category facebook v3.png

Toronto's Artez Interactive announces Facebook-powered social fundraising app

At f8, Facebook’s developer conference, Toronto-based Artez Interactive, which specializes in multi-channel fundraising solutions, announced a new Facebook app that enables friends to share the charities and social causes they support through the Facebook Platform.

“We know Friendship Powered Fundraising is extremely successful,” said James Appleyard, CEO & Chairman, Artez Interactive. “In fact, door-to-door fundraising has evolved to include online, social and mobile channels. This enables fundraisers to be where their supporters are and tap into their network of friends, family and colleagues. With this new app on Facebook, donors will be able to share with their friends what they support and engage their networks in social and charitable initiatives.”

read more

Facebook cracks 800 million users, half of them use it everyday

Facebook now has 800 million active users, Mark Zuckerberg says, as the company crawls toward the legendary one billion user milestone. Approximately half of these people use Facebook every day.

Of the social network's myriad users, an impressive 44% are now active mobile users. That's roughly 350 million people Facebooking on their tablets and smartphones.

The average number of friends a Facebook user has is 130. 

'A New Era of Facebook': Social network announces host of changes during f8 conference

f8, Facebook's developer conference, just ended in San Francisco. The social network ushered in "a new era" by bringing "a whole new Facebook experience for users and developers."

Today, Mark Zuckerberg and his team announced that Facebook will be "sleeker, more innovative, and people will have even more control over what they do."

Some of the announcements included:

  • Timeline (not available today, this will be a slow rollout over the next few weeks) – Profile will have a sleek, new design to redefine how you tell your story by offering a more organized and clearer view of your profile. Timeline gives you the opportunity to express yourself in new ways, discover and add new music, movies and apps from your friends. You will also be able to see a complete view of your life on Facebook and have even more control over what and how things appear on your Timeline so it is possible to express who you really are.

 

  • Activity Log – The Activity Log is a list of all the things you have ever done or posted on Facebook. This log is only visible to you so you have control to curate the information that has been shared over time. You can change the privacy settings, delete stories/photos or make a story from the past more prominent in your Timeline.

 

  • Open Graph applications – The Open Graph is in its beta phase right now and gives developers the chance to enable any action to be part of a user’s Facebook experience, if they’ve chosen to add the app to their Timeline. This will let developers make applications for what people are already doing on their social website and drive even more traffic from Facebook. Today, we proudly announced over 50 partners that will launch some of the most awesome apps ever seen on Facebook, including Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Yahoo, Zynga, EA and even more!

To check out images of the new Facebook go here.

Does Social Media Curb Or Promote Terrorism And Violence?

This article was originally published on Smedio.

I often say that social media is a powerful monster and with power, comes responsibility. If you use it for constructive means, it pays off. If you don’t get it right, you pay for it. Though it’s hard to believe, social media has been directly or indirectly associated with a large number of incidents related to violence, terrorism and uprisings all over the world.

Whether it’s the revolts in Egypt and Libya, the recent riots in London or the more recent ‘Twitter Terrorism’ in Mexico, social media is now the de-facto trigger for such events across the world. On one hand, it has freed nations from dictators but on the other, it has promoted looting and served as a medium for communal violence.

I don’t think anyone could have imagined that social media would play such an important role in global peace or the lack of it. In this post, I pour my heart out and present my opinion on whether social media curbs or promotes terrorism and violence.

read more

Facebook to delay IPO again, report says

When it rains, it pours.

With Groupon and Zynga delaying their IPOs, Facebook has joined the mix, according to a Financial Times report. Citing people familiar with the company, a "late 2012" IPO seems likely now, with something sooner appearing implausible.

While Groupon and Zynga's delays seem to be related to the continued market volatility (and possibly Groupon's constant bad media coverage of late), Facebook's looks to be about employees: the company wants staff to focus on building great products and not cashing in shares, the report suggests. Market chaos is probably a factor nonetheless.

Facebook is seeking a valuation upward of $100 billion, a number deemed grossly high by most critics and mathmeticians. 

Facebook becomes more like Twitter and Google+ with new Subscriptions feature

Facebook is adding a new key feature called Subscriptions, which is a one-way follow model remarkably similar to that of Twitter and Google+.

With Subscriptions, user will see buttons on peoples' profiles. Clicking these lets you "subscribe" or follow that person, whose information will appear on your news feed. Thing is, they don't need to be friends, or even friends of friends. They can be pretty much anyone. Each person can select what information is distributed to their "subscribers."

read more

Social media account for 22% of the time we spend online: Study

Social media is the number one category in terms of how we spend our time online, according to Nielson's “State of the Media: The Social Media Report." It accounts for a whopping 22.5% of Americans' online time.

This statistic is powered largely by Facebbok, which reaches 70% of the country's population. The report revealed that Americans spend over 50 billion minutes on Facebook every month, not even including time spent accessing it via mobile devices. Given that Canadians are even more addicted to social media than our southern neighbours, it's safe to say we clock in it at least 5 billion minutes monthly.

Other popular time consumers were Blogger (720 million minutes monthly), Tumblr (620 million), Twitter (565 million), and LinkedIn (325 million).

Facebook on pace to generate over $3 billion revenue this year, $1 billion net income

Facebook, with its one trillion monthly pageviews, has generated $1.6 billion in revenue through the first half of 2011, with roughly $500 million of that winding up as net income, according to Reuters.

This is up from a reported 2009 revenue of below $800 million and net income of $200 million. It's about double what the social network earned last year, but still falls below analyst estimates of $4 billion in revenue for the year. It's still possible, but would require an accelerated rate of revenue growth.

The company is expected to file for an IPO in 2012, though controversy is in abundance over how valuable Facebook is. It's been valued as high as $90 billion, an insane amount given its current income, but not entirely out of the norm these days when looking at companies like Groupon and Zynga, both of which recently postponed their IPOs.