A small group of Facebook employees have been working on “something big,” which the social network is set to unveil on Thursday.

The press event for Facebook's "new product" will take place at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

To notify reporters about the event, Facebook sent out paper invitations through traditional post — an unprecedented move — in addition to digital versions. In both cases, a coffee stain is prominent on the invites, suggesting that Facebook may be serving up more than just a cup of joe to reporters. Indeed, it foreshadows a coffee-related theme for the event

Since the invitations went out, there have been reports that Facebook will be announcing video for Instagram at the event, which would help the company better compete with Twitter’s Vine. Read more...

Google today launched the first beta version of its Dart SDK and Editor. With this update, Google says, the SDK can now produce significantly smaller and faster JavaScript code and make it easier for Dart developers to deploy their code. The Dart Editor now features an analysis engine that’s 20 percent faster at parsing and analyzing code as you type it, making it a bit less likely that your code won’t run because of a typo.

Dart, which developers can compile to JavaScript or run in a special version of Chrome that features a built-in Dart VM, hasn’t quite caught on with developers yet, but that doesn’t mean that Google isn’t putting quite a few resources behind the project.

The Dart Editor now also features smarter code completion that is, for example, camel case aware, deletes unused optional parameters automatically after template editing is done and includes a number of other enhancements.

The Dart VM, Google says, is now up to 40 percent faster at executing certain benchmarks and even the code that’s compiled to JavaScript is up to 20 percent faster. The Dart team also says that it has greatly improved WebGL performance in Dartium, Google’s special build of Chrome with the built-in Dart VM.

It also looks like Google is working to bring its Polymer web components-based UI framework to Dart, though the team currently lists this as a “work in progress.”

You can find the full release notes here.

Other browser manufacturers haven’t shown much interest in working with Google to integrate Dart into their own browsers (Mozilla, for example, is betting on Rust, JavaScript and asm.js for performance improvements). Even Google hasn’t integrated Dart into Chrome yet, but as the language matures, it’s probably just a matter of time before the first Chrome builds with the Dart VM arrive.

No matter how much thought you put into your social media strategy, the real world can always interfere.

Robert Reimann spent more than a week hashing out a plan to boost sales and engagement on the Facebook page for his bike tour business, after being matched with Shane Johnston, a social media marketing consultant from Mashable's Small Business Panel. With Johnston's help, Reimann would launch a contest — along with Facebook ads to promote it — in order to attract more fans and build up an email list of customers, which he would then work to convert into sales.

Then the flood started

Germany, where Reimann and his business BikeSherpa are based, was hit with severe flooding earlier this month that forced tens of thousands of residents to evacuate. While Reimann's home in Dresden wasn't damaged, he had to help his sister move all her furniture and evacuate from her house along the Elbe river. Reimann also had to scramble to come up with new bike routes and re-book hotels for customers who had booked bike trips around the city. Read more...

Last week, Hillary Clinton made her official Twitter debut. Equipped with an epic Twitter bio and profile picture from the #TextsfromHillary meme, she definitely entered the Twitterverse in style.

We loved seeing Hillary’s real-world influence translate on social media. Within 24 hours of her first tweet, she was greeted by Ellen DeGeneres, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton.

Welcome to Twitter, @HillaryClinton! Maybe now I won't have to text you so much.

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 10, 2013

Happy to welcome @HillaryClinton to Twitter. Stay tuned for the real #TweetsFromHillary.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 10, 2013

Does @Twitter have a family share plan? Great to be here with @HillaryClinton & @ChelseaClinton. Looking forward to #tweetsfromhillary.

— Bill Clinton (@billclinton) June 10, 2013

In her first tweet, she thanks the creators of the popular Texts from Hillary Tumblr for their inspiration. Given the excitement and engagement around Hillary joining Twitter, it’s no surprise that her Klout Score has skyrocketed.

Take a look:

Keep track of Hillary’s influence on Klout, and tweet her at @HillaryClinton!

Facebook has started to roll out photo comments, a new feature that allows you to comment on posts with images rather than words.

Originally built during a Facebook employee hackathon, photo comments are starting to roll out globally on the web as well as the Facebook mobile site. Users can't yet leave photo comments within Facebook's mobile apps, but they are viewable. The feature is expected to come to those apps in a future update.

Adding a photo comment involves clicking a camera icon beside the text box where you would typically write a message and then uploading an image from your computer. Read more...

Facebook Page owners, rejoice: Facebook Insights, the social network's analytics dashboard for public Pages, is getting a makeover. A small, random group of beta testers will get access to the new desktop design on Wednesday, with a broader rollout to follow at an unspecified date.

The new design is simpler, cleaner and more intelligible. Stats that were previously rolled in together (i.e., "People Talking About This") have been broken down into separate charts that allow Page owners to individually measure the reach and engagement (likes, comments, clicks and shares) of individual posts. Additional charts make it easier for users to see what kinds of posts — say, those with videos, or ones targeted to certain groups — have better reach or more positive engagement than others. Owners can also now break down demographic behavior on individual posts to see, for example, if Read more...

Google launched a new scorecard in AdSense today that allows site owners to see how their properties are performing relative to other AdSense publishers. The scorecard is organized into three categories: revenue optimization, site health and Google+ (because everything Google does needs to have a bit of Google+ built-in). For each of these, Google assigns a rating between one and five and suggests improvements for increasing traffic and revenue.

As Google notes, the company won’t take any action and punish a site that has a low score in any of these three areas. “This is an informational tool only to give you greater insights into how your site is performing,” AdSense product manager Nick Radicevic notes in today’s announcement.

Still, AdSense users will likely want to look into Google’s recommendations, given that the company probably has a pretty good idea what kind of changes could help a site improve its traffic and revenue.

AdSense, Google says, will calculate these scores daily, but it may take a few days before the score reflects any changes you make on your site.

At its heart, Google still remains an advertising company, and while tools like this are obviously meant to help site owners make more money through AdSense, they won’t exactly hurt Google’s bottom line, either.

AdSense, it’s worth noting, turned 10 earlier this week and Google says about 2 million publishers currently use the service. Last year, the company says, it paid out over $7 billion to publishers that use AdSense on their sites.

News of Mark Zuckerberg's trip to South Korea is resulting in widespread speculation that Facebook is working with Samsung, the world's largest smartphone-maker, to build a phone specifically tailored for the social network.

In April Facebook launched Home, a software tool geared to make the site's features easier to use and more integrated on mobile, and Samsung was one of the first companies to integrate that feature on devices such as the Galaxy S4. Reports from South Korean news outlets suggest that Zuckerberg's real objective is to ask Samsung to craft a more Facebook-friendly device. That move could in part be precipitated by disappointing sales of the HTC First, the Android-powered Facebook phone made by the Taiwanese company HTC (AT&T has since dropped the unit because of poor sales). But this mix, as well as Samsung's close ties to Google, could make a future partnership with Facebook a murky proposition. Read more...

Facebook has pushed back the introduction of video ads in its News Feed until the fall, according to a report

Advertising Age cites a "source familiar with the product" as saying the launch, originally set for the spring and then summer, is now being delayed another season. Facebook declined to comment on the matter.

A source told Mashable that Facebook is still trying to convince advertisers of the merits of the ad units, which will fetch around $1 million, though they could go for as high as $2.4 million, according to AdAge Part of the issue is that video is an unproven format on Facebook. Measurement is also an issue. The 15-second ads, which would start automatically without sound, would count as an impression even if consumers don't watch them. Facebook is also holding off on Black Friday inventory, presumably because such ads could go for more than $1 million Read more...

Facebook now has more than 1 million businesses actively advertising on the social network, the company announced Tuesday.

The "vast majority" of those advertisers are small businesses, according to Dan Levy, Facebook's director of small business, who announced the milestone during an event at Facebook's office in New York.

"The feedback we hear from businesses from all over the world is, 'Just make it simpler,'" Levy said at one point during the event. Perhaps with that in mind, Facebook announced plans to slash the number of ad products in half in order to streamline and improve the experience for advertisers Read more...