EBay will begin allowing brands to target advertising to its users based on the data it collects about them, Stephen Howard-Sarin, the company’s head of digital display in North America, said at an advertising conference today, according to Ad Week.
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Facebook Backs Same-Sex Marriage in Supreme Court Filings (AllFacebook)
Facebook joined the growing list of companies expressing their support for same-sex marriage, announcing in a post on its LGBTQ@Facebook page that it will submit briefs on the topic to the U.S. Supreme Court. The social network said it would post links to its filings on the LGBTQ@Facebook page when they become available.
Apple Hit By Hackers Who Struck Facebook (The Wall Street Journal)
Apple said Tuesday that some of its employees’ Mac computers were attacked by hackers, a rare admission for a company that has long touted its security over PCs running Windows software. The malicious code in the latest attack is believed to have been the same discovered by Facebook, which said on Friday that its employees’ computers were breached by hackers last month.
eBay is moving forward with the more visual design it first introduced in October. Today, more than 90 percent of eBay users based in the U.S. will see the new, personalized homepage as soon as they log into the site as the company rolls out the design to the rest of eBay’s users worldwide.
The social media sector took a hit this week with an average weekly loss of 3% as FB’s announcement of a new graph search failed to excite investors, sending the stock down 7% (though it is still up 11% in the three weeks of trading of 2013). Despite the negative week, the average return for the social media sector in 2013 is a gain of 5%. EBAY announced solid Q4 results (see below) and next week we will see notable earnings from GOOG, NFLX, and most importantly, AAPL, which has cast a cloud over the entire Internet and media sector during the past six weeks.
Craigslist and eBay have agreed to stop selling scalped tickets to the presidential inauguration, Chuck Schumer, the chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, announced today.
The social media sector performed well this week with an average weekly gain of 2% as investors continued to make bets ahead of upcoming earnings. In the next several weeks, several notable companies (including EBAY, GOOG, AAPL, NFLX, YHOO, and FB) will report Q4/12 earnings and set the tone for investor sentiment on the social media and Internet sectors over the next several months.
Americans still use Google to find their favorite social networks, according to a report by Experian. Facebook, YouTube, and “Facebook login” topped the list of popular search terms on Google and other search engines in 2012.
In an on-stage interview in San Francisco in which he declined to address questions about whether he would stay on as Groupon CEO, co-founder Andrew Mason described his company as a local business engine that will build shareholder value over the long term.
More Twitter users are talking about eBay than Walmart, according to the latest data from HootSuite. This month, HootSuite is offering the public a glimpse into the minds of holiday shoppers through its 2012 Holiday Tracker: a social media dashboard that pulls keywords and hashtags from Twitter to uncover holiday-themed trends. In terms of buzz, eBay ranked second among retailers — behind Amazon, but ahead of Walmart, Toys R Us, and Best Buy — with more than 103,500 mentions.
