Facebook Roundup: Media, Facebook Phone, Pages, Early Facebook ...

UK’s The Independent Allows Granular Facebook Subscriptions â€" In a blog post this week the UK paper The Independent announced that its web site will now allow users to Like a particular football team or authors on its Page in order to follow that content back on Facebook. It’s another step in making Facebook a central information-consumption service.

The First Facebook Phone? â€" If you recall, last fall there was a big hoopla about Facebook developing its own phone. Well, Pocketnow reports that the INQ Cloud Touch is the first of two “Facebook phones,” as it has deep Facebook integration. The phone in question is the next version of a model that has had Facebook integration for years.

Facebook’s Rosenthal Leaves, Built Mobile Carriers to 300 â€" Alison “Ali” Rosenthal from Facebook’s business development team is leaving the company this week. She worked primarily on mobile business development recently, especially in overseeing and growing Facebook’s relationship with 300 mobile operators globally.

Best Times for Pages Posts â€" SocialFresh published a set of conclusions on the best times for Facebook Pages to post updates, using data from Vitrue’s blog and Facebook’s Data team’s Page. Specifically, the best times include 3 p.m. EST when the largest number of users are active on Facebook. There is also a morning peak at 11 a.m., and an evening peak at 8:00pm EST. Despite the 3 p.m. peak, the morning probably is due to the fact that nighttime gives posts time to accrue Likes and comments before the night’s drop in engagement. Vitrue said morning posts were 39.7% more effective than afternoon posts. Monday is when the most users are posting and Wednesday when the most users are commenting. Avoid Saturday and Sunday when engagement is the lowest.

Facebook Purchased FB.com for $8.5 Million â€" We reported last year that Facebook’s employees were going to be using the fb.com domain name internally, and not it’s come to light that Facebook paid the Farm Bureau $8.5 million to do so.

Pentagon Manages Its Own Social Media â€" Although The Pentagon previously hired people to teach staffers how to use social media, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs now is having his staff of 100 or so does the job in-house.

Mixpanel Analytics Grows 40% Monthly - TechCrunch reported that Mixpanel, an analytics startup, is its data volume 40% each monthly, tracking more than 1 billion actions a month and is set to add to its current data set the ability for users to create “custom email digests of data” either hourly or daily and bookmarks that allow users to track “visitor retention by source.”

Winklevoss Twins in Court Again - The twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who have been carrying on a legal dispute with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg over the origins of Facebook, are back in court. They’re now trying to get a better deal on a 2008 settlement currently worth around $140 million in Facebook stock, claiming that Facebook had misrepresented the value of the company at the time and as a result gave them less stock than they feel they deserve.

Facebook Participating in IPv6 Upgrade â€" Facebook, along with other major Internet companies, has agreed to participate in the first global trial of IPv6, the upgrade to the Internet’s primary communications protocol, IPv4. The test will run on June 8.

Stanford Students Created Facebook-Like Site in 1999 â€" Whatever the Winklevosses may claim about the originality of what they were trying to build this past decade, The Stanford Daily has a story this past week about a social networking website created at Stanford University in 1999 by students that combined information from the Stanford directory with photos from the university’s “Facebook.” The university ultimately shut down the site. [Image Via Stanford Daily]

SNAP Interactive Raises $8.5M for Social Dating â€" SNAP Interactive, which claims 30 million installs for its social dating app across its platforms, including Facebook and iPhone, is set to raise $8.5 million in a “private placement transaction.” TechCrunch reported that the company has agreed to sell about 4.25 million shares of common stock in the deal.

Influence Measurer Klout Gets $8.5M â€" Startup Klout, which measures influence across the social web, raised $8.5 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins’ sFund. Bing Gordon will join the board. This brings Klout’s total to $10 million.

Facebook Struggles in Japan, Thrives in Taiwan â€" Although Facebook has yet to take command of Japan’s online audiences, users in Taiwan are increasingly flocking to the social network. comScore reported that Facebook’s visitors in Taiwan almost beat Yahoo’s Wretch.cc social network there and the company hit 9 million users in January. In Japan meanwhile, there are less than 2 million users.

MySpace to Lay Off 500 â€" MySpace is set to lay off about 500 workers, about 47% of its workforce, and is also entertaining potential purchase offers.

Source : Google blogsearch