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Facebook unveils 'Home,' a family of apps for your Android phone

Facebook unveiled a new "Home" on Android at a press event at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters today -- a family of apps meant to keep mobile audiences always affixed to its social network.

Facebook Home consists of a set of the social network's apps that become the home of your Android phone. With Home, the device's home screen transforms into "Cover Feed," or a visually rich and swipe-able version of News Feed for your phone. Home also includes a more picture-perfect version of messaging, complete with a Facebook-invented feature called "Chat Heads,&… Read more

Facebook's new home on Android: Join us Thursday (live blog)

After years of the rumor mill churning out reports of a Facebook phone, the social network may actually deliver something at its press event Thursday.

Facebook set off a fresh round of speculation -- despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg's repeated denial that the company is working on a Facebook phone -- when it invited journalists to "Come See Our New Home on Android."

CNET will be bringing you the news, images, and commentary as the event unfolds starting at 10 a.m. PT. Follow along with our live blog here:

CNET's live coverage of Facebook's unveiling of its new home on Android, 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET … Read more

Facebook helps brands monitor and respond to comments

Facebook has been tinkering with how businesses, brands, and celebrities can deal with all of the comments they receive on the social network. And, today, it's rolling out another new tool -- a way for brands to more easily monitor and respond to comment replies.

Setting up a triage comment system through a new API, Facebook is making it possible for programmers to set up different comment "views."

The first view is "top level comments," which can be ranked to show those that a brand wants everyone to see. Then there are "replies," … Read more

Facebook's mobile ad revenue forecasted to skyrocket in 2013

Facebook's focus on upping its mobile ad presence over the last year seems to have paid off. Literally.

The social network is expected to make nearly $1 billion from mobile ad revenue in 2013, according to a report released today by market research firm eMarketer.

"Facebook, the No. 2 mobile ad publisher in the country, accounted for 9.5 percent of mobile ad revenues in 2012 and is expected to take 13.2 percent this year," eMarketer wrote in a blog post today. "In the mobile display market, however, Facebook is on top, projected to grab … Read more

Could this yellow blinking eye be Zuckerberg's first Web site?

Some religions worship relics.

Bones of saints and artifacts of old emerge seemingly from nowhere, with no one ever truly knowing how real they might be.

I therefore bare my skepticism with moves not dissimilar to those in a Haka dance on hearing that Mark Zuckerberg's first ever Web site might have been unearthed.

My inconsistent reading of Motherboard today offered the startling information that Zuckerberg's first site might have included a blinking yellow dinosaur eye.

It seems that someone posted to Hacker News that the Facebook CEO's first masterwork was still available on Angelfire.

It's … Read more

Tech firms may balk at California push for citizen data access

The European Union has long championed its citizens' right to submit requests for data that companies hold on them in order to ensure the information is up to date and correct. In recent years, an Austrian law student brought this "habeas data" right into the public spotlight by demanding his Facebook data from the social network.

Americans don't have this right -- and generally, relative to the EU, they have little legal protection from the state or federal government against data theft, unauthorized disclosures, and other privacy-related matters.

Though the EU and the U.S. have never … Read more

One year after release, half of Instagram users on Android

Photo-sharing phenom Instagram is celebrating its one-year anniversary on Android with a fun fact: Nearly half of its members are using the Android application.

Instagram launched its Android application on April 3, 2011, a whole 17 months and 30 million users after the popular app for shooting square, filtered photos first debuted on the iPhone. At the time, the service was also just days away from announcing that it would be purchased by Facebook for about $1 billion in cash and stock.

Today's little reveal suggests that Instagram's Android application has at least 50 million active users. The … Read more

Leaked pics portray Facebook's take on Android

What does Facebook's "Home" on Android look like? It's a twist on the Android user interface that's image-rich, includes graphical notifications, and offers quick access to popular Facebook features, according to pictures obtained by 9to5Google, a constant source of rumors about Facebook's "phone" in the past few days.

The pictures add some additional color to "Facebook Home," a supposed version of the Android operating system that makes the social network's features and applications native to smartphones. Tomorrow, the social network is expected to reveal its home running on an … Read more

Facebook and mobile browsing: Pretty much the same thing

New research from mobile analytics firm Flurry suggests that Facebook is so powerful a force on mobile that the social network has become synonymous with browsing on smartphones and tablets.

Facebook accounts for 18 percent of U.S. consumers' total time spent on smart devices, a percent that translates to more than 28 minutes per day on average, according to Flurry, which measures application usage on more than 1 billion monthly active smart devices.

Facebook's new home on Android: Catch our live coverage on Thursday at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET

The firm, which used its … Read more