According to The Wall Street Journal, General Motors Co. executives announced Tuesday that they will stop advertising through the social network because they have seen little impact on customer car purchases through paid Facebook ads.

“We regularly review our overall media spend and make adjustments as needed,” GM said in a statement. “This happens as a regular course of business and it’s not unusual for us to move our spending around various media outlets—especially with the growth of multiple social and digital media outlets.”

The Journal reports that GM spends about $40 million a year on Facebook marketing, $10 million of which goes directly to paid advertisements. For now, paid advertisements remain Facebook’s largest source of revenue, so GM’s announcement comes at an inopportune time so close to the company’s IPO. Although Facebook reports $3.7 billion in ad revenue (showing GM ads to be a small fraction of its revenue), GM’s decision could cause other companies to follow suit, especially since the automaker is the country’s third largest advertiser, says the Journal.

GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick told the Journal that the company will continue to use its Facebook page as a way to engage customers and produce content, but that it is “definitely reassessing” its advertising angle.

“Companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they’re no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget—a shocking fact given the site’s dominance among users,” said Nate Elliott, an analyst at research firm Forrester, in a company blog post Monday.—Maeghan Ouimet

Photo courtesy of Andrea_44

Apparently taking a cue from daily deals sites, the financial services company has launched My Offers—a feature on the company’s iPhone app that will let small businesses create and share consumer offers, with the option of sharing deals with only new customers or loyal clients.

“We are really interested in reaching out to small merchants and getting small merchants involved, and getting them to embrace American Express as more than just a payments company, but a trusted marketing provider,” said Luke Gebb, American Express VP of global marketing. “We have a heritage of providing great offers to our customers, and technology is really allowing us to connect buyers and sellers in a much more sophisticated way than we have in the past.”

Announced yesterday, the program—which business owners can manage through AmEx’s Go Social program—is being piloted in Los Angeles and New York City, although national franchises will also participate.

For cardholders, My Offers will appear inside the AmEx bill-paying application; the app will display offers catered to users based on previous American Express transactions. Once cardholders select an offer, they can redeem it by using their AmEx card at the establishment.

In one of the launch offers, for instance, shoppers at Amy’s Bread in Manhattan can get 10% back as a credit on their card statements. The bakery’s “marketing budget is shockingly low,” says Yang-yang Chen, assistant retail manager for Amy’s Bread. The company had been hesitant with Groupon-style deals, especially after hearing stories about small businesses being overwhelmed with new customers. But when American Express approached the bakery, Amy’s Bread saw this as a risk-free way to test the mobile waters.

“Fundamentally, we see this business of connecting buyers and sellers as core to our mission,” AmEx’s Gebb said. “On the small business side, as you’ve seen with Small Business Saturday, we are incredibly focused on helping small businesses grow.” —Erin Kim

Photo courtesy of American Express.

The question-and-answer website raised $50 million in series B funding, the Wall Street Journal reported last night. Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo confirmed the funding round on the company’s website under the question “What will Quora do with the $50 million in funding it just received?”

In the post, D’Angelo said the money will be used to help Quora expand, letting the company add to its staff of 30 and “spread knowledge far and wide outside of quora.com.” D’Angelo founded the company along with fellow “Facebook mafia” member Charles Cheever.

The funding places the company at a $400 million valuation, according to the Journal. That is more than quadruple its value two years ago, when it was worth an estimated $86 million. –John McDermott

Photo via Quora.

Although 48% believe the GOP to be the biggest supporter of small business, 32% say they’ll cast their vote for Barack Obama, with Mitt Romney trailing behind at 24%, according to Manta, a community website for small businesses.

But, at least they’ll be voting.

Only 60% of those 18 to 29 years old are actually registered to vote, with 56% positive they’ll mark the ballot, according to a Gallup poll. The number is lower than the average, and strikingly low compared to number of those 65 and older registered, at 92%, with 86% definitely voting—the highest percentage across all age groups.

Comparatively, of the small business owners surveyed by Manta, only 2% said they would skip the polls, with the majority of the percentage saying they just didn’t like any of the candidates.

On top of covering candidate preference, entrepreneurs were also quizzed about their political concerns and opinion about the future. The top issues for small businesses were health care, tax policy, and government regulation.

Despite uncertainty about the election and the small business treatment to come, 65% of the 1,576 small business owners polled are optimistic about the economic outlook for their business post the 2012 election. —Caitlin Berens

Photo via Vox Efx

Here are a few of the more interesting stories we saw this morning about the social networking giant:

• Facebook’s public offering will present the company with one big new challenge: pleasing shareholders outside of the company. In order to maintain growth, the company will have to effectively monetize users’ personal data, the New York Times reports. This cache of personal information is Facebook’s most valuable asset, rich and constantly growing, but questions have risen as to how to make this data available to marketers without infringing upon users’ privacy.
• Mark Zuckerberg has said that improving Facebook on mobile devices will be the company’s “first priority,” Reuters reports. Yesterday, the company announced on its website the debut of a new mobile app design. The retooled interface increases the viewing size of photos by three times and has drawn comparisons to Instagram, the photo-sharing app Facebook bought for $1 billion last month.
• Despite speculation that Facebook does not create enough revenue from its mobile offerings–and criticisms of Zuckerberg’s hoodie–investors remain bullish on the company. Facebook now projects share prices to be in the $34 to $38 a piece range, according to CNNMoney. Just earlier this month, Facebook predicted a range of $28 to $35 per share. The new price places the company at a valuation around $106 billion.
• Not everyone agrees with these optimistic investors, though. In a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll, half of the 1,004 respondents said Facebook is a passing fad. And less than half of active investors surveyed (42%) hold a favorable impression of Zuckerberg. –John McDermott

Photo via Scott Beale.

“Viddy has experienced rapid growth of our community in our first year and we’re just at the beginning of this opportunity,” CEO and co-founder Brett O’Brien said in an email. “Our goal is to continue to build on the passionate community of Viddyographers who are creating, sharing and watching original Viddys worldwide.”

The mobile app, which lets users apply special effects and music on 15-second videos and share them with friends, drew investment from Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures, Battery Ventures, and NEA. With more than 26 million users, including A-listers such as Mark Zuckerberg and Snoop Dogg, the company plans to use the funding to hire more engineers and expand internationally.

Viddy raised $6 million in its Series A round just a couple of months ago in February, which included investment from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment.

The Los Angeles-based start-up launched in 2011 after co-founder and designer JJ Aguhob went on a trip with friends. He captured some footage, but took months to edit the video, and that’s when the duo decided to make a product to share edited videos with friends quickly. —Erin Kim

Photo via Flickr user Shht!.

According to the American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor, which has been released semi-annually since 2002, only 22% of female business owners report they’re ready to take risks, compared to 42% of men.

While the overall survey showed women to be more cautious about an economic turnaround, they are more hopeful this year than last. More than eight in 10 female owners are encouraging their current employees to innovate, 62% have a positive outlook on the economy (up from 50% last fall) and 31% say they plan to hire within the next 6 months.

Even so, more women than men—69% vs. 60%—tend to let the economy stress them out. And it seems perhaps some of that stress affects how they manage their team: Women tend to be less likely than men to offer employees flexible working hours.

The data collected is based on a national survey of 813 small businesses with under 100 employees. The survey was conducted between February and March 2012.—Maeghan Ouimet

Photo courtesy of Victor1558

A security lapse for crowd-funding website Kickstarter resulted in the premature publishing of more than 70,000 projects, the Wall Street Journal reports. While no financial or personal data was made available, information about unlaunched projects was accessible via the site’s API.

The security lapse was active from April 24 until it was discovered and fixed on May 11, and only 48 projects were viewed early, Kickstarter says in a company blog post about the API bug. The problem began when the company introduced its API and new homepage.

No reports have surfaced about prospective projects being negatively affected by the security lapse, but competitive information regarding those 48 projects may have been shared. –John McDermott

Photo via Scott Beale.

Fortunately Deborah Farrington—a founder and general partner at New York VC firm StarVest Partners—has told The New York Times exactly what traits she seeks when considering a start-up investment.

Beyond the basics—expertise, technical skills, and intelligence of entrepreneurs—are a few of other criteria:

• Honesty: Don’t just share what you do well. Tell the truth about your weaknesses.
• Listening skills: Actually listen to feedback. Be able to accept it. And be able to implement it.
• Open-mindedness: Don’t be so overconfident that you’re closed to new ideas. “I look for people who don’t think they know all the answers, because no one does in this very fast-changing world, especially in technology,” Farrington told NYT.
• Self-awareness: Understand yourself and your business. Know your strengths, and be able to create excitement for others.
• Congeniality: StarVest was intentionally based on respect for individuals, Farrington says: “So we started out with a rule: ‘No jerks allowed, ever.’”

Farrington says her standards come from years of experience. “I’ve invested in about 70 companies, and I’ve looked at hundreds of others,” she says. “I tell them: I’m not preaching to you, I’m partnering with you … I’m trying to make you be the best CEO you can be.” —Caitlin Berens

Photo via company

Matt Hackett, the head of brand strategy and marketing, left the company Friday, according to Reuters editor Matthew Keys’ blog.

Hackett said in the email that he’d made the decision after speaking with several people at the company, including founder David Karp, Keys reports. The resignations of both Maloney and Hackett follow a recent adoption of a new advertising model.

Hackett posted a “memorial GIF(t)” for his last day on his own Tumblr page. —Erin Kim

Photo via Chad Swaney.