As part of the social network’s continuing efforts to build out its location database, Facebook now allows users to upload and suggest photos for unadministered place pages.

Facebook’s location platform relies heavily on user-generated content and community editing. Anyone can create a place or edit the details of an existing place, such as the category, business hours, website or other information. Some place pages are run by the people or organizations that own them, and in those cases, they can designate their own profile picture. This new feature applies to places that don’t have an admin.

Unadministered places are ones that are not managed by a person, business or organization, and are often cities, public parks or local businesses that haven’t claimed their page on Facebook. They do not appear in Timeline format like claimed places do. These rely on Facebook users and a community of power users called “Places Editors” to be filled out with complete information and photos.

Previously, users could suggest the place’s official website and then select one image from the site to serve as the profile picture of that place. Earlier this month, Facebook began rolling out a new way for users to add any photo to serve as the profile picture. Users can now upload a new photo or choose from one of their existing albums. Other users can vote on the submitted photos, and the most popular one becomes the profile picture. The other images become part of an album for the place.
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This is a guest post by Mario Zelaya, Managing Director at Majestic Media, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer & digital marketing agency, specializing in custom apps and promotions for web and mobile.

Marketers are starting to focus more on social media efforts, realizing that it’s an important piece of the marketing puzzle. They’ve started to use social media, but only as an extension of a traditional campaign or as a small marketing initiative on the side. Many of them are hesitant to rely too heavily on social media. They’re willing to let social media ride in the car, but they’re reluctant to give them the keys.

According to a report released by Social Media Examiner at the end of 2012, 83 percent of marketers have said that social media was important to their business. However, the CMO survey released in February found that marketers are only allocating 8.4% of their budget for social media.

Many believe that in order for a campaign to succeed, it always needs to be integrated across different channels. This is simply not the case. At Majestic Media, we’ve seen time and time again that a fully digital campaign, or even a fully social campaign, can reach hundreds of thousands of consumers, achieving millions of social impressions and engagement, and generate a tremendous amount of traffic.
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Facebook shares down 31 percent since IPO 1 year ago – Facebook shares closed today at $26.25, up $0.12 from yesterday but down 31 percent since the company’s initial public offering on May 18, 2012. Despite a new focus on monetization, particularly on mobile, Facebook hasn’t instilled confidence in investors in its first year as a public company. Many of its recent products, such as Gifts, Graph Search and Home, have launched to mixed reviews. And with all still in limited release, none has emerged as a clear source of future revenue. Still, Facebook has gone from having no ads on mobile to having mobile account for about 30 percent of all advertising revenue in the first quarter of this year.

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Facebook today announced that its new version of Offers with larger images and calls to action are now available on Android.

In February, the social network began testing the new layout on desktop with an option to shop immediately or get a reminder before the promotion ends. The interface also lets users decide if and when to share the offer with friends. We started seeing this on iOS in early April, and the company officially announced it a few weeks later. Now, the product is uniform across desktop and mobile, including Android.

Overall, the new design is likely to increase conversions on Offers posts because of the cleaner design and more prominent buttons to “Get offer” or “Shop now.” The “Remind Me” button available for some retailers working with Facebook directly allows companies to prompt users to redeem their offer at a later date through a notification on Facebook.

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As Facebook looks to convert more page owners into advertisers, it is trying even more new ways to highlight its Promoted Posts product.

Some users are now receiving notifications when one of their page posts performs better than average. The notification encourages page owners to advertise the post to get “even better results.” Whether or not they take the recommendation, page owners might appreciate the notice about how well their post is doing. This is similar to another recent test of a homepage module that identifies a well-performing post and links to a page where users could buy additional reach through Promoted Posts. This new test uses Facebook notifications instead.

Another test some users are seeing lately is an additional button to promote their posts. The button in the top right corner of an existing post next to the “highlight” and “edit” options features a megaphone icon, which Facebook uses to denote advertising. The story also includes a “boost post” button in the bottom right corner. Other page owners are seeing different language, including “promote” “get more reach” or “advertise post” instead of “boost post.”

Promoted Posts are page posts that get additional paid reach in News Feed among fans and friends of fans as a result of using a button on the page. Part of their appeal is that they don’t require page owners to create campaigns through the more complex ads create tool or Power Editor. However, as Facebook gets more aggressive in pushing these paid features, some page owners might be turned off.

First screenshot from Jay Baer via Social Marketers, a private industry group for social marketing professionals.

Facebook added 29 new positions to its careers page this week, including a number of openings on the user operations, public policy and global marketing teams.

New listings added to Facebook’s careers page:

• Software Engineer (London)
• Construction Project Manager (Contract) (Singapore)
• Executive Assistant, Public Policy (Washington)
• Communications Manager (Sydney)
• Manager, Public Policy, EMEA (Brussels)
• Localization Project Manager (Contract) (Menlo Park)
• IT Infrastructure Manager (Menlo Park)
• Technology Partner (Contract) (Dublin)
• eCrime Investigator (Austin – Menlo Park)
• Manager, Global Compensation (Menlo Park)
• People Operations (HR) Partner Lead (Menlo Park)
• Technical Lead Recruiter (London)
• Training and Development Program Manager (Menlo Park)
• Building Automation Controls Engineer (Altoona)
• Creative Strategist, Global Creative Solutions (Tokyo)
• Event Manager (Menlo Park)
• Ad Operations Coordinator (Contract) (Dublin)
• Strategic Client Services Coordinator (Dublin)
• Team Lead, Ads Integrity (Austin)
• Team Lead, Payment Operations (Austin)
• Analyst, User Operations Intellectual Property (Menlo Park)
• Analyst, User Operations, Turkish (Dublin)
• Intellectual Property Analyst, User Operations (Menlo Park)
• Intellectual Property Associate, User Operations (Menlo Park)
• Account Manager (Hamburg)
• Strategic Partner Development, Mobile Gaming (Menlo Park)
• Executive Assistant (São Paulo)
• SMB Analyst, Hebrew (Dublin)
• Client Partner – Tech, Telco & Entertainment, Global Marketing Solutions (Sydney)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook has hired Atsushi Iwashita as its Managing Director in Japan, according to AsiaJin. Iwashita was most recently CEO of brand consultancy firm Interbrand Japan and previously served as CMO of McDonald’s Japan. Facebook has been growing quickly in the region, recently surpassing local competitor Mixi. Earlier this week Mixi replaced its founding CEO with 30-year-old Yusuke Asakura.

Catlin O’Neill, chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, will join Facebook’s lobbying efforts in Washington, The Hill reports. She will join Greg Maurer, a former aide to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Chris Herndon, a former Republican House and Senate aide, on Facebook’s House lobbying team. O’Neill had worked for Pelosi since 2002.

Facebook Director of Communications Larry Yu this week announced that he would be leaving the company to work with friends on building The Pramana Collective, a new communications consultancy for startups. Yu had been with Facebook since August 2008.
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Triggit

Facebook Exchange retargeting partner Triggit today announced that it has secured $6 million in additional funding led by North Atlantic Capital along with existing investors Spark Capital and Foundry Group. Triggit says it will put the investment toward engineering and other talent as it focuses on improving products for advertisers retargeting users on the social network, particularly as Facebook evolves the exchange to include News Feed inventory.

Moontoast
Rich media advertising platform Moontoast today announced a partnership with user-generated video platform VideoGenie to give advertisers a new type of video ad unit within the Facebook News Feed. Brands will be able to post a call for user-generated video through their page, and directly from that post in News Feed, users will be able to record and submit their videos.

Mass Relevance

Social curation and engagement platform Mass Relevance today announced that it has integrated more than 25 billion pieces of content into dynamic visualizations on digital displays ranging from TV and second screens through billboards, stadium displays, websites, mobile apps, conference centers and in-store displays. Mass Relevance is the first Certified Twitter partner licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content for display. It can also aggregate, filter and display posts from Facebook. In the past year, Mass Relevance has powered social experiences for the the 2012 elections with CNN and Facebook; the Olympic Games with NBC and Twitter; as well as campaigns for brands like Pepsi and Doritos.

awe.sm
Social performance tracking platform awe.sm today announced a new CEO: Fred McIntyre, who has held senior leadership roles at AOL, Last.fm and CBS, and most recently has served as an advisor to Univision, SoundHound and other media companies and startups. awe.sm measures the business results of social marketing, such as signups and purchase. awe.sm co-founder and founding CEO Jonathan Strauss will now be Head of Product Development.

Google today announced a number of new partners, including Facebook, with apps for its wearable computing device Google Glass.

Facebook developed its own app Facebook for Glass, which will allow users to post photos from Google Glass to their Facebook Timeline and friends’ News Feeds. Users can share photos they’ve just taken or upload past photos. To include a caption, users can speak their description aloud. The app includes options to share with the public, friends only or privately with the “only me” setting.

For now, the app enables photo sharing but not other types of status updates or posts. If Google Glass eventually comes into wide use, Facebook is likely to develop other ways for people to share, browse content or connect with friends through the device. The social network aims to let people access Facebook from any platform, whether it’s web, mobile, smart TVs or emerging categories like wearable computers. Generally, though, it focuses its own development on the top platforms like web, Android and iOS, whereas apps for less popular platforms like Windows Phone and Blackberry are done by those companies themselves.

“We look forward to exploring Facebook experiences across new types of mobile devices; this is only a first step,” Facebook Mobile Product Manager Erick Tseng wrote in a post on Facebook.

More information about Facebook for Glass is available from the social network’s Help Center. Other partners with apps for Glass announced today are Twitter, Tumblr, Path, Evernote, CNN, New York Times and Elle.

Commerce and payments platform Marqeta today announced that it is the company providing the technology behind the Facebook Card, a gift card that can hold balances for a number of retailers or restaurants simultaneously.

Marqeta had agreed with Facebook not to disclose this until now. The announcement came as part of news about Marqeta’s latest round of funding: a $14 million Series B from Greylock IL, Granite Ventures, Commerce Ventures and a number of new angel and strategic investors.

The company’s +M Platform connects online and offline commerce through prepaid loyalty programs, similar to the Starbucks Card. It also allows prepaid amounts from multiple merchants, which is what Facebook is taking advantage of for its card. Facebook Card is a resusable gift card that can be loaded with balances for different businesses when a user’s friends buy them gifts through the social network.

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