by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Google has beaten Facebook to become publishers’ main source of external page views over the course of 2017, a new data showed.
Google used to be the main source of referral traffic for web publishers. Then Facebook eclipsed it, ReCode reported late on Monday.
According to digital analytics company Parse.ly, Google sent more traffic than Facebook to publishers — Facebook sent 25 per cent less traffic to publishers in 2017, while Google increased its traffic by 17 per cent.
In January, Facebook provided nearly 40 per cent of publishers’ external traffic which is now down to 26 per cent.
Google, which started the year at 34 per cent, generated 44 per cent of the total traffic.
Parse.ly pointed out a number of factors for this turnaround.
In 2016 Facebook tweaked its algorithm to prioritise posts from friends and family over publishers.
Also, Facebook’s “Instant Articles” feature, where the service hosted some publishers’ content directly but promised to send more readers to the original site as well, has declined in importance, the analytics company found.
Since users can now publish videos directly on Facebook, this might have affected how many links to web stories publishers put on their Facebook pages.
Google’s “accelerated mobile pages” (AMP) feature, which also hosts publishers’ content directly on Google’s servers, became more important over the year.
AMP stories – typically from news publishers – are surfaced at the top of mobile search results as “Top Stories,” which drives clicks.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : More than a year after launching “Instant Games” — a new platform for gaming with friends on the Messenger chat app, Facebook has announced support for live streaming via Facebook Live and video chatting with fellow gamers.
“First, we’re launching live streaming, which will start to roll out today, to gamers who love to share their playthroughs and engage in a little smack talk,” Facebook wrote in a blog post late Thursday.
The users will be able to record these live streams so that they can be posted to the profile afterwards.
“Over 245 million people video chat every month on Messenger. We’re excited to begin a test soon that will enable people to play games with each other while video chatting,” the company added.
Meanwhile, the social media giant also announced additions to “Instant Games” with a handful of big-name mobile titles that will be “re-imagined” for the platform.
“Launching globally in early 2018 is none other than Angry Birds, a new game built for Messenger that will feature classic gameplay with an exciting new way to challenge friends,” Facebook said.
The immensely popular game will join the recently launched Tetris which includes beloved features like marathon mode and the ability to play with friends in Messenger group chats.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate Jobs, Employment, Markets, Social Media, Technology
London : Facebook has opened a new office in London and has announced that it would hire 800 people which will take the total strength of its employees in Britain to 2,300 workers by the end of 2018, the media reported on Monday.
The new seven-storey office building in central London will make the British capital Facebook’s largest computer engineering base outside of the US, The Telegraph reported.
“Today’s announcements show that Facebook is more committed than ever to the UK and in supporting the growth of the country’s innovative start-ups,” said Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s Vice President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Facebook opened its first office in London 10 years ago. The new building will house developers and sales staff.
Google, Apple and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, have expanded their operations in London since the Brexit vote last year, the report added.
“It’s a sign of confidence in our country that innovative companies like Facebook invest here, and it’s terrific news that they will be hiring 800 more highly skilled workers next year,” Chancellor Philip Hammond said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Marketing Basics, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : To ensure that advertisers do not use Facebook tools in a discriminatory way, company COO Sheryl Sandberg said that the social media giant would take a closer look at its advertising policies.
In light of a ProPublica investigation and pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus, Sandberg announced the decision in a letter to CBC Chairperson Cedric Richmond.
The move comes after following the criticism of Facebook that is under fire for its practices and policies that enable advertisers to exclude “multicultural affinity” groups from the audiences they reach via the social network, Tech Crunch reported.
Under the new development, until Facebook figures out how to ensure advertisers do not use its tools in a discriminatory way, it will temporarily disable the option that lets advertisers exclude multicultural affinity groups from their audience.
“Multicultural affinity groups are made up of people whose activities on Facebook suggest they may be interested in ads related to the African American, Hispanic American, or Asian American communities,” she wrote in the letter.
She said there are also concerns that advertisers use Facebook to discriminate against people in the areas of housing, employment and credit loans.
“By allowing online advertisers to promote or market a community or home for the purpose of sale to select an ‘ethnic affinity’ as part of their advertising campaign, Facebook is complicit in promoting restrictive housing practices,” the members of the CBC had said last year.
Facebook said it also will take a look at how advertisers are using exclusion targeting across other “sensitive segments”, like ones that relate to members of the LGBTQ community and people with disabilities.
In September, reports surfaced that the social media giant enabled advertisers to reach “Jew haters” — to which Sandberg, who also of Jewish origin, had apologised, saying the company was now strengthening its ad policies.
Facebook enabled the advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater”, “How to burn Jews” or “History of why Jews ruin the world”, a ProPublica investigation revealed.
At that time, Facebook temporarily disabled some of its ads tools following news reports that slurs or other offensive language could be used as targeting criteria for advertising.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, News, Social Media
New York : More than four million donors in India have signed up for Facebook’s blood donation feature and the company will now expand this feature to Bangladesh, the social media giant has said.
In October, Facebook launched a new blood donations feature, starting in India, to make it easier for people to donate blood.
“There are now more than four million blood donors signed up on Facebook in India.
“In addition to enabling people in need to connect to blood donors, our tools also allow organisations to connect to donors more efficiently,” Naomi Gleit, Vice President, Social Good, said in a blog post late on Wednesday.
Hospitals, blood banks and non-profits can create voluntary blood donation events on Facebook, and nearby donors are notified of the opportunities to donate blood.
“In early 2018, we will expand blood donations to Bangladesh, where, like India, there are thousands of posts from people looking for blood donors every week,” Gleit noted.
Facebook also announced new tools and initiatives to help people keep each other safe and supported on its platform.
At the second annual Social Good Forum in New York late on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is introducing a new mentorship connection programme, new fundraising tools, blood donation initiative and the suicide prevention programme.
“Mentorship and Support is a new product where mentees and mentors come together to connect and interact directly with each other and progress through a guided programme developed by nonprofit organisations,” Gleit posted.
All donations made through Facebook payments to nonprofits will now go directly to those organisations.
“Facebook Donations Fund” is a $50 million annual fund for 2018 to help communities recover from disaster by direct contribution.
“People will now be able to sync their off-Facebook fundraising efforts to Facebook fundraisers, making it easier to tell friends and family about the causes they support on and off Facebook,” the company said.
When people connect their off-Facebook fundraising campaign with Facebook, it creates a Facebook fundraiser that syncs with their campaign page.
Facebook also introduced a Community Help API, which will give disaster response organisations access to data from public “Community Help” posts that can offer important information about the needs of people affected by a particular crisis.
“We are piloting the Community Help API with NetHope and the American Red Cross,” Facebook said.
—IANS
