We?ve seen quite a few major company quarterly and year end reports recently, and one of the latest, Facebook, was one of the most talked about and closely watched of recent IPOs. Clearly, Facebook has shown growth, and that has to be good for the company and its investors. Advertising is up, especially mobile, but spending is up, too.
I suspect we?ve yet to see the best of its profitability as it acquires more and continues to develop its sales and systems.
I?ve certainly seen a considerably greater number of adverts appearing in the feed, and have started to notice them, too. In part, i?m looking at them for research purposes.
I?ve also been testing Facebook?s Graph Search beta and it looks like it has potential. It?s far too early to say much more on it right now as it?s still a beta, but I can see how the knowledge in there is a powerful marketing tool.
Obviously, we?ll all be watching what Facebook does, and how it continues to develop.
Last week's WebmasterWorld Weekly is here.
Here's the latest WebmasterWorld Weekly Roundup.
Yandex announced it was experimenting with a voice-powered search App, "Wonder," in U.S. combining its own proprietary search algorithms with data from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare, along with voice recognition from Nuance, in an iOS app. Within hours of the launch, Facebook blocked all API calls from Yandex's API. We can learn a great deal from this, primarily that the data, in this instance, belongs to Facebook, and the appropriate company, and we can't just assume we can make use of it without agreements.
Wolfram Alpha, the computational search engine, has announced expanded personal analytics service for Facebook. I tested it and there's some nice graphics there.
There's some interesting commentary going round about Windows 8. Some suggestions indicate that the shipments were weak over the holiday period. Yet, we heard that Windows 8 Pro upgrade is about to get a lot more expensive.
Reports are coming in that Twitter is gearing up to launch its advertising API some time in Q1. No doubt, just that knowledge will boost its worth.
Google has been talking to advocacy groups and companies about joining a lobbying effort to change the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, said Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman. That's an interesting statement, made around the time of Data Privacy Day, January 28. At the same time, Google made a statement on its approach to your online privacy and Government requests for that data.
There was an important appeal won by Newegg last week over a patent troll attempting extract a patent tax of about one percent of revenue from many online retailers. If you have an ecommerce site of any size you could have been the target. Many retailers already have. Read about this important win by Newegg, which has impact on the previous awards.
Yahoo reported its full year results of $4,987 million, and its CEO Marissa Mayer said, "I'm proud of Yahoo!'s 2012 and fourth quarter results. In 2012, Yahoo! exhibited revenue growth for the first time in 4 years, with revenue up 2 percent year-over-year,"
This week, WebmasterWorld Members were reporting increased bingbot activity. It raises the question of additional urls appearing in Bing's SERPs. How has its crawling impacted your sites?
In an expected move, Microsoft has launched its $100 a year, Office 365 Home Premium. Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, said "Today's launch of Office 365 Home Premium marks the next big step in Microsoft's transformation to a devices and services business." Perhaps the only thing we didn't know was the cost. I wonder how many with pay that fee, and what happens with your files if you decided to cancel your subscription. 
YouTube is making moves towards subscribers, too. I heard it had reached out to a small group of channel producers and asked them to submit applications to create channels that users would have to pay to access. Would you pay?
Google AdSense ran 'Learn With Google' this week, and thanks to WebmasterWorld Moderator, Martinibuster, we had a virtual seat at the event. Read all about the experiences and information in our thread. 
I read that Firefox custom cookie settings may cause sites to fail to render. If you're testing cookies, you need to know it's working and rendering. Find out about the solution in our thread.
A five year-old DNS flaw appears to remain unplugged amongst major U.S. companies. It seem incredible this is the case, until you read about the patches that may have been applied in the misguided view it has solved the issue. It appears not.
I welcomed the news from Firefox which announced user plugin control for greater stability and security.
As I mentioned earlier, Facebook announced its 4Q revenue which reached $1.585 billion, with ad revenue up 41pct, ending the full year at $5.089 Billion.
There were reports from our Members this week of new AdSense animated ad blocks. Have you seen them yet?
For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees. Hackers didn't have it all their own way. Read about it in our thread.
I hope you enjoyed our roundup for this week. If you've spotted some news that we haven't covered or discussed, drop me a stickymail.
Enjoy your week!
Cheers
Neil
@engine
Follow WebmasterWorld on twitter. #webmasterworld or @webmasterworld
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