Samantha Murphy Kelly says, “Facebook told a few members of the press this week that its Internet.org initiative, which aims get more of the world’s population online, is on track for an aggressive expansion. Chris Daniels, VP of Internet.org at Facebook, said the company plans to expand into 100 countries by the end of the year. The program is currently set up in six countries — Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Colombia and India — and has helped more than 7 million people access health, employment and local information services without data charges”. Facebook wants to bring... [...]

Samantha Murphy Kelly says, “Facebook believes that one day we’ll be able to connect with friends in virtual reality, so users can eventually experience someone’s vacation as though they’re right there with them. Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox revealed on stage Tuesday at the Code/Media conference the company’s vision for how it plans to embrace virtual reality. Cox said Facebook is already developing virtual reality apps to enhance sharing, providing a fuller picture of what the social network is doing”. Facebook is working on virtual reality apps for... [...]

Samantha Murphy Kelly says, “Facebook believes that one day we’ll be able to connect with friends in virtual reality, so users can eventually experience someone’s vacation as though they’re right there with them. Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox revealed on stage Tuesday at the Code/Media conference the company’s vision for how it plans to embrace virtual reality. Cox said Facebook is already developing virtual reality apps to enhance sharing, providing a fuller picture of what the social network is doing. Facebook, which acquired virtual-reality technology company... [...]

Ann Smarty says, “A hashtag is the wonder of the past decade. It was born to address the need to organize and make sense of the overwhelming social media buzz. Thanks to active and creative user adoption, hashtag support has been added to most popular social media platforms. This article shows how different social media sites make use of hashtags. Most importantly, it shares some insight into how you can make the most effective use of hashtags for your brand”. How Hashtags Work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr MOZ Blog  [...]

Lara O’Reilly says, “Facebook is rapidly scaling Atlas – the ad network that puts it in direct competition with Google’s DoubleClick – by opening up the ad tech platform to more businesses, bringing the total number of partners officially now on board to five. Some sources say Atlas actually offers superior targeting and post-campaign measurement to Google, making Facebook’s internet ad platform a huge potential threat to the search giant. On Tuesday Atlas announced its latest round of partnerships: CRM (customer relationship management) agency Merkle and advertising... [...]

Rex Santus says, “Facebook has started rolling out new ways for people to buy and sell things on the platform. As an alternative to services like Craigslist or eBay, Facebook users sometimes turn to Facebook Groups to make purchases. Previously, however, this was mostly done informally. Facebook users can now select a “sell” button instead of “post” when writing up a listing. Individual slots can also be filled out to specify price and product descriptions, instead of the typical single body of text you’re used to when writing a Facebook post. Sellers can also mark... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Call them algorithm helpers. Facebook has turned to humans to help improve the News Feed. The social network has built a team of people to give detailed feedback about their daily interactions with the News Feed, in an effort to learn more about people’s preferences, according on an article by Steven Levy today on Medium. It’s basically an intense daily focus group, started in August with 30 people in Knoxville, Tenn., and now up to 600 throughout the U.S.. Each person spends four hours a day on the desktop scrolling through and interacting with stories in their News... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “Foursquare Tips meet Facebook Place Tips. Today Facebook introduced Place Tips, which offer a range of content, information and recommendations about places in the real world. The value is obvious. As with Foursquare Tips, Facebook Place Tips offer advice and information from the location’s Facebook Page and from people in your network who’ve been there before. At a high level, there appear to be two main differences between Foursquare Tips and Place Tips. Foursquare Tips are from the public generally, while Place Tips are from your network (and the entity). The... [...]

JP Mangalindan says, “Love it or loathe it, Facebook is as integral to our day-to-day lives as checking email or texting that special someone. And in case there was any doubt, the social network unleashed new data on Wednesday to prove it. Nearly 1.4 billion people around the world use Facebook every month. Some 890 million people visit it daily and now view more than 3 billion videos a day. Unsurprisingly, much of the growth is happening on the mobile side. Almost half of Facebook’s 1.89 billion mobile users now check the social network exclusively on their phones and tablets. In other... [...]

Seth Fiegerman says, “Facebook just had its first $10 billion year. The social network posted earnings of $0.54 per share on revenue of $3.85 billion for the December quarter, coming in well ahead of Wall Street estimates for earnings of $0.48 per share on revenue of $3.77 billion. That holiday performance brings Facebook‘s total revenue for 2014 to nearly $12.5 billion, compared to just under $7.9 billion in 2013, and it’s more than double the annual revenue it reported for 2012″. Facebook’s annual revenue topped $10 billion for the first time in 2014 Mashable  [...]