Call Friends for Free with Facebook’s Messenger App (Mashable)
Now you can call your Facebook friends for free — if you’re an iPhone user, that is. The company has rolled out a new feature in the United States that allows Facebook Messenger app users to place voice calls with friends over the social network using their data connection or Wi-Fi.
Find out how to use Google Tools to manage social media content and campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an interactive online event starting June 6. Monica Morse (left), head of social & SMB solutions at Google, will familiarize you with a wide range of Google tools such as trends, Google+ and Hangouts. Learn more about our our twelve event speakers and register here. 
Pinterest Introduces Secret Boards (Mashable)
Ever want to pin something on Pinterest, but don’t want the entire world to see what’s catching your eye? At long last, the company introduced on Thursday a new “secret boards” feature which limits visibility to only the creator and any collaborators they may invite.
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Judge Rejects Facebook’s ‘Sponsored Stories’ Settlement (CNET)
U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of San Francisco, Calif., has rejected Facebook’s settlement of a class-action suit regarding an ad feature that publicizes users’ “likes” of products and services to their Facebook friends but doesn’t pay the users for the endorsements or allow them to opt out. Under the proposed deal, Facebook would have given its users more control over how their “likes” were handled and would have allowed users under 18 to opt out of sponsored stories. Wired Seeborg was concerned that the deal, which provides a $10 million payout to attorneys suing Facebook and $10 million to charity in what is known as a cy pres award “was merely plucked from thin air.” In his Friday ruling, he ordered the parties to provide more information on how it reached that amount. Bloomberg Businessweek Seeborg also said that while it isn’t feasible to divide $10 million among as many as 70 million affected customers, it isn’t sufficient to justify giving that money only to advocacy groups. Lawyers for customers had argued the groups would be “watchdogs” over Facebook. Inside Facebook Facebook is once again the second-largest video site in the United States, according to comScore. The social network saw 53 million unique video viewers in July, about a third of Google’s audience but higher than the number of unique viewers on Yahoo and Vevo. Mashable Google, thanks largely to YouTube, still enjoys a comfortable lead in the race with nearly 157 million total unique viewers. Yahoo users, however, watched more videos — 625 million to Facebook’s 327 million. Facebook users watched an average of 21.7 minutes of video throughout July, while Yahoo users consumed 70.4 hours of video content. Read more
If you don’t want to buy a new smartphone for yourself, AT&T has a viral marketing campaign that lets you use a Facebook app on your desktop or smartphone that lets you build a case (as in a mock “legal case”) to convince someone you designate to buy a phone for you.
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Graphic courtesy of Wired.
Do you know how long mobile phone service providers keep records about which cell tower you used? Or, text messages? Or, call detail records? Wired took a look at a photo copy of a U.S. Department of Justice summary table titled “Retention Periods of Major Cellular Service Providers” that provides the specifics.
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Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) will be available in the U.S. within a few weeks. Microsoft said that owners of Windows Phone 7 devices can expect to see updates soon. However, based on the Dell Official Corporate Blog, Windows Phone users who are AT&T subscribers may have a longer wait.
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AT&T appears to believe that teenagers’ phone of choice is a BlackBerry (8xxx and 9xxx models). At least that is one possible theory based on the release of an app for BlackBerry phones that automatically sends customizable replies that the recipient is driving and unable to respond.
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The Android-powered HTC Status with a BlackBerry-like physical QWERTY keyboard and dedicated Facebook button seemed like a good design and phone choice for frequent Facebook users who, presumably, want to type in a lot of status updates. It made its debut just two months ago.
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Electronista doesn’t have to work too hard to convince me that mobile phone companies’ wireless data plans charge way too much for people who do not even come close to their plan’s monthly data quota. Here, they report on a study by Validas.
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Starbucks is a digital oasis for me.I usually pop in, fire up the Starbucks mobile card app, order a beverage, have my iPhone scanned to pay for it and then sit down to use the Starbucks WiFi access point (provided by AT&T) on a smartphone, iPad or notebook (or netbook). This plan usually works just fine. And, I’ve executed this plan more times that I would care to admit.
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