SecondMarket Can't Sell Any Facebook Shares For The First Time Ever

SecondMarket failed to sell any shares of Facebook in its weekly auction for the first time ever, Michael Arrington at Uncrunched reports.

Arrington says the weighted average price for Facebook shares was $33.91, which is in line with the week before. So, it's not like buyers were scared off by a price jump.

Earlier this year the action in the private markets for Facebook was very hot. Suddenly, it's cooled off.

What's going on here?

Maybe all the buyers got their fill of Facebook? Maybe the economic uncertainty is taking its toll? Maybe people are just waiting for the official IPO?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Facebook Has Its Most Important Launch Ever On Thursday -- Here's What To Expect

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Facebook is in a product funk, with no big hits since the "Like" button in April 2010.

But this Thursday at its F8 conference in San Francisco, the company has a chance to wow the crowds of developers and press, and set Facebook back on course to its goal of becoming the first trillion-dollar company.

Facebook is on a companywide push for the big day -- platform director Katie Mitic looked physically exhausted when I mentioned F8 to her last week, and other execs are calling it the biggest F8 ever.

So what's on tap? Here's everything we have heard and read about Facebook's plans for F8.

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How To Use The New Facebook To See Who Unfriends You

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Facebook Timeline is pretty spectacular, giving a panoramic view of achievements, love, birth, death, and a lot of binge drinking photos. But what else does it provide? A window into social treachery: a list of those who've unfriended you.

It's extremely easy. First, get Timeline early. Then scroll down to a particular year of your life. Say, 2010. In that year, I made 51 friends, Facebook tells me (that's it?!). I can click that number and see a list. Great! I'm still friends with almost all of them, which Timeline notes. Aw.

Except next to a few names, I have the option to "Add Friend." This means I was friends with the person in 2010 (or whichever year in the past), but not anymore. If you weren't the one who axed them, this is proof the person unfriended you between then and now. Now pardon me while I bawl my god damned eyes out. WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU, KIRAN? [BuzzFeed]

This post originally appeared at Gizmodo. 

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Why You Shouldn't Be Surprised Spotify Requires A Facebook Account To Sign Up

We think Spotify's free service is the best there is right now.

Why?

Because for the first six months you get all the music you can eat, for free. (Major caveats: You can't listen to an individual track more than five times per month and you have to deal with a few ads.)

A lot of people made a big stink today when they realized Spotify requires users to have a Facebook account to sign up.

Yes, it would be wonderful if you could just create a free Spotify account without letting all your Facebook friends know what you're listening to.

But, as the saying goes, nothing in life is free. Spotify requires payment in the form of blasting your activity to your Facebook friends*, with the hope that they'll sign up too.

It ain't cheap for Spotify to legally provide access to its library of 15 million songs. It needs a massive user base to listen to the ads that help pay for the service.

That means Spotify has no choice but to ask you to sign up using the largest social network in the world, giving it access to potentially hundreds of millions of new subscribers.

At last count, Spotify has about 10 million users worldwide. Only about 2 million of those are paid subscribers, according to CEO Daniel Ek. That leaves 8 million others getting all the music they want for free.

And the company is ambitious. Some leaked marketing materials from this summer show that Spotify hopes to snag as many as 50 million users in the U.S. within the first year.

It can't do that without Facebook.

*If you really, really don't want your friends to see your Spotify activity, you can always crank up your privacy settings to block the app from sharing anything.

If you're still not convinced: Check out how awesome Spotify is when you use it with Facebook's Open Graph >

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Should The New Facebook Terrify You? The SAIcast Break It Down

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Facebook Now Has Bigger, Faster Photos

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Former HotPotato founder and now Facebook employee Justin Shaffer wrote about Facebook's improved photo experience yesterday.

Photos are now shown on a clean white background (it was black).  Uploaded images are bigger (720 pixels to 960 pixels, they load twice as fast, and they are shown in a higher resolution.

More than 250 million photos have been uploaded to Facebook.  Here's what the new photo experience looks like:

Image: Facebook

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Facebook Goes Straight For Instagram's Throat With Photo Filters

  x You have successfully emailed the post. Facebook is planning to add photo filters to its mobile photo application, the Times' Nick Bilton reports.

This is obviously a direct attack on Instagram, which has been crushing it in the mobile photo sharing space. Given that photo sharing is Facebook's direct use case, and that mobile is the future of computing, this is a pretty direct threat to Facebook.

Will this work?

Actually, probably not. 

Instagram is a beautifully-designed product. More importantly, we don't think people think "Facebook app" when they think "take a pretty photo with my phone and share it with friends."

Now, of course, Facebook has the most popular mobile app, and maybe it can teach people to think differently. But that's what it tried to do with check-ins and locations against Foursquare, and that didn't work at all.

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Travel shoppers react badly to Facebook Like buttons: report

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Posted 18 August 2011 10:59am by Graham Charlton with 0 comments

Consumers on travel sites had an overwhelmingly negative reaction to Facebook 'Like' buttons, seeing this as a unnecessary distraction, according to a travel usability study. 

The study from Usabilia used 800 participants and looked at the user experience on airline, hotel and travel comparison websites. 

Here are just a few highlights from the report, as well as a couple of infographics based on the data...

Social media can work very well on travel sites, but much depends on the context. For example, Hyatt links to its YouTube channel so users can see videos of hotel rooms and facilities before they book. 

The addition of reviews from sites like TripAdvisor can also be incredibly useful for consumers, and makes perfect sense for travel firms, as users are just going to head there anyway. 

However, the context is all important, and asking consumers to 'Like' a page during the search and booking process may not be the best approach. 

According to the report: 

Participants strongly disliked the buttons and stated they “really hate the pushy appearance of a company asking for an endorsement” or “begging” a user to ‘Like’ their company or brand without any bene?t to the user. 

A better solution would be to include 'like' buttons in follow up emails or surveys. If customers have enjoyed their journey or the hotel, then they will be predisposed to hitting the button.

Also, some incentive such as a discount on future bookings may provide more of a reason for people to click. 

This is a task that should be easy for users to complete, and all airlines need to do is provide a clear link from the homepage. This was a 'one-click test'. 

The infographic below shows the time taken to find boarding passes on the various sites (click image for a larger version): 

Users were able to find the boarding pass (online check-in) link most easily and quickly on the Delta airlines website. All it takes is a nice clear link: 

Finding a boarding pass on the KLM website took longer: 

As the heatmap shows, several users failed to click the correct link. In fact, just 39% got the right link. The relative clutter of the KLM homepage compared to Delta's was one factor. 

The study tested first impressions of a hotel website's homepage, and the elements which convey trust. The logo and the brand awareness was the top factor, cited by 48% of participants.  

This infographic shows the importance of factors like clean design and social media (click for larger version): 

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