While Foursquare has been the most hyped location startup out of New York, there is actually another startup that is growing a real business from serving merchants with about 150,000 locations globally.

Yext has quietly grown to 200 employees through a platform that makes it easy for brands and small businesses to manage their location data across more than 50 search engines, mapping companies and on Facebook. They’ve raised more than $65 million to date after spinning out and selling an older pay-per-call business to IAC, in favor of going after this opportunity.

CEO Howard Lerman thinks of his company as the “quiet location giant,” which could eventually become one of the New York tech scene’s serious IPO candidates.

They’re making their connection to the Facebook platform even more seamless today with the launch of Yext Sync. Through a mobile app, businesses can manage their Facebook Pages, whether they have one or one thousand of them. It’s designed so that a local employee at one of a franchise’s hundreds or thousands of locations can update the page with real-time content like photos or status updates.

“If a Starbucks barista is interacting with customers every day, why can’t they manage the local Facebook Page?” said Yext CEO Howard Lerman. He said that Facebook is now a growing source of local search; according to a study from Neustar, Facebook has about 13 percent of local searches now.

The app they’ve built, called Yext Sync, kind of feels like any other social networking app where you can just add photos or updates to a stream (which ends up being the Facebook page). Facebook actually has its own Pages Manager App, but it isn’t multi-platform, Lerman says.

“When a business or brand posts into Yext, it appears not just in Facebook, but also, optionally on our network of 50 sites,” he explained. “So, post once, and it updates more than 50 platforms with one touch. This is better than updating each platform individually.”

Yext is looking to have 300,000 locations on its platform by next year. They have a subscription model with tiers that range from $149 a year to $499, depending on the number of sites a business wants to manage.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook has brought its Promoted Posts feature for pages to its mobile apps for iOS and Android, as well as m.facebook.com. At the same time, the company has begun testing different targeting options for page owners using the desktop version, in some ways limiting the control people have over their ads.

Previously, Promoted Posts could be created through the Pages Manager mobile app, but not from the main application or mobile site. Now, however a user accesses their page, they’ll have a way to easily increase the reach of their posts.

On desktop, some page owners are finding that Facebook has changed who they can target Promoted Posts to. Earlier this month some page owners lost the ability to promote their posts only to current fans. The post has to reach both fans and friends of fans. Some page owners might be frustrated by this since they may want to ensure their message is only being seen by the most relevant audience. However, these page owners can still use the main self-serve ads tool to create more targeted ads to fans only if they want.

Other page owners recently gained a new option to reach anyone on Facebook, even if they aren’t connected to the page directly or through a friend. This is helpful for smaller pages that want to extend their message to new potential fans they weren’t previously able to reach with Promoted Posts. Page owners who do not yet have this option with Promoted Posts can instead use the main self-serve ad tool to run page post ads to a broader audience.

Both of these still seem to be in testing, as Facebook’s Help Center still says that page owners can run Promoted Posts to fans or fans and their friends.

Desktop Promoted Post screenshots from Jon Loomer and Facebook’s Help Center.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook today released its Pages Manager application for Android in the U.S. and the U.K., after rolling out to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand over the last week, a company spokesperson tells us.

Pages Manager is a standalone mobile application that gives page owners access to page notifications and insights on the go, and allows them to make posts, respond to comments and reply to direct messages. Although we haven’t had a hands-on trial, Facebook says the Android app allows admins to access all of the same features as the iOS version, which launched in May.

Before this latest release, Android users had to continue to rely on the desktop version of Facebook to manage their pages. With the m.facebook.com and the main Facebook for Android app, page admins can access their pages and write on their Timelines, but there was no ideal way to get notifications or analytics without a third-party service. Direct messages to a page were also exclusive to desktop until now.

Last month, Facebook announced that more than 3 million page owners were using the mobile admin app each month on iOS.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook released an Android version of its standalone page management application on Thursday for users in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to a company spokesperson.

Pages Manager gives page owners access to page notifications and insights on the go, and allows them to make posts, respond to comments and reply to direct messages. Although the app may be visible in the Google Play store, it is not available for U.S. or U.K. users yet. Facebook  tells us this is coming soon.

This week’s release comes nearly eight months after the app debuted on iOS. Facebook first launched Pages Manager for iOS devices in May. Facebook continued to add features to the app throughout the year, but Android users had to continue to rely on the desktop version of Facebook to manage their pages. With the m.facebook.com and the main Facebook for Android app, page admins can access their pages and write on their Timelines, but there was no ideal way to get notifications or analytics without a third-party service. Direct messages to a page were also exclusive to desktop until now.

We haven’t gotten a hands-on with the Android app yet, but based on screenshots in Google Play, it seems mostly similar to the iOS version. However, the Timeline page is more similar to how it appears in the main app with photos and activity log accessible below the cover photo. The iOS Pages Manager doesn’t use this view and doesn’t seem to include activity log, though it came to the main app in September.

Last month, Facebook announced that more than 3 million page owners were using the mobile admin app each month on iOS.

Thanks to Aidis Dalikas for the tip.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook updated its Messenger and Pages Manager mobile apps on Monday with new features and bug fixes.

Version 1.1 of Facebook Pages Manager for iOS adds functionality that was missing when the app was first released in May. Now page owners can view and reply to direct messages their page receives. Users can also adjust how often they receive notifications about their pages’ activity. Admins can receive push notifications for some pages and not others, or pause notifications overnight.

The app now has some support for Facebook Questions and events. Page owners can see answers to questions and guest lists for events created on their pages, but they cannot create events or post Questions from the app. Additionally, the update adds insights for check-ins and links to pages’ photo albums, which were not included in the first iteration of the app.

Facebook Messenger for iOS and Android also received some significant updates, giving users the ability to share bigger photos, delete individual messages from conversations, and switch between multiple conversations with in-app notifications. Users can now include friends of friends in conversations and see who’s available when starting a new conversation. The most obvious cosmetic change to the Facebook Messenger is its new logo. Improvements under the hood make for faster app loading, navigating and sending, as well as more reliable push notifications, according to the app’s release notes.

Pages Manager for iOS can be downloaded here. It is not yet available for other devices. Messenger for iOS can be downloaded here and for Android here.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Carefully cultivating your Facebook presence can be tough enough when you only have your personal profile to deal with, but it’s a completely different story when you’ve got a full-blown Page (or three) to manage on top of it.

To help those particular users stay on top of things, Facebook has begun to roll out a new app (called, imaginatively enough, Pages Manager) in a small handful of markets, though we in the U.S. can’t play with it just yet.

As far as the design goes, the Pages Manager app should be familiar territory for anyone who’s ever used the standard iOS app, though a few thoughtful additions make the prospect of keeping tabs on multiple Pages a little less hairy. All of the Pages a user has admin rights to can be accessed from the app’s left pane for quick access, and those admins will get notifications whenever a user interacts with a Page under their purview.

Thankfully, notifications can be handled on a Page-by-Page basis, so it’s easy to enough tune out trolls if need be. Perhaps most importantly, the app allows provides on-the-go access to Page Insights — the metrics that track Page performance and user engagement through likes — so admins will always have an idea of where they stand.

For now, it seems as though only users in Australia and New Zealand can access the new Pages Manager app in the App Store, though SiliconRepublic reports that it’s slowly becoming available to users in Ireland as well. No news yet on whether or not an Android version is coming down the pipeline, though considering the slow-and-steady approach they’re taking with this early iOS release, it may be a while before we see it making the rounds.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch