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Facebook Annual Meeting: Mark Zuckerberg Addresses Concerns About Stock Price (AllFacebook)
Facebook held its first annual meeting Tuesday at the Westin San Francisco Airport in Millbrae, Calif., and co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed shareholders’ concerns about the company’s stock price, which has never approached its initial public offering mark of $38 per share since its first day of trading last May 18. Aside from concerns about Facebook’s stock price, the most common subject in the question-and-answer session was user dissatisfaction with the social network’s News Feed algorithm. Inside Facebook Shareholders’ frustration was palpable. Some discussed how they bought large portions of stock when the company went public, only to see it dip to roughly half its value before building back up. Zuckerberg noted that the company has been trying new ways to gain revenue, but these things take time and won’t make the company instantly more valuable. Los Angeles Times Even before the question-and-answer session began, Zuckerberg expressed his own frustration with the prolonged stock slump. “We’re disappointed with the performance of the stock over the past year,” he said. CNBC According to Zuckerberg, Facebook is concentrating on three areas: building great mobile apps and experiences. Two, it is working to ensure that its platform is integrated into as many experiences and apps as possible. And three, the company aims to drive revenue that will continue to fuel innovation. TechCrunch The PRISM story has progressed significantly since last week, when Mark Zuckerberg published Facebook’s official response to the reports that it is among a group of tech companies that have been secretly cooperating with the United States government to provide user data. At Facebook’s annual shareholder meeting, Zuckerberg said the company continues to stand behind that initial statement.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft Seek Privacy Points by Asking Permission to Disclose Data Requests (GigaOM)
In related news, Google sent a letter to FBI head Robert Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday requesting permission to disclose the number of times the federal government requests data on national security grounds, according to a blog post. Facebook and Microsoft have followed suit.
Pandora Buys FM Radio Station in a Wily Move to Fight Music Labels (The Verge)
You might think that the biggest threat to Pandora right now is the just-announced iRadio, but Apple’s upcoming music service isn’t nearly as dangerous to Pandora’s bottom line as record companies are. Bloomberg Qualifying for rates from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc. may provide Pandora with cost savings of less than 1 percent of its revenue, the Oakland, California-based company said Tuesday in a regulatory filing. Financial terms of the purchase weren’t disclosed. The Hill In part, Christopher Harrison, assistant general counsel at Pandora, wrote on The Hill‘s Congress blog Tuesday: “While this might seem like an unexpected move for Pandora, it makes sense even beyond the licensing parity. Pandora excels in personalizing discovery, and terrestrial radio is experienced in integrating with a local community. We look forward to broadcasting our personalized experience to the community in Rapid City, an area where over 42,000 residents already use Pandora. And we will apply Pandora’s insights about listening habits to program music that accurately reflects local listeners’ evolving tastes.”
Social Media Users Like the Sound of iTunes Radio (CNET)
Apple finally unveiled its music streaming service, iTunes Radio, and the social Web approves. Social media analytics company NetBase found that 94 percent of social media users had positive comments about iTunes Radio following the product’s release during Apple’s WWDC developers conference on Monday, which means only 6 percent had negative comments.
You Can Now Pay In-Stream on Twitter with Chirpify (AllTwitter)
Social commerce platform Chirpify announced Tuesday that its members can now accept domestic and international credit and debit cards, as well as send and accept automated clearing house payments, directly in-stream with a single comment on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. With Chirpify’s new direct payment processing, consumers get more options and less friction, while sellers get lower costs because of the elimination of third-party fees.
Mediafed’s News Feed Discovery Platform is on Fire: Sees 30B Article Views and 83 Percent Mobile Increase (VentureBeat)
While most consumers aren’t directly taking advantage of RSS feeds — they’ve mostly been supplanted by social media and mobile news reading apps – they’re still an important way for publishers to get their content distributed and discovered. For London-based Mediafed, that means big business.
Google Closes on Deal for Waze (Inside Mobile Apps)
Google has acquired crowdsourced mapping application, Waze, as announced from the company’s official blog. It was long rumored that both Facebook and Apple have shown interest in acquiring the Israel based startup, but have been beat out by Google.
Surprise! Inspirational Text Messages Won’t Improve Teens’ Grades (BetaBeat)
All those “Good Luck!” texts you’ve been sending your teen on test day aren’t doing a damn thing, science says. We could have told you that anyway, but Harvard University economist Roland Fryer actually conducted an experiment to study the effects of inspirational texts on teens’ grades.
Unruly Opens Social Video Lab to Predict When Videos Will Go Viral (SocialTimes)
Creating the perfect video that reaches millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo purely by word of mouth could just be luck, but the analysts at Unruly believe they have it down to a science. Tuesday the video technology company opened a Social Video Lab in its New York office where brands can test the viability of their video advertisements with a viral success algorithm called Unruly ShareRank.
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Major liberal groups have pulled their ad campaigns from Facebook to protest CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts on behalf of immigration reform.
Social Media Newsfeed: Facebook Announcement | Twitter Mobile Updates
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Facebook is holding an event at its Menlo Park headquarters today to show the world its “new home on Android.” Although Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has always indicated — as recently as a few months ago — that a phone has “always been the wrong strategy” for Facebook, it looks like a phone may be just what we’ll see the company announce. ReadWrite The phone — yes, the Facebook phone — is expected to run a modified but not fully skinned version of Android, retooled to revolve around the little blue “f” that has come so far. If we’re getting into semantics, you could say Facebook isn’t building the Facebook phone — HTC is. VentureBeat Now we have our first glimpse at Facebook Home’s user interface, courtesy of 9to5Google. Surprisingly, it seems that it’s more focused on delivering a great-looking Android experience, while much of the social functionality is subtly baked into the interface. CNET “Facebook Home incorporates a minimal aesthetic with a lot of focus on full-screen photography. As expected, there are hooks to the primary Facebook functions available from most menus, obviating the need to actually navigate to the dedicated app or site in many instances,” 9to5Google said. AllFacebook In other Facebook news, revised forecasts by eMarketer place Facebook atop the mobile display advertising revenue list, with the research firm saying that the social network will account for $3 of every $10 spent in the sector in 2013, and adding that it boosted its projections following a stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter performance. In terms of mobile ad revenues in general, eMarketer pegged Facebook at No. 2 overall, behind Google, and it said the social network’s share of the market would rise to 13.2 percent in 2013 from 9.5 percent in 2012.
Twitter Updates Mobile Experience to Complement New Card Offerings (AllTwitter)
Complementing its earlier announcement on new Twitter card options, the microblogging platform is pushing its design enhancements into overdrive with newly announced mobile updates. And this time they’re rolling it out to Android, iPhone and the entire mobile web at the same time – though you may have to wait a little bit regardless. TechCrunch There are two critical pieces to what Twitter announced: a way to increase e-commerce conversions via mobile apps, and a way to boost discovery and app installs for any mobile developer. For any of this to really matter, Twitter needs to find a foothold of a significant and meaningful size on mobile. The New York Times/The Lede
In related news, in a belated attempt at damage control, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo edited its official Twitter feed on Wednesday to remove an update that drew attention to video of the American comedian Jon Stewart’s withering criticism of Egypt’s government. As The Lede reported on Tuesday, the embassy’s apparent promotion of “The Daily Show” segment, which mocked President Mohamed Morsi for the interrogation of an Egyptian comedian accused of making criminal use of satire, prompted furious Twitter replies from the official accounts of both the president’s office and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that got him elected.
One Year Later, Nearly 50 Percent of Instagram Users on Android (PC Magazine)
As the tech community celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first cell phone call, Instagram also has something to cheer about — the photo-filtering service launched on Android one year ago. On April 3, 2012, more than a million people downloaded the Android app. A year later, Android users make up almost half of all Instagrammers.
Accusations Mount Against Tech Power Broker Michael Arrington (SocialTimes)
Wednesday, a respected figure in tech, Jason Calacanis, who has worked with investor and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, wrote a long Facebook status update of his own, giving credence to Jenn Allen’s beating allegations. Calacanis referred to a former friend, “A brilliant mind, a great writer and funny … but with a dark edge.”
How Do Freelance Journalists Use Social Media? The 30-Second Survey (Ebyline/The News Hook)
Ebyline surveyed some of its freelancer members and found roughly that: while many freelancers inhabit social media all the time, a surprising number are still leery of using social media to connect with editors and other journalists and only bother to check in occasionally. More of our freelancers are on LinkedIn than Twitter, but few participate in groups they belong to.
The Weather Company Forges Twitter Partnership (LostRemote)
The Weather Company, the parent company of The Weather Channel, is partnering with Twitter to enhance its presence on the platform. Weather Channel content will now be embedded within tweets through Twitter’s “card” technology, and marketers can use the data from the two companies to target messages to specific people in specific regions.
Internet Commenters Help NYPD Track Down Brooklyn Subway Mugger (BetaBeat)
A video of a 56-year-old woman being brutally mugged in the F train station in Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood went viral. Commenters at Daily Intel and Gawker used the police’s description – a 20-something, 150 pound man in a hoodie with “‘Alpha Phi Delta,’ on the front and ‘Stugotz’ with the number 27 on the back” – to track down the man’s Facebook page and comment.
‘God Was Here’ Uses Social Analytics to Track God in Real Time (SocialTimes)
A team of creatives based in Chicago has built a website to track God’s every move through mentions of His holy name. God Was Here illustrates just how often we use phrases like OMG (444 times Wednesday) and “thank God” in our everyday speech, as we seem to thank our maker for everything from Fridays to Starbucks.
StoryWorth Aims to Elicit and Record Family Stories (AllThingsD)
StoryWorth aims to create archives of personal stories told between generations. After a parent-child pair (or some other similar relationship) signs up for StoryWorth together, the site emails out questions like, “What were your grandparents like?” and “What was your first car?” Then the older user replies via email or phone recording. And a family archive begins.
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