TechCrunch
drag2share: Facebook’s Audience Is More Global Than Yahoo’s
Over 85% of Facebook’s monthly active users (MAUs) live outside the U.S.
During the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook now has 1.15 billion MAUs worldwide. Putting that number together with recent comScore data on the number of U.S.-based Facebook users, we can say that approximately one-seventh of Facebook’s users are logging in from the United States.
That’s a far cry from the days when Facebook was a network solely for American students.
Yahoo serves as a useful comparison. One-quarter of Yahoo’s users are located in the U.S. At the same conference, CEO Marissa Mayer said Yahoo now has 800 million MAUs worldwide (an increase of 20% since she took over in July 2012), and that doesn’t include its newly acquired social media platform Tumblr, which had 300 million MAUs in May 2013.
Despite this growth, Yahoo’s ad business is dwarfed by Google’s and it’s also surpassed by the ad revenues at AOL, and Facebook.
Facebook’s global character makes it a prime platform for multi-national brand advertisers. Large brands, such as Coca-Cola, already enjoy incredibly massive followings on their Facebook pages, and paid media buys are a natural step in order to leverage that audience more effectively. This global growth is happening hand-in-hand with Facebook’s mobile growth, and both are signals that the platform isn’t yet close to its peak
Download the charts and data in Excel.
‘It’s Treason’ For Yahoo To Disobey The NSA (YHOO)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-ignore-the-nsa-2013-9
Marissa Mayer was on stage on Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference when Michael Arrington asked her about NSA snooping.
He wanted to know what would happen if Yahoo just didn’t cooperate. He wanted to know what would happen if she were to simply talk about what was happening, even though the government had forbidden it.
“Releasing classified information is treason. It generally lands you incarcerated,” she said, clearly uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation.
She also explained that when the government comes calling wanting information on Yahoo users, the company scrutinizes each request and “we push back a lot on requests.” But “we can’t talk about those things because they’re classified,” she said.
This has been going on long before her reign, too, she said:
“I’m proud to be part of an organization that from the very beginning in 2007, with the NSA and FISA and PRISM, has been skeptical and has scrutinized those requests. In 2007 Yahoo filed a lawsuit against the new Patriot Act, parts of PRISM and FISA, we were the key plaintiff. A lot of people have wondered about that case and who it was. It was us … we lost. The thing is, we lost and if you don’t comply it’s treason.”
Facebook kills physical Gifts in favor of digital redemption codes
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/24/facebook-kills-physical-gifts/
Not even a year after its inception, Facebook is killing physical Gifts. According to TechCrunch, the social media giant is ending its intermediary role for sending teddy bears, wine and chocolate (sounds romantic, no?) from its partners. Instead, it’s focusing on its own gift card, as well as redemption codes for iTunes credits and the like. Why? Well, aside from the cash the company will save, users simply weren’t buying physical Gifts all that much. The new Gift page will begin rolling out to ten percent of the site’s US userbase over the weekend, and the entire stateside population should see it within two weeks. It’s a little less personal, sure, but at least you won’t have to worry about getting your loved ones gift receipts.
How Facebook’s New Payment Product Can Help Advertisers
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebooks-payment-product-can-help-advertisers-2013-8
Thursday, reports emerged that Facebook was testing a new payment product, allowing users to purchase items within the website or app only with a Facebook ID and password, that analysts described to All Things D as “a dead on competitor of PayPal.”
But Josh Constine at TechCrunch believes that the new product can actually work in conjunction with PayPal its real goal is to show brands their ads’ ROI.
Constine writes:
Rather than collecting fees, Facebook’s payments test will give it data about whether your ad clicks lead to revenue for advertisers. Say you got that e-commerce app through a Facebook ad whose click cost the app $0.25. If you then make a $20 purchase using the Facebook info fill-in option, Facebook can then report back to the advertiser that their ad buy earned them a return on investment.
Facebook is consistently trying to make the site more retailer-friendly. It tested a “Want” button, which has a stronger purchase call to action than a “Like” button, and brands have also experimented with Facebook stores.
White House unveils National Day of Civic Hacking to solve problems with open data
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/23/white-house-national-day-of-civic-hacking/
Sure, the freshly announced National Day of Civic Hacking may sound like it’ll occupy a single square on your calendar, but the White House wants folks to get together on June 1st and 2nd to solve problems with a bit of coding and info from Uncle Sam. Government agencies including the Census Bureau, NASA and the Department of Labor are set to serve up publicly available data for developers and entrepreneurs to concoct solutions for problems affecting cities, states and the country. In addition to government support, the effort is being organized by outfits including Code for America, Random Hacks of Kindness and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. Currently, 27 cities have events scheduled during the weekend in question, but the initiative’s coordinators are looking to spawn even more powwows throughout the US. If you’d like to pitch in or submit ideas for challenges participants should tackle, hit the source links below.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: White House OSTP, Hack for Change
Hearst starts publishing iPad magazines days before print editions
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/18/hearst-starts-publishing-ipad-magazines-days-before-print/
Magazine publishers have more directly embraced tablets over more than a year as it became clearer that they were boosting the bottom line. We may be witnessing a watershed moment today, however. Hearst has started publishing issues for 22 of its magazines in the iOS Newsstand days before their print equivalents hit the racks — that we can tell, the first time a major magazine producer has given tablets an early lead. While the full terms aren’t public, Apple has confirmed to AllThingsD that other publishers are welcome to take the same route, and it mentions in the App Store that other online stores don’t have the same privilege. The early access has clear competitive benefits for both Apple and Hearst, which get customers to flock away from competing e-bookstores and publications, but it’s also a sign of Hearst’s confidence in the tablet as a medium: much like movie studios, it’s betting that digital is strong enough to stand on its own.
Via: AllThingsD, TechCrunch
Source: App Store
Facebook Is Launching a Numberless "Social Calling" Service
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5962449/facebook-is-launching-a-numberless-social-calling-service
TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is teaming up with carriers to provide a “social calling” service. Initially striking up a deal with French carrier Orange, it seems the service will allow friends to make voice calls without knowing each other’s numbers.
The service will apparently allow users to make calls from mobile and desktop flavors of Facebook, using ties on Facebook, rather than possession of a phone number, to allow calling. It’ll also apparently support group calls, too.
The service will be powered by Orange’s new IP-based call app Libon—already available on iOS—which is effectively a mobile Skype competitor. The Facebook social calling service is planned to go live in France during the summer of 2013. Orange’s reach spreads far and wide across Europe, though, so it seems likely that the service’s tentacles will spread.
It remains unclear how quickly that will happen, of course, and whether or not Facebook plans to roll it out internationally any time soon. It’s also not clear how consumers will embrace the news: while there’s certainly a shift towards voice calls being made online, the idea of any Facebook contact calling at will is maddening even in theory. [Tech Crunch]
Facebook Is Launching a Numberless "Social Calling" Service
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5962449/facebook-is-launching-a-numberless-social-calling-service
TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is teaming up with carriers to provide a “social calling” service. Initially striking up a deal with French carrier Orange, it seems the service will allow friends to make voice calls without knowing each other’s numbers.
The service will apparently allow users to make calls from mobile and desktop flavors of Facebook, using ties on Facebook, rather than possession of a phone number, to allow calling. It’ll also apparently support group calls, too.
The service will be powered by Orange’s new IP-based call app Libon—already available on iOS—which is effectively a mobile Skype competitor. The Facebook social calling service is planned to go live in France during the summer of 2013. Orange’s reach spreads far and wide across Europe, though, so it seems likely that the service’s tentacles will spread.
It remains unclear how quickly that will happen, of course, and whether or not Facebook plans to roll it out internationally any time soon. It’s also not clear how consumers will embrace the news: while there’s certainly a shift towards voice calls being made online, the idea of any Facebook contact calling at will is maddening even in theory. [Tech Crunch]
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