1. Monthly archive
  2. May 2014

May 2014

The key to Facebook's future? Mobile ads, everywhere you look

Facebook has made billions of dollars selling mobile ads within its social network. Now, it hopes to make billions more by selling mobile ads elsewhere, too.

Facebook unveiled a mobile ad network that coordinates and places ads for publishers of other mobile applications. The system taps the vast trove of data that Facebook collects about its users to help to help marketers better target their messages. "This is really the first time that we're going to help you monetize seriously on mobile," founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the audience of developers at his company's F8 conference in San Francisco. Facebook's mobile ad network, called Audience Network, opens a potentially huge new business for the company by letting it make money even when people use applications other than its own. The push also directly challenges Google, which has had a similar ad network for five years and currently dominates mobile advertising. Facebook has proven that it can sell mobile ads on its own social network. In just a few years, mobile revenue has gone from being an insignificant part of its business to being the cornerstone.

Can Silicon Valley teach nonprofits how to save the world?

At a time when Americans are growing increasingly distrustful of Silicon Valley's swagger, the more relevant question may be what engaging nonprofits may hold for a tech industry that's reached an uncertain adolescence. CareMessage, is part of a new crop of organizations emerging in Silicon Valley. They're a cross between the normal fare in the Bay area -- ambitious tech companies with plans for meteoric growth -- and companies more closely associated with policy wonks: mission-driven nonprofits with a social agenda. The aim is to do good while making money.

UK slips down global press freedom list due to Snowden leaks response

Britain has slipped down the global rankings for freedom of the press as a result of the government's crackdown on the Guardian over its reporting of whistleblower Edward Snowden's surveillance disclosures. The annual index of media freedom attributes the UK's drop to "negative developments", mainly the way the government responded last year to the Guardian with threats of legal action, the destruction of computer hard drives and the nine-hour detention of David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald.

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