Anthony De Rosa

Facebook unveiled a number of new opportunities for advertising on their social network today, the biggest being the ability to post ads to mobile devices, which they had not yet been offering.

Facebook calls the new ad opportunities “Premium for Facebook” and it opens up the following placements:

• Larger ads on the side of the Facebook home page that users see when they first log in
• Ads that run inside the Facebook Newsfeed
• Ads on mobile devices
• Ads that appear when a user logs out of Facebook
• The ability to run video ads on all these placements

We were not aware of just how many folks were using Facebook on mobile until they filed for their IPO. According to the filing, there were 425 million monthly active users of Facebook’s mobile products in December 2011. This gives advertisers another opportunity to get their products in front of Facebook users. Mobile is growing at an incredible pace. eMarketer estimates Facebook’s ad rev will pass $5 billion this year, accounting for 6.5% of all online ad spending. That doesn’t even factor in the new ad opportunities they’ve unveiled today.

Here’s more on the way Facebook makes money from Reuters TV: Tech Tonic

Excitement around the meteoric rise of Pinterest may come at a cost to those jumping on the social media site. Its terms of service say it can distribute, license and sell any content you put on their site. What?! That’s right. And it is creating an uproar in the online world with many people wondering – can Pinterest really do this? I get to the bottom of this legalese with the help of tech, media and business lawyer and consultant, Ash Kalb.

Can Facebook live up to the hype? I uncover three problems standing in the way of Facebook’s future growth.

Sam Hamadeh of PrivCo talks with me about the potential pitfalls in Facebook’s S-1 filing yesterday and why he’s bearish on Facebook’s IPO. Watch and find out why you might want to hold back some irrational exuberance when FB shares debut.

Watch out Facebook. One of the fastest growing social network’s online right now is newcomer, Pinterest. Pinterest is exploding in popularity. A skeptic at first, I show how Pinterest works, how small businesses can take advantage of it and if its success can be sustained.

Tumblr, the microblogging platform that has been experiencing explosive growth which I detailed recently, has hired Chris Mohney to become their editor-in-chief, along with Jessica Bennett, who will act as executive editor.

What exactly will they do? I spoke to Jessica to find out.

What do you envision the content you’re going to create to sound like? Will it be entirely on the staff blog or will there be some other platform?

What will the content sound like… I think it’ll sound a lot like the stories I write now. Probably less women’s issues, and certainly no Jerry Sandusky, but it will be real journalism — stories that are both about Tumblr’s users, what those users are creating, the social trends and cultural observations that are growing out of that creation, and the broader ideas and themes that surround it all. So: think trend stories — the democratization of creation. Think on the ground: who are the teen tumblr users in a remote town in Ukraine, and how did they find the platform? Think big picture: how is social media changing the way we interact and engage? Think data: what can Tumblr users tell us about the current presidential race? How do men and women interact differently online? Is it possible to find love on Tumblr? The mandate is broad, and the format will go beyond the written word. It’s really an opportunity to think outside the box, to experiment with what works — and to have some fun while we’re doing it.

Will you be given the opportunity to address issues in the Tumblr community, or is this more about broad general news outside of inter-tumblr community happenings?

Our goal is to surface genuinely interesting stories, to an audience of Tumblr users and the world at large. It’s definitely possible we’ll address what users are talking about. And we totally, totally encourage community input — how will we find the best stories if not taking tips and ideas from our users?

Will you be taking what’s being done already with tag pages and evolving them or is that outside the scope of this?

Tag pages — We’ll be looking at all the ways we highlight and tell the stories of creators on the site, initially beginning with the Staff blog and then looking for other places to tell their stories. Tag pages and evolving them are definitely on the agenda.

Why does Tumblr need these two roles, that you and Chris will assume? What will it bring to someone who comes to Tumblr?

I think the fact that they’re bringing us on shows a real commitment to creativity, to ideas, to the curiosity and intelligence of the tumblr community, and to really showcase the ways this platform is being used to innovate. It’s storytelling in it’s most basic form. Tumblr has 42 million users. If this were a physical place, wouldn’t journalists be covering it? It’s a window into this world that is growing by the minute — and into the stories, ideas and creativity that’s shaping it.

Will you both have full control over what you produce and final edit?

That’s the plan! To do our journalistic thang.

Here are some of the most interesting bits of information in Facebook’s IPO filing:

• Zynga accounted for approximately 12% of Facebook revenue
• Net income rose 65 percent to $1 billion in 2011, off revenue of $3.71 billion
• Sheryl Sandberg’s 2011 Facebook compensation: $30.9 million
• Facebook CFO David Ebersman’s 2011 total compensation was $18.65 million
• Advertising accounted for 85% of Facebook revenue in 2011
• Mark Zuckerberg’s compensation in 2011 was $1.49 million
• 845 million active users on Facebook
• Total capitalization as of Dec 31, 2011: $4,899 million
• Full time employees increased from 2,127 as of December 31, 2010 to 3,200 as of December 31, 2011
• Mark Zuckerberg holds stock with total voting power before IPO of 56.9%
• Facebook major ownership: Mark Zuckerberg : 28%, Accel (invested in 2005) :11.4% Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz 7.6% DST: 5.4% Peter Thiel: 2.5%
• Mark’s letter in the middle of the IPO filing
• Mark Zuckerberg’s annual salary will fall to one dollar starting 1/1/2013
• Facebook had 483 million daily active users on average in December 2011, an increase of 48% as compared to 327 million in December 2010
• 425 million monthly active users of Facebook’s mobile products in December 2011
• An average of 2.7 billion likes and comments per day were generated by users during the three months ending December 31, 2011
• Facebook cites Google+, Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut in Brazil and India, vKontakte in Russia as competitors
• Also cited by Facebook as competitors: Renren, Sina, and Tencent if they “are able to access the market in China in the future”

Peter Lauria points out that 85% of revenue dependent on advertising makes it more reliant than CBS, the most ad-dependent old-media firm.

Another interesting section addresses risks:

Any number of factors could potentially negatively affect user retention, growth, and engagement, including if:

• users increasingly engage with competing products;
• we fail to introduce new and improved products or if we introduce new products or services that are not favorably received;
• we are unable to successfully balance our efforts to provide a compelling user experience with the decisions we make with respect to the frequency, prominence, and size of ads and other commercial content that we display;
• we are unable to continue to develop products for mobile devices that users find engaging, that work with a variety of mobile operating systems and networks, and that achieve a high level of market acceptance;
• there are changes in user sentiment about the quality or usefulness of our products or concerns related to privacy and sharing, safety, security, or other factors;
• we are unable to manage and prioritize information to ensure users are presented with content that is interesting, useful, and relevant to them;
• there are adverse changes in our products that are mandated by legislation, regulatory authorities, or litigation, including settlements or consent decrees;
• technical or other problems prevent us from delivering our products in a rapid and reliable manner or otherwise affect the user experience;
• we adopt policies or procedures related to areas such as sharing or user data that are perceived negatively by our users or the general public;
• we fail to provide adequate customer service to users, developers, or advertisers;
• we, our Platform developers, or other companies in our industry are the subject of adverse media reports or other negative publicity; or our current or future products, such as the Facebook Platform, reduce user activity on Facebook by making it easier for our users to interact and share on third-party websites.

There’s a bit of a debate going about whether Twitter’s new censorship policy is reasonable or not. My colleague Paul Smalera wrote one of the better posts leaning toward Twitter’s policy having some merits, in the way it makes it easier for those outside censoring countries to see what’s being censored. But I also see some flaws with this, which Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin helped me realize. She calls it “a polite step down a slippery slope”

First, the very act of tweets being censored in those countries, even if those outside the country can read them, removes an early warning system for the folks in country to know of incoming danger. Let’s say, for example, there is a riot on the march toward the village they live in, or there is police activity by an oppressive regime under which they’re force to live headed their way. Twitter’s supposedly enlightened method of censorship isn’t going to protect them.

You also can’t assume everyone is a geek. Some activists use Twitter simply because it’s a broadcast medium and have no idea how to hack their way around censorship. They may have no knowledge, for example, about Tor, an application that can help sidestep the type of blocks that countries try to use to stop citizens from reaching certain bits of information or, in some cases, the entire Internet.

According to Xeni, the real reason Twitter would want to implement this policy is because they want to have a physical presence in these countries. And they can’t have boots on the ground without giving in to some of the demands of the governments in places like China, India, and in the UK, where there are more nuanced defamation laws.

It’s easy to accept censorship in other countries when you’re privileged enough to know what’s being censored. I would like to assume that the ability to see what is being censored will lead to something being done by outside parties, but that requires political courage, and possibly even military action, that many countries ravaged by global recession neither have the resources nor the stomach for.

View the full discussion that came up in response to my support for Paul’s column — “Is Twitter’s censorship policy a good one?” — on Storify.

A social media first occurred this evening when President Barack Obama held a Google+ Hangout to take live questions from five Americans and a few people who were taped beforehand, including a homeless veteran and an Occupy protester.

He answered questions about the economy, job creation, small business, and the use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama referenced a New York Times story on the use of drones, which he called “overwritten,” and said that the use of drones had not resulted in an unusual number of civilian casualties. Asked about the anti-piracy legislation that set the Internet on fire, Obama said, ”When SOPA came up on the hill, we expressed some concerns about the way the legislation had been written.”

Almost as fascinating as the Hangout itself was the discussion of the Hangout on Twitter.

Many wondered who chose which questions were posed to the president from the more than 130,000 submissions. Alex Howard, who covers “open government” for O’Reilly Media, said Steve Grove, head of community partnerships at Google+, picked the questions.

Was it a campaign stunt, an ad for Google, a great opportunity for citizens to connect with the president, or all of the above?

The videoconference lasted thirty minutes and ended with a request for the president to show off some dance moves. He declined, but suggested he might use a future opportunity to sing. “In some future Google+, I may sing another tune,” he said.

I hear he does a great Al Green.

Update: CNN’s Security Blog points out that during the Hangout, Obama casually admitted to drone strikes in Pakistan

“a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA, and going after al Qaeda suspects who are up in very tough terrain on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military actions than the one we’re already engaging in.” (FATA being the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan where Al Qaeda and many Taliban are ensconced).

Obama also made another bit of news by addressing a question regarding a young UK man named Richard O’Dwyer who the US is trying to have extradited for copyright infringement. He runs a website called “TV Shack” that offers streaming video of movies and television programs. Obama was asked “Why are you personally supporting the extradition of UK citizen Richard O’Dwyer for solely linking to copyright infringing works using an extradition treaty designed to combat terrorism and bring terrorists to judgement in the USA?” to which he responded that he was “not personally doing anything” because the president does not get directly involved in those type of decisions.

“One of the ways our system works is the president doesn’t get involved in prosecution decisions and extradition decisions and this has been a decision by the justice department,” he said.

“Broadly, we want to make sure intellectual property is protected we want to make sure that the creative works of people in this country aren’t expropriated, but we want to do it in a way that is consistent with internet freedom.”

The Huffington Post has more on this particular story.

Watch the Hangout, via the White House, starting at the 1:02 mark:

Credit: YouTube/WhiteHouse

Word came down yesterday that Twitter will begin giving the governments of some countries the ability to request to have messages censored over their service. This is a big change from Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray’s previous statement from last year that the company was “from the free speech wing of the free speech party.”

Twitter claims they have not yet censored anyone under this new policy and will tell the public when they do, possibly with greater cooperation with the website Chilling Effects.

One has to wonder if the Arab Spring could have happened the way it did under this new policy. Since censored tweets will still be available for people outside of the country doing the censoring, does that simply make those banned tweets more powerful? If everyone else in the world can see what is being blocked, will it have the opposite of the intended effect and bring greater worldwide attention to possible injustices?

For a reasonable, smart analysis of the new Twitter policy, check out this great post by Paul Smalera.