Facebook Helps Musicians With Subscribe Button For Any Page’s Nearby Events

Phhhoto Tops 1 Million Users

You don’t want to miss your favorite band’s concert in your town, even if you don’t care to see every one of their News Feed posts. To give you a hand and appeal to musicians by boosting their ticket sales, Facebook last night added an Events subscribe button to the Events section of all Pages on desktop and mobile. Once clicked, you’ll get a Facebook notification when that Page hosts an event near where you live.
The move could help bands sell more concert tickets, which is critical in an era where recorded music is hard to monetize and touring is an increasingly important revenue stream for musicians. Local businesses running events or promotions, sports teams, and more could also benefit from the new way to tell people about IRL get-togethers.

You can see the Events subscribe button above on the desktop Events tab and below on mobile via the Page of one of my favorite artists, Robert DeLong. He’s like The Postal Service meets Skrillex.
Perhaps the Event subscribe button will win back some trust from bands after Facebook’s rocky past supporting musicians.
Many musicians are currently pissed at Facebook because of the drop in organic Page reach, which I’ve detailed is not vindictive but a natural result of competition. People reading the News Feed for a finite amount of time while Liking more Pages and adding more friends that all share more content. Still, artists assuming they’d reach all their fans with every post (which was never true) aren’t happy.
In the 2010-2011 era, Facebook was looking like the successor to Myspace for musicians. Many artists used the option to set a default landing tab to show a screen built by BandPage or ReverbNation that let people stream their music and see their tour dates.
But in 2012, Facebook removed the ability for Pages to set a default landing tab. BandPage lost 90% of its traffic on Facebook in a few months, and musicians’ Pages started looking just like everyone elses, making them much less useful for promoting songs and concerts.
Facebook has since tried to give musicians some help. Its Open Graph tie-in with Spotify and other music apps broadcasted what people were listening to to their friends, helping artists score new fans. More recently, Facebook added a Call To Action button for Pages that let them show a “Shop Now” button that would lead to their iTunes or website’s store.
The new Events Subscribe button will appear beneath the Like button on the Events section of all Pages. Events you get notifications about will also appear in your Events Dashboard as if you’d been invited. Facebook will also suggest you subscribe to events from artists and Pages you Like in the Events dashboard. Similar to Likes, your friends will be able to see which Pages’ events you’ve subscribed to.

On mobile the Events subscribe is pushed a bit down the screen in the Events section before the Timeline starts, but at least it’s visible by default. On desktop, the Events subscribe button is still quite buried. It’s on the Events tab as shown above, rather than the Page’s homescreen. Not all musicians or Pages select to have their Events tab visible by default on their Page, so users may need to click the “More” drop-down navigation button on desktop to access the Events tab.
While the feature is sure to get more fans to shows, which makes artists more money, it could also strengthen artists’ loyalty to Facebook as it tries to fend off competitors. Twitter, SoundCloud, and more are vying to own the communication channel between musicians and their fans. Now, artists will have extra incentive to set up a Facebook event for every one of their shows.

By: Unknown On 06:20

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Zuck Says “Sure”, Facebook Would Love To Work With Google On Global Internet Access

Zuck Says “Sure”, Facebook Would Love To Work With Google On Global Internet Access | Cloze Debuts A Smart, Personal Assistant App For Managing Your Professional Relationships
Connecting the world doesn’t have to be a cutthroat competition, Mark Zuckerberg signalled on stage at Mobile World Congress earlier today
When asked if Facebook’s Internet.org access initiative would consider working with Google’s Project Loon, he said “Sure. When we launched the Internet.org app in Zambia with our operator partner there…one of the apps we launched with was Google Search, because search is an important product and piece of functionality people around the world want. I would love to do more with them, and Sundar (Pichai, Google SVP) talked about their apps being more in partnership with Internet.org.”

However, Zuckerberg did throw a little shade at Google’s efforts to extend network connections to people in remote areas through hot air balloons. He noted “90% of people in the world already live in range of a network. While it’s kind of sexy to talk about satellites [lasers, and other high-tech ways to distribute an Internet connection], the real work happens here”, referring to Mobile World Congress itself.
What he meant was that the barriers to access are really the cost of data plans and lack of education about why the Internet is important. Zuckerberg said it’s Internet.org’s mobile operator partners that are making the real investments and bets on behalf of access. They build the network infrastructure like towers and are trying zero-rating plans for free access to limited parts of the web.
The Internet.org app is now available to 500 million people in six countries. Facebook says 7 million people used mobile data for the first time thanks to its partnerships. Operators increased their rate of acquisition of new customers by 40% after supporting Internet.org’s app.
In conclusion, Zuckerberg reiterated what he’s said since Internet.org launched its effort to connect the rest of the world. Internet accessibility is a social good mission for Facebook, but it must be a sustainable business for mobile carriers. If giving away access doesn’t eventually lead to more data plan sales, carriers won’t be able to support democratization of the knowledge economy.
Essentially, through zero-rated apps like Internet.org, citizens of a country can get free data access to a limited set of “basic Internet services” that include Facebook, Facebook Messenger, health tips, civic participation instructions, human rights information, and sometimes third-party services like Google Search and Wikipedia.
But to access any other part of the web, free users hit a roadblock where they’re asked to buy a data plan. The question is whether operators are actually scoring new customers in exchange for subsidizing access for those who can’t afford it.
Luckily, Mobile World Congress then had several operator executives come out to discuss the business success of giving away access. Operator Tigo’s CEO Christian Ruiz Diaz said that in Paraguay, his company has seen a 30% increase in paying customers in the few months since Tigo began supporting the free Internet.org app. Facebook also says Tigo saw a 50% increase in data users in Colombia and a 10X increase in monthly smartphone sales in Tanzania since launching the Internet.org app.
Zuckerberg proudly noted that “The overwhelming feedback we’re hearing from our partners is that it works. It grows the Internet and grows their business. Those are the two things we set out to work with partners to do and we’re really excited.”
Of course, long-term, helping people get on the Internet has business potential for Facebook and Google too. By facilitating access, these platforms endear themselves to web rookies who might even mistake their multi-featured services for the Internet itself. Forging this relationship could pay dividends down the line if previously unconnected people become loyal Facebook or Google users.
Monetizing in the developing world is tough because buying power is low, and currencies aren’t equivalent. But tech’s giants will probably be able to make money eventually if they can be the first step people take to getting online.

By: Unknown On 00:35

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Mozilla’s CTO On Cars, Facebook And Why It Doesn’t Matter You Can’t Use Uber On Firefox OS

 Adds Power To Your Pirojects Mozilla, the open-source Internet software company that makes the Firefox web browser, has been working hard to get more critical mass on mobile with Firefox OS — key to making is platform relevant both for developers and users in the longer term as mobile becomes an ever more important way to go online. Today, it announced another wave of partnerships that will see Firefox OS make its first foray into the U.S. market — by way of feature phones and a deal with Verizon Wireless — and into Africa/Middle East — by way of a new handset and a partnership with Orange.In a longer conversation with Andreas Gal, the CTO and VP of mobile for Mozilla, I asked about some of the company’s challenges in the market, when we will see it appearing in other places like cars, and why it doesn’t matter that you still can’t use Uber on Firefox OS phones.Strategy Analytics’ Neil Mawston has said that Firefox is the industry’s fastest-growing smartphone OS, but that’s from a very low base and with traction in only a “handful” of countries in Latin America and Western Europe. How do you convince potential partners that you are or can be relevant? If you look at Android you can see it’s not a healthy ecosystem, because that’s not an experience where device makers can differentiate. And that’s only becoming more the case, if you look at initiatives like Android One, where Google dictates what these phones are supposed to look like, right down to chipset. That’s the opportunity. Yes, we are very late into the game, we are several years late, but that is because the mobile web is late. A couple of years ago you couldn’t even do the smallest things over the mobile web and that’s where we are trying to make a difference.When will see Firefox OS in cars, and why haven’t you done more in targeting other kinds of mobile devices?In the beginning we focused on smartphones because that was where volumes are. There are still billions looking for connectivity and they will do it using a mobile handset. With something like cars, until we are ready to talk about something we won’t. We are a much smaller organization than, say, Google, so we focus our attention.The partnerships in general work along the lines of the recent deal we announced with Panasonic for the first Firefox OS TV. Panasonic came to us, adding engineers and much of the work needed to bring Firefox OS to TVs. This is how we will do other things. We are talking to partners, to anyone who wants to take the OS to other device categories. We are talking to a lot of different partners. Just this week we will talk to a lot of different electronics companies. In mobile we are late but in the Internet of Things, there are no established winners yet, and we are very interested in conversations. One thing that is worth mentioning is the experimental device made by Monohm, and “heirloom” smartphone called the Runcible.Targeting emerging markets aligns you up with Facebook, which is also putting a lot of effort into targeting emerging markets. Do you think you will ever work with them, or do you think that door is closed off because of the fact that Google is also part of Internet.org, and that Facebook already works extensively in iOS and Android?  We have an integration with Facebook on the web (the ‘do not track’ social API) and a good relationship with them. Internet.org is something we are aware of and have talked about. It’s true, they have been leaning quite a bit on Android but I’m not entirely clear what they are trying to achieve. Internet.org mostly looks like a ‘Facebook for all’. We like the idea of more connectivity for people but want to make sure that it’s access for all. It’s important that it’s not just for segregated services. I also have a hard time seeing Facebook and Google working together in an overlapping area of interest. They are competitors.Why the turn to feature phones when everyone — even Mozilla, until today — is so fixated on smartphone growth?About one-third of all phones in the U.S. are feature phones, and until 2018 or 2019 the volume is not going to decline that much. The overall market is growing faster than that category is declining. So we are trying to be on that line. Going into the feature phone category and not the iPhone end of the range is how we can enter the market. We have other carriers besides Verizon who have expressed interest in Firefox OS. This is just the first concrete announcement. This is not exclusive, and in some cases you see carriers even working with competition to create a neutral platform.Microsoft has been trying to break the duopoly of Google and Apple in mobile operating systems, with very little success. Why do you think you might have a shot here?FirefoxOS is in a different situation in two ways. First, we are targeting a different segment than Windows Phones. They are trying to convert people off iPhone, and that is very hard. And in emerging markets, we are not tracking Windows Phone at all. Those low end devices are cheap for U.S. standards but it’s a different definition they are aiming at emerging countries.The second and more important problem is much harder: Windows Phone is a proprietary ecosystem using Microsoft language. Going to app makers and telling them, use this language, is partly why Microsoft is having such a hard time. We are different. We didn’t have to go to Facebook and say, “Can you make a Firefox experience?” They didn’t have to do that. Okay, it’s still not as polished as the native Facebook apps, but it’s a much smaller problem to solve. It’s a few percentage points of a gap to be closed.Native apps continue to define how people are using their mobile devices, while you have built Firefox OS around the mobile web. How are you getting around the fact that some of the most popular mobile apps today — like Uber — are just not available in a mobile web format?Yes, Uber is not available but this is not a problem so far. We don’t need Uber in Senegal, for example. A much bigger problem is to make sure we provide local apps, and for those using smartphone for the first time, this usually means local news and information, and local services.But again, this is a gap that we have to close. Even Instagram is not fully optimised but even there you have at least a partial experience [of viewing and commenting, if not taking and posting pictures, via the web]. But as we turn to more established markets like the U.S., the content needs are changing. We will have to work closer with top brands, which are important in Japan and the North American market.

By: Unknown On 12:09

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Funnely Builds Smarter Facebook Ad Campaigns For Online Stores

in fact, the company just announced new ad units for this very purpose. But if you need a little more handholding, there’s a startup called Funnely that might help.
Funnely was created by a team based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and that’s where the startup’s developers are still based

By: Unknown On 23:11

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Facebook Patents Clever Way To Advertise Just To Important People

Celebrities aren’t like you and me. They’re better. Or at least Facebook thinks they’re worth more money.
Convince experts and influencers to like something, and everyone will follow their lead. The question is how to identify who these special people are, and Facebook’s just patented one of the trickiest ways yet.
The idea is that Facebook could watch the rate at which a piece of content like a link is shared, then figure out whose posting led to a sudden increase in share rate in their network. Those people are the influencers, and the people that they discovered the content from are the experts.
Facebook could then target those people with ads and presumably charge businesses a boatload to reach them. It makes perfect sense. Why would it cost the same amount to reach someone famous, powerful, or widely cited as someone whose endorsement won’t sway people?

By: Unknown On 01:35

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CrunchWeek: President Obama In Silicon Valley, Tesla’s Earnings Miss, Facebook After Death

Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaTrendingTinderNSAAndroidGoogleMicrosoftAppleTwitterFacebookAll TopicsAll GalleriesTCTVShowsTCTV NewsBuilt in BrooklynCrunchWeekFly Or DieGadgetsIncubatedInside JobsTC CribsAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechSupport EventsDisruptCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonHardware BattlefieldIncludeNews AboutGoogle I/O 2014CESSXSWWWDC 2014

By: Unknown On 23:15

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This Facebook Bug Allowed Anyone To Delete Your Photos

How many photos do you have on Facebook? How many of those are photos you never thought to back up?
This just-disclosed Facebook bug would have allowed for anyone with a bit of technical know-how to delete any photo on Facebook.
Fortunately, the guy who discovered the bug (Laxman Muthiyah of India) was quick to give Facebook a heads up

By: Unknown On 02:57

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You’re Going To Die. First, Choose Someone To Manage Your Facebook Profile

Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaTrendingTinderNSAAndroidGoogleMicrosoftAppleTwitterFacebookAll TopicsAll GalleriesTCTVShowsTCTV NewsBuilt in BrooklynCrunchWeekFly Or DieGadgetsIncubatedInside JobsTC CribsAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechSupport EventsDisruptCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonHardware BattlefieldIncludeNews AboutGoogle I/O 2014CESSXSWWWDC 2014

By: Unknown On 19:29

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New Facebook Threat-Sharing Project Sees Safety In Herd

Facebook announced a new repository this morning for sharing information about malware threats called ThreatExchange. Using a familiar Facebook look and feel, with APIs for querying and publishing threat data, the system is designed to allow companies to contribute information about common attacks, and thereby make it safer for the group.
Early partners include Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and Yahoo. Dropbox and bit.ly have since come on board.
There is a growing feeling among security industry observers that there is safety in the herd, that the sheer number of threats has become too great for any one company to handle on its own.
The genesis for ThreatExchange began about a year ago when Facebook was experiencing a nasty spam-driven malware attack, Mark Hammell, manager of the Facebook threat infrastructure team, told TechCrunch. He decided to contact other companies, which also had a sizable user bases to see if they were experiencing similar attacks.
All of the partners recognized there was a common goal here and finding information on the type of malware, the source domains, the IP addresses involved and the nature of the malware itself, was key to the success of the group in battling these types of attacks.
While the participating companies recognized the need for this type of system, nobody had actually come forward and taken the lead in the past. Facebook had been building a platform in-house for compiling this type of information using the Facebook platform.
They believed that using the Facebook Graph, which helps you see connections among your friends, they could also see connections about the hackers and their methodologies. It made sense to use that existing, commonly understood Facebook core as a basis for what would become ThreatExchange.

By: Unknown On 14:27

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Facebook Takes Internet.org And Its Free Mobile Data Services To India

Facebook’s Internet.org project to provide basic mobile internet services for free just took its biggest step to date after it launched in India.
The service, which is run by non-profit organization Internet.org with input from a number of telecom industry partners, has thus far been available in a handful of Africa countries and Colombia, but now it is making its way to India’s billion-plus population.
The app isn’t available to the full Indian population yet, since Facebook partnered with operator Reliance to offer free access to Internet.org sites in an initial six states: Tamil Nadu, Mahararashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, and Telangana. That’s the first step on a path to

By: Unknown On 11:31

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