Twitter Changes Feed Again

Twitter once again has changed their feed and not all users are happy about it. My question is why
would you change anything right now with an IPO looming?

As Zach Miners reports users are complaining about a change that puts photo previews front and center in their streams, and offering advice to others on how to turn it off.

Apparently some users like viewing photos on Twitter but don’t want image previews appearing automatically in their stream, which is what happens with a change to the service rolled out Tuesday.

“I was perfectly happy with that one extra step of ‘show picture’ for the ability to see a picture that I want to see,” one user wrote on Twitter’s developer forum.

“I do not necessarily want to see every picture that every person I follow posts, right on my timeline,” the person wrote.

Another Twitter user wondered if he had “ticked something somewhere” without realizing it.

“Wow, Twitter is suddenly unscannable. What is this crap in the feed and how do I turn if off?” asked another.

The update means users no longer have to click a link to view the photos, so scrolling through Twitter can now mean scrolling past a lot of photos. It’s been activated on the desktop version of Twitter and is included with an update for the iOS and Android apps. It only works with images posted on Twitter itself, or videos posted on Twitter’s Vine service, however.

Twitter is apparently keen for users to see a lot more images in their Twitter streams. Photography is a key service for social networks, and Google updated its photo features on Google+ Tuesday as well.

Showing photos in Twitter without needing to click on them can have unintended consequences, though. A search for “twitter photo previews” on Twitter Tuesday revealed at least one explicit pornographic image.

Some users provided advice on how to disable the feature, posting screenshots of how to turn it off within the Twitter app on mobile devices. The image previews can’t be disabled on the desktop, however. (Here’s TechHive’s advice on turning off online images in the mobile version of Twitter.)

It’s not uncommon for users to complain about changes to online services, as Facebook, Yahoo and others know too well.

One user suggested this is a fight Twitter can’t win. “Y’all complained when Twitter wasn’t visual. Today, y’all are complaining it has photos in your stream?”

Twitter Could Be Worth More Then $11 billion

Julianne Pepitone of CNN reports that Twitter could be worth 11 Billion or more. She writes that 

Twitter isn't yet making a profit, but analysts think its future is bright -- and that it's worth more than the current $11 billion valuation.

Twitter set the preliminary price range for its initial public offering at $17 to $20 per share late Thursday. At the top of that range, the company would be worth $11 billion.

That's lower than the $15 billion to $20 billion valuation that some experts had predicted.

Even the $11 billion figure might sound high given that Twitter is unprofitable. But investing in a company is about belief in its future potential, not its current situation.

In a note to clients on Friday, SunTrust analyst Robert Peck said Twitter "wisely started the pricing conservatively" -- and he expects the company to raise its range, which isn't binding, over the next few weeks.

"[Twitter] left room to raise the range based on potential investor demand, which we anticipate will be strong," Peck said. He based that demand prediction on discussions with several investors over the past few weeks, which leads him to believe the deal will be "well received."

In fact, Peck set a $50 price target on Twitter.

Morningstar analyst Rick Summer hasn't yet set his price target, but he noted that Twitter's valuation is "rich" when comparing its financial performance with that of Facebook (FB, Fortune 500) and LinkedIn (LNKD). Still, he's extremely positive about the company's offerings and business model.

"Twitter is a very unique medium, and we think that speaks extremely well of the company," Summer said. "It's not just about selling ads on the side of a page and measuring impressions."

Twitter runs ads for corporate accounts, specific tweets and topics, and the sponsored content is tucked right into users' feeds. Advertising accounted 85% of Twitter's revenue in 2012.

"They've done a good job of offering unique advertising and not forcing products that don't work," Summer said. "They dominate their market and really partner with companies, which use Twitter to distribute their content widely. It's attractive."

Twitter has also been quick to offer those ad products on mobile. Three-quarters of Twitter's monthly active users accessed the service on a mobile device last quarter, and mobile ads brought in 70% of its total ad revenue.

Mobile was the big area where Facebook suffered -- and, as a result, so did its stock. So it's a big plus that Twitter has figured out this important part of its business.

But Nate Elliott, lead social analyst at Forrester, cautioned against judging Twitter through the lens of Facebook.

Twitter was founded more than seven years ago, while Facebook had eight years under its belt when it went public in 2012. That's not too much of a difference from a timeline perspective, but Elliott pointed out that the two social networks have very different histories.

"The big comparison everyone is making is how Twitter stacks up to Facebook," said Nate Elliott, lead social analyst at Forrester. "But Twitter is at a much earlier stage of business than Facebook was when it went public. Twitter is still figuring out how to best serve its audience."

Twitter may be more green than Facebook, and is certainly less popular -- it has about a fifth of Facebook's user base. But that newness could be to Twitter's advantage.

"We've had advertising partners tell us they're kind of burned out on Facebook, but they haven't gotten to that point on Twitter yet," Elliott said. "That doesn't mean they're necessarily sold on Twitter. But they're listening." 

Facebook Redesigns Messenger

It's not immediately obvious that the latest version of Facebook Messenger for iOS and Android is a Facebook app at all says Ellis Hamburger of The Verge. Its name is Messenger, not Facebook Messenger, and its icons, text, and buttons have been graded a new shade of lighter, more vibrant blue. If not for the chat window's big Like button, you might mistake Messenger for yet another new app to let you send photos and stickers to friends. And that's kind of the point.

This past spring, Facebook made it abundantly clear that it didn't intend to sit on the sidelines as messaging apps like WhatsApp gathered hundreds of millions of active users per month. Facebook Home, the company's most progressive piece of mobile software ever, elevated chatting with friends above everything else on your Android device. The latest version of Messenger for Android and iOS hopes to take this idea to the next level, because it doesn't want to feel like part of Facebook. Messenger wants to be something else entirely: a mobile to mobile messaging network like WhatsApp or Kik. The redesigned app begins testing with a random group of Android users today, and will come to everyone on iOS and Android "in the coming weeks."

The new Messenger has largely the same functionality as its predecessors, but features a brand new design meant to emphasize its distance from the main Facebook app. Most importantly, friends' avatars are now circular, and have a little badge on them if a friend is using the Messenger app. In other words, it's instantly clear if a friend you're chatting with is using Facebook Chat on the web, or has the Messenger app on their phone and will receive your chats instantly. This distinction is part of what makes apps like WhatsApp compelling. WhatsApp isn't hooked in to any social network, and there's no ambiguity about how you're chatting with a friend.

"This is a refresh of the Messenger brand," says designer Luke Woods, which focuses not just on "mobile to mobile" but on fitting in with iOS and Android and their respective conventions, like the Send button. The previous version of Messenger, Woods says, was an iOS app visually ported to Android. Before that, Facebook for mobile devices was built using HTML 5 for no platform in particular, but Facebook ditched that plan long ago.

In terms of functionality, there are a host of under-the-hood improvements to make sending and receiving messages faster, says product manager Peter Martinazzi. There are also some front-end tweaks that makes the app faster — especially on Android, where the SMS texting feature, which let you text friends who don't have Facebook, has been removed. "We made a big deal about the SMS feature and it just didn't take off," said a Facebook spokesperson. Removing the ability to send SMS texts from within Facebook Messenger is an interesting move, especially considering KitKat, the next version of Android launching soon, will let users pick their own default SMS app. KitKat would provide Facebook with one more place to insert itself into your digital life, and rumor has it Google plans to make its Hangouts messaging app the default SMS app in Google Play devices like the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4.

While Facebook won't let you text a phone number from Messenger, the company plans to use phone numbers in a new way: to identify its users, just like in WhatsApp. Upon opening Messenger for the first time, it will ask you to provide your phone number. Then, the app can match you with people whose numbers you have, but whom you aren't Facebook friends with. Facebook guarantees your messages will reach somebody's inbox if you have their phone number. "The Facebook friend graph is an important graph for you, but everyone also has a phone graph," says Martinazzi. "These are the people who you aren't Facebook friends with, but you have their phone number, like a classmate or coworker." While Facebook has abandoned its plans to replace your texting app wholesale, it's more dedicated than ever to becoming your de facto messaging app.

The messaging wars are hotter and more fragmented than ever. By cutting visual ties between its messaging experience and its main app, Facebook hopes to get its horse back in the race — because features have never been the problem. If anything, the problem has been branding.

Mobile Adds Equals Profit For Facebook

With Facebook targeting hard on mobile adds profits are soaring. Vindu Goel of the New York Times says
Mark Zuckerberg should ditch the hoodie and dress up as a mobile phone for Halloween.

After all, that’s how half of his company’s users connect to the social network and where half of its advertising revenue comes from.

He just has to be careful not to scare away the kids because the youngest ones are already starting to go elsewhere.

Facebook, which operates the largest online social network, reported Wednesday that its profits doubled in the third quarter, to $621 million, after excluding expenses related to stock options.

The company’s revenue rose 60 percent, to $2.02 billion, compared with last year’s third quarter. Most of that, about $1.8 billion, came from advertising.

Perhaps most important for Facebook’s future as an advertising-driven company in a world of iPads and Android smartphones, the company noted that mobile ads accounted for 49 percent of its advertising revenue, up from 41 percent in the second quarter. Facebook said prices for mobile ads remained high, and users were clicking on them in their news feeds more frequently.

That bodes well, analysts said, for its smaller rival, Twitter, which takes a similar approach to mobile ads and is preparing to sell stock to investors in an initial offering as soon as next week.

Clark Fredricksen, a vice president with eMarketer, a research firm, said Twitter would benefit from Facebook’s efforts in mobile because the larger company had been investing heavily in educating marketers and users about mobile ads.

“Facebook has been a major force in helping advertisers and users get more comfortable with seeing and buying mobile ads,” he said.

Other big Internet companies like Yahoo and AOL are benefiting less from mobile ads, he said, because their ads are fragmented across various sites and are less appealing to advertisers.

The Facebook results beat Wall Street’s expectations for both revenue and profits, and cemented the company’s position as the leading platform for mobile display ads for products like games and sugary snacks. (Google, which eMarketer estimates will account for roughly half of the world’s $118 billion in digital advertising this year, is still the overall leader in mobile ad sales because of its dominant position in search ads.)

But Facebook, whose stock has doubled in the three months since its last earnings report, also tried to temper expectations for endless fast growth.

In a conference call with analysts, the company’s chief financial officer, David Ebersman, warned that the company would not keep increasing the percentage of ads in its users’ news feeds, especially for mobile users.

“This is important because increasing ads in News Feed has been a meaningful driver of our revenue growth in 2013,” he said. “So this should be factored into your expectations for next year.”

Although he did not disclose how many ads Facebook was showing its users, the company said this year that roughly 1 in 20 posts sent to users’ news feeds were ads.

Shares of Facebook, which were down slightly in regular trading to $49.01, initially soared about 12 percent in after-hours trading following the earnings report. But the stock quickly lost the gains as investors digested the results.

LinkedIn, another leading social networking company, issued a similar warning late Tuesday, saying that its sizzling growth rate could not continue — hardly surprising, given the law of large numbers, but still a shock of cold water to investors. LinkedIn shares fell more than 9 percent on Wednesday.

Mr. Ebersman also confirmed an observation made by outside researchers that teenagers were using Facebook less. Although the overall engagement of teenagers remained stable, he said, younger teenagers were indeed using the service less.

It’s unclear how big a problem that will be for the company since those younger users are in part flocking to Instagram, a photo-sharing service owned by Facebook that just began showing ads this month.

“Facebook is the obvious audience for advertisers looking to reach mobile users,” Mr. Fredricksen said. “They are capturing market share by leaps and bounds on an annual and quarterly basis.”

Ronald Josey, a senior research analyst following the Internet industry for JMP Securities, said Facebook’s results were solid. “They’ve learned mobile,” he said. Clearly they have the right product for advertisers.”

But even before Mr. Ebersman’s comments, Mr. Josey predicted that the company would put a damper on the exuberance that has doubled the price of the company’s stock in the last three months. “They are going to try to temper expectations,” he said.

The company also continued to add to its user base slightly. In the third quarter, 1.19 billion people used the site at least once a month, up from 1.15 billion in the second quarter.

Facebook is expected to account for 5.41 percent of the $117.6 billion global digital ad market this year, up from 4.11 percent last year, according to eMarketer.

Facebook’s presence in the mobile ad market is growing especially quickly. The company will account for 15.8 percent of worldwide mobile ad spending in 2013, according to eMarketers, up from 5.35 percent last year.

Mark Mahaney, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said Facebook posted its highest profit margins in a year and half and built on its mobile strength.

“But you can’t keep accelerating forever,” he said.

Google+ Rolling Out Personalized URLS

As Kit Eaton reports"Vanity" URLs have been available to some high-ranking Google+ users for a while, but now Google is dramatically expanding the system. This means you will likely be able to customize your account page with a more memorable address. Instead of a bunch of meaningless numbers, users' URLs now look like:http://plus.google.com/+Username.

Google is rolling out the system to users right now. To get one, you must verify your Google account with a phone number, have had an account for at least a month, and have at least 10 followers.

I think this is a very big move for Google. The vanity URL makes it easier for potential followers to find you on Google+. More significantly, it makes the Google+ network a more human place. Owning your Plus homepage is now a more touchy-feely experience because, for example, to share your account details you don't have to email someone a stupid machine-like string of numbers to tell them the address of your Plus profile. It's also the sort of label that can go on a business card or in an email footer. 

Google+ Aims to Become a Photo Storage and Editing Hub

                               Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times wrote this nice article on google+

Google Plus has not come close to rivaling Facebook for social networking. But it is trying to carve out its own niche, as the place to go for photo storage, editing and sharing.

At a news conference showcasing photographers’ work on Tuesday at a San Francisco gallery, Google Plus executives barely mentioned sharing and social networking. Instead, they focused on new photo and video services.

“The cloud is not just about storing your photos,” said Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president in charge of social networking. “Google aims to revolutionize photography.”

As cellphones have helped the field of photography explode, photography and video have become one of the hottest areas of competition for Web and software companies, including Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Yahoo and many start-ups.

Google’s pitch is that it can fit the needs of a variety of users, including casual cellphone photographers who want to share what they are doing, amateur photographers who want an easy way to organize family photos, and hobbyists who want high-tech editing solutions.

“No other company has dared to take on the entire spectrum of photography,” said Bradley Horowitz, a Google Plus vice president for product.

Google has some advantages, like massive amounts of computing power for storing, sorting and automatically editing photos and the money to buy photo start-ups like Nik Software, maker of Snapseed.

But it lacks a few important things. Google said on Tuesday that its social network had 300 million monthly active users posting in the stream, a fraction of Facebook’s 1.2 billion. And many consumers have already invested time and effort in other services, like Apple’s iPhoto and iMovie.

Still, Google is trying to compete, even if it is still early in the process, Mr. Horowitz said.

The press conference was streamed live on Google Plus, and active Google Plus users in the Bay Area were invited to attend in person. Some offerings, like automatic photo editing and album organizing, had been announced earlier at Google’s I/O conference.

Many of the new features are also done automatically, replacing manual labor, and will be part of a new Google Plus photo app to appear in the next few days.

Google offers automatic back-up and free, unlimited storage for lower-resolution photos taken on Android and Apple phones. People can store higher-resolution photos as well, but in that event Google charges for storage after a certain point.

With a feature it calls Auto Awesome, it automatically turns a series of related photos or videos into animated GIFs, or short movies. Google has also created computer vision algorithms to let people search their photos using thousands of words, like manicure, bridesmaid, concert, kiss or waterfall.

CryptoLocker

This new Worm going around is quite nasty. You can become infected via email attachment in the form of a .zip or from a botnet.

These emails will seemingly come from legitimate companies as well. Please be mindful when opening anything from anyone.

In a nutshell, the .zip file will contain a .PDF that will execute the trojan on your computer thus starting the nightmare that is Cryptolocker.  Cryptolocker will then encrypt the following file extensions on your computer.

*.odt, *.ods, *.odp, *.odm, *.odc, *.odb, *.doc, *.docx, *.docm, *.wps, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.xlsm, *.xlsb, *.xlk, *.ppt, *.pptx, *.pptm, *.mdb, *.accdb, *.pst, *.dwg, *.dxf, *.dxg, *.wpd, *.rtf, *.wb2, *.mdf, *.dbf, *.psd, *.pdd, *.eps, *.ai, *.indd, *.cdr, ????????.jpg, ????????.jpe, img_*.jpg, *.dng, *.3fr, *.arw, *.srf, *.sr2, *.bay, *.crw, *.cr2, *.dcr, *.kdc, *.erf, *.mef, *.mrw, *.nef, *.nrw, *.orf, *.raf, *.raw, *.rwl, *.rw2, *.r3d, *.ptx, *.pef, *.srw, *.x3f, *.der, *.cer, *.crt, *.pem, *.pfx, *.p12, *.p7b, *.p7c

As you can see this would be a nightmare of a worm to get.

Now after this propagates through your computer you then get this lovely message










100 bucks.

Thats right, $100 smackeroos. I even seen an instance that said $300.00

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP PREVENT THIS

Bleeping Computers .com has a great article on this and how you can prevent this forest fire of a nightmare. Those folks over there are very very good. Read this excerpt from this post by one of their admins:

How to block this infection from running on other computers on your computer.

You can use Software Restriction Policies to block executables from running when they are located in the %AppData% folder, or any other folder, which this thing launches from. See these articles from MS:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310791
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc786941(v=ws.10).aspx

This can also be setup in group policy 

File paths of the infection are:

C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\{213D7F33-4942-1C20-3D56=8-1A0B31CDFFF3}.exe (Vista/7/8)
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\{213D7F33-4942-1C20-3D56=8-1A0B31CDFFF3}.exe

So the path rule you want to setup is:

Path: %AppData%\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Don't allow executables from AppData.

With the bundling of Zbot with Cryptolocker, it is now also recommend that you create a rule to block executables running from a subfolder of %AppData%. This can be done with this path rule:

Path: %AppData%\*\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Don't allow executables from immediate subfolders of AppData.

You can see an alert and event log showing an executable being blocked:









I would like to add that I personally use Acronis as my software backup with an external hard drive.
This is a VERY cheap method to keep your files safe and stored and a very quick recovery if you need to wipe and start over. At any rate, with the prices of Hard Drives so low and software like Acronis so cheap it would benefit everyone to have a nice backup in the event you become infected with terrible stuff like this.

LinkedIn's New Email Service Receiving Bad Reviews From Security Reseachers

Aaron Souppouris from the Verge.com reports that LinkedIn's Intro, an ambitious service that inserts LinkedIn profile information into your iOS emails, has been slammed by security researchers. As The New York Timesreports, several researchers have spoken out against Intro, likening it to a "man-in-the-middle attack." The concerns arise from how LinkedIn adds profile information to your email. Essentially, when signing up for the service you authorize LinkedIn to scan your emails. When its server detects a person with a LinkedIn profile, it adds in data to your email and sends it to you. It's a neat trick, but it also means that a third party is scanning all your emails.

In a lengthy blog post, security firm Bishop Fox describes Intro as "a dream for attackers," a viewpoint shared by Richard Bejtlich, a researcher at Mandiant that The New York Times interviewed for its report. "I don't think people who use this are seriously thinking about the implication of LinkedIn seeing and changing their email," Bejtlich tells the paper. "It just completely breaks the idea that email traffic is going where it should go and no place else."

Both Bishop Fox and the NYT also raise an important point: last year, LinkedIn fell victim to perhaps the most public username and password theft in recent history. The company saw 6.4 million user accounts compromised, and it was established that the professional social network had not followed best practices when securing users' data. With privacy and security high on the public agenda following this year's NSA leaks, several researchers have raised the point that Intro makes LinkedIn a big target for government surveillance.

There's a parallel to be drawn with LinkedIn's system, and it's one that many mobile users have benefitted from. Mobile browsers like Opera, and more recently Google Chrome, offer services that compress your browsing data. That's done by passing your data through the companies' servers before it's sent to you. Such services have also come under fire for posing a possible security issue, though they remain available. Of course, your email is private, personal, and very different from your general web browsing, but it's worth noting that LinkedIn Intro is making similar claims in regards to security. The social network says all data is encrypted to and from your device, and that your passwords, email contents, and security tokens are stored on your iPhone rather than LinkedIn's servers.

Twitter Seeks Biggest Web IPO Since Facebook

Bloomberg.com reports thatTwitter plans to sell 70 million shares at $17 to $20 each in the offering, according to a regulatory filing today. That would value the company at $10.9 billion at the top end of the range, cheaper than Facebook and LinkedIn Corp., based on the 544.7 million common shares outstanding after the IPO. The IPO is set to price Nov. 6, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The six-year-old short-messaging site, which draws more than 230 million monthly active users and has transformed the way people communicate, is taking advantage of renewed appetite for social-media stocks to sell a 13 percent stake. While the company has more than doubled revenue annually, it hasn’t yet turned a profit and the pace of user gains is slowing. Still, Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo is betting the service’s popularity on mobile phones will help lure advertisers.

“They’re picking a slightly lower valuation to ensure that the IPO goes up on the first day of trading,” Francis Gaskins, president of IPODesktop.com, said in an interview. “I would definitely buy them in the offering at this valuation.”

At the top of the range, San Francisco-based Twitter would be valued at 9.5 times estimated sales in 2014 of $1.15 billion, according to analyst projections compiled by Bloomberg. That multiple is lower than Facebook’s 12.9 times sales and LinkedIn’s 13.4 times sales, the data show.

Silicon Valley’s Take

On a fully diluted basis including restricted stock and options, Twitter will have about 695.2 million shares outstanding. By that measure, at the top end of the range Twitter would be valued at $13.9 billion.

Twitter is aiming to avoid the fate of Facebook, whose stock fell below its $38 debut price after its record $16 billion Internet IPO in May 2012, before finally rallying to close above that level in August 2013.

For Silicon Valley, a successful Twitter IPO will go a long way toward erasing the aftertaste from Facebook’s IPO, which along with the poor stock market performances of Web companies like Zynga Inc. (ZNGA) and Groupon Inc. (GRPN), shattered some confidence in consumer Internet companies.

Following those offerings, venture capitalists and others shifted investing dollars to technology businesses that sold their products to other businesses, said Nihal Mehta, founder of LocalResponse Inc. and venture capitalist at Eniac Ventures. Now with Twitter’s debut and Facebook trading above its offering price, confidence in consumer technology has revived.

More Consumer Deals

“Twitter will help escalate all the other advertising-based consumer companies, and create potential for more to be born,” Mehta said. “We’re seeing more consumer deals than we ever have before.”

Twitter’s average revenue per user is less than half Facebook’s, regulatory filings show. The service had 231.7 million average monthly active users in the three months through September, up 39 percent from the year-earlier period. That compares with 65 percent growth the prior year.

About three-fourths of Twitter’s most active users accessed the service from mobile devices in the three months through September, compared with 69 percent in the year-earlier period, filings show. More than 70 percent of advertising revenue comes from those devices, a higher proportion than Facebook’s.

Williams’s Stake

Co-founder Evan Williams’s stake will drop to 10.4 percent from 12 percent after the offering, the filing shows. The single biggest individual shareholder, Williams would have a stake valued at as much as $1.14 billion following the IPO.

Rizvi Traverse, an entity affiliated with early Twitter backer Chris Sacca, will see its stake shrink from 17.9 percent to 15.6 percent after the sale. That holding would be valued at up to $1.7 billion.

Based on the offering terms, Twitter expects IPO proceeds of about $1.25 billion after underwriters’ fees, the filing shows. Twitter plans to use those funds for so-called general corporate purposes, including working capital and operating expenses, and may also use them for acquisitions or technology upgrades.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is the lead underwriter of the IPO, joined by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, Allen & Co. and Code Advisors. Twitter has said it will list on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the symbol TWTR.

News Through Facebook? 33% Are Getting It That Way

According to Reuters, One in three Americans get news through Facebook, according to a study from the Pew Research Center released on Thursday.

Almost 80 percent of those surveyed happen upon news when they are checking up on friends or sharing photos. Heavy news consumers did not describe Facebook as an important source of news, the study found.

"People go to Facebook to share personal moments - and they discover the news almost incidentally," Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew, said in a statement.

The survey is the first part of a series of studies that the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are conducting to examine social media and news consumption.

The study said that about two-thirds of all U.S. adults use Facebook. The world's largest social media site displays a stream where people and publishers can share news. Only 4 percent of Facebook news consumers said the platform is the most important way they obtain their news.

Social media is playing an increasingly important role in how people find news. The trend is especially pronounced among young people who prefer to get news through platforms like Twitter or Facebook rather than traditional forms of print or broadcast television.

In an earlier study, Pew found that 34 percent of people aged 18 to 24 consume news through social media compared with 10 percent of adults between the ages of 50 to 64.

The current Pew study found that adults aged 18 to 29 account for a third of Facebook news consumers.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all experimenting with ways to aggregate and share news as a way to keep people coming back to their platforms. On Monday, Facebook said that referral traffic to publishers' sites increased 170 percent through the past year.

Facebook users are not discriminating when it comes to the source of news - 70 percent click on news stories because of interest in the topic. Only 20 percent said they read a story based on the news organization.

The survey was conducted August 21 through September 2 among 5,173 U.S. adults including Facebook users.

Twitter Now Has A Billion Dollar Credit Line

As Reuters has reported that Twitter Inc has obtained a $1 billion credit line ahead of its initial public offering, the company disclosed Tuesday in an amended investor prospectus.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank were involved in arranging the credit deal, Thomson Reuters LPC reported earlier this month. The banks are also underwriters of Twitter's IPO.

No amounts have been drawn under the credit facility, Twitter said.

The micro-blogging company, the most closely watched social media IPO prospect since Facebook went public last year, is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange by mid-November.

Twitter also disclosed that MoPub Inc, a digital advertising exchange it acquired in September, had lost $2.8 million in the first six months of the year on $6.5 million in revenue.

Twitter paid $350 million in stock for MoPub, its largest acquisition to date. The deal is expected to close in November, according the filing.

Facebook Changes Stance On Violent Videos

Facebook has delved into the issue of free expression vs. damaging content and decided to lean on the side of removing potentially damaging content, according to the All Things Digital website.

On Tuesday, Facebook removed a video of a brutal decapitation of a woman that at first it maintained amounted to free expression.

The debate centered around whether the posting amounted to support for or expression against acts of violence. The video was initially shown in May but taken quickly taken down after complaints that viewers would suffer psychological damage. Recently, it resurfaced, initially prompting Facebook to defend the posting.

On Tuesday, the company issued a statement upon its reversal:

"People turn to Facebook to share their experiences and to raise awareness about issues important to them. Sometimes, those experiences and issues involve graphic content that is of public interest or concern, such as human rights abuses, acts of terrorism, and other violence. When people share this type of graphic content, it is often to condemn it. If it is being shared for sadistic pleasure or to celebrate violence, Facebook removes it."

In the statement, Facebook said it was strengthening enforcement of policies by:

• Making a more "holistic look" at context surrounding violent material, and removing that which celebrates violence.
• Considering whether a person posting content is sharing responsibly, such as carefully selecting audience and warning the public about the nature of the content.

With the revision of the age 13-17 group privacy policy this had to be expected. 

Amazon May Join Google Inside Facebook's Ad-Serving Platform

Jim Edwards of Business Insider reports that Amazon may more ad-serving platforms to shore up some more business. Jim writes:

Amazon may get access to Facebook's ad exchange, FBX, according to a report in AdExchanger.

The move would be a logical step given that Google just became an ad-buyer inside Facebook, too.

For consumers, the move would create a formidable online ad environment: Previously, all three companies targeted consumers with ads separately. With the Amazon move, any consumer could be cross-targeted across all three companies, as the three companies would have to cooperate in serving data to each other in one way or another.

AdExchanger had only the barest of details on Amazon's entry into Facebook's FBX:

Amazon, the ever-silent commerce stalwart, may be next in line to join the Facebook Exchange party, according to AdExchanger sources.

Facebook, Google and Amazon all have their own ad exchanges. They work by allowing buyers to target the tracking cookies that users create as they surf around the web. Once you enter Facebook, Google or Amazon carrying one of those cookies, the three companies let other advertisers target you with ads that might be relevant to you, based on your browser history.

But only recently have the three companies begun cooperating within each other's targeting environments. For a long time, Facebook kept Google out of FBX, for fear that Google might get a look at its performance data. That changed last week. Google brings a big new set of clients inside Facebook — likely pushing up prices due to higher demand. (Facebook has traded a loss of data for more potential money, in other words.)

By allowing Amazon into FBX, Facebook could make the same tradeoff: It would get more money from ad buyers using Amazon's "demand-side platform" (a DSP is the buying platform Amazon's clients use to buy ads in exchanges across the web).

Amazon has previously had a two-pronged strategy as an ad buying platform: Its clients have been able to use Triggit, an independent company that Amazon has used as a DSP, or Amazon's own purpose built DSP.

To speculate further, there is one obvious piece missing from this puzzle: A Facebook DSP, allowing Facebook's clients to target Facebook users in ad exchanges outside Facebook.

Facebook IOS Update And Platform Update

The new update now allows the ability to edit post and add emoticons. There are a few other minor updates including privacy shortcuts and the ability to add photos to comments.

There was also some platform updating for payments.

Monetization Tips for Canvas

Now that all canvas developers are using our new payment system, we wanted to highlight a few important monetization best practices:

1. Encourage first time purchases. The payer promotions API is designed to help you convert people that haven't previously purchased virtual goods on Facebook. Facebook sponsors this feature, which lets you offer these people a discount on your game's virtual currency.

2. Monetize through offers. You can enable users to earn virtual currency by directly integrating with TrialPay for offers. A direct integration with TrialPay will allow for quicker load times, more specific reporting, and easier troubleshooting than before. For more information about offering reward based advertising, please visit TrialPay's Facebook Developer Center.

3. Streamline gift card redemption. You can now implement the Gift Card Dialog directly, to make it easy for people to buy your game’s in-app currency. Facebook Gift Cards are available in over 20 countries and in approximately 130,000 retail locations worldwide.

Facebook Privacy Settings For Teens Changed

Facebook is now allowing freedom to the age 13-17 group of users.
In their blog they state:

On Facebook, you control who you share with. That can be a single person in a message, a small group, with friends, or with the world.

Each time you share a status update, you choose the audience you want to share with. Unless you change it, the audience remains the same for future posts.

Up until today, for people aged 13 through 17, the initial audience of their first post on Facebook was set to “Friends of Friends” – with the option to change it.

Going forward, when people aged 13 through 17 sign up for an account on Facebook, the initial audience of their first post will be set to a narrower audience of “Friends.”

A new option to share more broadly 

Teens are among the savviest people using social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard. So, starting today, people aged 13 through 17 will also have the choice to post publicly on Facebook.

While only a small fraction of teens using Facebook might choose to post publicly, this update now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services.



In addition, teens will be able to turn on Follow so that their public posts can be seen in people's News Feeds. As always, followers can only see posts they are in the audience for.

These changes are designed to improve the experience for teens on Facebook. As part of this, we are also looking at ways to improve the way teens use messages and connect with people they may know.

Inline Reminders and Education

We take the safety of teens very seriously, so they will see an extra reminder before they can share publicly. 

When teens choose “Public” in the audience selector, they’ll see a reminder that the post can be seen by anyone, not just people they know, with an option to change the post’s privacy. 



And if they choose to continue posting publicly, they will get an additional reminder. 

This was bound to happen sooner then later. While Mom and Dad may not be happy about this money will always tend to lead folk when making decisions like this.