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 in 2009 with a Master’s degree in Cybersociology, examining the influence of technology on social interaction. He researched the impact of privacy controls on the socialization of children, meme popularity cycles, and what influences the click through rate of links posted to Twitter.
Constine also received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Stanford University in 2007, with a concentration in Social Psychology & Interpersonal Processes. He became fascinated with social networking theory after joining Facebook as a freshman a month after the service first launched.
Josh Constine has spoken at the South By Southwest Interactive and Music conferences, and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Atlantic, BBC World Magazine, Slate, and more.
Facebook doesn’t want to look like just another website, so it’s testing colorful new versions of Facebook.com on a very small percentage of logged out visitors. One features a 3D polygon art map of the Facebook universe, while another showcases an adorable couple.
So next time you login, or finally surrender and sign up, you might be greeted with something a lot more vibrant than text inputs. → Read More
Pandora founder Tim Westergren denied claims that musicians earn peanuts from streaming services and said today at SF MusicTech that lower royalty rates would bolster innovation. “There are a couple artists making over $2 million on Pandora. Some artists making over $100K a year.”
Of the rumor that artists only make $15 a year from streaming services, Westergren said, “that’s far, far from… → Read More
Love it or hate it, your job is a big part of your life. But you probably don’t go to LinkedIn everyday. Maybe you only visit a few times a year.
BranchOut thinks your professional network should be more like a home than a tool. So five months ago it stopped updating its app in preparation for today. What’s emerged is a more vivid way to tell the story of how you bring home the bacon. → Read More
Facebook has just begun testing “Collections” — a new feature it says is “unrelated” to Pinterest but could be a competitor. It allows retailers to add “Want” or “Collect” buttons to news feed posts about products. These save and share products to a “Wishlist” on user profiles that host a “Buy” button that can be clicked through to make purchases offsite. → Read More
Survival in a harsher age. That’s why we evolved to fear for our privacy. Without somewhere secret to sleep, defecate, or have sex so someone couldn’t run up an club us while we were vulnerable.
Times have changed but we carry the fear like a vestigial wing. If we don’t stay conscious of our bias towards privacy, it could retard the progress of innovation. → Read More
The year was 2008 and Zynga had it all figured out. Facebook became a portal to games for those who had never played. Viral growth there was unchecked. Facebook ad rates were low, so buying traffic was cheap. And most games were played on the desktop. But soon everything changed, and Zynga never recovered.
Here’s a look at four big shifts that caused Zynga’s power and share price to plummet. → Read More
Facebook grew to 1 billion users by adding massive value on top of what came before it. Specifically, authenticated identity. There may be no greater leap forward another social network could take, and that’s why Facebook will hold the crown for a long time.
What’s emerged is network effect incarnate. No feature, no user interface, and no marketing campaign can trump that. Sorry, startups. → Read More
Ben Horowitz loves hip-hop, but in an interview with TechCrunch he outlined a deeper vision behind his firm’s $15M investment into Rap Genius. “Knowledge about knowledge over time becomes as important as the knowledge itself”, said Horowitz about the value of the site explaining lyrics, religion and more.
Watch Rap Genius’ founders tell me their roadmap for bringing understanding across the… → Read More
Facebook is expanding to the US the controversial Promoted Posts feature that lets users pay to get their posts more visibility in the news feed. It will cost $7 per post and Facebook hopes it will be used for garage sales, parties, wedding photos and other important announcements.
Promoted Posts could surface important announcements, but I worry it could allow the rich to dominate the feed. → Read More
Everyday your friends are getting married, breaking up, and getting drunk, but it can be hard to follow along. So today The Taploid launches its web app that runs natural language processing on your Facebook feed to produce a gossip magazine of subtle trends and juicy tales. Taploid can tell you which of your friends are alcoholics, or who someone that just got out of a relationship will date… → Read More
“Check out this link: http://bit.ly/QGuBiv ”
If you clicked that, you experienced something dumb but familiar on the web — blindly clicking a link only to end up somewhere you’ve been before or you didn’t want to go. Come on, Internet. We’re better than this. We’re too busy, and there’s too much beauty, humor, and knowledge abound for us to waste time. Every URL deserves a preview. Who’s… → Read More
Show someone a Facebook ad once and they’ll forget, 100 times and they’ll be annoyed. So Facebook is going to use offline purchase data to help businesses increase ROI up to 40% by showing them the “sweetspot” of ad frequency, it announced today at New York’s Advertising Week.
Privacy fears flared recently when the Financial Times revealed Facebook was working with in-store purchase tracker… → Read More
Facebook has just closed a deal to hire Dwight Crow and Christopher Berner, the two founders and only teammates of the Y Combinator used car price comparison site Carsabi. The founders are now looking to sell the site so it can live on even though Facebook won’t be needing it.
Facebook tells me there wasn’t something specific that attracted it to the co-founders other than that “they’re… → Read More
Facebook has to show more ads to make more money, right? Wrong. Or at least not necessarily. If it expands its new off-site ad network and Gifts e-commerce product, it could rely on its data, not its traffic, to grow its revenues. That would leave its site and apps uncluttered, designed to maximize enjoyment, the amount we share, and our feeling of connection instead of page views.
You might… → Read More
Facebook today launches Facebook Gifts to make ecommerce more convenient. It turns user data into suggestions for gifts to buy right from where you spend your time, and without a friend’s address. Facebook earns a percentage of sales when you use it to buy friends physical products or digital gift cards for their birthday, wedding, or other special occasions.
Starbucks, Uber cabs, Warby… → Read More
Facebook mobile news feed ads are a hit with advertisers and they’re the most efficient way to purchase Facebook fans, say five out of five leading Facebook ad-buying software startups. The data comes from a news study by AdParlor that I’ve verified with leaders of four competing Facebook ad platforms / services TBG Digital, Optim.al, BliNQ Media, and Nanigans.
Pay for a Like through ads… → Read More
To inspire developers to build apps that help kids get into, stay in, and graduate from college, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched an education tech Facebook app contest today with 30 prizes totaling $2.5 million. To kick off College Knowledge Challenge the submission period, it’s co-hosting an edtech hackathon today at Facebook’s headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo… → Read More
In case Facebook Poking wasn’t addictive enough, the Pokes page recently began updating in real time. That means you can leave your finger on the trigger and poke back the instant a friend pokes you.
I’ve heard from a Facebook employee that the feature was built by an intern, and bless their soul. Or curse it if you have something important to do, because you’d be surprised how quickly you can… → Read More
Some Facebook business Pages lost tens of thousands of fans today, but they shouldn’t fret. Facebook has confirmed with me that it’s currently purging fake accounts and Page Likes as it implements site integrity improvements announced last month. You can see the evidence on Pages like Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker whose fan count dropped by 96,000 today after steady after long steady… → Read More
Facebook has responded to reports of a security issue that lets people post in Groups as if they’re someone else. It says this is a known problem with SMTP email standard that it is working with email providers to close the hole. Facebook explains that it does use email verification, and “0ur system rejects most unauthenticated email to groups”, or flags suspicious emailed posts as “Unconfirmed… → Read More
Twilio’s business is getting a huge boost today, as AT&T has just announced it will resell the startup’s voice and SMS API and apps as the “AT&T Advanced Communications Suite”. Businesses can buy survey tools, ad-hoc workgroup messaging and calling, appointment reminder services, or build directly on the Twilio API.
The partnership has been a year in the making and will get Twilio in… → Read More
Facebook has just released the Facebook SDK 3.1 for iOS which lets app developers on its platform to take advantage of single sign-on through native login and other features from the social network getting baked into iOS 6. The new SDK lets app developers prep their Facebook mobile apps for iPhone 5′s screen size, native sharing “sheets”, ready-to-use UI elements, and a new ad analytics beta. → Read More
If you see your friends are registered to vote, you might register too be more likely to actually cast your ballot. So in hopes of making us better citizens, Facebook now lets you declare you’re “registered to vote” through a new Timeline event.
U.S. residents can use the personalized shortcut link in Facebook’s announcement of the feature, or find “Registered To Vote” in the ‘Travel &… → Read More
Even though search history on search engines like Google is totally private, some people still enjoy the ability to delete it. Now Facebook is following suit, allowing you to view and delete all or part of your search history through the profile Activity Log. The new feature will give you more transparency into what you do on Facebook, what it tracks, and make you feel like you’re more in control. → Read More
No one got just how powerful it was that Facebook recently said it would allow ad targeting to lists of email addresses. Today it became clear as Facebook ad chief David Fischer formally launched “Custom Audience” ads and how they tie into CRM at the Dreamforce conference. I’m convinced they’re going to be hugely profitable for advertisers and Facebook. → Read More
Today Facebook awarded the 12 best social marketing tool and service providers with a new “Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer” distinction. The exclusive sPMD list will help brands sort through the 300 B2Bs in Facebook’s PMD directory and find trusted Facebook Page and Ads optimization providers.
Facebook’s VP of Biz and Marketing Partnerships David Fischer announced the sPMD today at… → Read More
Why would Facebook quietly hide everyone’s real email addresses and only display @facebook.com addresses on our profiles? Signs, rumors, and one source point to pressure from Apple to join forces and keep Gmail addresses from being pulled in by iOS 6 Facebook contact sync.
See, Google with its social network and Android OS has become the common enemy. All three are pushing their own unified… → Read More
Millions of people are downloading iOS 6 right now, and many will use the Facebook contact sync feature to pull in photos and current phone numbers of friends. But rather than your real email address, they’re going to pull in hundreds of @facebook.com addresses. These addresses don’t actually deliver to your email, but instead to your Facebook Messages Inbox.
Why? Because with little notice, … → Read More
Correctly anticipating that Twitter’s API crackdown would reach photo sharing services, Twitpic is actively talking to at least two potential acquirers and has received offers over the past few weeks, said one source familiar with the discussions. Founder Noah Everett is said to have wanted to sell and move on to new projects.
Twitpic may have hoped to get a sale brokered before the hammer… → Read More
Facebook today begins testing its own mobile ad network. Advertisers can pay to target you with ads for app stores or websites based on your Facebook data that appears while you’re on other apps and mobile sites. Facebook tells me that, similar to its first off-site ad placements on Zynga.com, the goal is to show Facebook users more relevant ads wherever they go, even outside the social network’s… → Read More
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