Some Facebook page owners are seeing a new “Report Duplicates” module that allows them to search for pages related to their own and report those that are unofficial. Facebook will review the duplicates and then recategorize them as community pages that link back to the official fan page.

This feature, which appears in the “Edit Page/Update Info” dashboard of some Facebook pages, will help page owners address the common problem of fan-created pages being confused with official pages. The screenshot below is from All Facebook, which first wrote about the change.

When a page is designated as a community page, it will say so beneath the page name and include a link to the main fan page. Community pages are similarly distinguished in search results, though many users might not notice the difference. Unlike Twitter, which offers verified accounts, Facebook doesn’t give official pages any designation. Typically users look at the number of Likes as a gauge.

Page owners who do not have the new duplicate page finder tool in their dashboard can use Facebook’s main search bar to look for related pages. If they find duplicate pages that are not properly designated as community pages, they can report them directly by clicking the gear icon beneath the page’s cover photo and clicking “report page.” This leads to a dialog where users can indicate which official page it is a duplicate of.

We’d like to see Facebook create a crowdsourcing tool to allow users to easily report duplicate or miscategorized pages. Last year the social network added a Places Editor app for anyone in the community to contribute details to place page listings and identify duplicates. A similar app for fan pages would help clean up Facebook’s database, which would improve search and lead more users to a brand or public figure’s official page.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Like so many things that go on to have big success, Yammer, the enterprise social networking company that was just officially acquired by Microsoft for a cool $1.2 billion, had an inauspicious start.

At first, actually, Yammer was not intended to be a company at all. It was built as an internal feature within a genealogy startup called Geni, to let Geni employees communicate with each other about work. Soon, though, Geni co-founder David Sacks realized that this tool they’d built could be very useful for others. And voilà, Yammer was spun out and born as its own business, with Sacks at the helm (Geni, meanwhile, is still very much around as an independent entity, its current CEO Noah Tutak told TechCrunch via email today.)

The really cool thing is that TechCrunch was on it from the very beginning. Yammer launched officially in September 2008 at TC50, the TechCrunch-backed conference that has since been replaced with our bi-annual Disrupt events. David Sacks took the stage and did the first public demonstration of Yammer, positioning it as the private Twitter for intra-company communication, saying:

“We’ve been using it internally for about the past six months, and we think it’s so good that we decided to spin it out into its own company, Yammer, so that other companies can use it as well.”

You can watch that first demo, and the reactions of TC50 judges including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, right here:

The first reactions to Yammer were pretty enthusiastic, and the company went on to win the TC50′s top prize that year. Erick Schonfeld was the first to report on the launch for TechCrunch, writing:

“Just like Facebook in the early days, which required a university e-mail address to join, Yammer requires a corporate email address to join.

Unlike Twitter, Yammer actually has a business model. It is free to use for employees, but if a company wants to claim their network and get administrative tools to remove messages and users, set password policies, or set IP ranges for who can use it.”

That same bottom-up “freemium” business model structure is what eventually helped to attract the acquisition interest from Microsoft, according to CEO Steve Ballmer. Yammer is “pretty unique, maybe very unique, in the viral adoption model. You can throw the word ‘enterprise’ and ‘social’ on a bunch of different stuff, but you can’t find anybody who has really built a customer base of enterprise customers in the same way virally with great respect from the IT department, with great love from the consumer,” Ballmer said in a conference call with press and analysts this morning. Post-deal, Microsoft said, that revenue model will stay intact.

We at TechCrunch have actually been both users and office neighbors of Yammer, so the relationship here has stayed pretty close — sometimes uncomfortably so. So we do have an extra bit of pride seeing Yammer’s big exit confirmed today (and Steve Ballmer’s limo parked outside), even if the price tag causes some to balk just a bit (and complain even more about Yammer’s lack of an auto-refresh feature. Grumble grumble.) But hey, you know what they say about what haters are liable to do. And it could be argued that many of those who hate on Yammer only do it because they also love it — and use it — so very much.

Anyway! Big congratulations are in order, Yammer. Don’t forget us little bloggy people now that your startup days are officially behind you.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook is testing a new version of the home page that displays a column titled “Happening Now”  listing recent actions of friends in the right sidebar where the “Upcoming Events” section usually is. The short Happening Now entries such as status updates, Likes, new friendships, posted links, and comments can be clicked to pop up a window in-line that shows the original wall story and all its associated Likes and comments.

Happening Now could give users a snapshot of more than 10 stories about friends before they even scroll beneath the fold of the news feed, decreasing the bounce rate. For now, though, Facebook says the ”test includes a small percentage of Facebook users,  just a fraction of a percent”.

An Abbreviated Feed Provides a Wider Breadth of Content

The Facebook news feed only has room to show a maximum of roughly five stories above the fold before users have to scroll to see more, and this number can dwindle as low as one or two in the case of posted links with lots of comments. Happening Now allows Facebook to display a much wider breadth of stories above the fold through an independently scrollable frame, increasing the likelihood users will see something that catches their eye, and decreasing the immediate bounce rate of the home page. It does this by abbreviating some stories such as posts of links by omitting feedback and the author’s description, so the stories bear resemblance to notifications.

Unlike Twitter’s stream, which this test looks similar to, Facebook doesn’t always show a new update at the top of the news feed, and the rich content can make it difficult to rapidly consume. In 2009, Facebook at one point altered the news feed to be purely real-time updates similar to Twitter, but moved back to its original algorithmic design after seeing a prolonged negative response from users.

As Facebook becomes a hub for so much of people’s social activity, many have probably gotten into the habit of quickly opening a Facebook tab in their browser, scanning for new notifications and interesting stories at the top of the news feed, and closing the tab if nothing hooks them.

Happening Now could ensnare these impulsive visitors by giving them instant access to relevant content, and encourage them to leave Likes and comments that trigger notifications for friends. These actions, as well as more complicated ones such as watching posted videos, can all be done from the in-line pop up. Facebook Ads that are traditionally shown in the right sidebar appear to be pushed above or below the new column. If the feature was rolled out, Upcoming Events would have to be moved somewhere, and Facebook would need to prevent redundant content from appearing side by side.

Facebook briefly tried out a different “Happening Now” on the Events home page in August, which showed people currently active Places checkins as well as events going on that day. The web version of Facebook doesn’t have a way to see an aggregated list of checkins by friends, so users must either sift through their news feed or access Facebook via a mobile site or app. If checkins can appear in the new Happening Now, the column could inform users that their friends are at a nearby cafe and they should considering meeting them before they get engrossed in the site.

The Twitter-esque Happening Now has the potential to offer a more concise stream of content than the news feed without requiring significant redesign that might shock users. It augments the news feed’s algorithmically sorted Top News and real-time Most Recent feeds with an abbreviated, scannable feed. Happening Now could help users stay closer connected to more friends without having to browse or scroll.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Yesterday, I noticed my Gmail account was insanely slow for no apparent reason. Nothing new here really, so I decided to wait it out. A few hours later, same deal. So I began phase two of my normal routine these days: publicly bitching about Gmail on Twitter. Normally, this works like a charm. Google reaches out and says they’re investigating (yes, fear my TechCrunch power and all that). Within a day, I’m zooming away seemingly faster than ever before.

Except today it’s actually even worse.

Emails are taking upwards of 30 seconds to load. Archiving is taking at least 15 seconds. Search is completely unusable. All the same is true on the mobile site as well. It’s so bad there, in fact, that the app believes it’s actually offline when it’s not.

Anyway, again, none of this is new. I tend to bitch about these things every few months. Here’s me last November, for example — a problem which Google confirmed after my post and quickly fixed. But here’s the thing: why does this keep happening on a regular basis? And why does it take me bitching or a TechCrunch post to fix it? I’m sure this is affecting scores of other users without such a platform, and their complaints likely go unheard.

And before everyone jumps to the silly “it’s free” defense, know two things: 1) Gmail is not free, we’re all paying for it in advertising clicks and/or views. 2) I am actually paying for it. Yes, real money to Google for both more storage and a yearly fee for Google Apps (well, that’s TechCrunch paying, but still). We’re all “paying” customers. Google should be more on top of this.

And I’m sure right after I post this I’ll get an email (which will take 45 seconds to load) that will say the problem is only affecting 2 percent of users. That’s the PR-spin way of saying that millions of people are suffering.

So it’s time for a new deal.

Google, please set a price — any price — that you determine is necessary to keep anyone’s account running smoothly at all times. I’ll gladly pay it. I don’t care if it’s $100 a year or $1,000 a year. It would be worth it.

People often talk about the desire to pay for Twitter either for better uptime or for more features, but the situation with Gmail is much more serious. Unlike Twitter, I conduct basically all my business through Gmail. I simply need it to work for me at all times. And I’m happy to pay for that to be the case.

Currently, I’m only paying $5 a year for 20 GB of storage. Soon, I’ll have to upgrade to the next step, which is $20 a year for 80 GB. The problem is that with this price increase, there’s no guarantee of better service right now. So I’m obviously hesitant to do it. Hell, I’d consider paying the maximum $4,096 a year for the 16 TB of storage if I knew for sure it meant better service.

As for the “why don’t you just switch” argument, it’s tough. Gmail is still the best email service feature-wise and when it’s working properly, no one comes close to it. There’s also a huge lock-in factor for all the people that currently message me this way. Sure, I could forward emails, but really, shouldn’t Gmail just work? Why should I have to switch to an inferior service (from everything but the performance perspective)? I shouldn’t.

So Google, you now have this letter that I’m posting publicly because I currently can’t send it via Gmail in a reasonable amount of time. Set a price and let me know.

Or, if it will help, steal my Gmail Lite idea! Just please do something.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Twitter is feeling the need. The need to monetize. As such, today the service is going to begin testing in-stream ads through popular third-party client HootSuite, AdAge first reported and Twitter has since confirmed.

So what does this mean? Unlike Twitter’s previous experiments with advertising (through their Promoted Suite products), these new ads will be the first that appear in-stream regardless of what a user is doing. Previously, with Promoted Tweets, for example, they showed up pinned to the top of the stream only when a user did a search. This new way of advertising will have tweets from the likes of Virgin, Starbucks, Red Bull and others in a user’s regular stream of tweets.

But Twitter says that these tweets will still be based on targeting. What they mean is that you should only see them if you follow people or products on Twitter that are related to the Tweet ad they have to show you.

Again, for now, these Tweet ads will only appear to users who are using HootSuite, a client which about a million of Twitter’s 175 million users use. But if this is a success, you can expect this to roll out to other clients shortly. And yes, these ads could appear on Twitter.com one day as well.

You may recall that back in May, Twitter started making moves to prohibit third-party ad networks from advertising in Twitter’s stream. By June, this hammer was dropped, which sort of screwed startups like ad.ly — though they adapted. There were a few reasons why Twitter did this, but the most obvious is that they wanted to be the ones to serve up the in-stream ads themselves. And now they’re starting to.

Update: Here’s Twitter’s post on the matter. Of note, these are still called Promoted Tweets, they’re just playing around with when and where they’ll show up. Here’s a key blurb:

Similar to our Promoted Account recommendations, we use several signals to determine a Promoted Tweet’s relevance to a user, including the public list of whom they follow. We will expand the rollout only when we feel we’re delivering a high-quality user experience.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch