Facebook has not handed over user data to Turkish authorities during the country's ongoing anti-government protests, the company said in a Wednesday statement.

Facebook's comments follow a Turkish government minister's claim that Facebook was "in cooperation with the state" while Twitter was refusing to supply user data, per NPR.

Read Facebook's full statement below:

Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests. More generally, we reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child, which has been the case in only a small fraction of the requests we have received.

We are concerned about legislative proposals that might purport to require Internet companies to provide user information to Turkish law enforcement authorities more frequently. We will be meeting with representatives of the Turkish government when they visit Silicon Valley this week, and we intend to communicate our strong concerns about these proposals directly at that time.

Reuters also reported that Turkish authorities are asking Twitter to set up an office in the country to facilitate cooperation between the microblogging service and the government. Turkey's Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, has previously called Twitter a "curse" filled with lies.

The social media back-and-forth comes as some Turkish lawmakers call for stricter rules on social media use following weeks of protests.

Facebook and Twitter alike have long been a refuge for Turks seeking a platform to express unpopular viewpoints largely unmolested by censorship. They have grown increasingly important during the recent demonstrations, serving as crucial tools for Turks to share information as local media failed to adequately cover the protests when they began late last month.

Facebook's rejection of the Turkish official's claims also comes as the company is under fire for alleged cooperation with a recently revealed National Security Administration user surveillance program known as PRISM.

Should Facebook and Twitter cooperate with the Turkish government? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Starting a social media marketing campaign can be extremely overwhelming if you're not familiar with the digital space. Just the thought of creating a company Facebook page or tweeting to your consumers can cause stress and anxiety. Last month, Mashable hooked up a few small businesses with social media experts from our Small Business Panel, to offer some mom-and-pop shops advice on how to amp up their presence on various social platforms.

We paired local salt-maker Borsari Food Company with social media marketing expert Ben Pavlovic, founding partner of VineSprout. After reviewing Borsari's social assets, Pavlovic immediately suggested that it focus its efforts on increasing its Facebook following. In order to do this, Pavlovic recommended that Borsari implement a targeted ad campaign on Facebook, include a call to action to "like" the Page in its marketing materials, create a vanity Facebook URL to boost SEO, and to change its cover photo to better reflect the brand and its product.

In one month's time, Borsari has seen an increase in its Facebook following from 133 fans to 167, and it's also seen a slight increase in Twitter followers, from 73 to 86. Additionally, when you now visit the Borsari's Facebook Page, you are welcomed by one of its store's wooden signs, and a thumbnail image that showcases one of its products. Before our makeover, the Page didn't have any cover image — and its thumbnail was of a random garden.  Read more…

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Amazon's Friends and Family Gifting feature is getting a little more social with the Tuesday launch of a tool that allows you to create and send group gift cards to your Facebook friends on their birthdays.

By connecting your Facebook and Amazon accounts, you can keep tabs on your friends' birthdays and prepare group gift cards in advance. To get started, head over to Amazon.com/birthdaygift, select a friend with an upcoming birthday and privately invite friends (via Facebook) to contribute to a gift card. Participants can contribute as little as $1 and as much as $25, and can also invite other friends to join, a spokesperson for Amazon told Mashable. The card, personalized with your message, is delivered to the recipient's Facebook wall on his or her birthday.

It's a well-executed concept. Soon, we imagine, Amazon will allow us to tap into friends' Amazon wish lists and send group gifts from there. Read more…

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King.com launched its third game on mobile Thursday, Pet Rescue Saga. Following the success of games like Bubble Witch and Candy Crush Saga, the Facebook favorite is arriving on both iPhone and Android.

Currently one of the top 10 games on Facebook, Pet Rescue Saga prompts players to destroy colored boxes on screen by placing three or more of the same color into groups — in order to rescue pets trapped within the multicolored block structure. Read more…

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Facebook updated its Android app Tuesday, and enhanced Facebook Home, its all-encompassing skin for Android smartphones.

Facebook Home now has a dock, making it easier to access favorite apps.

The addition of the dock is the first of many improvements Facebook has planned for Home, improvements being made in part based on the reactions of early adopters to the launcher.

“We’ve spent a lot of time digging through the one star ratings,” Facebook's Director of Mobile Engineering Cory Ondrejka told a small group of reporters earlier this month.

Facebook already has plans to add folders for grouping your apps to Home as well.

In addition to the changes to Home, Facebook added the ability to send multiple photos in a single message, and the ability to change who can see something you’ve already shared to its traditional Android app Thursday.

The updated Facebook Home and Facebook Android app are available now from Google Play.

Images courtesy of Facebook

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We’re thrilled to announce Mashable's annual New York City Social Media Day event. This year, we're planning for the biggest Social Media Day celebration the world has ever seen.

On June 29, media companies Vice and Milk will join Mashable to host a massive celebration that redefines social media as we know it: The Social Media Day of Reckoning.

We're expecting the most diverse crowd yet as the three worlds of Mashable, Vice and Milk merge into a dynamic mix of creatives, artists and tech-savvy individuals.

This event will take place at Milk Studios, where fashion, music and art come together at one of the most preeminent venues in NYC.A newly revealed global malware campaign hit 350 high-profile targets in 40 different countries. The cyberespionage campaign, codenamed Operation NetTraveler, has been active since at least 2004, stealing more than 22 gigabytes of data from computers around the world.

The malware attacks were uncovered on Tuesday by Russian online security company Kaspersky Lab. The hackers behind the campaign used a data-exfiltration tool called NetTraveler — not a very sophisticated malware designed to steal sensitive data and information.

The name originates from a string contained in the malware code: "NetTraveler is Running!" Read more…

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As those of us who spend our days on the social network (for research purposes, naturally) know, there are two ways to view your News Feed on Facebook: sorted by "top stories" and by "most recent." You switch from one to the other via a menu at the top of your feed.

Many of us assume that "most recent" means you get posts from your friends unfiltered, without Facebook's algorithm determining what's a "top story." In fact, even "most recent" is filtered for your reading pleasure, based on whose stuff you've interacted with in the past.

So users are always interested in different ways of looking at their feed. One programmer stumbled across one on Monday — a URL that leads to a version of the news feed that many of us find to be less filtered than the alternative. But the link he found will vanish on Wednesday.

Scottish developer Tom Waddington found an apparently internal Facebook link for a completely unfiltered feed: https://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf_all. (Give it a try. We'll wait.)

How did he find it? "It was a lucky guess," Waddington told Mashable. "Obviously nf is newsfeed, and I tried tacking things on the end."

But Waddington also cautions that the link may not be working come Wednesday. That's when Facebook tends to push out its updated version of the site, which developers get to preview at beta.facebook.com every Sunday.

"It's in the process of being removed," says Waddington. "The beta site has it removed already. I'll see if there's still a way to get it to show!"

Here's what Facebook had to say in a statement: "It is an old link that allows you to access your News Feed operating on an earlier version of our ranking algorithm. This feed does not show all posts."

The company strenuously denied an earlier report in TechCrunch that incorrectly called it an "unfiltered version" of the feed.

Facebook did confirm, however, that the link will not function as of Wednesday. Check it out while you can.

What does your feed look like with this link? Would you want to have access to it going forward? Let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: Some users are reporting that Facebook has turned off the old link for them, two days' early. If what you're seeing is exactly the same as your regular news feed, that would be why.

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NARS Cosmetics developed a limited-edition product line for the holidays inspired by Andy Warhol. NARS Andy Warhol Collection includes a range of cosmetics products like an eyeshadow palette with Warhol’s portrait and an essentials kit packaged in a film canister.

NARS energized its robust online community by taking its tribute to the pop art icon a step further. The company created the NARS Profile Makeover app in which users can "Warholize" their Facebook profile for a visual makeover.

Users can pull images from their Facebook photos, desktop images or take a new picture from their webcam. They can then assemble images and templates that combine Warhol’s artistic touch and NARS’ branding. Read more…

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Ah, the news feed, Facebook's party central. Purveyor of addictive updates on friends and former acquaintances. And ground zero in the battle for what the social network was, is, and where it's going.

What shows up in that news feed, an interview with the relevant manager at Facebook reveals, is the result of an endless chess game of algorithmic amendments by the company trying to please its users — as well as endless rounds of complaints from those users.

Case in point: earlier this week, a programmer uncovered a Facebook URL that appeared to show your feed unfiltered, algorithm free, with all of your friends' updates in chronological order. That was news to Facebook, which has no idea where the page came from.

"That was not something that was ever live," News Feed Product Manager Will Cathcart told Mashable. "It was a mix of our current algorithms and an old approach. It was ranking by [interesting] friends, rather than by which posts were likely to be interesting.

"As soon as we heard about it, we turned it off."  Read more…

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Last week, Facebook introduced a "Share" button on its mobile site and apps.

At long last, smartphone and tablet users can post links from their News Feed directly to their own pages with the touch of a button. It's taken the social media giant years to take this step and move mobile closer to the desktop Facebook experience. If you're (understandably) excited to start sharing but aren't sure exactly how, check out this step-by-step guide. Read more…

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Facebook’s “I’m Voting” app was credited in a study with convincing 340,000 Americans to vote in 2010, and the social network brought it back for 2012’s national elections. Although we don’t yet know what effect Facebook had on voter turnout this year, the social network has released some interesting facts about which Facebook users carried out their civic duty.

The findings were published last Friday in a note authored by Eytan Bakshy, a member of Facebook’s Data Science Department. Of the roughly 168 million Facebook users in the United States, 9 million used the app to declare their intention of voting.

According to the study, more women than men reported that they were voting. As Bakshy points out, however, this doesn’t mean that females are more politically engaged than their male counterparts. Instead, it’s reflective of the fact that women are more willing to share on Facebook than men.

“The answer is much simpler: as shown in the chart [below], women are disproportionately more likely to share in general on Facebook. Compared to comments, likes, and status updates, voting has the same amount of gender imbalance as we see in other forms of communication.”

It wasn’t just women who were more forthcoming with their information than their counterparts. Liberals— those whose declared political affiliation ranges from “very liberal” to “Democratic”— voted at a higher rate.

Read more…

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Sorry, democracy fans. The world's largest virtual nation, a billion citizens strong, just officially became an oligarchy.

You probably weren't even aware of it, but until Wednesday, you had voting rights on Facebook. The site used to put major changes to its governing documents — that is, the rules for how it treats your information and your privacy — up for a vote.

The last time this happened, however, so few virtual citizens came out to vote that it made the U.S. midterm elections (with their average 40% voter turnout) look like a triumph of participation.

In June, the company proposed two alternative versions of its statement of rights and responsibilities, and let users vote on them for a whole week. A mere 342,632 cast their ballots.

That was roughly 1 in every 2,600 users — or 0.038% of Facebook's population at the time.

So in the future, Facebook said Wednesday, it would let users comment on proposed changes to the governing documents, but not vote.

"We found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality," corporate VP Elliot Schrage wrote in a statement (italics his).

"Therefore, we’re proposing to end the voting component of the process in favor of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement."

Of course, the true power at Facebook lies where it has officially resided since the IPO: with its shareholders. And specifically with founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who controls a plurality of voting shares.

But giving users the option to vote, even if that option wasn't much used, gave the site more of a fig leaf that suggested it was out to accomplish a "social mission," as Zuckerberg's IPO letter put it. The next time a major change is proposed to Facebook privacy settings that users don't like, they will have one less outlet to complain about it.

As political pundit Joni Mitchell once put it: Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

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ZZ Ward, who Fuse TV recently proclaimed as one of 30 must-see artists at South by Southwest, just launched a web app that plots when fans first discovered her. How?

The "365 Days of ZZ Ward" app uses Facebook's Open Graph to browse users' Facebook activity and plot their ZZ Ward-tagged status updates, photos and videos.

The moments will be displayed on an interactive timeline, and fans' social participation with the experience will unlock exclusive music content. At launch, people will be able to earn access to four videos and a free MP3 download of an unreleased song. Read more…

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Facebook urged its employees in August to switch from iOS devices to Android so that flaws in the company's mobile app could be addressed more rapidly.

Now, photos have emerged of posters hung around the Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters of Facebook, which further urge employees to make the switch that they're calling 'Droidfooding — as in testing your own product. Read more…

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Peer-to-peer car-sharing service RelayRides is going social, enabling users to rent a car through Facebook by harnessing their social network.

In a process the company is calling “Renting Social,” members of RelayRides can now post a Facebook status message that requests to rent a car, broadcasting their need to friends. The idea is simple: One of your buddies may have an extra car, or happen to be out of town when you need some wheels, and could be willing to loan it to you for a little cash. Read more…

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Facebook announced a new method of mobile messaging Thursday: A system where users can send and receive messages within other apps as to not disrupt their general workflow.

The name of this visionary technology? Chat heads.

(Pause for reaction.)

Of course, the Twitterverse instantly went to work questioning Mark Zuckerberg's sanity for approving the odd name. Read more…

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On Tuesday, Nokia chief Stephen Elop fielded questions from irate shareholders at his company’s annual meeting in Helsinki. When, they wanted to know, would he do something about Apple and Samsung? In London next week, Nokia will announce its new high-end flagship product, whatever it is.

But Elop’s launch of the Nokia’s new Asha 501 in India this morning is worth watching more than the ailing manufacturer’s battle at the top end of the market. At a recommended price of $99 (before taxes) and near-enough full smartphone functionality, this is Nokia’s big push to capture the growing market for cheap smart devices. Elop wants to sell 100 million of them over the next few years. By way of comparison, that’s one in seven of every smartphones sold last year. Read more…

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The folks from uptime monitoring company Royal Pingdom have assembled a gargantuan list of various internet-related stats from 2012, and it's a very interesting read.

Though we've seen nearly all of these numbers before — for example, we covered Facebook passing 1 billion users in October as well as Twitter's 200 million in December — seeing them all in one place reminds you of how small and insignificant we are in the vast ocean of data that is the internet. Read more…

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A glitch Thursday night prompted rumors that Instagram was randomly deleting accounts. However, the company says although some people lost access to their accounts for a short time, there was no mass purge.

Nevertheless, during the height of the rumors Thursday night, the hashtag #Dontdeletemyaccount made the rounds on Instagram (where more than 500,000 photos used the tag) and on Twitter. As many noted, using such a hashtag would be unlikely to change anyone's mind. Read more…

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