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Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More In what could blossom into an ecommerce opportunity, Facebook is testing a new “Mail A Postcard” feature powered by Sincerely that lets you choose one of your photos and have Facebook send it to a friend as a postcard — in real life . You can add a message that will appear on the back, and also mail friends prints of their own photos. The sender is charged a small fee, and Facebook is trying out a few different price points. Though built as a spur-of-the-moment Hackathon project, if Facebook rolls out Mail A Postcard it could give users a new reason to upload and i...

Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More Today at The TC CrunchUp at the Fox Theater in Redwood City, a group of founders and entrepreneurs took the stage to talk about the future of Facebook’s platform, where it’s been and where it’s going as a result. Although the company’s stock has been limping of late, Facebook continues to be impossible to ignore — by the end of June, for example, the platform was seeing 955 million monthly active users, with 81 percent of those coming from outside the U.S., and more than 230 million people playing games on Facebook.com every month. Although it may seem like Facebook has plenty on their plate in terms of stock downturns, ad monetization strategies and more, Facebook Director of Product Management Doug Purdy said that a big challenge facing Facebook today is building a solid and stable platform for third-pa...

Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and startups. Previously, he was a staff technology writer at Adweek, worked as a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and was also a reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing.... ? Learn More Preferred Ventures, the digital media investment firm launched last year by FreeCreditReport.com founder Ed Odjana and former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, just announced that it has invested a “high six figure” seed round into GoDigital, a digital distribution service for independent films. GoDigital has a library of more than 1,000 independent, documentary, and foreign movies, which it makes available to viewers through deals with Lionsgate, iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, and others. Initially launched as a music distribution service, then switching to its current model in 2008, GoDigital has been b...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More Facebook keeps its network tight. Today it promoted Justin Osofsky to director of platform partnerships and operations, taking the spot of Ethan Beard who is departing after leading the partnerships team along with Dan Rose since 2008. Director of platform marketing Katie Mitic also announced she was leaving today, and mobile platform marketing manager Jonathan Matus stepped down last week. Along with Sheryl Sandberg’s addition to the board of directors, and long-time Facebook engineers Mike Vernal and Cory Ondrejka taking on former CTO Bret Taylor’s role, the mess...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More Investors demand more revenue from Facebook, and Sheryl’s got just the APIs to give it to them. Over the last two days, three major ads tech partners have revamped their products with recently released Facebook APIs that allow brands to track and optimize for on-site conversions including app installs, buy home page ads and logout page takeovers, and target ads specifically to mobile. The new capabilities in tools from Buddy Media, Nanigans, and BLiNQ Media (who just updated today) will attract ad dollars from app developers, huge brands, and local businesses. That...

Colleen Taylor is based in San Francisco where she is a reporter for TechCrunch TV. Previously she worked for GigaOM, where she reported on startups and Silicon Valley. Earlier, Colleen reported for Mergermarket, an online newswire and subsidiary of the Financial Times focused on M&A. Before that, she was a contributing editor for Electronic News, the semiconductor industry trade newsletter. Colleen... ? Learn More Anyone who has used Facebook on a smartphone or tablet knows that the social network still has a ways to go when it comes to nailing the mobile experience. Turns out that Mark Zuckerberg is well aware of this — and on the company’s Q2 2012 earnings call with investors and analysts this afternoon, he vowed that his team is on it. Zuckerberg said: “Facebook is the most used app on basically every mobile platform. So when we think about what we want to do right now, we want to increase the depth of experience in addition to just growing users. We want to not just have app...

Kim-Mai Cutler is a technology journalist who has worked for Bloomberg, VentureBeat and The Wall Street Journal. Before she joined TechCrunch, she led mobile coverage at Inside Network, a six-person media startup that was acquired by WebMediaBrands in 2011 for $14 million in cash and stock. She specializes in covering gaming, distribution and monetization of mobile applications and venture... ? Learn More No early Google-style growth here. Facebook’s payments revenues barely budged for a third quarter as gaming activity increasingly moved onto mobile devices. The company also hasn’t really started taking revenue share from apps in other verticals like music and media yet either, so that means there aren’t any new engines for platform revenue growth — yet. The company’s $192 million in payments revenue is barely an inch above the $186 million it made last quarter or the $188 million it made in the holiday quarter. On top of slowing advertising revenue growth, this means that the second...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More Younger users are just as engaged as everyone else, Facebook is selling $1 million in Sponsored Stories ads a day, and building a phone “wouldn’t really make much sense” are a few of the juicy news nuggets dished on on Facebook’s first earnings call today, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Still, Facebook noted it was disappointed in how its stock has traded. For details on Facebook’s actual earnings, check out our coverage of its revenue and financial progress, and its user growth. But here are the biggest highlights from the earnings call which lay out Facebook’s roadm...

Eric Eldon is the Co-Editor of TechCrunch. He was previously the cofounder and editor of Inside Network, where he managed publications including Inside Facebook, Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps. Before that, he spent a couple years covering technology and finance at VentureBeat, a leading Silicon Valley publication where he was the first employee. While Inside Network sold... ? Learn More Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg broke out how one of the company’s key new products is doing during the company’s first earnings call today. Sponsored Stories ads, which are advertiser actions (like posting a photo) that appear in the news feed, are getting “early results that are encouraging.” The product, which has slowly rolled out over the last half- year or so, are on a $1 million a day annual run-rate (so $365 million a year), around half of which is mobile. “Sponsored stories and newsfeed are the cornerstone of our mobile monetization strategy,” chief operating officer Sheryl Sand...