Editor’s Note: Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), OpenTable Inc (NASDAQ:OPEN)
Facebook Moves Into Local Commerce With OpenTable Restaurant Bookings (Forbes)
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) announced a deal today with OpenTable Inc (NASDAQ:OPEN) that will let people book restaurant reservations from the Facebook mobile app. Now when people visit a restaurant’s Facebook page, they can book directly from the page without leaving to go to another app. It will be available for all 20,000 restaurants on OpenTable in North America. The move places Facebook more in competition with Yelp, which also has an integration with OpenTable for reservations. If Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) could build out more reviews or signals to indicate which of your friends “Liked” a particular restaurant, that could be a real competitor to Yelp.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s latest acquisition could help it connect users across language barriers. It has just announced that it’s acquired the team and technology of Pittsburgh’s Mobile Technologies, a speech recognition and machine translation startup that developed the app Jibbigo. From voice search to translated News Feed posts, Facebook could to a lot with this technology. Facebook tells me “We’ll continue to support the [Jibbigo] app for the time being.” Jibbigo launched in 2009, and allows you to select from over 25 languages, record a voice snippet in that language or type in some text, and then get a translation displayed on screen and read aloud to you in a language of your choosing.
Facebook users in India up by 5% (The Hindu)
The number of monthly active users of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) in India has shot up by 5 per cent to 82 million for this year’s April-June period. The California-based social networking giant had 78 million users in India in the January-March period. “MAUs (monthly active users) by the end of second quarter stood at 82 million against 78 million at the end of January-March 2013,” Facebook India Country Growth Manager Kevin D’Souza told PTI. A majority of active users in India access Facebook through mobiles, he added.
Facebook’s Sandberg Sells $91 Million in Shares After Surge (Bloomberg)
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg sold about $91 million worth of shares in the social network after the stock topped its $38 initial public offering price for the first time since May 2012. Sandberg sold 2.37 million Facebook shares on Aug. 7, two days after Facebook closed at a record high of $39.19, according to a regulatory filing. With the latest sale she has sold more than 7 million shares, or about 12 percent of her total, since the IPO. The holdings include unvested restricted stock units as of end-2012 and options.
Why Facebook’s Latest Updates Makes Way For Mobile Graph Search (Simply Zesty)
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has been pretty busy over the last few weeks. After a successful Q2 report which saw its stock price rise and come close to its opening day value, it also released Graph Search to all US English users. These are significant milestones for the company, but it’s the iOS app update that could lead to something more exciting. Not only made hashtags accessible, but it placed a greater emphasis on businesses and video, mainly being able to book a reservation and check showtimes for TV and films. Compared to what’s gone before it, it’s not a major update, but it – and one significant purchase – are important as it hints towards Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) bringing Graph Search to mobile, and further refining the product.
