Tumblr Adds Facebook Timeline Integration

Tumblr is joining the Facebook Timeline integration bandwagon.
The social blog announced today that sharing posts to Facebook would get “a billion times” easier. Tumblr posts now appear on your Facebook Timeline, News Feed and Ticker when you chose “send to Facebook.” Tumblr likes and replies will appear on Facebook, as well.
Tumblr users can adjust their blog settings to share posts on their Timelines. If you already have your Tumblr linked to Facebook, you’ll be get a notification that says, “We’ve improved Facebook sharing. Upgrade now.”
Your Tumblr posts will now be grouped together on Timeline — just like Spotify songs, Pinterest pins and Foursquare checkins — making Timelines easier to navigate.

1. Quadro

From the font to the layout, the Quadro theme is a close tie with the Pinterest pinboard.

---

2. Kinley Lite

Kinley Lite uses a very similar pinboard layout, as well as a similar color and font style.

---

3. Star-Aurora

Star-Aurora is another mosaic-style option with a bolder font.

---

4. Meringue

The Meringue theme also has the same pinboard feel to it.

---

5. Nominal

This theme uses a crisp font, and has a clean, mosaic look.

---

6. Cargo

Cargo has the same mosaic asthetic as your Pinterest board, but it's a little more minimalist.

---

7. Canvas

This example includes text, however, it's still the same board-like layout. This theme also includes the infinite scroll option.

---

8. Tessellate

For Tumblr users who post mostly images, Tessellate is a no-brainer.

---

9. Photo Stack

When you hover over the scattered stack of photos, the theme organizes into a neatly arranged board.

18:22 by Robert dawne · 0

T-Mobile Apologizes For Mistakenly Sending Notification Bar Ads

You must have noticed it in the news last week that T-Mobile took the opportunity to display ads in the notification bar of some Android phones with the occasion of an update to T-Mobile's My Account application.

After the word got out, T-Mobile made an official statement, via e-mail and from a spokesperson, saying that the advertisement was a mistake and that the carrier is sorry for any inconveniences it might have caused. The wording goes like this: "during a recent software update, a message to promote T-Mobile's free VIP Zone was mistakenly sent to certain customers and appeared on the notification bar for some Android devices. After T-Mobile was made aware of this mistake, the company stopped the notifications. T-Mobile apologizes for the inconvenience this may have caused customers".

With most of Google's revenue coming from ads, do you see a possible future where ads would be delivered, in a similar way, to your mobile device (and not only in free, ad-supported applications)?

08:49 by iliot Atlas · 0

500 Startups Alum LaunchBit Launches Its Email Ad Network

Advertising in email newsletters is an old idea,but the founders of LaunchBit, a startup that’s leaving closed beta testing today, say things haven’t changed since the ’90s .
The biggest problem? When you advertise in newsletters, you blindly send the same ad to everyone on the list.
“There’s no targeting or tailoring to specific individuals and little-to-no analytics to track how the campaign did” says co-founder Elizabeth Yin. “This also means that advertisers would often have to pay a lot of money for a single large list before knowing it worked. So; if you wanted to test lots of newsletters, you’d have to spend tens of thousands of dollars before you had a chance to think about iterating copy and improve the campaign. Most companies don’t have this kind of budget just to test”
Yin used to be a marketing manager at Google, and she says the LaunchBit experience is similar to Google AdWords. You create your ads, identify the demographics of the audience that you want to reach, and choose the cost-per-click (CPC) price that you’re willing to pay. Then, Yin says, “Your ad wins a certain number of impressions in multiple newsletters, ensuring that you reach your target demographic and allowing you to get your campaign in multiple newsletters with a ‘normal-sized ad budget.’” Publishers meanwhile, get to see the ad and the CPC bid and reject the ones they don’t like.
She also says LaunchBit is focused on “value and aesthetics,” giving advertisers analytics to understand the effectiveness of their ads and only accepting high-quality publishers and advertisers.
LaunchBit is a graduate of the 500 Startups incubator program. The ad network has been in private beta testing and has limited its ads to the software industry. The early results are promising, Yin says — ads in the best newsletters consistently see clickthrough rates between 1 and 10 percent; and that one campaign saw CTRs as high as 18 percent.
In addition to leaving the closed beta, LaunchBit is also announcing that it will now running campaigns in any industry, and it’s also integrating with email newsletter service MailChimp.

09:51 by Robert dawne · 0

LinkedIn Plans Mobile Ads This Year

LinkedIn just became the second social media giant this month to signal plans for ads in mobile.
During its quarterly earnings call Thursday, CEO Jeff Weiner said mobile access represents an ever-growing share of time users spend with LinkedIn. He said the company is investigating ways to monetize those page views.
“We’re going to start to run some tests with regard to advertising some of our marketing solutions within the mobile environment,” Weiner said.
When those ads will appear and what they’ll look like is anybody’s guess. LinkedIn did not immediately reply to a request for more information.
Weiner’s remarks come one week after reports surfaced that Facebook will begin serving ads to its 420 million-strong mobile audience. The Financial Times cited unnamed sources who pinpointed a launch date of early March, ahead of the company’s planned public offering in May. Those sources referred to the pending ads as “‘featured stories’ in the news feed.”
In August, LinkedIn revamped its mobile presence with new apps for Android and iOS and a new mobile site. As a result, Weiner said mobile is the fastest growing service on LinkedIn, accounting for more than 15% of total unique number visits.
“Because members need LinkedIn to work wherever they work we’ve made great strides in our platform in mobile offerings in 2011,” said Weiner.
LinkedIn is the number three social networking platform in the U.S., with 33.5 million unique viewers, according to comScore. Throughout much of 2011 the company vied with Twitter for number two, but Twitter pulled away by year’s end with 37.5 million unique viewers.
– Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ

12:30 by Robert dawne · 0

Facebook’s Amended S-1 Exhibits Zynga Agreement Filed Last Year

Facebook has just filed an amendment to its S-1 that exhibits the agreements between it and Zynga. These 2 developer agreement documents are the same as those filed in Zynga’s own S-1 amendment from last year and don’t include significant new information.
The exhibits do spell out how Facebook has promised to help Zynga with advertising on Zynga sites such as FarmVille.com, and share revenue from such a partnership. This should not be confused to mean sharing ad revenue from Zynga’s games on Facebook.com. Facebook also included its 2005 stock plan, and employment letters to key executives.
The developer agreement documents appear to have the same redactions as when Zynga filed them. Last year, TechCrunch writer Eric Eldon reported on these docs explaining how they show that:

Facebook also appears to have guaranteed Zynga certain growth targets in exchange for continuing to invest in games on the platform, whether web or mobile. Facebook has given Zynga permission to create some sort of “Zynga Platform”. It also has given the developer access to new features, including a proposed “Game Friends Protocol” API, apparently offering a new way for social gamers to find and play together.

Regarding ad revenue sharing:

At first glance, the terms read as if Zynga had a special deal with Facebook, where it gets a portion of the ad revenue from Facebook ad units that run alongside its games in canvas apps. However, the terms specified that it is not canvas app ad revenue — instead, it’s referring to Zynga web sites [also known as Zynga Game Pages, which do not include Canvas Pages or any other pages on www.faceboook.com.].
We asked Facebook about the matter and got this response: “We don’t have agreements with any developers, including Zynga, to share revenue from ads next to their Facebook canvas apps. We did agree with Zynga to work together in the future on providing ads on their properties beyond Facebook, but we have no current timeline for when we might start working on that.”

This could be the first sign of a future Facebook off-site ad network, in which sites could host ads that employ Facebook’s own targeting system to present relevant ads to visitors that are currently logged in to Facebook. This could become a huge revenue stream for Facebook if it ever rolls the system out to sites beyond Zynga’s.
Some specific points from the agreement:

• Zynga is responsible for “all content and materials, maintenance and operation” of its own gaming websites, except for the Facebook ads it hosts
• Zynga will not “remove, minimize, frame, or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Page” such that it could obscure ads or overlays that pop up when ads are clicked.
• Zynga will exclusively use Facebook Credits as its in-game purchase processing method on all its “Covered Zynga Services”, including Mafia  Wars, FarmVille, and any other games that utilize Facebook data.

15:08 by Robert dawne · 0

Google Algorithm Changes Downgrade Sites With Too Many Ads

Got a lot of ads on your website? Google‘s new search algorithm, which looks for sites that maintain a good balance of content and ads, could automatically filter it out of search results pages. The change comes after complaints of searches regularly turning up sites that favor bulky ads over the content.
The search engine will show more high-quality websites by downgrading pages that display too many ads, according to a blog post from Google engineer Matt Cutts. High-quality sites will also be rewarded, encouraging “a healthy web ecosystem.”
Google, though, is already coming under fire for the changes. Some say its own site sometimes favors ad results. One example — see the video above — shows how a search for “Blu-Ray DVDs” turns up sidebar links to stores, supported personalized ads, shopping results, plus advertisement links that deflect from real content that users may be looking for.
The change, Google’s Cutts notes, will affect less than 1% of global queries or less than 1 in 100 searches. The new algorithm will reduce rankings for low-value ads and sites deemed less useful.

Afraid your site will be affected? Google suggests cleaning up obscure content with the help of its Browser Size tool, plus screen resolution emulators to see how users will see your webpage on different devices.
Tell us in the comments what you think of Google’s latest algorithmic tweak, and if you think it’ll impact your website.

17:02 by Robert dawne · 0