.He points out that this discovery was made by checking out the apps that have been running the longest on the iPhone. Before you jump to conclusions and say that he was probably just using Facebook for an extended period of time, he argues that this isn’t a reasonable argument because of how apps actually work on iOS devices.If you have iOS 4 or higher, Apple introduced a multitasking feature that enables apps to run in the background even if you close it for up to 10 minutes. Before this, apps would simply be frozen when closed therefore using up zero CPU power.There are exceptions to the 10 minutes, meaning that if an app meets certain criteria it can even run indefinitely even if you close it. Facebook, the post explains, takes advantage of this. VoIP and audio are two of these exceptions that the social network uses, which grants Facebook the power to run in the background. When closed, Facebook’s app doesn’t exactly stay active every waking second. What Facebook actually does is become active for 10 seconds every few minutes for the entire day.Now if you want to stop Facebook from turning on every few minutes even with the app closed, Hagga.net writes that you’ll either have to delete the app or manually close the app in the iOS task manager.Now that you know this, turning off Facebook might add a couple of hours to your battery life. Like a Facebook Page? Share it

AllFacebook has reported that Facebook is encouraging users to “Share this Page with more friends.” The social network has been trying figure out a way to aid in the discovery of new Facebook Pages – page discovery is one area that the social network is lacking when you compare the platform to Twitter. It has been stepping up page discovery efforts however starting with “More Pages You Might Like,” which was a feature that was rolled out earlier this year that recommends other Facebook Pages when you hit “like.”

$9million wedding for Facebook's first president

Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, has married his singer girlfriend in one of Silicon Valley's most extravagant weddings.

Napster co-founder and Facebook founding president Sean Parker (R) and Alexandra Lenas

The nuptials, which reportedly cost $9 million, took place in the coastal retreat of Big Sur, California in front of 300 guests.

Parker, 33, had been rumoured to be planning a themed event, based on the television series Game of Thrones, for his wedding to Alexandra Lenas.

However, before the ceremony he said: "Sorry to disappoint, but the wardrobe we're giving guests is essentially modern. No swords or chain mail. This is not a 'theme' wedding."

The scene did reportedly resemble a Hollywood set with landscapers spending weeks building fake waterfalls, ruins and backdrops, and a $600,000 stone gate.

According to People magazine a temporary dance floor reportedly cost $350,000, and the bill for flowers and plants came to $1 million.

The couple's infant daughter Winter Victoria and the guests were dressed by Oscar-winning costume designer Ngila Dickson, known for her work on The Lord of the Rings films.

Parker's representative described it as a "romantic, magical setting," Forbes has estimated the wealth of Parker, who also co-founded music sharing site Napster in 1999, at $2 billion.

He was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the 2010 movie "The Social Network".