Hasta La Gadget!

As Facebook’s public persona ramps up another new month, less than a year after it’s first put itself on the public market with an IPO of some great disaster, the social network faces several allegations of advertising network faux pas. The most recent bit comes in as a release in their very own company filings, a note on how more than 8.7% of its 955 million active accounts are “rule breakers” or completely fake accounts altogether. The second and third negative news bits come from 3rd party groups saying Facebook’s advertising network relies too heavily on “likes” that may not even be real, so to speak.

The Facebook company filings shown this week by Facebook say that the Zuckerberg-owned company is made up of 4.8% duplicate member accounts. That’s a fairly massive number when you consider that it’s more than half of what the company suggests are simply rule breakers. An amount of 2.4% of the total number of members on Facebook then are user-misclassified, that being personal profiles for pets, businesses, or objects. Finally there’s the eerily titled “Undesirable” category which makes up 1.5% of the members on Facebook.

The “Undesirable” category is made up of what Facebook says are profile “intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming.” This is not good news for the company that also notes in its most recent filing that, “the loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business.”

Earlier this week the digital distribution firm known as Limited Press let it be known that they were quite suspicious of Facebook’s ways and means of charging them for advertisements and clicks on the social network. They noted that based on their own 3rd party analytics software, they found 80% of clicks on their advertisements to have been made by bots – aka not real users in the least.

Limited Press now notes that after substantial attention from the press, Facebook is now looking in to the matter.

Meanwhile the BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones had a hankering last month to investigate Facebook’s recent round of fake “likes” allegations. He created a fake company by the name of VirtualBagel and found that a large majority of the interactions the company had were from non-English-speaking regions in the Middle East and Asia. Cellan-Jones also observed that many of the accounts – if not a majority of them – were entirely fake and/or created for spam.

Have a peek at the timeline below to find our more about Facebook’s recent past and see if you can track their movements with several pointed news bits.

Facebook faces loose Likes at crucial ad crux is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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.

Starting today users across the entire world can access and utilize the brand new Facebook App Center however they please. You can access your own personalized and localized App Center from the same address no matter where you are across this Earth of ours, right over at facebook.com/appcenter. From there you’ll be treated to a collection of forward-thinking social network-based apps for all manner of functions and fun-loving activities.

As Facebook Public Relations superstar Malorie Gator will tell you, it’s time to get started if you’ve not already jumped in on Facebook’s App Center. You can also see on Facebook App Center’s timeline that today is essentially their birthday as never before has the App Center been available the whole world over.

This app center has both a mobile and a web version with classic Facebook apps like Farmville running hard right next to new apps like Bubble Witch and Sim City Social. And it’s not just all about games – Facebook App Center also has official Olympics apps and news apps as well. Timeline apps also sit pretty up in the main section of the portal with Mobile Apps just making their first big break-out here so that Facebook can push on in to the future in mobile style!

We recommend you check out a collection of apps from many different categories so that you get a healthy dose of what’s possible in the social network overall. You can grab Travel and Local apps, Sports apps, Utilities, Music, and Lifestyle apps as well. Also don’t forget to check our own timeline below to keep up to date on how far the Facebook App Center has come in a short time!

Facebook App Center unleashed to the whole world is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Well, you might not have heard about it from us, but by now you’re likely familiar with the tale of British journalist Guy Adams and the controversy surrounding his suspended Twitter account. The Independent correspondent posted a number critical missives regarding NBC’s Olympic coverage, one including the corporate email address of an executive at the network. Shortly there after his page went down. Adams has since had his account reinstated, but Twitter felt it necessary to clear the air about the circumstances regarding the temporary blockage. When the company’s Trust & Safety receives a complaint that personal information is being distributed, its policy is to temporarily suspend the offending account. NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel filed such a complaint, and the social network now admits it was at the behest of members of its team working closely with NBC on its Olympic coverage. That, it acknowledges, was a mistake. Twitter says it does not actively monitor anyone’s account and that the Trust & Safety team was unaware that Zenkel acted on the suggestion from the company’s employees. Adams has since had his account reinstated and in a blog post Twitter has stated that it “should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is.”

Filed under: Internet

Twitter responds to suspended reporter controversy, explains Trust & Safety policies originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft has already made its “decision” engine get all buddy-buddy with Facebook and Twitter, but now it’s taking the integration one step further. You’ll now actually be able to tag your friends in searches. Why, pray tell, would you need to do such a thing? Perhaps you’ve got a buddy who grew up in Paris and need suggestions for where to eat while you’re visiting. Or maybe you’ve spotted an awesome hiking trail and want others to tag along. Just enter the question in the Bing side bar then tag the appropriate people. The search will show up on your timeline and others can pitch in. Of course, you could always just ask these same people via Facebook message, text or (gasp!) in person. But why would you want to simplify matters? Check out the source for more info and the video after the break.

Continue reading Bing search lets you tag Facebook friends, forces them to Google ‘Bing’

Filed under: Internet

Bing search lets you tag Facebook friends, forces them to Google ‘Bing’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 02:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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