Facebook Taking A Shot At LinkedIn Adds Job Title Add Targeting

Beware LinkedIn. Facebook is coming after you. This newest add-on for business is a smack in the face or the proverbial shot across the bow.


Facebook’s targeting features are becoming simpler and even more powerful. In the coming weeks, our improved Core Audiences targeting options — the targeting features built into all of our ad buying interfaces — will begin rolling out, allowing advertisers around the world to reach precise audiences based on four main targeting types: location, demographic, interests and behaviors. And in the US, we’re also adding Partner Categories to the Ads Create Tool so that every marketer — from brands to local businesses — can use this targeting option.


Location

Say you’re a retailer that wants to show ads to people that live near your brick-and-mortar locations. With flexible location targeting, you can build campaigns around any combination of geographies: country and city (France and London), country and state (Canada and New York), state and city (California and Las Vegas), state and ZIP code (US only), etc. It's also easier to exclude certain areas — i.e., New York City, except 11211, or the UK, excluding Cambridge.

Demographic

Trying to boost sales at your flower shop? It’s now easier to reach people who have recently declared their love for someone on Facebook. Core Audiences features more values for relationship status (like civil unions and domestic partnerships) as well as timely changes in life events, like getting engaged or married. We've also added a level of flexibility long requested by marketers, which allow targeting for people that have gotten engaged or married in the past year, or the last 3 or 6 months.
Or, maybe you're a recruiter for a law firm and want to specifically advertise to associate attorneys at law firms in New York. Now you can. Core Audiences now covers information like workplace and job title, and offers expanded information about education.


Interests

We know that people have a ton of interests, and that marketers want to reach people specifically based on them. So we simplified how you can do this on Facebook by redefining our interest-based targeting segments so each has one simple meaning. Rather than having multiple targeting options like broad categories and keywords, we developed a new methodology that increases the precision of interest-based targeting by allowing advertisers to simply choose one segment. Now, if you want to reach baseball fans, just choose "baseball" as your targeting segment — it'll pull in all the people that have liked or expressed interest in baseball-related topics on Facebook.

Behaviors

We're including in Core Audiences a new targeting option, behaviors, which includes Partner Categories. This gives marketers the ability to target campaigns to people based on things they purchase and what devices they use. For instance, if you want to reach people interested in music that use iPhones, you'll use behaviors as part of creating your target audience.
Expanded availability of Partner Categories

Previously available only in Power Editor, Partner Categories will soon roll out to the Ads Create Tool for US advertisers, offering more marketers the ability to build audiences around offline actions.

Facebook To Acquire WhatsApp

From the Facebook News Feed. This is one LARGE Acquisition. Wow.

Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WhatsApp, a rapidly growing cross-platform mobile messaging company, for a total of approximately $16 billion, including $4 billion in cash and approximately $12 billion worth of Facebook shares. The agreement also provides for an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units to be granted to WhatsApp’s founders and employees that will vest over four years subsequent to closing.

WhatsApp has built a leading and rapidly growing real-time mobile messaging service, with:

Over 450 million people using the service each month;
70% of those people active on a given day;
Messaging volume approaching the entire global telecom SMS volume; and
Continued strong growth, currently adding more than 1 million new registered users per day.


The acquisition supports Facebook and WhatsApp's shared mission to bring more connectivity and utility to the world by delivering core internet services efficiently and affordably. The combination will help accelerate growth and user engagement across both companies.

"WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "I've known Jan for a long time and I'm excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected."

Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, said, “WhatsApp's extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide. We're excited and honored to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world.”

Facebook fosters an environment where independent-minded entrepreneurs can build companies, set their own direction and focus on growth while also benefiting from Facebook’s expertise, resources and scale. This approach is working well with Instagram, and WhatsApp will operate in this manner. WhatsApp’s brand will be maintained; its headquarters will remain in Mountain View, CA; Jan Koum will join Facebook’s Board of Directors; and WhatsApp’s core messaging product and Facebook’s existing Messenger app will continue to operate as standalone applications.

Upon closing of the deal, all outstanding shares of WhatsApp capital stock and options to purchase WhatsApp capital stock will be cancelled in exchange for $4 billion in cash and 183,865,778 shares of Facebook Class A common stock (worth $12 billion based on the average closing price of the six trading days preceding February 18, 2014 of $65.2650 per share). In addition, upon closing, Facebook will grant 45,966,444 restricted stock units to WhatsApp employees (worth $3 billion based on the average closing price of the six trading days preceding February 18, 2014 of $65.2650 per share). As of February 17, 2014, Facebook had 2,551,654,996 Class A and B shares outstanding plus approximately 139 million dilutive securities primarily consisting of unvested RSUs. The Class A common stock and RSUs issued to WhatsApp shareholders and employees upon closing will represent 7.9% of Facebook shares based on current shares and RSUs outstanding.

In the event of termination of the Merger Agreement under certain circumstances principally related to a failure to obtain required regulatory approvals, the Merger Agreement provides for Facebook to pay WhatsApp a fee of $1 billion in cash and to issue to WhatsApp a number of shares of Facebook’s Class A common stock equal to $1 billion based on the average closing price of the ten trading days preceding such termination date.

Facebook was advised by Allen & Company LLC and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP; and WhatsApp was advised by Morgan Stanley and Fenwick & West, LLP.

New Twitter Certified Program Partners

Here is the newest add to Twitter. This is taken from their blog.

Eighteen months ago, we launched the Twitter Certified Program to showcase the leading products that make Twitter more valuable for businesses. Since then, we’ve grown to 31 partners in the Certified program including Hootsuite, Sysomos, and Wayin. And recently, we’ve added two new Certified products:

Lithium Social Web: 

Mines Twitter data for relevant customer discussions and uses the Twitter APIs to drive real-time customer support and marketing engagement. Lithium Social Web powers some of the world’s best customer support on Twitter, including brands like Sony, Time Warner Cable and Virgin Media.

ScribbleLive: 

Is a leading curation and publisher engagement tool, helping some of the world’s biggest sites find and display relevant Tweets. You’ve seen ScribbleLive’s work on sites like CNN, ESPN and The Boston Globe.

Microsoft's OneDrive

Shocked it took Microsoft this long to throw their hat in the ring. To bad Google and IBM will have a leg up over everyone. Here is the article by CNET.

Over the years, critics occasionally -- and justifiably -- slammed Microsoft for cramming too many features into its software. But could that ingrained habit yet work to Microsoft's advantage as it relaunches its consumer cloud storage service in a young market that's up for grabs?

Microsoft on Wednesday officially announced the global availability of its rebranded cloud storage service OneDrive. Microsoft originally called the service SkyDrive but was forced to rebrand after British Sky Broadcasting, the biggest pay-television broadcaster in the United Kingdom, sued and won a trademark lawsuit over use of the name.

Besides the new markings, Microsoft is offering the first 7 gigabytes of storage free along with a couple of additional bonus offers. As expected, Microsoft users will receive up to 5GB of free storage for referrals. Another freebee: 3GB of storage to anyone using the service's camera backup feature. You can read more about CNET's hands-on review here.

"Five or 10 years from now, if you say that you lost a file, your kids will look at you funny," said Chris Jones, the Microsoft vice president in charge of the company's OS Services group. "It's not going to happen."

"That's the dream," Jones acknowledged, noting the continuing specter posed by security breaches. It was a battle, he said, "that's never going to be over."

of experience warding off myriad security challenges from what its executives frankly describe as "determined and persistent adversaries." But bumps in the road notwithstanding, Microsoft has learned to navigate the front lines of the security wars. (See Trustworthy Computing for more.)

So while Microsoft often gets dinged for moving too slowly, weighted down by "baggage" accumulated over nearly four decades, might that same legacy work in its favor? As more people look to cloud storage, there will be no shortage of pitches. In a crowded field, a good reputation surely is going to be worth a battalion of sales and marketing people. Apropos, consider these findings from a Harris company survey carried out last December at Microsoft's behest.


Four out of five people responding to the survey -- who did not use cloud storage -- said that they remained "wary of lesser-known cloud storage offerings" and flagged concerns about privacy and security.
About two of three people who expressed being "at least somewhat knowledgeable about cloud storage" aren't using the services.
66 percent of these non-users were not ready to trust cloud storage with important files -- again, because they say it's neither sufficiently secure nor sufficiently private



Let's be careful here. "Lesser-known cloud offerings" is a loosey-goosey umbrella term. Someone who doesn't obsess over the latest tech fashion out of Silicon Valley might not be as familiar with Apple's iCloud, Box, iCloud, SugarSync, or Google Drive as some of you. But by this definition, those offerings would still get lumped in (misleadingly) with the "lesser-known" crowd. Besides, not being a household name isn't necessarily a deal kidder: Consider the case of SpiderOak, which received higher marks for security than its better-known competitors from this Ars reviewer.)

Post Platform Changes From LinkedIn

New blog from LinkedIn. Talks about some changes made to the post/profile platform.
Desperation may be setting in from the drop in stock price. Changing the platform to a more Facebook style seems like a stop the bleeding type move.

We believe in giving our members access to the business knowledge they need to be great at what they do. To put that simply, we are making a commitment to our members: the time you spend on LinkedIn will make you better at your job today.

The valuable Influencer posts and the wide range of professional content from millions of publishers that we currently aggregate on LinkedIn are powerful, but only the tip of the iceberg. Combined, our members have extremely valuable and varied experiences; however, their knowledge and expertise has not yet been captured and shared.

Starting today, LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. Now members have the ability to follow other members that are not in their network and build their own group of followers. Members can continue to share their expertise by posting photos, images, videos and their original presentations on SlideShare.

Every professional has valuable experience to share. Trying to grow your business by reducing customer attrition? Read the post from Monica Adractas, head of customer retention at Box, on churning out churn. Just starting a career in sales? Read the post from Brent Beshore, the founder/CEO at adventur.es, on how to sell anything. Need a science-based planning tool for river restoration? Read the post from Glen Leverich, senior geomorphologist at Stillwater Sciences, on A Science-based Planning Approach for Riparian Restoration.

LinkedIn Influencer started in fall of 2012 and features top voices in business like Richard Branson, Martha Stewart and Bill Gates. The expertise they have shared through their Influencer posts has resonated in a meaningful way with LinkedIn members and is fueling business conversations. The average Influencer post drives more an 31,000 views and receives more than 250 likes and 80 comments. By any measure, this is a remarkably high level of engagement for digital content.

We are adding new Influencers who are excited to share their insights and experiences directly with LinkedIn members. They include Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, CEO of AOL Brand Group Susan Lyne, and Financial Expert and CNBC host Suze Orman. We will regularly evaluate who we have as Influencers to include only the most engaged, prolific and thoughtful contributors and to ensure that their expertise matches up with our members’ interests.

Starting today, 25,000 members will have the ability to publish content on LinkedIn. We’ll be steadily expanding the capability to all members in multiple languages over the next few weeks and months to come. Check out our member help center for more information.

Girl Killed For Having A Facebook Account

While I normally avoid blogging about such things I could not turn a deaf ear to this.

A Syrian girl reportedly named Fatoum Al-Jassem was sentenced to death by stoning for having a Facebook account.

A Facebook account.
Think about this for a moment.
What sane person could say this deserves death.
None would be my answer.

According to reports they (the ruling court) considered this the same as adultery.
And her punishment was to be put to death by means of people(if you can call them that) picking up stones and throwing them at her until she is dead.

So if the 1 billion users of Facebook moved to Syria we would be killed for having that terrible adulterous Facebook account.

Incredible. Incredibly sad and terrible. These people try and dominate the very fabric of humanity where they live and with the death of this girl are succeeding.

Google Acquires Slicklogin

Google has reportedly bought Israeli security startup SlickLogin. The company’s three-man team announced the deal, saying Google shared their beliefs that logging in should be easy and authentication effective without frustrations or barriers. SlickLogin uses smartphones and high-frequency sounds for identity verification at websites.

There is speculation that the deal is worth several million euros although the terms have not been revealed. Google likes shopping in Israel. It has recently snapped up spreadsheet company iRows, LabPixies entertainment, and mapping service Waze.