Hasta La Gadget!

Facebook is going rampant with its changes. It has brought on a new targeted ad interface for marketers, a new and improved timeline, support for hashtags, and now a new Chief Technology Officer. Mike Schroepfer, previously the Senior Vice President of Engineering, has become the new CTO of Facebook, replacing interim CTOs Cory Ondrejka and Mike Vernal. It’s still uncertain what Facebook will do with Ondrejka and Vernal.

Schroepfer was perviously the Vice President of Engineering for Mozilla, as well as the Chief Technology Officer of Sun Microsystems’ data center automation division. Facebook believes that with Schroepfer’s impressive experience and expertise, he will be able to improve upon many important aspects of the company’s main money makers. Schroepfer will be improving the company’s mobile division, as well as develop more ways to mine user data for better advertisements.

Along with promoting Schroepfer to CTO, Facebook has also announced that it will be supporting hashtags. These moves make it appear as though the top social network is trying to copy Twitter. Just a couple of days prior to Facebook’s promotion of Schroepfer, Twitter also promoted one of their own to CTO. Twitter’s CTO spot, which was vacant since 2011, was filled up by Adam Messinger, previously the Vice President of Application Development. And the hashtags feature, as well all know, was popularized by Twitter.

This could all be a coincidence, but it wouldn’t be too surprising if Facebook really is looking at other social networks to see how it can improve its own user experience. With Schroepfer working on improving Facebook’s data mining and mobile experience, Facebook’s support for hashtags, and all of the other changes the company has planned in the past few weeks, Facebook is hoping to dramatically increase its advertising revenue.

[via Wired]

Facebook promotes ex-Mozilla engineer to CTO is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Career website Glassdoor has posted up its 2013 list of the 50 highest-rated CEOs, and Facebook big wig Mark Zuckerberg has topped the list, with a 99% approval rating from employees, which is up from an 85% approval rating last year. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook fell from the number one spot last year to 18th this year, with an approval rating of 93%, down from 97% last year.

Of course, a 93% approval rating is still pretty darn good if you ask us, and 18th place is still highly respectable, considering that the list is based on over 500,000 company surveys submitted through Glassdoor within the past year. Other companies that made the top of the list include Qualcomm, Google, NVIDIA, and Amazon.

Glassdoor’s CEO rankings come from the employees themselves at the respective companies, and they vote on whether or not they’re happy with the person leading the company. A 99% approval rating for Facebook’s Zuckerberg isn’t too shabby at all, and a 14% jump from last year should provide a sign that something changed for the better within the past year over in Palo Alto.

One interesting note, however, is that there’s only one female CEO on the list of 50 total bosses, and Yahoo and HP CEOs Marissa Mayer and Meg Whitman didn’t make the cut. Victoria’s Secret CEO Sharen Turney was the only woman to make the list, with an 82% approval rating. However Mayer did score an 87% approval rating, but since not enough Yahoo employees voted in the survey, she wasn’t eligible for the list, which would have her at 32 in the ranks. Whitman was on the list last year, but was bumped off this year.

[via VentureBeat]

Mark Zuckerberg rated top CEO based on employee survey is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you happen to be an avid user of Facebook for Android, did you notice that you started to receive a prompt from the social network giant to download an update for a new build of its app, known as 141046, and this is surprisingly done without requiring you to go through the official Google Play app store? Liliputing reported that some users claim to have been heckled, for the want of a better word, by Facebook’s persistent notifications, informing them that an update is ready, where clicking on this notification would then take you straight to the Facebook app as you will then be prompted to download the new version.

According to Facebook product manager Ragavan Srinivasan, “We’re working quickly to improve Facebook for Android and want to make sure everyone is using the best version of our app. You’ll experience these updates when you are on Wi-Fi, and they won’t rely on your data plan.”

Why do you think that Facebook decided to take this rather clandestine path? Is there an axe to grind by the social network giant, and how does Google view this?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Cheap iPhone Rumored To Have 4-Inch Display, Multiple Color Options, SwiftKey Will Be The Samsung Galaxy S4’s Keyboard Of Choice,

Hashtags have long been the domain of Twitter, where users utilize them alongside keywords to make searching and grouping easier. Over time, hashtags have become an embedded part of our vernacular, used as a part of speech to emphasize a particular aspect of the conversation, the speaker’s setting, and other such things. As such, it only makes sense that Facebook would add the hashtag to its own service.

The information comes from individuals who are said to be familiar with the matter, according to the Wall Street Journal. The hashtag feature, once incorporated, will allow events and trends to be aggregated together by their shared topic, with users being able to click on the hashtag to see a list of statuses with the same marker.

While the hashtag is a staple of and most commonly associated with Twitter, it isn’t exclusive to that service, and can be found in use across the web, including on Facebook’s own Instagram, which makes it easier for photos to be sorted and discovered. As it currently stands, Facebook users can already tag certain things via “@.”

This comes at a time when Facebook is making some big changes and is competing against Twitter in a spectrum of areas, not the least of which is getting more advertisement dollars flowing its way. Recently, the social network updated its search engine, stated that public statuses will be searchable, and has pushed users to post more content publicly rather than with just their friends. Says the sources, this feature won’t roll out for awhile, so don’t expect to see it with the updated news feed.

[via Wall Street Journal]

Facebook to add hashtags, says sources is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The world of social networking is a breeding ground for very interesting stories, and today, you would be able to read about one of them. Who would have thought that your good friend is actually your relative? Yes sir, a certain Paula O’Brien explained to the world over a Facebook post that she had, for the longest time, wondered what had happened to her niece who was adopted 29 years ago, and was born on September 19th.

It so happened that Abbey Donohoe, one of her 29-year-old friends, actually realized that the birthdate mentioned was that of her own, and figured out that the circumstances shared by Paula was actually a story of her life, reuniting the niece and aunt along the way. What are some of the other heartwarming stories that you have heard because of a Facebook connection? I know someone who has a grudge against Google’s Street View though (granted, that is no social network) as it blew the cover of a cheating fiance. Do share your stories and experiences of serendipity in the comments below.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Merges Maps And Search Division, Digg Wants To Create Own RSS Reader,