Facebook Rolls Out Major Feature Upgrades Ahead of Earnings

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is expected to reveal its earnings for Q2 2012 on July 26. This will be its first earnings release after it went public in May. There has been speculation that Facebook’s earnings for the quarter might be below expectations, which has led to its stock price being hammered down to around $28 over the last week. However, the company continues to focus on its ad offerings and is rolling out multiple new features that will make it easier for brands to manage pages on its network. This will help increase engagement on its website among fans and followers of the brands and makes the brands more likely to spend on Facebook advertising. ^{[1] [2]}

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Facebook is also currently testing a new feature which adds a Subscribe button to Pages, enabling users to follow certain brand pages without explicitly liking them. It’s similar to the Subscribe to Users feature and may help improve follower counts for brands.

The social network giant also rolled out some updates like scheduled updates which can be scheduled to some future time/date; unpublished page posts which can be targeted at particular segments of users instead of the whole follower base; and page admin permission which enables page owners to securely use third party tools to manage their pages more effectively.

Facebook generates most of its revenue from social ads, which account for around 70% of its overall value. We currently have a $33 Trefis price estimate for Facebook, which stands nearly 15% above its market price. It competes primarily with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo (NYSE:YHOO) in the online advertising space.

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1. Facebook rolls out scheduled posts, segmentation and more for Pages, TNW [↩]
2. “Subscribe” For Pages Being Tested By Facebook, MarketingLand [↩]