Facebook To Users: 'Pay To Promote Your Posts'

San Fransisco: Facebook is letting users in the United States pay a fee to boost the visibility of their postings on the social network, the company’s latest effort to look beyond advertisers for revenue.

The promoted-posts-for-users feature, which Facebook began offering as a test on Wednesday to a limited number of its US users, ensures that a comment or photo shared by a Facebook member gets prominent billing in their friends’ newsfeeds.

“When you promote a post – whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news – you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it,” Facebook said in an announcement on its official blog on Wednesday.

Facebook is considering a variety of prices. The current test price in the United States is $7, according to a Facebook spokesman.

Facebook is letting users in the United States pay a fee to boost the visibility of their postings on the social network. AFP

The move marks Facebook’s latest effort to experiment with new ways to make money beyond advertising, which accounted for roughly 84 percent of the company’s revenue in the second quarter. Facebook also takes a 30 percent cut of purchases of virtual goods by users playing Zynga’s Farmville and other social games on its website.

With Facebook’s revenue growth rate showing a sharp slowdown in recent quarters, many analysts and investors believe the company needs to find new ways to make money.

Last week, Facebook unveiled a feature that lets US users buy and send real gifts, such as eyeglasses, pastries and gift cards to their friends. Initially available to a limited number of users in the United States, Facebook Gifts could signal the company’s intent to play a bigger role in e-commerce.

Facebook’s main social networking service, which has 955 million users, will remain free, said Facebook spokesman Jonathan Thaw.

“Facebook has offered paid products – virtual gifts, virtual goods in games, sponsored stories, ads – for years, and still remains free. This doesn’t change that,” said Thaw.

The paid postings will be visible on the desktop and mobile versions of the social network. Facebook will place the paid-for postings towards the top of people’s newsfeeds for a limited period of time. Facebook’s newsfeed typically displays content by freshness and relevance.

The promoted-posts-for-users feature was first tested in New Zealand in May, and Facebook said it has tested the service in 20 other countries since then.

Shares of Facebook, which made its public market debut at $38 a share in May, were down 1.7 percent at $21.89 in afternoon trading on Wednesday.

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Censored! No Facebook, No YouTube In Kashmir

There are reports that the Indian government has blocked Facebook and YouTube in Kashmir. The story was first reported by GreaterKashmir which said that,ISP companies blocked social networking sites including Facebook and YouTube in Kashmir without any official directive the state government.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, GPRS has also been blocked in the state.

IBN-Live reports that the order was issued by the state Home Department, invoking the powers conferred under section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act 1885.

According to the IBN-Live report, the order was issue with regard to public safety and also emphasised that if necessary entire domains could also be blocked by service providers.

“If necessary, due to technical reasons, the Fully Qualified Domain Names shall be blocked viz www.youtube.com, www.facebook.com etc” the order reads.

According to GreaterKashmir, which spoke to the General Manager of Reliance (J&K) Ataullah Haque who said that every company has jammed Facebook and YouTube but the rest of the services were functioning. “Basically government has issued a directive to block the Facebook but other services are functioning,” the report quoted him as saying. 

The blocking comes after PTI had reported yesterday that the Union Government asked private telecom operators in Jammu and Kashmir to provide at the earliest, a mechanism for fool-proof monitoring of Internet traffic to the state especially that provided on the smartphones.

The government says the monitoring of Internet in Kashmir is a must to ensure that anti-India propaganda is not spread in the already volatile region. Kashmir also saw violent protests after the Anti-Islam film which resulted in some URL’s being blocked.

In the past, Facebook and YouTube have been used by Kashmiris to highlight police abuse. For instance in 2012, the government blocked a video showing Kashmiri men being stripped and humiliated by the police after it went viral across India.

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Facebook Shares Hit A New Low

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Facebook Inc. slumped to a record low on Friday after a pair of brokers slashed their price targets on the stock, citing the combined weight of massive share lockups as well as signs of a weakening advertising business at the social network.

In morning trades, Facebook (US:FB) shares fell more than 4% to $18.31. This represented an all-time low for a stock that has steadily been losing ground since its high-profile IPO in May, with the company’s market value now less than half the level set by its debut price of $38 per share.

More than 24 million shares had traded hands in the first hour of trading, compared to the stock’s three-month daily average of 36.8 million.

Report History: Facebook Shares melt to half.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch and BMO Capital Markets both cut their price targets on Facebook. Stifel Nicolaus does not have a price target on the stock, but trimmed its forecast for the company’s 2013 fiscal year.

“Although valuation appears tempting, the uncertainty of the earnings trajectory and increasing public float leaves us cautious,” wrote Stifel’s Jordan Rohan in a note to clients.

A major issue weighing on Facebook at present is the expiration of post-IPO share lockups. About 271 million shares were released in mid-August, while more than 1.3 billion shares will become available for trading by mid-November. This will significantly increase the size of the company’s share float, with investors worried that the influx will push down the stock’s price if insiders like early investors and employees rush to sell their shares.

“Facebook has multiple lock-up expirations over the next year, and recent selling activity on the August lock-up suggests to us the risk of future selling pressure,” wrote Bank of America’s Justin Post.

Pointing to the mid-November lockup expiration that will release about 1.2 billion shares, Post said: “We wouldn’t expect the stock to see buying momentum until December.”

Daniel Salmon of BMO cut his price target to $15 from $25, and said the lockup was one factor, but also cited weakness in the company’s advertising business.

“Checks on paid media spending remain mixed; many conversations referenced a ‘pause’ in order to reevaluate earned/owned/paid mix and ROI [return on investment] measurement,” he wrote, adding that another risk factor is “continued industry pricing pressure.”

Report: Facebook can now detect 'Fraud Likes'

Salmon, who has an underperform rating on the stock, said that investor sentiment “is now much worse” than sentiment among advertisers for Facebook, but that focus will return to the company’s business fundamentals “after the technical challenges presented by lock-up expirations over the next six months have been absorbed by the stock (possibly offset by some index buying at some point).”

Bank of America’s Post kept a neutral view on the shares, cutting his target to $23 from $35. He noted “opportunities for new ad formats” that could help the company improve its advertising business, but expects continued pressure for the rest of this year.

Stifel’s Rohan said Facebook’s platform “has huge potential,” but still faces “significant” challenges with monetization.

“We believe the period of indigestion may continue as more shares come to market, limiting the positive reaction to growth initiatives,” he wrote, keeping his hold rating on the stock.

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Facebook Can Now Detect And Remove Fraud 'Likes'

Facebook engineers have rolled out new technology that automatically removes fraudulent Likes that are mass-produced to exaggerate the popularity of a webpage or brand.

The social network recently increased its learning algorithms to detect the spammed endorsements, which are often generated by computers, fake Facebook accounts, or other fraudulent means, the company said on its security blog Friday morning. The post said the inauthentic Likes are a tiny sliver of the overall endorsements on the site; on average, less than one percent of the Likes on any given page are expected to be affected. We're guessing, however, that certain pages—say, some promoting things like male enhancement pills—will be heavily hit.

More: Facebook shares melt to half price

"These newly improved automated efforts will remove those Likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk Likes," the Facebook post stated. "While we have always had dedicated protections against each of these threats on Facebook, these improved systems have been specifically configured to identify and take action against suspicious Likes."

In addition to spawning script-created Facebook accounts, Like scammers often use other tricks, such as clickjacking. The technique uses Adobe Flash objects to hide the true destination of a Web link, tricking people into clicking on links they had no intention of hitting. Twitter has been rolling out similar technology to curtail fraudulent tweets and accounts on its site, and one recent report found that 15 percent of US presidential candidate Mitt Romney's followers were paid fakes.

Facebook's blog post doesn't elaborate on the underlying technology that makes the automated efforts work, but with so many different methods of falsifying Likes, we're curious to see just how effective the new Facebook measures are.

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