HTC today revealed the HTC First, the first Android smartphone that comes with Facebook Home pre-installed on the device.

With Facebook Home pre-installed on the HTC First, users can get all the experiences from the new Facebook Home app, such as cover feed and chat heads. But the HTC First packs some exclusive Facebook Home functionality that the app won’t have like the ability to feed in email and calendar notifications to the home screen.

“It’s a great opportunity to bring mobile and social together,” said HTC CEO Peter Chou at the event today held at Facebook’s headquarters.

Instead of building the mythical Facebook phone or its own mobile operating system, Facebook decided to partner with mobile device manufacturer HTC, and build an Android app that functions as a home screen replacement, without the need to fork or modify the Android OS.

“Android was designed from the ground up to support these deep integrations,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg also revealed the Facebook Home Program for all original equipment manufacturers of Android devices, so in the future, more and more Android manufacturers could potentially design devices like the HTC First, with Facebook Home pre-loaded as the default home screen.

The HTC First will be available exclusively from AT&T on April 12 for $99.99, with four color choices including red, light blue, white and black. Pre-ordering for the HTC First begins today.

Zuckerberg tops list of highest rated CEOs - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the No. 1 highest rated CEO, according to employee reviews on the career community site Glassdoor. Employees are asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way your CEO is leading the company?” Zuckerberg has a 99 percent approval rating. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who took the top spot last year, came in at No. 18 with 93 percent approval.

Zuckerberg supports immigration reform in letter to Obama - Zuckerberg was one of more than 100 executives of major tech companies and trade associations who signed a letter to the president and Congress this week calling for immigration reform to increase the number of highly skilled workers in the U.S. Specifically, the executives are asking for the quotas and categories for high-skilled nonimmigrant and immigrant visas to be more responsive to market needs and for spouses and children to not be included in those caps.

Users take 1B Open Graph actions daily – Facebook announced this week at SXSW that more than 400 billion Open Graph actions have been shared back to the social network since apps began integrating them in fall 2011. Of that, more than 110 million songs, albums and radio stations have been played 40 billion times via Facebook-integrated apps and 1.47 million books have been shared. The company says 1 billion Open Graph stories are shared daily.
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Zuckerberg participates in Code.org video – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey and other popular tech figures, appeared in a short film by Code.org to promote computer science education. The video, called ”What Most Schools Don’t Teach,” discusses the gap between the number of available programming jobs and the number of qualified graduates to do them. ”Our policy (at Facebook) is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find,” Zuckerberg says. “The whole limit in the system is that there aren’t enough people who are trained and have these skills today.” The video aims to raise awareness of the issue and make coding seem more approachable for students.

Facebook declares support for same-sex marriage – Facebook joined a coalition of about 300 companies including Amazon, Apple and Google, in submitting briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting same-sex marriage this week. The briefs explain how the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 discriminate against employees in same-sex marriages and create undue burdens on companies and employees. The document argues ”recognizing the rights of same-sex couples to marry is more than a constitutional issue. It is a business imperative.”

Facebook runs sale on Facebook Gifts - Facebook continues to promote its Gifts business with new features and deals. This week some users saw offers to get $4 off a gift of $5 or more. This enabled users to send users to, for example, send a $5 Starbucks gift card for only $1. Facebook previously ran $1 gift promotions before Valentine’s Day. Image via CNET.
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Zuckerberg and Brin collaborate to launch Foundation – Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and technology investor Yuri Milner are joining forces to launch the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, which will award 11 scientists $3 million each. The prize will spotlight outstanding minds in medicine and hopes to enhance medical innovation.

Twitter announces Ads API – Twitter has officially launched its Ads API which it began testing last January. Marketers will be able to work with Ads API partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns and both desktop and mobile ads. The initial partners include Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital. This means advertisers will be able to buy Twitter’s promoted products in similar ways to how they purchase Facebook ads, and many Facebook Ads API companies are likely to incorporate Twitter’s Ads API in their platforms soon.
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Facebook re-enables photo tag suggestions – Facebook announced Thursday that it is re-enabling the photo tag suggestion feature in the U.S., which uses facial recognition to help users identify  friends in their photos. The controversial feature launched in late 2010, and was removed temporarily last year while Facebook made technical improvements and considered privacy matters. The feature uses algorithms to group photo uploads by those with similar faces, then it suggests friends those faces may belong to by matching them with previously tagged photos of friends. Users can adjust or approve those tags. The feature is on for users by default.

Facebook launches Ask Our CPO feature -  Facebook this week launched an Ask Our CPO feature, which allows users to submit questions, concerns and feedback about privacy issues to the company’s chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, who will respond to some questions each month. The feature works as an app on the Facebook Privacy page and is part of Facebook’s attempts to give users more opportunities to raise important matters and get responses from the company, especially after the social network eliminated the option for user votes on policy changes late last year.
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It has been a year since Facebook opened the gates for developers to create Open Graph applications with custom verbs and a new way for users to share their app activity through Timeline, Ticker and News Feed.

Since then, thousands of apps have integrated Open Graph and many have experienced significant growth in users and engagement. But hundreds of thousands of other apps don’t incorporate Open Graph, either developers they don’t know what is possible with it or because they doubt its value. Open Graph is core to what Facebook is trying to accomplish with News Feed, Timeline, search and ads, but it is not growing as quickly or being perceived as valuable as it could have been if Facebook hadn’t made a critical misstep: using the word “frictionless.”

At f8 in September 2011, CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly referred to “frictionless experiences” as one of the key components of Open Graph apps. He also talked about the potential for “real-time serendipity” and “finding patterns,” but most people honed in on “frictionless,” and even today auto-sharing is what most people associate with Open Graph. The term has led users, developers, marketers and the media to fundamentally misunderstand what Open Graph apps are and why they should be built and used.
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Some users see option to message Zuckerberg for $100 - As part of Facebook’s paid message test, some users are seeing an option to send a message to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s inbox for $100. When Facebook began the paid message test, the company said it would charge $1 to have messages rerouted from a user’s Other folder to the main inbox, but that it would also try higher price points for public figures and celebrities. As for the $100-price tag for Zuckerberg, Facebook told Mashable, “We are testing some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam.” Image via Mashable. 

Facebook issues grants to local nonprofits – Facebook has given $200,000 in grants to 42 nonprofits in Menlo Park and East Palo Alto, according to the Mercury News. The donations are part of a deal with the city of Menlo Park that gives Facebook permission to expand its headquarters there. The grants range from $2,500 to $5,000 and support causes including youth programs, food distribution, small business aid and clothes for homeless kids.

Facebook solves password security flaw – Facebook has fixed an issue that would have allowed someone to change a user’s password without the user’s knowledge, according to researcher Sow Ching Shiong who discovered the security flaw. Previously, someone could visit Facebook.com/hacked on a logged in account and reset the password without being asked for the original password. Since the discovery, Facebook asks users to verify their password before proceeding.

Facebook customer satisfaction worse than any other social network - Facebook scored the lowest out of any social networks in the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index ratings. Facebook’s score of 61 put it last among social networks and third worst of all companies in the index. Facebook’s score is tied with that of cable and internet provider Comcast. Google+ and Wikipedia came in first among social networks with a score of 78. The ACSI ratings are based on customer surveys.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today that more than 1 billion stories are being shared from Open Graph apps per day.

Open Graph apps are those that share users’ actions, such as reading, watching, listening and other custom activities to Timeline, Ticker and News Feed. These were first introduced in September 2011, but only began to be widely developed and used as of January 2012, when the social network began approving third-party integrations. Facebook says more than 4,500 of these type of apps have launched.

Open Graph is an important aspect of Facebook’s growing platform, which Zuckerberg repeatedly referred to as being core to the social network’s overall strategy. The CEO also said that Facebook’s vision for the platform is “bigger than most people perceive.” He urged investors not to think about the platform as being solely about games on Facebook.com, even though that is the vast majority of the company’s $192-million payments business. Zuckerberg believes his platform will actually extend beyond the web itself. He talked about the future possibility of buying a new car, logging in with Facebook, and having the car populate with your favorite music, your friends’ addresses, restaurants you like and places your friends have been to.

Although Open Graph does not directly generate revenue for Facebook, except in the case of game developers who integrate the platform and also sell virtual goods, Zuckerberg discussed how in the future, the company will likely take a percentage revenue that is generated by applications that build on Open Graph. With games, Facebook takes a 30 percent fee, which Zuckerberg suggested was because Facebook was such a core part of what drives value to the game companies. With media apps and commerce integrations, which are “more nuanced” social experiences, he said Facebook will probably take a lower fee.

The company has not offered any time frame for these moves, but it is testing a new subscription billing option, which could be used by applications like Spotify and others, generating revenue for Facebook in the process. In the meantime, though, Zuckerberg says the company is focused on building tools and products that allow companies to build social products. He also noted that many of the top developers also become some of the social network’s biggest advertisers as they look to extend their reach to new users.

New platform policy more mindful of developer schedules – Facebook updated its policy to make any breaking changes to the API on the first Wednesday of every month. Previously, changes were pushed on the first of the month, which sometimes fell on a weekend. Now all changes will be made during the work week.

Facebook works to stop secondary market trading - Bloomberg reported that Facebook is working to curb trading of company shares on secondary market by early April, ahead of the company’s initial public offering in early May. This means there will be no new trades and the IPO won’t be until at least May 2.

Facebook to investors: Zuckerberg won’t be overly involved in IPO – Reuters reported that Facebook representatives at a recent investor meeting told those in attendance not to expect much involvement from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Specifically, the report said that “expectations should be set pretty low.” [Image via Facebook]

Zuckerberg’s lawyers expedite disclosures – The Federal and Trade Commission agreed to eliminate the 30-day waiting period and expedite the approval of a filing for Zuckerberg. The CEO plans to exercise stock options worth about $5 billion in Facebook’s initial public offering, according to the New York Times.

Rumor: Facebook works on its search engine – According to anonymous Business Week sources, Facebook has hired a former Google engineer to work on the company’s search function to make it easier for users to access users, photos, videos and other Facebook information, possibly including elsewhere on the web.

Google launching commenting system – Google is set to launch a commenting system for third-party websites that is likely meant to rival Facebook’s plug-in.

Facebook launches cover photo contest – Facebook Marketing Solutions is sponsoring a contest for businesses to get featured in the cover photo of the page. The photos are supposed to capture a business in a “different or new” way. The winning photo will become the cover photo for the page, which has nearly a million Likes.

Facebook calls out employers asking for user info - Facebook responded to reports that some employers are asking users for their Facebook accounts in order to view private profiles. Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan said this practice may lead to legal liability and the company will protect users by influencing policymakers, shutting down apps that violate privacy and taking legal action when necessary.

Zuckerberg could be taking less visible role in IPO – The Wall Street Journal reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent behavior hints that he may not be playing a visible role in the company’s IPO. As evidence the WSJ offers that he was absent at a meeting of analysts and bankers at Facebook HQ recently.

Facebook mirrors Apple with low R&D investment – Bloomberg reported that Facebook spends less on engineering and research and development than other Internet firms, specifically by not relying on outsiders for this work. According to the report, Facebook spends 10 percent of sales on R&D.

Facebook Hacker Cup crowns winners – The 2012 Facebook Hacker Cup went down March 19 in Menlo Park, Calif. First place went to Roman Andreev, of Russia, who finished in one hour and four minutes and won the $5,000 first place prize. Tomek Czajka from the U.S. won second place and $2,000, finishing in one hour and five minutes. [Image via Facebook]

Google has higher employee satisfaction than Facebook – For the first time in four years, Facebook ranks lower than Google in employee satisfaction, according to Glassdoor. Google’s rating on the employer ratings site is now 3.9, while Facebook’s rating is 3.7.