Hasta La Gadget!

Facebook is apparently marking down gifts from its marketplace in order to get more people to use it. Not only that, but you’ll also be given the option to “give a gift” whenever your friends get a new job, a promotion, or give birth to a child. Facebook is going to great depths to market its own marketplace. Perhaps it should utilize its own, newly updated custom audiences tool. It could benefit from better targeted marketing, and it can’t really boast about the success rate of its tool if its own marketplace isn’t doing so well.

The mark downs were discovered by CNET, and they seem to appear when you want to send a gift to a friend for their birthday. It seems a bit desperate because the message that you’re greeted with is, “Send a gift of $5 or more and get $4 off.” That’s a whopping 80% markdown. Yes, the company is willing to lose money in order to get more people to try out their marketplace, which they hope in the future will bring in the returns it had lost. Facebook’s marketplace doesn’t generate the revenue it wants, so its hoping these specials will turn that around.

Alongside essentially turning part of its marketplace into a Dollar Tree store, Facebook is trying various methods to get its marketplace some publicity. Special sales will emerge around certain holidays, like Christmas or Valentine’s Day, and there will most likely be sales centered around the seasons (keep an eye out during Spring and Summer time). However, Facebook does deserve some credit for reminding people to give gifts to those who have something special to celebrate. It’s a bit of a guilt-trip, but it is smart.

So if its your co-workers birthday, or your acquaintance’s birthday, you can give them a small, little treat to brighten up their day and show them how thoughtful you are. A nice cup of coffee can go a long way in terms of your relationship with your peers, and it’s only going to cost you a dollar.

[via CNET]

Facebook marking down gifts as much as 80% is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s a sweet time to be a photographer and the Geanee Donut Digital Camera is the right camera at the right time. With the boom in online image hosting, photo-sharing and image-centric social networking services like Flickr, Instagram and Shutterfly showing no signs of fading, this cute yet capable camera should really hit the spot.

Falcon Pro, arguably one of the best Twitter clients available for the Android operating system, has just reached its 100,000 token limit set by Twitter. The limit was set by Twitter back in August of last year, and it limits 3rd party apps, who utilize Twitter’s main features, to only 100,000 users. Falcon Pro has hit this limit only 3 months after it launched its app, catching them by surprise.

As of right now, Falcon Pro has created a petition. The creators hope that the petition will get enough signatures to convince Twitter to extend Falcon Pro’s amount of tokens. As of 8 hours ago, the petition has accumulated over 600+ signatures. Whether this helps or not is completely up to Twitter. Falcon Pro is also working on the issue of pirates. According to its stats, only 40,000 people have actually purchased its app, meaning there are 60,000 who either aren’t using the client anymore, or have pirated the app.

Guys, bad new, the Token limit has been reached sooner than expected. Getting reports that new users can’t login… Thanks @twitter.

— Falcon for Android (@falcon_android) February 23, 2013

Falcon Pro is also asking users who don’t use its client anymore to revoke access to the app via their Twitter settings. This way there can be additional tokens freed up for other users. Falcon Pro has included a disclaimer in its app description warning users of the 100k limit. Hopefully it will stop users from giving the app a 1-star rating. However, it still has to deal with the refunds for people who bought the app, but can’t access it.

Falcon Pro is currently finding other ways to get an extension on its tokens, and it’s trying to avoid any methods that may breach Twitter’s terms of service. While it’s important to get more users access to its app, Falcon Pro doesn’t want to jeopardize anything for its current users. So as of right now, all its users can do is sign its petition and hope that Twitter’s lenient.

[via Falcon Pro]

Falcon Pro reaches Twitter’s 100k token limit is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There are some 240 billion photos taking up precious space on Facebook’s servers, with another 350 million photos uploaded every day. Facebook has discovered that not all of these photos get looked at anymore. Many older photos and albums lay dormant because they get pushed aside by newer photos and albums. In order to handle all of these photos, Facebook is planning to launch a data facility specifically for storing older photos on the social network.

In total, Facebook is preparing to launch three new “cold storage” facilities at its data centers in Prineville, Oregon, in which the first one will open sometime this fall. However, unlike regular servers that are always powered on and ready to go, these servers will purposely be put on standby in order to open up their regular servers to more important tasks.

Essentially, these standby servers will be on in a way, but they won’t be fully operated unless there’s a request. For instance, if a user wants to look at some old photos on Facebook, the standby server that has these older photos stored on will wake up and operate until the user is no longer looking at those photos.

According to Facebook, 82% of its traffic goes toward just 8% of its photos. The company also says that its cold storage servers will have eight times the capacity of their traditional servers, and will be five times more energy efficient. Facebook’s Oregon datacenters used up approximately 71 million kilowatts of power in just nine month’s time, but they say that the cold storage facilities are expected to cost much less than normal servers.

[via The Oregonian]

Facebook planning “cold storage” data facility for old photos is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A couple of weeks ago, NASA announced that it would be conducting a live Google+ Hangout from the International Space Station today starting at 10:30 am ET. Of course, the space agency is sticking to their promise and have officially started the Hangout, which means you can watch live as astronauts answer all your hankering questions.

Astronauts Kevin Ford, Tom Marshburn, and Chris Hadfield are answering questions from now until approximately 11:30 am ET. The team is answering both pre-recorded questions sent in via YouTube, as well as live questions from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and of course Google+. We’ve embedded the live stream below for your viewing pleasure.

The deadline for submitting video questions has already passed, but you can still submit live questions via social media sites using the #askAstro hashtag, but don’t be upset if the astronauts don’t end up getting to your question — we’re sure they have thousands of other questions to pick from.

Overall, it should be an interesting talk with the astronauts, who will mostly discuss what it’s like in space, and what it’s like to feel weightless in zero gravity. Of course, if you follow soon-to-be ISS commander Chris Hadfield on Twitter, he usually provides sneak peeks inside the ISS every once in a while.

NASA’s ISS Google+ Hangout is live right now is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.