Facebook No. 1 Mobile App Of 2013 But Google Has 5 Of Top 10

Nielsen published a range of year-end data today. Among other things the measurement firm said that 65 percent of American cell phone users now own smartphones. By comparison comScore says the figure is 62 percent. Regardless it means there are now more than 150 million smartphone users in the US.

Nielsen also reported that 29 percent of US households have at least one tablet. If there are roughly 115 million US households that argues there are roughly 33 million tablets in American homes. However this number undercounts the actual number of tablets in the market.

A previous Pew survey found that 35 percent of Americans over 16 owned tablets. The Pew data, if extrapolated, argue that there are more than 80 million tablets (as of September 2013) in US households. After the holidays are over that number could swell to over 100 million.

Not counting iPads and iPod Touch devices, Nielsen found that Apple had a 41 percent OS share of the smartphone market compared with 52 percent for Android. The most recent comScore US smartphone data reflect a very comparable 52.2 percent (Android) to 40.6 percent (Apple).

Nielsen also reported that Facebook was the top mobile app of 2013 and the Facebook-owned Instagram came in seventh but it was the fastest-growing app of the year. The second-fastest growing was Apple Maps.

Google dominated the rest of the list with five out of the top 10 apps. It takes up the most mobile app “shelf space.” Twitter came in at number 10.

Source: http://www.marketingland.com/

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:

kate jhaveri @taneyhill

Hello @twitter! I'm excited to be joining the #consumermarketing flock! #letthefunbegin

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.

Passing the torch. I care deeply about Twitter and our users, will continue to help while exploring other passions http://www.bricoleur.org/2013/08/some-news-and-thanks_30.html …

Source: http://mashable.com

Facebook Now Gives More Control Over What You Share

Facebook announced on Thursday that the site's two-step app permission process has been fully integrated with users worldwide. The feature, which was first announced in April, allows users to have more control over the content they share to Facebook through third-party applications.

When users sign in to an app like Lyft or Words With Friends using their Facebook login credentials, they can now specify exactly what they would like to share with Facebook in a two-step process. The first step asks for "read permisasions," which dictate the information from the app accessible to Facebook. The second step presents "write permissions," which if accepted, allow the user to post directly back to his news feed through the app.

Previously, the two permissions were a package deal, meaning you couldn't agree to one without also green-lighting the other. The update in April granted users more control and enabled them to accept just one or the other if they weren't comfortable accepting both, according to Chris Daniels, director of business development at Facebook. The update is now fully available to all users, and a recent study of certain "high quality" apps by the social network found that 

Facebook benefits from users logging in to third-party apps using their Facebook profile. Those who log in with Facebook count as "active" users for the platform — more logins mean more content shared back to the site. Facebook has more than 850 million login events per month, and 81 of the 100 top-grossing iOS apps support Facebook login features, according to the company's blog post. On Android, 62 of the 100 top-grossing apps support Facebook logins.

The new permission option was based on feedback from users and developers who felt they needed more control, Daniels said. Often, users timid about sharing back to Facebook saw the permissions page and simply elected to bypass logging in altogether.

"We understand people’s concerns about apps posting on their Timeline or to their friends," Facebook posted on its blog. "The recent changes to Login are just the beginning of more improvements you'll see as we continue working to provide useful services for developers that are easy for users to understand." 

Have you ever skipped logging into an app because of Facebook permissions? Tell us in the comments below.

Source:http://mashable.com

Facebook To Buy Voice Translation Firm Mobile Technologies

FACEBOOK has agreed to buy Mobile Technologies, a firm specialising in voice translation software.

Founded in 2001, Mobile Technologies is best known for developing the Jibbigo mobile application for speech-to-speech language translation.

"I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to acquire Mobile Technologies, a company with an amazing team that's behind some of the world's leading speech recognition and machine translation technology," Facebook's Product Management Director Tom Stocky wrote in an online posting.

"Voice technology has become an increasingly important way for people to navigate mobile devices and the web, and this technology will help us evolve our products to match that evolution.

In a separate statement, the smaller firm said it was "excited to announce that Facebook has agreed to acquire Mobile Technologies and that once the deal has closed many of us will be joining the company at their headquarters in Menlo Park, California".

Neither company revealed the cost of the sale.

Despite having over one billion monthly users, Facebook has struggled to climb out of the wreckage of its disastrous stock market debut more than a year ago.

The social network has appeared to be on an upward trajectory, however, following an earnings report last month that showed a big jump in mobile advertising revenue and sent shares soaring more than 40 per cent.

Source:http://www.theaustralian.com.au

Facebook Hires First Marketing Chief From Motorola Mobility

More than a year after going public, Facebook apparently believes it's time to hire the social network's first-ever chief marketing officer.

Gary Briggs, who was formerly the marketing chief at Motorola Mobility, has been hired by the social-networking giant to lead the company's marketing efforts, according to AdAge. Briggs replaced vice president of product marketing Eric Antonow, who has supervised Facebook's marketing efforts for the past three years.

Upon Google's completion of its $12.5 billion takeover of Motorola Mobility a year ago, Briggs was appointed Motorola's CMO after serving as vice president of consumer marketing at the Web giant.

Briggs said in a statement to AdAge that he was excited by the new challenge.

"Facebook isn't just a company. For more than a billion people, it's their connection to the friends and things they care about most," Briggs said. "Telling the story of such an important and still very young brand is an incredible opportunity, and I cannot wait to get started."

After six-year stints in consumer marketing at eBay and Pepsico, Briggs most recently served as an adviser to Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside and its new CMO, Bill Morgan.

Source: http://news.cnet.com

Facebook Shares Soar 40% In A week On Mobile Ad Revenue Increase

Wall Street likes Facebook again. Shares in the social network todayreturned to their flotation price briefly for the first time since its disastrous initial public offering last year.

Facebook's shares touched above the milestone $38-a-share float price on New York's Nasdaq exchange, before slipping down to $37.63 by the close. The shares have soared by more than 40% since last Wednesday, when Facebook reported a surge in mobile advertising revenue. The rapid share price increase values the company, founded by a 20-year-old Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room less than a decade ago, at just under $92bn (£60bn) – about eight times the value of Marks & Spencer (founded 1884). Zuckerberg's paper fortune has risen by just under $5bn in a week to nearly $17bn, according to the Bloomberg billionaire’s index.

Now 29 – and known for his blue hoodies and desire to maintain a relatively simple life despite his vast wealth – Zuckerberg jumped from the 75th to 42nd-richest person in the world, leapfrogging Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Michael Dell, founder of Dell, along the way. Bill Gates, 57, the Microsoft founder, remains the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $72bn. Carlos Slim, 73, the Mexican telecoms magnate, is $5.5bn behind Gates.

Facebook's shares have not been able to hold above the $38 float price since its 18 May 2012 debut, when its underwriters were forced to buy stock to stop it falling below the issue price. By the end of that month the shares had crashed by more than $10, wiping more than $4bn off the value of Zuckerberg's fortune in less than two weeks. By August, the shares had dropped a further $10, wiping out almost $50bn of the company's market value.

The recovery only really began in earnest last week when Facebook reported a much better than expected 53% year-on-year increase in revenue to $1.8bn in the three months to the end of June.

Wall Street was particularly impressed with the company recording a 51% increase in mobile users to 819m. Previously, analysts had openly mocked Zuckerberg's "mobile first" promise.

"We are investing in mobile, measurement and product innovation," Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, said on a conference call with analysts. "The results we're reporting today demonstrate the early returns on these investments."

David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, a history of the company, said: "Very few people saw the pace at which the entire activity of the planet's internet connectivity was going to move toward mobile. It's clearly under way now."

"They've really done a 180-degree shift toward mobile, even if it was somewhat belatedly," he told Bloomberg.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com

6 Best Back-to-School Tablets

Summer's coming to an end, but don't let that get you down — instead, take advantage of back-to-school season and upgrade to a tablet that you truly love.

We've rounded up the best tablets on the market today, including the classically beautiful iPad with retina display, the light-as-a-feather Nexus 7, the media-rich Kindle Fire HD and more.

1. iPad With Retina Display

This iPad is easily one of the most beautiful tablets on the market today. With over 3 million pixels, the retina display on this tablet makes for a stunning visual experience. It has a sharp camera and a new A6X chip, which makes it twice as fast as previous iterations.

Price: $499 (16GB), $599 (32GB), $699 (64GB), $799 (128GB)

2. iPad Mini

The iPad mini is enjoyably small, weighing in at about 308 grams. It fits nicely in one hand, and is small enough that you can carry it in your bag alongside your other books without breaking your back. The device has a 5-megapixel camera and 1080p HD video recording. With so many different data package options, you'll be able to enjoy the Apple store's 275,000 apps, take class notes and store your music, all on this miniature device.

Price: $329 (16GB), $429 (32GB) and $529 (64GB)

3. Google Nexus 7

Unlike previous Nexus devices, Google's seven-inch tablet is designed by Asus. It's much thinner than previous iterations (2 millimeters thinner and 50 grams lighter than its predecessor), and boasts a high-definition LCD display. It also has a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, Bluetooth 4.0, and a micro USB 2.0 port. The Nexus 7 tabletclocks in as exceptional across the board: The UI is smooth, it weighs very little and it's cheaper than a lot of its competitors.

Its the first to ship with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro 8064 processor rated at 1.5GHz. There is also a 4G LTE version, priced at $349.

Price: $229.99 (16GB) and $299 (32GB)

4. Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7

This tablet features a sharp visual display, an extensive media library, and it offers a smart and streamlined UI. With an 8.9-inch display, it's bigger than some of its competitors. The Kindle Fire gives you access to more than just books — you can check out Amazon's films, music apps and games. It has a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, but does not have a camera on the back.

Price: $159.99 (16 GB), $189 (32GB)

5. Nook HD

The Nook HD is competitively priced, but it doesn't offer the same sleek user experience as some of its competitors. It's light, weighing just 315 grams, so it's easy to transport to class. However, some argue that the lightweight plastic makes the device feel cheap and detracts from the overall experience. This tablet doesn't have a camera, but it does have dual speakers on the bottom. It also has a microSD card slot.

Price: $129 (8GB), $149 (16GB)

6. Samsung Galaxy Note 10

The quad-core processor makes the Galaxy Note 10 exceptionally fast. With a stylus pen, it's great for taking handwritten class notes without having to carry heavy binders and notebooks. The Galaxy Note 10 also has functional multitasking, so you can have multiple apps running at once — perfect for updating your Facebook during the boring parts of class.

Price: $449 (16 GB) and $499 (32 GB)

Source: http://mashable.com

Facebook Leaps into Games Publishing

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook wants a cut of the revenue from the mobile games business.

The company today said it plans to take a role beyond its position of games platform to that of promoter and publisher. Facebook's new pilot program, dubbed Mobile Games Publishing, will allow it to promote small- and medium-sized games and take a cut in the sales in return.

"We are invested in the success of these games, and in exchange for a revenue share, we will be collaborating deeply with developers in our program by helping them attract high-quality, long-term players for their games," Facebook said in a blog post.

Facebook shares rose 5.6% at $37.43 in trading, approaching the company's IPO price of $38.

The world's largest social network will use its massive 800-plus million monthly users of its mobile apps as a vehicle to drive the reach of these games with promotional support.

"While it's hard to precisely estimate the revenue opportunity at the outset, this is a great opportunity for game publishers/developers and a strong opportunity for Facebook as well," Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling says. "Obviously, games are a category that is very much bound up with the history and growth of Facebook engagement."

Games helped Facebook post blockbuster second-quarter results last week. Its payments revenue increased 11%, with games accounting for 7% of that revenue, in the period compared with a year ago.

Facebook also announced the first 10 developer participants in the program. They are 5th Planet, Brainbow, Certain Affinity, Dragonplay, Gameloft, Gamevil, KiwiGames, Outplay Entertainment, Space Ape and We Made Entertainment.

The move serves a blow to Zynga's troubled online games business. Shares of Zynga traded nearly 1% lower at $3 today.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com