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Facebook adds an easy way to find your local government officials
In part of his 5,700-word manifesto last month, Mark Zuckerberg hinted at plans to make Facebook a more informed and civically engaged social network. Now, some of those ideas are getting a concrete solution with a new feature called Town Hall, which is rolling out to Facebook users in the US today. Found in the "Apps" tab on mobile or the "Explore" section of the sidebar on the web, Town Hall lets users easily track down their representatives in local, state and federal government.
Facebook buys mobile development tool house Parse
Facebook has purchased Parse, a service that provides a cloud-based set of mobile services and development tools. This news comes on the heels of last week's Mobile Developer Conference where Facebook introduced tools making it easier to implement Open Graph on mobile along with the release of Facebook SDK 3.5. With the addition of Parse's toolset developers will be able to store and build server-based apps for Facebook in the cloud without the need for expensive infrastructure. The best news regarding the deal is Facebook's plan to keep Parse's current tiered pricing. The basic level of Parse is free, with up to 1 million requests or pushes per month. Pro and Enterprise options are available for users seeking more requests and pushes, greater security, support, and collaboration features. This creates a new revenue stream for Facebook without losing the existing "freemium" user base. As Facebook seeks to become a force in the mobile market, it has two major stumbling blocks; it doesn't own an mobile OS or have its own device. Parse's developer tools will help make Facebook integration easier, both inside the apps and via ad buys. Couple that integration with the monthly fees from subscribers and this purchase is an interesting way for Facebook to establish themselves in the mobile marketplace. Here's Parse's statement on the sale. Parse has come a long way. In just under two years, we've gone from a rough prototype to powering tens of thousands of apps for a very broad spectrum of customers. Some of the world's best brands trust us with their entire mobile presence, and a growing number of the world's brightest independent developers trust us with their next big thing. We couldn't be happier. As stewards of a good thing, we're always thinking about the next step in growing Parse to become a leading platform in this age of mobile apps. These steps come in all sizes. Most are small and incremental. Some are larger. Today we're excited to announce a pretty big one. Parse has agreed to be acquired by Facebook. We expect the transaction to close shortly. Rest assured, Parse is not going away. It's going to get better. We've worked with Facebook for some time, and together we will continue offering our products and services. Check out Facebook's blog post for more on this. Combining forces with a partner like Facebook makes a lot of sense. In a short amount of time, we've built up a core technology and a great community of developers. Bringing that to Facebook allows us to work with their incredible talent and resources to build the ideal platform for developers. We think this is the right way to accomplish what we set out to do. We're excited about the future of Parse! Ilya, Kevin, and James And here is Facebook's statement: Last week, we hosted our first Mobile Developer Conference, where we launched several new products to help mobile developers integrate Facebook: Open Graph for mobile, better Facebook Login, and new developer tools. Today, we're making it even easier to build mobile apps with Facebook Platform by announcing that we have entered into an agreement to acquire Parse, a cloud-based platform that provides scalable cross-platform services and tools for developers. By making Parse a part of Facebook Platform, we want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span mobile platforms and devices. Parse makes this possible by allowing developers to work with native objects that provide backend services for data storage, notifications, user management, and more. This removes the need to manage servers and a complex infrastructure, so you can simply focus on building great user experiences. We've worked closely with the Parse team and have seen first-hand how important their products and community are to developers. We don't intend to change this. We will continue offering their products and services, and we're excited to expand what Facebook and Parse can provide together.
Facebook redesigns mobile site and apps, takes a tip (or two) from Instagram
Maybe it was inspired by the other app's most recent update, or perhaps by Zuck's newly-minted commitment to mobile applications. Regardless, Facebook's redesigned its iPhone / iPod and Android apps along with its pocket-sized site, clearly taking some design tips from none other than its fresh acquisition, Instagram. As you can see in the image above, the news feed is now showing one large post rather than the usual two or three (at least on the iPhone / iPod variant), this mainly due to pictures now being up to 3X larger than before. Facebook didn't note any other major changes, and there was no mention on when, or if, this snap-driven design will make its way onto some of those not-so-mobile devices. Be sure to keep an eye out for the redesign, as it's said to be rolling out as we speak.
This Week in Facebook: Offers, Ads and Timeline for Pages
Facebook's gently unveiled a raft of changes to its policies to boost advertising on the social network. It unveiled Timeline for pages, meaning that companies can now start uploading baby pictures and changing the cover photo every day. While adverts have been traditionally restricted to the right-rail of the site, now they'll be jammed in at will -- including in your mobile app (which the company conceded it wasn't "monetizing"), timeline and log in / out pages. Advertisers will also have access to a reach generator: once your brand reaches a set (unspecified) number of fans, you can pay to contact up to 75 percent of them with your adverts each month. Finally, there's offers: a way for businesses to share discounts and promotions with users that can then be whipped out at the store on your cellphone, which is certainly cooler than slicing out sections of the penny saver. [Thanks, Chris]
Facebook gets chatty, brings Comments Box plugin to mobile media sites
Chiming in on your favorite posts is about to get a little bit easier, now that Facebook has brought its Comments Box mobile plugin to media websites. Today's announcement comes just about a month after the social network introduced its Subscribe button, marking its latest efforts to enhance user engagement on mobile web platforms. According to Facebook, the new feature will use "social signals" to automatically detect the highest quality comments for each individual, with each thread ordered to show the most relevant and popular comments from a user's friends. There's also an integrated moderation function so, you know, play nice. Developers interested in getting in on the action can find more details at the coverage link below.
What's on Facebook's mind? Mobile event set for November 3rd
Facebook's made no official push into the smartphone universe -- to date, we've been left using various mobile apps to connect with J. Timberlake, Marky Z. and the rest of the crew, but it looks as if the preeminent social networking site of our generation (ahem) is just about ready to clear the air on at least one issue. The invite above recently landed in our inbox, requesting our presence at "a mobile event at Facebook HQ" in Palo Alto, California. Naturally, we'll be on hand from NorCal bringing you the blow-by-blow, and we're interested to know what you think will be on deck. Will we finally see the Facebook phone that it quickly shot down? The Nexus Two with a borderline-criminal amount of Facebook integration? The resurgence of using pastel colored tin cans to connect Jane and Joe? Whatever the case, we're sure It's Complicated.
Facebook: Actually, there are 44 million active monthly users of our iPhone app, not 104 million
Yesterday, the internet collective noticed that Facebook was claiming some astonishing monthly active user figures on its respective app fan pages. At the time, Facebook was showing just over 100 million users of its Facebook for iPhone app, nearly 60 million BlackBerry users, and a bit more than 12 million using the Android client. These numbers have continued to rise in the face of contrarian evidence -- for example, how could there possibly be over 100M users of the iPhone app when only 100M iOS devices (a number that includes the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad) have been sold as of June 2010? Easy, it all comes down to how you define "active." Here's the official word we just received from a Facebook spokesman: "There are currently 44 million monthly active users of the Facebook for iPhone app. We recently changed the definition of mobile active users to exclude those who have only liked or commented on stream stories. Instead we are counting "active" users as people who have taken explicit actions within an application. This practice is more aligned with how we count overall active users for the site." So yeah, not 104 million, but that revised number is still a significant proportion of all iPhones (59M iPhones as of last quarter by our calculations) and iPod touch devices (Apple doesn't break these numbers out) to have ever sold, let alone currently in use globally. Any wonder why Google and Foursquare are worried?
