Social driving app Waze is attracting its fair share of suitors. Google is reportedly in talks to acquire the company for more than $1 billion, Bloomberg reports, following a report from a few weeks ago that Facebook was eyeing Waze. It sounds like Waze could be setting itself up for a bidding war between the two companies, and it likely sees itself as more valuable than the $1 billion Facebook paid for photo-sharing app Instagram last year. Other suitors may also join in — Microsoft has reportedly invested in Waze, and the driving app would be a good addition to its Bing Maps. Waze lets drivers crowdsource driving conditions and other data with its mobile apps, which often give drivers Read More

This is a guest post by Resolution Media Director of Client Strategy and Development George Manas. Marketers seeking better ways to reduce waste, influence buying behavior and strengthen brand equity are likely to embrace Facebook Partner Categories. Launched on April 10, this new self-service capability puts a rich array of data-driven targeting segments at advertisers’ fingertips, helping increase the precision, relevance and effectiveness of their Facebook campaigns. Partner Categories uniquely combines data describing both the online and offline purchasing behavior of consumers in more than 500 segments and relies on data from third-party firms Datalogix, Acxiom and Epsilon. Marketers of all sizes can benefit from Partner Categories’ easy access and no-minimum-spend requirement. The new service is the latest in a series of Read More

A Pennsylvania man accused of murdering his girlfriend posted a photo of a shotgun and a shotgun shell on his Facebook page prior to the crime and boasted to his friends about it. The suspect, Gregory Twyman, 44, called 911 on Tuesday and told the operator, “I need the police, I just shot my girlfriend,” Twyman was arrested moments later by police who found him sitting on his front porch, smoking a cigarette, and still chatting with the 911 operator. Jamica Woods via Facebook Chester County prosecutors believe Twyman’s murder of Jamica Woods (above) was premeditated. RELATED: MAN NAMED WHISKEY ARRESTED FOR FATALLY SHOOTING GIRLFRIEND According to NBC10 in Philadelphia, Twyman told the operator that he used a shotgun to Read More

Facebook Ready To Spend Heavily To Promote A Successful Facebook Home Launch Ewan Spence Contributor Zuckerberg Goes Cuckoo To Test Facebook Home’s Mobile Strategy Ewan Spence Contributor Facebook Home in action (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife) UK network EE have confirmed that the HTC First,  the so-called Facebook Phone, will not be sold in the UK (reports Engadget, and others). This is due to Facebook looking to increase the customisation features of the Facebook Home experience before the HTC First goes on sale on the right hand side of the Atlantic. Following on from reports of poor reviews, and a slow-down in the downloads of the Facebook Home experience for users to install on their own Android handsets, it Read More

When Facebook acquired Parse last month, it was unclear what good could come of the deal for Facebook. On Thursday, Facebook executives didn’t share detailed new plans for its developer platform or Parse per se, but they did lay out broadly how the social networking giant can benefit. Mike Vernal, Facebook’s director of engineering, said the integration of Parse technology could boost ad sales by making development of cross-platform mobile apps easier to build and run. If a startup builds an iOS app with a way to connect into Facebook, great, but its reach is limited to the number of people with iOS devices. Then the developers have to start over to build a version of the app for Android Read More

A Pennsylvania man accused of murdering his girlfriend posted a photo of a shotgun and a shotgun shell on his Facebook page prior to the crime and boasted to his friends about it. The suspect, Gregory Twyman, 44, called 911 on Tuesday and told the operator, “I need the police, I just shot my girlfriend,” Twyman was arrested moments later by police who found him sitting on his front porch, smoking a cigarette, and still chatting with the 911 operator. Jamica Woods via Facebook Chester County prosecutors believe Twyman’s murder of Jamica Woods (above) was premeditated. RELATED: MAN NAMED WHISKEY ARRESTED FOR FATALLY SHOOTING GIRLFRIEND According to NBC10 in Philadelphia, Twyman told the operator that he used a shotgun to Read More

MENLO PARK, CALIF. – The Facebook Platform celebrates its six year anniversary on Friday, and engineers for the world’s largest social network offered a behind-the-scenes look at where the infrastructure is going next. See also: Understanding Unicorn: A deep dive into Facebook’s Graph Search | Facebook translates natural language interface under Graph Search The update, held at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters, also shed light about the company’s evolving B2B strategy, which got a boost with the recent acquisition of Parse. To recall, Facebook bought Parse, a startup with a cloud-based platform of scalable cross-platform services and tools for developers, back in April. Specifically, Parse came with tools designed for development on iOS and Android devices. Read More

Ashton Kutcher was the first to amass 1 million Twitter followers. But he’s not happy with what Twitter has become. Ashton Kutcher was one of Twitter’s first break-through celebrities. But he thinks the social media platform is broken. “For lack of a better verb, the media came and @&$#%! [expletive deleted] it up,” Kutcher said at the CTIA wireless industry trade show in Las Vegas on Thursday. “When I first got on, it felt like the democratization of media. Now it just feels like media.” Kutcher became the first person to have 1 million followers on Twitter. He now has 14.5 million and remains an avid tweeter. But he said he feels the experience of using Twitter has become less Read More

Some of Facebook’s (FB) core users have told researchers that their enthusiasm is waning with each visit to the social network. They get increasingly annoyed when their friends share inane details or broadcast the trivial drama of their lives. Furthermore, keeping up with the daily discourse on Facebook is becoming a chore for some and a source of stress for others. These are not the frustrations of thirtysomethings who’ve lost the social networking bug. It’s the perspective of teenagers—ostensibly, Facebook’s future. The latest Pew Internet & American Life Project study delves into teens’ growing disillusionment with Facebook. It’s still the most popular social network—94 percent of teenage respondents said they have an active account. But growth has stalled year-over-year. With Read More

(Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET) Twitter users may see more videos start to pop up in their timelines. The microblogging site has already worked with companies to display videos in their tweets. ESPN and Ford Fusion teamed up to show instant replays in tweets during college football games. Turner Sports, the NCAA, AT&T, and Coke Zero united to tweet real-time video highlights of basketball games. But now this program has a name and a bunch of new partners. Dubbed Twitter Amplify, the program will expand to show Twitter users more video clips, accompanied by short ads. The tweeted videos tie in with programs and commercials shown on television, further cementing the relationship between Twitter and TV. Companies will use Promoted Read More