Study: Google Ads Work Better Than Facebook’s (Boston Herald)
Facebook may be this week’s stock market darling, but when it comes to online display advertising, search engine Google provides advertisers with “significantly more value” than the social media giant in terms of growth rates, performance, targeting options and formats, according to a study released Tuesday. The study compares the value of Facebook advertising to Google’s Display Network. PC Magazine Facebook moved quickly — again — to address concerns that it wasn’t doing enough to satisfy mobile users, buying the developers of the Lightbox Android photo app. However, the company also made it clear that Facebook was not acquiring the company or the photos that users had stored on the Lightbox website, just the developer team. AdAge General Motors said Tuesday that it is “reassessing” its spending on Facebook advertising — about $10 million — but “remains committed” to the social network as part of “an aggressive content strategy with all our products and brands.” Meanwhile, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, said that the automaker is bullish about Facebook ads — particularly “sponsored stories” that contain a social layer — and intends to “accelerate” spending on them. AllFacebook Facebook followed up last week’s introduction of its app center with two new metrics to its insights for applications: app ratings and negative feedback. The new app ratings dashboard will bring developers information on how users rated their apps with the five-star ratings system Facebook recently implemented. The negative feedback feature shows developers how many times stories from their apps have been hidden or reported as spam, as well as how many times the app itself has been blocked. Mashable Two Colombian criminals almost got away with robbing an Internet cafe, but one of them checked Facebook first — and ended up being identified and arrested because he forgot to log out. The two men whipped out guns at the cash register to demand money and made a clean getaway on a motorcycle. After the men escaped, an employee at the cafe called the police turning in information from the Facebook page that led to his arrest. continued…

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Facebook IPO Week: The Basics (PC Magazine)
Big news for Facebook this week — and no, not just because the company is testing new ways for its users to annoy each other in the form of paid-for “highlighted” posts. Actually, it’s Facebook IPO week! The significance of this fact carries a ton of importance if you’re an institutional investor, a small amount of importance if you’re a neophyte investor, and absolutely no meaning whatsoever if you think the stock market is little more than organized gambling. ZDNET Going public brings with it all new pressures. For venture-backed companies such as Facebook, it means a difficult transition from the multi-year expectation on delivering returns to the quarterly results horizon. Even in the extremely fast-moving world of Internet companies, this can come as a shock to the system. AP He famously wears a hoodie, jeans and sneakers, and he was born the year Apple introduced the Macintosh. Today is his 28th birthday. With eight years on the job, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has logged more time as leader than the average CEO, whose tenure is a little more than seven years, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. Bloomberg News Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said he will buy shares in Facebook when the social networking company sells stock to the public. Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer with Steve Jobs and co-founded the company with him in 1976, said he would buy Facebook’s stock regardless of its valuation. Mashable Facebook, infamous for its changing policies and confusion among users about what they’re getting themselves into when they use the world’s largest social network, has finally aggregated all its terms and policies under the same roof. That roof — Facebook.com/policies — contains, in the words of Facebook, “Everything you need to know, all in one place.” continued…

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Myspace Faces 20 Years of Government Scrutiny for Privacy Violations (Mashable) Myspace’s privacy practices will be kept under close watch by a third-party observer for two decades as part of a settlement related to an investigation of the company’s advertising sales strategy, the Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday. The agreement also prevents Myspace from making “future privacy misrepresentations” and requires it to make significant changes to its privacy policy. The New York Times The FTC asserted that from January 2009 through June 2010, and again from October 2010 through October 2011, Myspace transmitted information, including internal identification numbers of users, and their ages and genders, to outside ad networks that served ads to Myspace. Using that information, the FTC said, third parties could obtain the user’s name and other personal information and use a file placed on the user’s computer to view a history of websites the user had visited. AP The settlement is similar to deals the FTC struck previously with Facebook and Google. In March 2011, the FTC settled with Google over charges that it deceived users and violated its own privacy policy when it started a social-networking service called Buzz. In November, the agency reached a settlement with Facebook in which the company agreed to get explicit approval from its users before changing their privacy controls. CNET Myspace was sold by News Corp. to digital-media company Specific Media last June for a rumored $35 million. News Corp. had purchased the social networking site in 2005 for $580 million with the hopes of using it to drive traffic to Fox’s various media efforts. PC Magazine In a statement, Specific Media said it “thoroughly examine[d] the company’s business practices and, where applicable, make improvements” following last year’s purchase. “A major focus of this review was to ensure that Myspace delivered advertisements to consumers in a manner that safeguarded their privacy,” Specific Media continued. continued…

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Source: Facebook’s IPO Show to Hit the Road May 7 (Reuters) The roadshow for Facebook’s initial public offering is scheduled to start on Monday, meaning the company’s shares should begin trading on May 18, a source familiar with the process said on Tuesday. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has mostly operated in the background during Facebook’s closely watched journey to public markets, will be involved in the roadshow, another source said. Mashable However, Zuckerberg will only be present for some of the roadshow, sources said. COO Sheryl Sandberg will handle the rest, along with CFO David Ebersman. San Francisco Chronicle Numerous details remain unknown, especially the range where the Menlo Park company expects to price its stock. MSN Money Some are beginning to question whether the social networking giant is worth the investment. Revenue growth is a major issue for investors, according to Boston University professor N. Venkat Venkatraman, chairman of the Information Systems Department of BU’s School of Management. “Other [investors] will focus on Facebook’s monetization machine and question if Facebook could create and maintain the growth in revenue and profits,” Venkatraman said in an email. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

SmartBear Software company released its standard quarterly report for overall Web Performance for Social Networks. The company ranked each social media site by its speed and availability in the third quarter of 2011. By speed means how fast the platform loads on the Internet, and by availability means maintaining its presence on the Internet without crashing.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The premise of Headliner.fm is simple: help artists get in touch with each other so they can more easily form networks and share fans. While this sounds like it shouldn’t be anything revolutionary, as someone who plays in a band, it’s an extremely welcome tool that should, if properly advertised, become a mainstay for indie artists seeking to promote their work.

Headliner comes equipped with many useful features. The meat and potatoes of the service — getting an artist heard by networking with similar musicians — is handled through integrated linking to social mainstays like Twitter, Facebook and, yes, Myspace. By taking advantage of a Hootsuite-styled posting system, Headliner users are able to queue up news and releases, allowing for timely promotional announcements of shows, fresh material and more. Artists have to approve of one another’s posts as well, meaning that it’s in the best interest of Headliner.fm members to filter out unnecessary, spammish messaging in order to keep their profile attractive enough for potential listeners to pay continued attention to.

The entire system runs on the virtual currency of “Band Bucks”, a kind of points system that rewards interconnecting with others. Band Bucks are earned by helping to promote other artists and can be spent on asking others to spread a message in turn. This system is a simple but intelligent way to keep the whole network under control while providing ample reward for artists who invest time and energy in getting the most out of the service. Combined with in-depth analytics that allow users to monitor how their music is being received (for instance, checking the number of times their songs have been re-posted on Facebook walls), handled through a deal between Headliner and SoundCloud, the site seems to have thought of most everything that aspiring artists could want from a new social network.

Such a sound foundation makes Headliner.fm well worth paying attention to for both casual audiences and musicians. The ability to so easily discover and/or network with similar acts while simultaneously promoting music is something that hasn’t been properly offered by another social network to date — and this may be all that Headliner needs in order to become popular. We’ll have to wait and see how the site develops over the coming months in order to really say whether or not it’s a success (initial user figures look promising) but, if nothing else, the concept and execution is exciting enough to already deserve praise.

Check out Headliner.fm at its official site for more information or visit the company’s Vimeo page for a quick demo reel of the service in action.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

According to newly released report from comScore, professional social network LinkedIn best Myspace in June regarding overall traffic. Linkedin is now the No. 2 most visited social networking site in the U.S. Of course, the increase of traffic started with LinkedIn filed its IPO in May, reaching the ultimate of 33.9 million unique visitors in June compared to Myspace with 33.5 million unique visitors. MySpace decreased in numbers from 34.9 million in May. But, Myspace has new owners, so we might see a change in the numbers in the ensuing months.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.