Hasta La Gadget!

More than 83m of Facebook‘s registered users are in fact fakes, the social network has calculated, almost 9-percent of the total membership of the site and taking some of the shine off the near-1bn milestone. Facebook made the estimate in its latest 10-Q filing, totaling up the number of duplicates and false users along with “undesirable” accounts that could potentially be used for spamming legitimate members, though the figure is significantly higher than the previous estimate made only a few months ago.

In March 2012, Facebook estimated around 5- or 6-percent fake members, which given the company’s books at the time amounted to as many as 50.7m. These new numbers, however, mark a huge step up, with Facebook now saying that around 4.8-percent of accounts are duplicates, user-misclassified accounts make up 2.4-percent – that is, Personal Profile accounts which have been incorrectly created as individual users, when really they should have been Pages – and finally 1.5-percent being undesirable accounts.

“The numbers of our MAUs and DAUs and ARPU are calculated using internal company data based on the activity of user accounts. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage of our products across large online and mobile populations around the world. For example, there may be individuals who maintain one or more Facebook accounts in violation of our terms of service, despite our efforts to detect and suppress such behavior” Facebook

Facebook does not give its exact workings to identify those false accounts, but a tightening of the net rather than a sudden surge in fake registrations over the past quarter is expected to account for the disparity in numbers. Nonetheless, with the site eagerly approaching its one-billionth member, it’s worth bearing in mind that the raw database doesn’t necessarily map to a billion individuals.

It’s not the first time that fake membership has impacted Facebook’s reputation this week. One startup gained attention with the news it was deleting its account on the social site after realizing that a fair proportion of advertising clicks were coming from bots not real users.

“Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t reply” music platform Limited Run wrote. “Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes. But let’s move on, because who the bots belong to isn’t provable.”

In fact only 20-percent of the clicks actually came through to Limited Run’s site, the company claimed. Although hardly scientific it further highlights the ongoing issues Facebook has in monetizing its membership; mobile has already been identified as a key weak spot where heavy use has not been translated into cash.

[via CNET]

Facebook fakes make up 83m members Zuckerberg reveals is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google+ lead Vic Gundotra has defended his decision to postpone an API for the social network, sneaking in a quick slap at Facebook by saying Google is “actually respectful of developers who build on our platform.” The delay in releasing a full Google+ API for third-party coders has prompted anger from some – Gundotra says that he was booed by the audience at SXSW when he said it was not ready – but the Senior VP argues that delivering one half-baked and “then later changing the rules of the game” isn’t in anybody’s best interests, citing recent criticisms of Facebook.

Those complaints, made in an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg by developer Dalton Caldwell, followed a meeting in which he was told that a product he was developing based on the social network would, rather than being warmly welcomed as previously indicated, instead be considered treading on Facebook’s toes thanks to the new App Center. Caldwell claims he was pressured to sell his work to Facebook or risk seeing it crushed by Facebook’s own system:

“The meeting took an odd turn when the individuals in the room explained that the product I was building was competitive with your recently-announced Facebook App Center product. Your executives explained to me that they would hate to have to compete with the “interesting product” I had built, and that since I am a “nice guy with a good reputation” that they wanted to acquire my company to help build App Center … Your team doesn’t seem to understand that being “good negotiators” vs implying that you will destroy someone’s business built on your “open platform” are not the same thing” Dalton Caldwell

That situation, Gundotra writes – on Google+, of course – is what Google hopes to avoid. “I’m not interested in screwing over developers” he said, “when we open an API, we want developers to feel confident that the innovations they build are going to be long lasting. Releasing an API, and then later changing the rules of the game isn’t fun for anyone, especially developers who’ve spent their life’s energies building on the platform.”

Currently, only select partners have access to Google+ data. The company announced a deal with Flipboard in recent months, that allows users of the news-browsing app to log into their Google+ account and see shared content from there in their stream. Google has also been improving integration between the social site and its own products, including YouTube and Gmail, with the promise of broader availability when it’s ready and not before.

“So I’m sorry that we haven’t released a wide open write API for those of you who want one. We’re being careful because we want to be different. You know, actually respectful of developers who build on our platform. It’s novel. I know” Vic Gundotra, Google

Google+ won’t screw developers (unlike Facebook) claims Google VP is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While Mark’s network had already flipped the App Center switch in a number of parts around the globe, there was still a large chunk of its abundant user base missing out on the recently unveiled application hub. That’s all about to change starting today, however, as a Facebook rep has announced on Twitter the social app shop is now available to every single one of its signees worldwide. In other words, this means now you’ll have yet another thing to keep track of during your daily internet browsing routine.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software

Facebook App Center goes full circle, rolls out to all users worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There seems to be this popularity contest going on among celebrities in the world of social networks, and you might just be surprised to hear who the “winner” is when it comes to an artist who has the most Facebook “likes”. I would suppose if you mentioned Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and perhaps even Michael Jackson, those perennial favorites would come close, but none of them are able to overhaul Eminem who recently managed to set the pace for the most Likes by a living person with a cool 60.1 million figure. This would place him heads above shoulders from the rest, and it clearly places him at number 5 on the list of the top 10 Facebook pages.

The App Data page showed that Eminem actually gains approximately 179,000 new Likes each week, and if you break it down, that would be 26,854 a day – more that a thousand Likes per hour! Rihanna is close behind at second place with 59.4 million Likes to date. The other Facebook pages with more Likes are not human though, with YouTube (61.2 million), Texas HoldEm Poker (63.8 million), Facebook itself (70.3 million) and the Facebook for Every Phone page (117.5 million) beating out Eminem.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: All Facebook users to receive timeline this fall, Facebook for iOS gains a new Save feature,

Ever wanted to flag a Facebook post for the future — one you wouldn’t want to be seen “liking” in the present? Well, the heads at Palo Alto are testing a way to make that happen: a save-for-later feature that’ll allow you to add posts to a private feed. Saving is conducted on the sly, so you can create a slimmed-down stalking experience without alerting the posters. If you’re prone to using the desktop version of the site, the option should appear alongside the familiar “Like”, “Comment” and “Share” soon. A similar change should be available on the mobile site, with a press-and-hold mechanic doing the job in the apps for iDevices. There’s no word on other platforms at the moment, but we’d be surprised if the update is confined to browser and iOS users. We know you’re keen to start hoarding those embarrassing drunken status updates, so hopefully the update will be rolling out shortly.

Filed under: Internet

Facebook working on ‘save-for-later’ feature, lets you like things privately originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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