Facebook had an official announcement to introduce their latest foray into mobile domination, but there were also others on the internet with their own interpretation of the social network’s new “phone.” Naturally, it appeared on You Tube:

Not to be outdone, Facebook also released an ad demonstrating its new benevolent operating system: Read more

February 14 is a day for singles – to commiserate. In fact, it has become synonymous with single awareness and relationship loathing events. This year, mobile apps like Killswitch are also getting into the act.

Are you still friends with your ex on Facebook? The makers of the Killswitch app want to help you with your recent heartbreak by removing any remnants of unwanted relations from Facebook.

Relationships ending and moving on is an essential, healthy part of life. And while Social Media intends to reflect many aspects of the human experience, it doesn’t yet easily reflect that key element–the end of relationships. With KillSwitch, we’re trying to fill that gap, bridge online with offline. To help people to move on in their digital lives as much as they want and need to in their personal lives.

Let’s say you don’t have an ex on Facebook, the app will discreetly remove photos, messages and shared links with any arch nemesis you are friends with. Read more

Facebook has updated the iOS app and has added the ability to record and share voice messages and video recordings from within the app. The feature was previously available in the Facebook Messenger app for Android, but the update brings it to the social network’s main app.

InsideFacebook has more: “Users can now shoot video directly from their Facebook app by selecting ‘Photo’ atop their News Feed or ‘Share Photo’ from Timeline and then swiping from camera mode to video mode, as we’ve circled below. Though taking video from Facebook is now possible, it is fairly cumbersome to do. Video sharing is more fluid in Facebook’s Poke app and could provide some guidance for how the company might implement a better experience in the main app.”

The version 5.4 update also includes an update to the “nearby” tab to make it easier to check in places.

One very common complaint from the tech industry in San Francisco is the obvious lack of women. I don’t mean that women are needed to create software – this is not a write up about gender in the workplace. Rather, I am merely referring to Manti Te’o fake Twitter girlfriend incident and other technology that fosters these imaginary, online relationships. First, let’s examine three possibilities for creating your fake relationship on Facebook.

• One very easy but pricey option is through Namorofake, a company that offers various price points depending on how long you want your relationship to last. For $99, you can have a fake girlfriend send you 30 messages for an entire month. According to the site, there are no available “girlfriends” so you might have to do some personal fakery if you are in a hurry.
• Fakegirlfriend.co is another example that sends your Facebook wall messages that you create, but you have to sign up for their phone account. The sign-up form feels like a scam, because anyone technologically savvy is capable of sending messages from free fake Facebook accounts. You shouldn’t need a phone account with another provider to send yourself fake messages that you write. This brings us to our last option.
• The most obvious and easiest way to create a fake girlfriend is to do it yourself – this wikiHow outlines the 7 steps to socially legitimize your significant imaginary other. The wiki is extensive and well detailed, but it’s not the only one. There are numerous others that can help. After all of that work (or money), you might think that having a fake relationship costs as much money and effort as a real one.

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Cleverbug is a truly clever app that will help maintain real world relationships by sending physical birthday cards to Facebook friends. The app creates a personalized store of cards that uses images from your photos (or your friend’s photos) and sends them to your recipient via snail mail for $2.99 plus the cost of stamps.

Facebook integration is key for Cleverbug, but it also means great benefits for Facebook users.  Most users would probably enjoy a physical birthday card rather than a message on an imaginary “wall” that lives only in the digital domain. In years past, I had actually turned off my birthday privacy so that my wall would not be artificially inundated with half-hearted birthday wishes, but this app makes having Facebook birthdays feel more genuine.

The best part of the app is the personalized card feature, which allows you to finally use your Facebook photos for personal gain. You can also use your personal photos from your camera roll, but if a friend of a friend snapped an amazing photo that your recipient has been using as a profile image, Cleverbug will use its intelligent algorithms to create a card for you to choose from. As the app develops, I would like to see improvement on the card designs and perhaps some user generated graphics that can be created from inside the store.

Facebook now has free voice calls for US users – so yes, you might as well forget all of your friend’s mobile numbers permanently. This move makes a lot of sense because every Facebook user turns to Facebook events, stats, and messages when they lose their phone. Facebook should also create a profile status that alerts everyone when you lose your mobile or desktop devices to electronic fatalities.

This voice call update came quickly after Facebook gave users voice chat features earlier this month.  The next natural progression for Facebook is to move towards group voice and video calls just like its major competitor, Google. Facebook voice calls are not the equivalent to Skype, which boasts great file sharing capabilities with an established user group (not to mention millions of  Windows Messenger users on March 15).

As Starbucks and other companies make their environment more mobile friendly with wireless power and free wifi, voice services will make voice connections a lot easier than traditional cellular calls. It seems that Facebook is moving quickly towards adapting voice features so expect them to tackle traditional cellular digits.

Researchers at the University of Iowa can track viral diseases like the flu, by using Twitter’s contextual information. Computational Epidemiology  uses real tweets and correlates them to reported incidents at the Centers for Disease Control for extremely reliable flu predictions for various geographical areas.

“Tweets” are the short messages that users of Twitter share with friends and the general public. In April 2009, the authors of this study began collecting and storing public tweets related to H1N1, or swine flu. The tweets matched a set of general keywords (e.g., flu, swine, tamiflu); additional keywords located tweets that mentioned travel and hygiene. Then, in October 2009, based on discussions with public health officials, the authors expanded their search terms to follow concerns about vaccines.

During the study, a digital map of the U.S. continuously displayed the time and location of the most recent 500 tweets. By passing their computer cursor over tweet, viewers of the map could instantly read messages related to H1N1.

Those with a Facebook account can use Help Remedies’ Facebook app to identify which friend got you sick, though those predictions are probably not as accurate, if not more fun and social. Soon, Twitter and Facebook will know that you are sick before you can even feel the symptoms. VIA

Kenshoo released new data indicating that Facebook’s mobile ad revenue is on the rise. The social networking giant saw a gain from 14% to 20% of its ad revenue since October of 2012. The growth is impressive considering that mobile ads have only started appearing in March of 2012.

Moreover, the company also charges 70% more for mobile ads than its desktop ads. Since Facebook’s webpage shows many more ads per page, it cannot guarantee that users actually sees or engages with as like its mobile version. There is a danger in placing too many ads into mobile as it might sour users’ experience of the app, so Facebook will need to strategize a careful balance of increasing costs per ad once they are proven to be effective.

The success of Facebook apps will also be determined on whether it can effectively target its users. Early indications shows that click-through rates are potentially lucrative for ads placed into users’ news feed. Maintaining and growing impressive ad numbers will be especially crucial in the next phase of Facebook ad redesigns. Monetization will be a key issue in 2013, but not without great user experience.

Via Techcrunch

The latest Facebook app update comes with voice messaging. Its new Poke app is fresh from development and Twitter gossip but this new voice messenger feature was a more natural progression. After all, its rival Google has voice, video, and group messaging features.

The best part about the new feature is that it works and feels like chatting. Users can see and access voice messages via their chat screen. Unlike real voice mail that you never check, social voice mail has a more prominent place where you actually spend most of your time communicating – in chat windows. Further, chatty users can also opt to continue a conversation while driving, then share these sound files later.

Some users are reporting that the voice recording feature crashes their app, so there might be more work for Facebook. Facebook is not adding voice messaging to its webpage, but perhaps video messaging for mobile is the next logical step?

Via Techcrunch