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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Facebook place pages now include an option for users to give star ratings to businesses and locations directly from their page on Facebook.com, even if they haven’t been to the location. Facebook tells us this is a test.

Previously, users could rate places from the Local Search section of the mobile app, and only if they had previously checked into the location or been tagged there. Facebook would also use the desktop sidebar to randomly prompt users to rate places they had been. There wasn’t a way for users to rate any place at any time they wanted until this past few weeks.

This enables users to go back and rate the places they might not have checked into on Facebook, but it also opens the door to rating manipulation. For instance, a business could ask friends or incentivize fans to give them five-star ratings. This became a problem at one point with app ratings. Facebook eliminated app reviews and ratings when manipulation made them no longer useful, but it later brought them back with more ways to keep them legitimate, such as random sampling. Facebook says it will continue to track engagement on place ratings to find ways to improve them over time.

This lates test on desktop place pages also gives users an easy way to change their rating. Before, the only way we could find to change a place rating was to do so through the activity log, but it could be difficult to find the rating among all of a user’s other actions. Changing a rating is not possible to do from the mobile app.
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Compass Labs

Social marketing platform Compass Labs today announced a new dynamic campaign solution, The Social Advertising Optimizer, which automatically manages an advertiser’s bids. The tool can identify and optimize campaigns by ad placement, targeting and creative combinations based on different weighted actions and goals. Compass Labs says The Social Advertising Optimizer has helped clients achieve a 17 percent decrease in conversion costs. It is available as a standalone product or integrated in Compass Lab’s main platform, the CLIQ Ads Manager.

Optimal

Social advertising and analytics company Optimal, Inc. has launched Optimal Analytics, an audience analytics dashboard for demographic and engagement statistics, as well as competitive analysis across sources like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. The tool looks at historical engagement data for top brands and daily interactions among millions of demographic and interest-based segments to give marketers key insights about their competitors and target audience. Marketers can get daily or weekly emails about the most engaging content from competitors or visit the tool directly to generate new consumer insights or build lookalike audiences for ad targeting.

Viralheat

Social marketing suite Viralheat today released a mobile app version of its platform, including the Viralheat stream and publishing tools. The app lets users manage multiple Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts from their iPhones. They can schedule posts, monitor conversations, respond and check analytics.