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Facebook welcomes Shant Oknayan

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Facebook has appointed Shant Oknayan to the role of Head of e-Commerce, Retail and Online Services at Facebook in the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan. Shant has over 15 years of experience in leading business development, with subject-matter expertise in digital and investment strategies for governments and corporations, having most recently headed up Google’s market development for small & medium businesses in the Middle East and North Africa. In his new role, he will lead efforts to enable e-commerce, retail and online services businesses in the region to scale growth and engage with consumers on Facebook.

“This is a very exciting time to be in the online industry in MENA,” says Shant. “Facebook’s 120 million users in the region are not only active on mobile, but they are looking at innovative products while evaluating services and transacting online. This creates opportunities for established businesses, particularly in the e-Commerce and retail space, as well for the vibrant start-up community here. At Facebook we want to partner in their growth, leveraging the power of technology, to help build the region’s economy.”

Facebook introduces Ads Manager App

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In an effort to make it easier for the two million businesses using Facebook advertising, the social network has launched an ads manager app for iOS devices.

According to the official announcement on Facebook for Business, by using the app marketers can:

  • Track ad performance
  • Edit existing ads
  • Edit ad budgets and schedules
  • Receive push notifications
  • Create ads

Allowing users to manage advertising campaigns on the go, the app is currently available for US users in the iOS store, with plans to make it globally accessible in the next few weeks and an Android version to launch later in 2015.

Facebook At Work app goes live

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Smartphone app Facebook At Work has officially hit iOS and Android app stores. With the software still in the early stages of development, a select number of test companies are currently eligible to download the app. Significantly, while the app appears and works similarly to the public Facebook network, there will be no advertisements and no tracking or holding of user data. A key feature of the Facebook At Work app is ‘Groups’, which aims to replace the ever-growing and never-ending email lists amongst employees.

With the launch of this app, Facebook will be competing with several companies seeking the top spot for social networking in the workplace. Other such companies include IBM, who has already developed a workplace social-networking service called Connections; Microsoft, which acquired social-enterprise company Yammer in 2012 and Slack – an enterprise-collaboration tool that was most recently valued at approximately $1 billion.

The date for Facebook At Work being launched to a wider availability has yet to be confirmed.

Facebook acquires voice-recognition firm

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Facebook has acquired Wit.ai, a company that makes voice-recognition technology for wearable devices and internet-connected appliances. While a price for the deal has not been released, the 18-month old company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, is to move to Facebook’s offices in nearby Menlo Park, with Facebook set to hire a number of Wit.ai’s employees, including its three Co-Founders – Alex Lebrun, Willy Blandin and Laurent Landowski.

In an official blog post by Wit.ai, the team has noted “Facebook has the resources and talent to help us take the next step. Facebook’s mission is to connect everyone and build amazing experiences for the over 1.3 billion people on the platform – technology that understands natural language is a big part of that, and we think we can help.”

The company currently makes software that can understand spoken words as well as written text phrased in ‘natural language’, and highlights Facebook’s ambition to extend its reach beyond computers and smartphones by potentially integrating the software into apps and home-automation devices.

Al Jazeera Arabic reaches 10 million FB followers

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Al Jazeera Arabic has become the first Arab news channel to reach ten million followers on Facebook. Having already secured its status as the most-watched Arab channel on TV, this Facebook achievement further highlights Al Jazeera’s goal to become the number one pan-Arab news outlet across all media platforms.

“The Arab viewer since 1996 has evolved from a TV viewer to someone who now absorbs news content on TV, tablets, desktops and mobile whenever and wherever they want,” says Yaser Abuhilalah, Managing Director, Al Jazeera Arabic. “Al Jazeera will always hold true to its values of journalism and fearless reporting, however it will change and adapt to new technology and platforms on which it is delivered. The constant evolution in news consumption is not due to the strategy of the channel but is due to the partnership with you, the viewer, the follower and the consumer. Each of the ten million followers on Facebook is a partner, same as anyone who shares our content on Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus, as well as the person who watches Al Jazeera on TV. I hope the partnership will expand and will continue to be enhanced.”

Al Jazeera Arabic’s Facebook page provides followers the ability to engage with the latest news, analysis and features. In December 2014, the page reach improved from appearing on 1.5 million timelines daily to 4 million. At the same time, the rate of engagement through comments, shares and clicks increased from 100,000 to 220,000 per day.

Facebook enhances its options for mobile app ads

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Facebook has added new buying, creative and targeting options to its mobile app ads. From this week, advertisers will be able to buy Facebook mobile app ads with highly predictable reach and frequency, allowing advertisers to boost awareness whilst controlling how often someone sees an ad.

According to the official blog post from the social media platform, with the increasing value of video at every stage of the buying cycle, video mobile app ads will now be played automatically in Facebook’s news feed, with advertisers given the option to purchase mobile app ads with video creative through Power Editor. Finally, the blog post confirms that device targeting on Facebook has been extended to include Amazon Fire tablets.

New Facebook platform to rival LinkedIn

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Facebook is rumoured to be working on the development of a new product called Facebook at Work, which will allow users to keep their personal and work profiles separate. While the layout is expected to be very similar to the traditional Facebook interface – including a newsfeed and groups – Facebook at Work will be entirely separate from personal accounts, with no information from a user’s social profile appearing on an individual’s professional page and vice versa.

Facebook’s new platform will include collaborative tools for work, allowing users to chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents. With this in mind, the new enterprise-focused product is set to compete directly with professional social networks LinkedIn and Google Drive.

In order for the venture to be successful, Facebook will need to win the trust of corporate IT chiefs, guaranteeing that professional information will not fall into the hands of rival businesses. It is understood that some development of Facebook at Work is taking place in London.

Facebook to reduce promotional content

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Facebook has released plans to reduce the number of promotional posts appearing in newsfeeds. As of January 2015, Facebook users will see less promotional content including posts which ask users to purchase a product or app, posts that encourage people to enter promotions or sweepstakes, and posts which reuse exact content from ads.

This change comes after the social network’s ongoing survey asked the public how they felt about the content in their newsfeed. It was found that people would prefer to see a greater number of stories from friends and pages that they care about and far less promotional content.

Facebook’s blog post stated, “Beginning in January 2015, people will see less of this type of content in their newsfeed. As we’ve said before, newsfeed is already a competitive place – as more people and Pages are posting content, competition to appear in newsfeed has increased. All of this means that Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.”

Facebook closes WhatsApp deal

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Facebook has completed its purchase of mobile messaging app WhatsApp, paying nearly $22 billion for the acquisition. With WhatsApp’s share price having risen by more than 13% since the deal was struck in February of this year, Facebook has been coerced into paying an additional $3 billion on top of the original $19 billion price tag.

“We are looking forward to connecting even more people around the world, and continuing to create value for the people who use WhatsApp,” says Facebook in an official statement.

Terms of the deal include adding Co-Founder of the messaging service, Jan Koum to Facebook’s Board of Directors, as well as remaining head of the company, where he will receive a one dollar per-year salary, mirroring that of Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg. Jan will also receive 25 million restricted stock units if he stays with the company for four years; with the RSUs at a current market value worth over $1.9 billion.

In a statement regarding approval of the deal, the European Commission said that Facebook and WhatsApp were not close competitors, and that consumers would continue to be offered a wide array of choices.

Joaquin Almunia, EU Compeition Commissioner adds, “We have carefully reviewed this proposed acquisition and come to the conclusion that it would not hamper competition in this dynamic and growing market.”

With WhatsApp now used by 600 million people, the buyout included 177 million Facebook shares, as well as $4.59 billion in cash. In addition, Facebook has agreed to provide 45.9 million restricted shares to WhatsApp employees.

Facebook relaunches Atlas for targeted ads

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Facebook has re-launched Atlas – its new ad-serving and measurement platform – allowing marketers to target advertisements across multiple devices. Microsoft sold Atlas to Facebook in 2013 for an estimated $100 million and is offered to advertisers as a way of targeting the social network’s 1.3 billion users. With personal information already used to show contextual ads on individual News Feeds, Atlas now enables Facebook to utilise the same data on behalf of third–party apps and websites.

Up to now, Facebook’s existing ad technology has used cookies to track websites visited by people for ad targeting purposes, though these cookies do not work on mobile devices and are often inaccurate, rendering it a challenge for marketers to track the interests of consumers reliably. Atlas allows advertisers to target ads around ‘Likes’ and interests for third-party websites and apps, anonymously tracking individuals and bypassing the flawed cookie ad-serving and measurement technology.

“Atlas delivers people-based marketing, helping marketers reach real people across devices, platforms and publishers,” says Erik Johnson, Head of Atlas. “By doing this, marketers can easily solve the cross-device problem through targeting, serving and measuring across devices. And, Atlas can now connect online campaigns to actual offline sales, ultimately proving the real impact that digital campaigns have in driving incremental reach and new sales. This valuable data can lead to better optimisation decisions to make your media budget even more effective.”

Global ad company Omnicom is Facebook’s first holding company to sign an agency-wide partnership with Atlas, and clients including Pepsi and Intel will be two of the largest brands to test out the Atlas platform. Initially, Atlas will be used exclusively for ad-serving and tracking, though Facebook has plans to set up Atlas as an ad purchasing platform in the future.