Is Facebook a Truly Mobile-First Company Yet?

Has Facebook finally succeeded in becoming a mobile-first company? That’s the big question heading into the social network’s third quarter earnings results Wednesday.

Facebook has impressed analysts and investors in each quarter so far this year by reporting strong growth in mobile ad revenue. The company revealed that mobile ads accounted for 41% of total ad revenue in the second quarter this year, up from 30% in the first quarter and essentially nothing a year earlier. If that growth continues, Facebook could approach or even surpass the 50% mark this quarter.

Facebook has taken steps in recent weeks to make mobile ads more effective, including testing autoplay video ads in the news feed and introducing more calls to action on mobile app install ads to entice users to click, though it’s doubtful either had much impact on the previous quarter results.

Beyond the mobile ad stats, analysts will likely be looking for any updates or hints about the company’s new and as yet unannounced ad products. Instagram is expected to introduce ads this week, perhaps finally justifying the amount Facebook paid for the company. On the other hand, Facebook has repeatedly delayed introducing video ads on the homepage raising questions about when and how the company will choose to go this route.

Overall, Facebook is expected to report earnings per share of $0.19 on revenue of $1.91 billion for the quarter, up from earnings of $0.12 a share on revenue of $1.26 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Facebook stock has been on a tear this year, rising to as high as $54.83 earlier this month, roughly three times the low of $17.55 a share it hit a year earlier. The stock was hovering just below $50 a share in early trading Wednesday, an increase of 1% on the day.

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty

Do Teens Really Think Twitter Is ‘More Important’ Than Facebook?

Teens are abandoning Facebook in droves for Twitter.

For many, that was the takeaway from an Oct. 10 Piper Jaffray study of 8,650 teens. That conclusion was false. The study had a much narrower focus than has been reported and only referred to purchasing activity on the platforms.

This key paragraph in the press release explaining the study caused the confusion (emphasis ours):

Teens have cited “friends” as the strongest influence over their purchase decisions for the duration of our survey history, but “Internet” is quickly rising in profile. More than half of teens indicate that social media impacts their purchases with Twitter being the most important, eclipsing Facebook, followed closely by Instagram. But the popularity of Facebook is waning among teens with 23% citing it as the most important, down from 33% six months ago and 42% a year ago.

There’s no doubt the report shows bad news for Facebook. However, the data refers to importance for purchases. The ambiguous wording of the presser — including remarks about the “popularity” of the social networks — didn’t help. After all, it was possible to read the last sentence as its own entity in which “most important” referred to most important overall.

That may be the case, but that’s not what Piper Jaffray was asking about. A rep for the financial advisor says the study was looking specifically at buying behavior and wasn’t trying to determine whether teens prefer Twitter to Facebook overall.

This sounds like great news for Twitter. Yet it’s unclear how much of teens’ purchasing activity is actually spurred by the social network. A study last year by IBM found that it had exactly zero effect on Black Friday sales. Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube didn’t fare much better, generating only 0.34% of online sales on Black Friday.

It’s also true that Twitter is gaining popularity with teens: A Pew Research study in May showed that the number of teens on Twitter doubled from 2011 to 26%. Yet 94% of teens reported being on Facebook. The “teens are tired of Facebook” narrative also picked up over the summer when Mashable ran an op-ed by 13 year-old Ruby Karp explaining that neither she nor her friends were on Facebook.

Nevertheless, researcher The Futures Company, which looks closely at teens’ behavior, has found that while Facebook use has plateaued (which tends to happen when you hit 94%), teens still aren’t leaving the social network en masse.

All of which is to say that there may be something to the persistent narrative that teens are getting sick of Facebook. The Piper Jaffray report doesn’t make that case.

Source: Mashable

Twitter Dethrones Facebook as Teens’ Favorite Social Network for Shopping

Twitter beat out Facebook in the battle for teenagers’ preferred social networks for online shopping. In a recent survey of teens’ retail behavior, participants were asked about their favorite networks, and 26% responded that it was Twitter.

Facebook and Instagram each captured the hearts of 23% of survey respondents. Clearly, Instagram’s rising popularity among teens took a toll on both Twitter and Facebook’s popularity; Facebook saw a 10% decrease in the survey since six months ago and Twitter saw a 4% decrease.

“The data point is likely unsurprising as the trend in our survey has been moving toward Twitter over the past couple of years,” said analysts Gene Munster and Douglas Clinton in a note to clients.

Statista’s chart, which uses data from Piper Jaffray, shows the changes in teens’ favorite social networks for shopping among fall 2012, spring 2013 and fall 2013.

Image: Image: Sean MacEntee

Study: 30% of Americans Get Their News on Facebook

A new study reveals that 30% of Americans get their news on Facebook, and suggests that the social network drives people to media sites who may not have otherwise done so. Of that 30%, more than half — 78% — said they click on news links to media sites after initially logging on for unrelated reasons, such as checking out friends’ pictures or updating their statuses. In fact, only 16% of Facebook users say that getting news is the primary reason they log on.

The study, published by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, found that almost half of American users click on news in their Facebook feeds. Since 64% of adults in the United States use Facebook, that means one in three Americans consumes news on Facebook.

However, only 22% of the 30% who get their news on Facebook think the site is a useful source for information about the world, and only 4% of those think Facebook is “the most important way” to get their news.

“People go to Facebook to share personal moments — and they discover the news almost incidentally,” Amy Mitchell, Pew Research Center’s director of journalism research, said in a statement. “The serendipitous nature of news on Facebook may actually increase its importance as a source of news and information, especially among those who do not follow the news closely.”

The study quotes one respondent, who said he believes “Facebook is a good way to find out news without actually looking for it.”

The importance of the social network also depends on how much of a news junkie the user is.

Among those who click on news links in their Facebook news feeds, just 38% of heavy news followers think the social network is “an important way to get the news,” but among those who follow news “less often,” 47% consider Facebook as an important source.

On Monday, Facebook announced that it was driving 170% more traffic to media sites this year than in 2012.

This is the first of a series of studies on social media and news published by Pew in collaboration with the Knight Foundation. For this study, Pew surveyed 5,173 Americans ages 18 and older. You can read the full report here (.PDF).

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Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

LinkedIn’s Website Goes Down for Some – Digital News

LinkedIn suffered a rare service disruption on Wednesday morning, which prevented many users from properly loading the website.

The company did not immediately respond to our request for comment on the cause or extent of the outage, but Downrightnow.com shows there has been a “likely service disruption” for the better part an hour. LinkedIn acknowledged that it is “currently experiencing some issues” in a statement provided to Mashable and in the tweet below:

Our site is currently experiencing some issues. Our team is actively working on it. We’ll keep you updated here. Thanks for your patience.

— LinkedIn Help (@LinkedInHelp) October 23, 2013

LinkedIn isn’t the only social network to experience problems this week. Facebook suffered a prolonged outage on Monday morning, which prevented users from posting and engaging with posts on the site.

Image: Creative Commons, Nan Palmero

Tailored Tweets, Coming to a Country Near You

Twitter offers a large target for marketers hoping to drive home a specific message — and its accuracy is improving.

A new tool, offered through Twitter’s API, allows marketers to send targeted tweets to specific geographic locations. For example, a brand could send a tweet to followers in the United States and a separate tweet to users in Japan from the same account. The tweets will not show up to followers in the brand’s Twitter timeline unless those followers reside in the country targeted.

This capability makes it possible for brands to consolidate their Twitter accounts, eliminating the need for different accounts for various countries or languages. It also lets brand target messages more directly to consumers by sending offers or promotions to followers in a specific region or create customized content for a specific country.

With roughly 77% of Twitter’s monthly active users located outside of the U.S., the ability for brands to connect with international users will be key to helping Twitter continually grow its advertising revenue moving forward.

The ability to geo-target messages is available to partners with access to Twitter’s Ads API, which was updated a few weeks ago. London-based TBG, a social media ad management company, first rolled out a country-specific tweeting tool on Oct. 4, although its customers aren’t utilizing the feature yet, according to a spokesperson.

Last week, Austin-based Spredfast, which offers tools that allow clients to better manage multiple social media accounts, became the first U.S.-based company to offer geo-targeted tweets.

“We think this is just the start,” said Jim Rudden, CMO of Spredfast. “The whole focus is on, ‘How do we get relevance in the news feed?’ The more targeted you can get, the better.”

For brands, the benefit is minimizing the number of social accounts to manage, creating a more direct funnel for consumer feedback. Brands would no longer need to manage or monitor regional Twitter handles; all messaging would come from the same account, so all feedback, comments or complaints would be directed to the same place.

However, compacting a brand’s Twitter handles also means consolidating a brand’s current followers and convincing users to follow a different Twitter handle (the brand’s main one).

TBG hopes brands will be willing to look past this issue, even if the process of shifting to a single account takes six months to a year.

“[One handle] is more efficient and it makes it easier for users to find you,” said Ian Cassidy, TBG’s executive creative director, in a statement to Mashable. “It also means that brands that have a global Twitter account can test localized, more specific messaging in different countries, which should increase engagement.”

As brands start to test out this new technology in the coming months, we’ll find out exactly how specific those messages can get.

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Image: Mashable composite; Flickr, Kevin M. Gill

Twitter Arrives on TV in India

Technology and platform convergence is the next big thing that businesses are looking for –- whether it be mobile and Internet or Internet and TV. It’s all about a revenue stream for the future.

Airtel Digital TV, an arm of Indian telecommunications company Bharti Airtel, revealed Monday that it has integrated Twitter with its digital TV offerings for the first time. With this new form of convergence, users can actually tweet while watching TV and can view tweets related to their TV shows as well. It launches Tuesday at no extra charge to subscribers.

Jana Messerschmidt, Twitter’s VP of business development and platforms, said, “We are excited to see partners like Airtel innovating with our platform and helping their audience connect with the TV programs they love.”

Airtel’s Twitter know-how actually comes from Bangalore-based startup Brizz TV, which works in the areas of TV technology and is powering this new service for Airtel Digital TV. To start watching-and-tweeting, subscribers just have to click their remote’s green button. Initially, the service will be available on select TV channels, but more will be added.

Airtel Digital TV has 373 channels including 17 high definition and five interactive channels. It claimed to have 8.5 million subscribers at the end of June 2013.

Although Airtel hasn’t disclosed the business model of this partnership with Twitter, it’s fairly safe to assume that the telco will stream targeted Twitter ads and marketing promotions to its TV subscribers. Airtel could also use this to better promote its other Internet services. Since the voice and SMS business is no longer the prime revenue generator in India, it is forcing telcos to innovate and develop new ways to get income.

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Facebook Average Referral Traffic to Media Sites Up 170% This Year

Flexing its muscles as a public-facing forum, Facebook reported Monday that the average referral track from Facebook to media sites jumped 170% last year.

Facebook also disclosed that from September 2012 to September 2013, Time’s referral traffic rose 208%, BuzzFeed’s increased by 855% and Bleacher Report experienced a boost of 1,081%. Facebook also announced a feature called Stories to Share for page managers of media firms that recommends which stories to share on Facebook.

Andy Mitchell, director of partnerships for Facebook, attributes much of the growth in referrals to improvements in Facebook’s News Feed algorithm. “We’re getting better at showing the right story at people who are interested in it,” he says. In addition, Facebook has shared best practices with media firms, which help them post more effectively, he says.

New research from SimpleReach bolsters the claim. SimpleReach found that Facebook drives more traffic to media sites than any other social media platform.

Meanwhile, Facebook had some advice to media firms: Post more. Facebook worked with 29 media sites over a seven-day period recently and found a greater number of posts “frequently” increases referral traffic by more than 80%. During that test period the site posted 57% more articles, which netted an 89% increase in outbound clicks to their domains plus 10% more Likes on average. The number of net fans per page rose 49%.

That said, Mitchell does acknowledge that the law of diminishing returns applies: At some point, you can overload fans with too many posts. Facebook doesn’t have a recommended number of posts. Mitchell says media properties have to determine a figure on their own.

Along the same lines, Stories to Share helps those media firms figure out which stories to post next. The recommendation widget is pretty straightforward: It analyzes your homepage to see which stories people are sharing the most on Facebook even though the media property hasn’t yet shared it through its Facebook account. That feature is going live on Monday with 1,5000 news organizations. Stories to Share had been in beta with a handful of news organizations (the company declined to identify which ones) over the past few weeks.

The emphasis on media partners comes as Facebook has recently revved competition with the much-smaller Twitter for ad-spending opportunities related to real-time marketing like second-screen conversations and trending news items. Encouraging news organizations to post more often will aid a Trending Articles feature that seems to be a likely next move for the company.

Image: Getty/KIMIHIRO HOSHINO

When Facebook Was Down, Brands Pounced – Social Media Marketing

Facebook experienced widespread service disruptions for much of Monday morning, which prevented users from posting and engaging with posts on the social network.

While the outage may have been a headache for Facebook and many users, some brands decided to turn it into a marketing opportunity — for better or worse:

#Facebookdown Grab your Venus razor and Embrace your extra "me" time. pic.twitter.com/pUYjLVobBb

— Gillette Venus (@GilletteVenus) October 21, 2013

#facebookdown? Ci pensiamo noi. pic.twitter.com/NLKDR5j47s

— Red Bull Italy (@redbullITA) October 21, 2013

Facebook is down, but don't worry, here’s our status update: thirsty #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/RJXVWkvnur

— Jupiler (@Jupiler) October 21, 2013

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Hell Freezes Over: Google to Sell Facebook Ads – Digital Marketing

Google and Facebook announced a detente of sorts on Friday in which Google will sell Facebook ad inventory.

The ads will be sold via Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, its real-time bidding system. In a few months, marketers will be able to buy ads for Facebook’s Ad Exchange on the platform.

SEE ALSO: Google Stock Hits $1,000 for First Time Ever

“Partnership has been key to Google’s success as a rising tide lifts all boats. So we’re excited to announce a new way to help our clients succeed by working with Facebook to participate in FBX, their real-time bidding exchange,” Payam Shodjai, Senior Product Manager at Google, wrote in a post.

Facebook introduced FBX last year. The program lets advertisers drop cookies in users browsers and then retarget those users when the re-enter Facebook.

Though Facebook and Google compete on many levels, their partnership isn’t unprecedented. In June 2012, Google bought Wildfire, a social media marketing agencies that develops ad campaigns for Facebook, among others. Facebook this year also purchased Atlas, an ad server that sells ads on Google’s display network.