Facebook to file transparency reports every quarter starting 2020

MENLO PARK, California — Boasting how things have changed around Facebook as a company, Sheryl Sandberg, its chief operating operating officer, announced that the social media giant will come out with transparency reports every quarter starting next year from currently doing it biannually.

“We will put it out just like earnings with a press call because we think the content on our site is just as important as anything we could do to earn money or create growth,” Sandberg told journalists from over 30 countries at the Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, California on Wednesday.

Sandberg said that with a community of 2.7 billion people, Facebook sees some of the “very, very worst of humanity” along with all the good that comes with it. 

“What we are focused on right now is making sure we are running our company differently so we do everything we can to prevent the bad but that we are really allowing the good to continue,” Sandberg said.

“We are making massive investments to the tune of billions of dollars in safety and security. We are working very closely with governments around the world to do things like protect elections. We are working really hard with our internal teams, product teams, and other companies to find bad actors and take them down,” she added.

Admitting that they cannot get rid of all the bad actors on Facebook, Sandberg said that they are making progress, especially with the effort to come out with transparency reports more frequently.

Asked about a recent critical New York Times opinion piece by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, calling for the tech giant to be broken up, Sandberg dismissed it by saying that: “People have to pay attention to how much consumer choice there is.”

“You know anti-trust, which is what Chris (Hughes) is talking about, is really about consumer protection and making sure that consumers have a choice. If you look at our products and if you look at what we do, it is just pretty clear that there is a lot of choice,” Sandberg said.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Mark Zuckerberg’s chilly charity challenge to Bill Gates

WASHINGTON — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest celebrity to be doused by a bucket of ice-cold water — and now he wants Bill Gates to follow suit.

Aimed at raising awareness and cash for the fight against Lou Gehrig’s disease, the Ice Bucket Challenge has become a viral craze in the United States in recent weeks.

It involves celebrities soaking themselves in icy water before challenging other well-known personalities to do the same — or else make a donation to the ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) Foundation, which heads the fight against Lou Gehrig’s.

Zuckerberg, who was nominated for the challenge by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, laughed as he tipped the ice over himself before daring Microsoft titan Bill Gates, to do the same.

He also challenged Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and Netflix director Reed Hastings to follow suit.

“You guys have 24 hours to complete the challenge or you have to donate to the ALS foundation — or both,” he said.

Television star Jimmy Fallon, singer Justin Timberlake and actor Mickey Rourke, along with several sports stars have all taken the challenge in recent weeks.

Even the 86-year-old widow of Robert Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, has taken the challenge — urging President Barack Obama to follow suit. Obama declined, but made a donation instead.

According to the ALS, the scheme has raised $5.7 million since its launch on July 29.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook plans campaign to ‘friend’ small business

NEW YORK— Facebook wants to increase its advertising and get more clicks on all kinds of ads. It believes tapping into the lucrative small business market will help it achieve those goals.

Sheryl Sandberg, the social media company’s operating chief and “Lean In” author, says the key is showing business owners how to find new customers by creating Facebook pages and by buying ads that appear on individual Facebook users’ pages. The company plans a campaign called Facebook Fit with workshops in five cities to show small business owners the nuts and bolts of using Facebook as a marketing tool.

“They don’t have enough customers. This is their No. 1 problem and we can help them solve it,” Sandberg said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The small business market has been difficult to crack for digital companies like Facebook and Google, said Greg Sterling, an analyst with the mobile technology research service Internet2Go. Many owners with Facebook pages are reluctant to advertise, limiting the revenue the company can make from small businesses.

“Many of them are struggling just to provide regular content updates or to understand how to use social media, let alone become masters of social media advertising,” Sterling said.

Meanwhile, Facebook needs to get more small business advertising to stay competitive with Google, said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer, a digital research company.

“They need to be sure they’re seen as a strong partner to small business owners,” she said.

Facebook has updated its technology to make it easier for business owners to use, Sandberg said. The company is targeting those who don’t have the time to sit down at a desktop PC and update pages or ads.

“Now they’re able to manage their pages from a mobile phone. Two years ago, they couldn’t,” Sandberg said.

Facebook says it is used by 25 million small business users worldwide. The company does not report the number of businesses in the US or any other country.

Many very small companies that don’t have websites use social media services like Facebook to reach customers. When a Facebook user “likes” a company’s page, that customer’s Facebook friends see posts on their own pages about the company. Businesses can also buy ads that appear on individual Facebook pages.

Facebook is also creating small business advertising products Sandberg said will be affordable. For example, companies will be able to spend $10 to promote a post on other Facebook pages, something they were unable to do in the past. Facebook pages will remain free.

“We’re hoping they’ll want to become advertisers if we can help them just spend a few dollars to help them promote a product,” Sandberg said.

Facebook is in a good position to get more revenue from small businesses simply because so many of them already use it. But the company must still convince them ads are a good investment.

“They have to make it really simple, affordable, measurable — a small business owner has to be convinced of the success and efficacy of the ad campaign,” Sterling said.

Facebook has held workshops for small businesses in cities and towns across the country the past two years, often in partnership with local chambers of commerce and business groups, said Dan Levy, Facebook’s director of small business. Workshops are planned as part of Facebook Fit in New York on June 3; Miami on June 19; Chicago on July 10; Austin, Texas, on July 24; and Menlo Park, California, on Aug. 5.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook shareholders vent ire over sagging stock

SAN FRANCISCO—Facebook shareholders on Tuesday grilled leaders of the social network regarding how they planned to revive the company’s stock and protect user privacy from snoops including US spy agencies.

Facebook’s famed co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg fielded a barrage of questions fired by investors who attended the first annual meeting of shareholders since the stock market debut last year.

“We understand that a lot of people are disappointed in the performance of the stock, and we are too,” Zuckerberg said before the start of a question-and-answer session that followed election of the Facebook board.

“It is our job here to build a great company,” he continued. “We think that, over time, we are building an asset and a network continually valuable in the world and we will continue to do that.”

Zuckerberg, who was elected to the board along with Sandberg and six others, urged stockholders to be patient but declined to predict how long it would take to build up shares that sank in a dismal initial public offering on the Nasdaq.

The IPO on May 18 last year sparked a series of crises for Facebook, with the shares plunging from $38 to as low as $17.73 in September.

Shares closed slightly down Thursday at $24.03.

“What the hell is your forecast for revenue and income for the next year?” one shareholder asked gruffly.

Chief financial officer David Ebersman told the investor that Facebook hasn’t made earnings forecasts the way other publicly traded companies typically do because it is young and in “a difficult business to predict right now.”

“My family is a big fan of yours, and because of that I invested blindly,” another stockholder told Zuckerberg and his team. “And now I am under water.”

A woman who said she bought more than 8,000 shares of Facebook at its debut asked the executives whether the stock was a smart buy at $24 a share only to be told the company wouldn’t give individual investment advice.

Another shareholder referred to the IPO as a disaster.

“Our strategy is to build great mobile apps, get more people to be able to connect through them, and build a network people can use and monetize that by building a strong advertising engine,” Zuckerberg said.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have control over the share price, particularly in the short term.”

Facebook priorities for building value over the long term included following its more than 1.1 billion members onto mobile devices; letting other Internet services plug into its social network, and making money with ads.

More people visit Facebook on any given day using mobile applications than do using desktop computers, according to Zuckerberg.

Facebook said its membership continues to grow rapidly and that it is working on a version of the service better suited to use by people in emerging markets where Internet connections be slow or low-capacity.

Zuckerberg dismissed competition from the Google Plus social network, saying the overall market is growing quickly and none of the trends he saw indicated rivals would interfere with the company’s success.

Shareholders were also keen to learn whether Facebook was protecting user data against hackers and a US online surveillance program revealed in the past week.

Zuckerberg said Facebook spends a lot of time making sure “bad hackers” can’t get into its computers and repeated assurances he gave on Friday that the social network doesn’t work directly with US spies.

“No agency has direct access to our servers and no one has approached us,” Zuckerberg said. “The truth is that anyone can go to our website and get access that way, which is why we didn’t say no indirect access.”—Glenn Chapman

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook to hire 'thousands' over next year

NEW YORK - Facebook said Friday that it plans to hire thousands of employees over the next year and add an engineering team to its office in New York.

"We will hire as many high quality engineers as we can here in New York," Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg told reporters at an event also attended by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"We're going to grow as quickly as we can in New York," Sandberg said.

She said Facebook would also be adding engineers at its Palo Alto, California, headquarters and in Seattle in addition to New York.

An engineering team in New York would be the company's first outside of the West Coast.

Facebook, which has more than 800 million members and is expected to go public next year, currently employs some 3,000 people

Sandberg said Facebook had plans to dramatically expand its overall workforce.

"We will be adding thousands of employees in the next year," she said.

Facebook currently has around 100 employees in its New York offices. Most of them work in marketing and recruiting.

Sandberg declined to say how exactly many people Facebook planned to employ in New York. But she said the company will probably need more office space.

Facebook currently has an office on Madison Avenue. — Agence France Presse

source:gmanetwork.com