Facebook posts

Facebook may or may not have abandoned its long-rumored dream of having its own branded handsets, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t want to be on every smartphone. In what may be a relief to many who dreaded the thought of a Facebook phone, the social networking giant is working with Chinese chipmaker Spreadtrum to embed its software directly into the guts of inexpensive smartphones. This is a much smarter move. Rather than get into the costly, risky world of hardware, they will be able to more easily achieve their goals of world domination mass adoption by going after the target market that eludes…

If you’re going to give up something that you really enjoy, you might as well get paid for it. That was the mentality of a 14-year-old girl who wanted to focus on “getting a job and working harder at school” when she asked her father to draft a different sort of contract. The agreement, shown above, was that she would get off of Facebook for 6 months in exchange for cold hard cash. According to Buzzfeed: Paul Baier, a vice president for Boston energy firm Groom Energy Solutions, drafted up a legal agreement for his 14-year-old daughter Rachel. The contract agrees to award Rachel $200 if she can stay off…

Thinking about giving a gift this year? Watch out – it should come as no surprise that while the amount you’re likely willing to spend is about the same as ever, the cost of things people actually want continues to rise. Gone are the days when the most popular gifts were $20 – $30. These days, you could be shelling out almost $600 to get them that Samsung Galaxy S3 that they want! In fact, in 2012 the most popular gifts all clocked in at over $100 and included things like smartphones, tablets, e-readers, MP3 players and head phones – a far cry from the $5.95 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures…

Facebook is about to get real and make their push into the physical wallets that they’ve always coveted. It’s not an evil plan of world domination (though it could be argued that it’s a step in that direction) but rather an innovative spin on the gift card industry that might actually have the legs to work. Gift giving on Facebook never really took off for the social network. They’ve had some success with digital Starbucks cards, but the whole of their gifting program has been unsuccessful. Their latest addition, physical gift cards, has some interesting features that might help it to stand out and…

Graph Search is Facebook’s newest pillar. Every user’s experience will be different because every user has a different network to tap into. Graph Search is a Facebook feature that is similar to search engines. Users can find targeted information on anything from their friends’ top rated television shows to jobs in Honolulu.   What is Graph Search? Graph Search is intended to make searching for information more relevant and personalized. The Facebook exclusive search feature recommends products and services based on friends, their connections and a user’s likes. Graph Search aggregates…

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook have a new advocate and he’s asking his billions of worldly followers to go forth through social networks to reach the nations. While Pope Benedict XIV is not at the level of Justin Bieber yet on Twitter, he hopes to continue to grow his month-old account well beyond his million and a half followers while encouraging them to spread the word of the gospel through social media. In an address given for the 47th World Communications Day, the Pope urged his followers to start participating in social networks. Some excerpts of his speech are below and the full transcript…

If you’re one of those who almost deleted your Instagram account but did not because you figured you’d give them one last chance to stop leaning towards the dark side, the latest round of Facebook/Instagram controversy should be enough to push you over the edge. As has been widely covered, Instagram and Facebook are locking people out of their accounts and requiring government issued photo IDs to get back into them. The story isn’t the fact that they’re doing this; Facebook has been known to have zero concern for their users and a distinct willingness to push their social media addiction to the limits….

In an environment with a billion users, millions of business pages, and just about every company in every industry trying to play along, it’s hard to post content to Facebook as a local business that can truly resonate within the venue. Local businesses have it harder than most as their goal should be to stay local but the attitude is one that demands mass acceptance. How can a business be relevant on Facebook within their local demographic when they are fighting for a fraction of attention in a world that is loaded with noise? There are advertising techniques and promotional tools that can help,…

Never has a internet company had so much information about its users. Facebook knows your friends. They know where you go in real life and online. They know who you hang out with, who you talk to, what interests you, and they have a database of pictures of you that the FBI would die to get a hold of (and probably have already). Companies are built around the data that Facebook shares about you, but that is changing. Facebook is building a moat around their data and only lowering the drawbridge to those who are not a threat and who contribute to the “Facebook cause” by giving back some love through sharing….

The cold war between Facebook and Twitter continued Thursday and nobody was really surprised by it. Vine, the new video app by Twitter that allows looping 6-second videos to be recorded and posted to the microblogging site, launched with the ability for users to find their Facebook friends that were also using the app. That ability lasted a few hours on Thursday before Facebook shut down API access. “It’s basically an annoyance, a hindrance on an easy way to connect with all your existing friends using the service,” wrote Mike Isaac. “It would have been a good way to jump into a new product, rather…