#Facebook to clean up News Feed

Facebook has announced that it is cleaning up its News Feed to weed out spammy posts, so that users of the social networking website don't miss important and relevant stories and to penalize spammers.

Elaborating on the move, Facebook posted on its blog that it's introducing a series of improvements to News Feed to reduce stories that users frequently flag as spam. "Many of these stories are published by Pages that deliberately try and game News Feed to get more distribution than they normally would," said Facebook employyes Erich Owens and Chris Turitzin.

Facebook will essentially take steps to counter three kinds of news feed spam - Like-baiting, frequently circulated content and spammy links.

Facebook says "Like-baiting" is when posts explicitly ask readers to like, comment or share the post, to get additional distribution beyond what the post would normally receive. " The improvement we are making today better detects these stories and helps ensure that they are not shown more prominently in News Feed than more relevant stories from friends and other Page," said the Facebook executives.

The update will not impact Pages that are genuinely trying to encourage discussion among their fans, Facebook clarified.

Facebook is also improving News Feed so that it doesn't focus on pages that reshare content as most users do not find such content relevant.

Stories that misguide users into clicking on links to pages that contain only ads or a combination of frequently circulated content and ads, will also be restricted. For instance some stories may claim to link to a photo album but instead take the viewer to a website with just ads, the social networking giant iterated.

"By measuring how frequently people on Facebook who visit a link choose to like the original post or share that post with their friends, we've been able to better detect spammy links," it added. According to Facebook, the update improves News Feed to reduce cases of spammy links, and in early testing it has witnessed a 5% increase in people on Facebook clicking on links that take them off of Facebook.

Ref - TOI

#WhatsApp's new VoIP feature's images leak online

Alleged screenshots of WhatsApp's upcoming Voice over IP feature have surfaced, and they show an app that looks a lot like iOS 7's Phone app. 

The images come from iPhoneItalia, which also claims that besides the addition of VoIP, the new WhatsApp won't be very different from the existing app. 

The VoIP feature will allow WhatsApp users to make voice calls with their smartphones and tablets over Wi-Fi and cellular connections. 

Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been expected for weeks to introduce VoIP soon, but there's still no official arrival date.


Image courtesy: iPhoneitalia 


Competition by imitation
WhatsApp announced that it would soon add VoIP at MWC 2014, shortly after Facebook bought the company for $19 billion (about £11.4b, AU$21b). 

As has been pointed out, the VoIP design seen in these alleged screenshots pretty closely resembles the Phone app in iOS 7, from the blurred background image to the circular, red end call button. 

The other semi-big change supposedly coming in the next WhatsApp update is that the camera button to attach photos to messages will be located right above the keyboard instead of tucked away behind the "more" button. Despite the info, there's still no word yet on when this update is coming.

Ref - TOI

#MWC2014: #WhatsApp's worth is more than $19 billion, #Facebook #CEO #MarkZuckerberg says

Billionaire Facebook founderMark Zuckerberg defended his huge $19 billion takeover of free mobile messaging service WhatsApp, saying it is actually worth much more. 

The 29-year-old Facebook chief announced the stock and cash purchase on Wednesday, a deal that marries his social network of 1.2 billion active users with Whatsapp's 450 million users. 

Asked about the price tag during an on-stage discussion at the February 24-27 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Zuckerberg saidWhatsApp was attractive as a company by itself, and as a strategic fit with Facebook. 

"I just think that by itself it is worth more than $19 billion [14-billion-euro]," said Zuckerberg, wearing a grey t-shirt, sneakers and black trousers. 

"I mean it is hard to exactly make that speech today because they have so little revenue compared to that number," he conceded. 

"But the reality is that there are very few services that reach a billion people in the world. They are all incredibly valuable, much more valuable than that," he added. 

"I could be wrong. This could be the one service that gets to a billion people and ends up not being that valuable. I don't think I am." 

Other Android messaging applications such as KakaoTalk, Vine and WeChat were already bringing in two to three dollars a person "with pretty early efforts", he said. 

"That shows that if we can do a pretty good job of helping WhatsApp to grow then this is just going to be a huge business," Zuckerberg said. 

"So even just independently I think it is quite a good bet." In partnership with Facebook, WhatsApp can focus on connecting "one, two, three billion people over the next however long that is going to take," Zuckerberg said. 

The Facebook boss said he and WhatsApp founder Jan Koum shared a vision of connecting everyone in the world to the Internet, delivering development benefits and in the longer term profits, too. 

Zuckerberg said Facebook planned to leave the WhatsApp service unchanged. 

"WhatsApp doesn't store the content," he said. "We would be pretty silly to get in the way of that." 

Hours earlier, WhatsApp's Koum said the messaging service would launch free voice calls by mid-year, putting it on a par with key competitor Viber which already does so. 

He, too, stressed that Facebook did not plan to change WhatsApp. "Mark really understands that for WhatsApp to be successful it really needs to stay independent," he said. 

Zuckerberg has come a long way in the mobile world in a short time. When Facebook sold its shares to the public in an initial public offering in May 2012, "it literally had no mobile advertising revenues", said Eden Zoller, analyst at the research house Ovum. 

"It did actually have a pretty strong mobile user base at IPO but what it had failed to do at that time was actually monetise those mobile users," she said. 

At the time of the float, worries over the lack of money coming in from the mobile business sent Facebook's shares sliding. 

But the social network -- boasting more than 1.2 billion members -- quickly repaired its strategy. 

By the end of 2013, mobile devices accounted for 53% of Facebook's advertising revenue, bringing in $1.2 billion in the last quarter and more than $3 billion over the whole year.

Ref - TOI

#Facebook to buy mobile messaging app #WhatsApp for $19 billion

Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, as the world's largest social network looks for ways to boost its popularity, especially among a younger crowd.

The acquisition of the hot messaging service with more than 450 million users around the world stunned many Silicon Valley observers with its lofty price tag.

But it underscores Facebook's determination to win the market for messaging, an indispensable utility in a mobile era.

Combining text messaging and social networking, messaging apps provide a quick way for smartphone users to trade everything from brief texts to flirtatious pictures to YouTube clips - bypassing the need to pay wireless carriers for messaging services.

And it helps Facebook tap teens who will eschew the mainstream social networks and prefer WhatsApp and rivals such as Line and WeChat, which have exploded in size as mobile messaging takes off.

"People are calling them 'Facebook Nevers,'" said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed and an early investor in Snapchat.

WhatsApp is adding about a million users per day, Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said on his page on Wednesday.

"WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community," he wrote on his Facebook page. "Since WhatsApp and (Facebook) Messenger serve such different and important users, we will continue investing in both."

Smartphone-based messaging apps are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe.

"Communication is the one thing that you have to use daily, and it has a strong network effect," said Jonathan Teo, an early investor in Snapchat, another red-hot messaging company that flirted year ago with a multibillion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook.

"Facebook is more about content and has not yet fully figured out communication."

Even so, he balked at the price tag.

As part of the deal, WhatsApp co-founder and chief executive officer Jan Koum will join Facebook's board, and the social network will grant an additional $3 billion worth of restricted stock units to WhatsApp's founders, including Koum.

That is on top of the $16 billion in cash and stock that Facebook will pay.

"Goodness gracious, it's a good deal for WhatsApp," Teo said.

TERMS

Shares in Facebook slid 5 percent to $64.70 after hours, from a close of $68.06 on the Nasdaq.

Facebook said on Wednesday it will pay $4 billion in cash and about $12 billion in stock in its single largest acquisition, dwarfing the $1 billion it paid for photo-sharing app Instagram.

The price paid for Instagram, which with just 30 million users was already considered overvalued by many observers at the time.

Facebook promised to keep the WhatsApp brand and service, and pledged a $1 billion cash break-up fee if the deal falls through.

Facebook was advised by Allen & Co, while WhatsApp has enlisted Morgan Stanley for the deal.

Ref - TOI

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#Facebook to launch 'digital newspaper'

 

Facebook is reportedly all set to roll out its digital social newspaper for its members to access on their mobile devices.

The digital newspaper of sorts has been named 'Paper', and is scheduled for delivery before the end of January.

According to Cnet, 'Paper' has been developed specifically for the mobile platform and will aggregate content from a variety of sources including status updates from Facebook and articles from partner media companies, just like Flipboard.

The social networking giant recently attempted to alter the way it is consumed by its users and in a bid to deliver `more relevant` content, the website tweaked its News Feed feature to show up more news articles over memes.

However, the company has declined to comment on the speculation but the plans for making Facebook a 'customized newspaper' have been announced by its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

#Microsoft #Skype's #Facebook, #Twitter accounts hacked

LOS ANGELES: The Syrian Electronic Army, an amorphous hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for hacking into the social media accounts of internet calling service Skype. 

The group also posted the contact information of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's retiring chief executive, on its Twitter account along with the message, "You can thank Microsoft for monitoring your accounts/emails using this details. #SEA" 

That message was an apparent reference to revelations last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, was part of the NSA's program to monitor communications through some of the biggest US internet companies. 

A message posted on Skype's official Twitter feed, apparently by the hacking group, read: "Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail, outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments. More details soon. #SEA" 

Similar messages were posted on Skype's official Facebook pages and on a blog on its website before being taken down in late afternoon. TheSEA later tweeted out copies of the message "for those who missed it." 

Representatives for Microsoft could not be reached for comment. 

The NSA's practices essentially made Microsoft and other technology companies partners in government surveillance efforts against private citizens in the United States and elsewhere. 

Last month Microsoft joined seven other top technology companies in pressing President Barack Obama to rein in the US government's electronic spying in a meeting at the White House. 

Media companies, including the New York Times and the BBC, have repeatedly been targeted by the Syrian Electronic Army and other hacker activist groups that deface websites and take over Twitter accounts. 

Obama and his national security team are trying to decide what recommendations to adopt from an outside panel's review of the NSA's activities. 

A US District judge in December ruled that the US government's gathering of Americans' phone records is likely unlawful and raised what he called "serious doubts" about the value of the so-called metadata counter-terrorism program. 

A second federal judge ruled later in the month that the program was constitutional, raising the likelihood that the issue will be settled by the US Supreme Court. 

This week, a monitoring group said the death toll in Syria's civil war, which began in March 2011 as peaceful protests against four decades of rule by Assad's family, had risen to at least 130,000.

#Facebook launches 'dislike' button for Messenger

Facebook has updated its Messenger app that includes a 'dislike' button. 

However, the 'dislike' option is only available on the desktop and mobile versions of Facebook Messenger, Fox News reports. The dislike button is not available for the newsfeed and cannot be used in statuses and other posts. 

In order to access the new sticker pack, users will have to download it from the Sticker Store inside the Messenger app. 

While a "like" sticker was already available on Facebook Messenger, the new set of finger stickers was added only now, after having been created during a hackaton that took place this fall.

Facebook is said to be mulling launching a 'sympathize' button.
(By: TOI)

How #Facebook wants to use your data

Facebook has unveiled plans on a partnership with New York University for a new center for artificial intelligence, aimed at harnessing the huge social network's massive trove of data.

The California-based tech giant named professor Yann LeCun of NYU's Center for Data Science to head up the project.

"As one of the most respected thinkers in this field, Yann has done groundbreaking research in deep learning and computer vision," said Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer. "We're thrilled to welcome him to Facebook."

Facebook, the world's biggest social network with more than a billion members, is building the team across three locations -- New York, London and its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

The lab will work on "machine learning," -- a branch of artificial intelligence that involves computers "learning" to extract knowledge from giant data sets.

LeCun, a French-born mathematician and computer scientist, said in a blog post that he was pleased to head up the project with "the ambitious, long-term goal of bringing about major advances in artificial intelligence."

"I am thrilled to announce that I have accepted the position of director of this new lab," LeCun wrote. "I will remain a professor at New York University on a part-time basis, and will maintain research and teaching activities at NYU."

Facebook chief and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke of the plans during a call in October to discuss the company's quarterly earnings.

Zuckerberg said a working group was formed in September "to do world-class artificial intelligence research using all of the knowledge that people have shared on Facebook."

"The goal here is to use new approaches in AI to help make sense of all the content that people share so we can generate new insights about the world to answer people's questions," Zuckerberg said at the time.

He added that one of the goals was "to build services that are much more natural to interact with and can help solve many more problems than any existing technology today."

LeCun is a professor at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and is the founding director of the university's Center for Data Science.

He is known for creating an early version of a pattern-recognition algorithm which mimics, in part, the visual cortex of animals and humans.

The algorithm helped allow AT&T's Bell Labs to deploy a check-reading system that by the late 1990s was reading about 20 percent of all the checks written in the US, according to NYU.

LeCun's recent research projects include the application of "deep learning" methods for visual scene understanding and navigation autonomous ground robots, driverless cars, and small flying robots, as well as speech recognition, and applications in biology and medicine

2 million #Google, #Facebook, #Twitter passwords stolen

Security experts have uncovered a trove of some 2 million stolen passwords to websites including Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo from internet users across the globe. 

Researchers with Trustwave's SpiderLabs said they discovered the credentials while investigating a server in the Netherlands that cybercriminals use to control a massive network of compromised computers known as the "Pony botnet." 

The company said that it has reported its findings to the largest of more than 90,000 websites and internet service providers whose customers' credentials it had found on the server. 

The data includes more than 3,26,000 Facebook accounts, some 60,000 Google accounts, more than 59,000 Yahoo accounts and nearly 22,000 Twitter accounts, according to SpiderLabs. Victims' were from the United States, Germany, Singapore and Thailand, among other countries. 

Representatives for Facebook and Twitter said the companies have reset the passwords of affected users. A Google spokeswoman declined comment. Yahoo representatives could not be reached. 

SpiderLabs said it has contacted authorities in the Netherlands and asked them to take down thePony botnet server. 

An analysis posted on the SpiderLabs blog showed that the most-common password in the set was "123456," which was used in nearly 16,000 accounts. Other commonly used credentials included "password," "admin," "123" and "1." 

Graham Cluley, an independent security expert, said it is extremely common for people to use such simple passwords and also re-use them on multiple accounts, even though they are extremely easy to crack. 

"People are using very dumb passwords. They are totally useless," he said.

#Facebook Messenger gets desi chumbak stickers

Chatting on Facebook and bored of using smilies? Well, here what can make you chatting on Facebook even more interesting. 

Facebook users can now send a sticker from the 'Chumbak Expressions' pack with an 'Oye' or a very aunty-ish, 'Any Good News'.

Chumbak Expressions pack is a set of stickers that is localised with Indian content, using day to day lingo. Stickers are available for free on the Messenger and Facebook apps for Android and iOS. 

Facebook has an estimated 80 million users in India of which a third are regular messenger users. 

How to identify fake accounts on #Facebook, Twitter, Google+

Almost everyone who matters in some way is on one or more social networks. But on the flipside, there are many miscreants, who masquerade as celebrities or put up fake pages of well-known institutions. If you aren't careful you may end up following an imposter, instead of the real Aamir Khan or Katrina Kaif.

The real person may not even have a social networking account. So, how do you ensure you are following the right person?

On Twitter and Google+, some well-known individuals and organizations have got their accounts stamped with a "Verified" sign. On Twitter, it's a green tick mark, on G+, it's a grey tick mark. That indicates the social networking site has proactively verified the genuineness of the account. But all genuine accounts don't have the "verified" badge.

The only other definite way to confirm the genuineness of an account is to find out the Twitter page from the official web page of the individual or institution. But there could be fake web pages as well, and you may not know which is the authentic one.

In that case, the only option is to combine your gut instincts with common sense and logic. One way is to see who the followers or mutual friends are. Two, take a close look at the type of status updates or tweets. Look for something that is odd or inconsistent. Then that may be a fake site.

#Facebook rolls out redesigned Like button

Facebook has rolled out a new Like button for its social networking site which is devoid of the earlier thumbs-up icon.

Software engineer at the social networking site, Ray He said that the redesigned Like button, with the Facebook logo in lowercase, will help people share more great content across the web.

According to ABC News, the company has also made the logo a darker shade of blue, and also changed its font apart from providing websites option of lumping the Like and Share buttons together.

He said that in coming weeks the new buttons will be rolled out to everyone.

The report said that many websites have already undergone the transformation and incorporated the new Like + Share button.

#Facebook fixes Timeline issue

Facebook has reportedly resolved the issue related to its Timeline and pages that restricted access temporarily to some of its users. 

The social networking giant said that some users experienced an issue that prevented them from loading Timeline or pages content for a brief period of time, but that has been now fixed and the content is back to normal. 

According to Fox News, the reason behind the outage wasn't clear that affected only small number of users, but a source revealed that it was apparently due to a technical network glitch.

The source explained that the glitch could be alleviated because of the possible rerouting of a portion of the site's traffic, the report added.

Facebook Gets Shared Photo Albums

Facebook is rolling out a new Shared Photo Album feature starting today, reports Mashable.

The world's largest social network announced shared photo albums on Monday, 
a new feature that allows multiple users to upload images to the same album. 
The album creator can share access to as many as 50 "contributors," 
who can each in turn share up to 200 photos. Previously, users could only
 upload photos to albums they created, and each album was limited to 1,000 
total photos. The new shared albums have three available privacy settings: public, 
friends of contributors and contributors only.

The project was spearheaded by Bob Baldwin a software engineer at Facebook
and his colleague Fred Zhao. A company-wide hackathon was held in January
and about a dozen engineers worked through the night to create the feature.

"I think one thing that's really fun about creating products at Facebook is that you're
never quite sure how people will use the product in the end," Baldwin said.
"We're really excited for launch because we think people will use [shared albums]
 in ways that we're not even thinking of."

Album creators will have the power to delete or modify any photo in the album but
contributors can only edit photos they've uploaded. Currently, there is a 200 photo limit
per person; however, that may increase in the future. Also, the ability to create an album
has yet to make it to mobile; however, you can contribute to an album from a mobile device.
The feature is not available for Page albums.

Facebook is rolling out Shared Photo Albums to select English users today and will expand it
to all English users before it finally reaches international users.

Facebook 6.0 Released for iOS, Brings Chat Heads, Cleaner News Feed

Facebook has released a major update to its iOS app that brings chat heads and a cleaner News Feed.

Features:
• See what friends are up to
• Share updates, photos and videos
• Get notified when friends like and comment on your posts
• Text, chat and have group conversations
• Play games and use your favorite apps

What's New In This Version:
Brand new ways to chat and a cleaner look for News Feed.

New for iPhone
• Keep chatting from anywhere in the app with chat heads
• Send stickers to liven up your messages
• Explore new feeds like Music, Photos and Games

New for iPad
• Keep chatting from anywhere in the app with chat heads
• Browse brighter, more beautiful stories

Chat heads and stickers will be available to everyone over the next few weeks.

You can download Facebook from the App Store for free.

Facebook in Talks With Apple to Bring Facebook Home to the iPhone

Facebook is in talks with Apple about bringing a version of its new 'Facebook Home' software to the iPhone, reports Bloomberg.

After debuting the software, called Home, for Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating system earlier this month, the operator of the world’s biggest social-networking service is speaking to Apple and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) about expanding to other platforms, Adam Mosseri, director of product at Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, said in an interview on Bloomberg West. The talks are ongoing and nothing has been finalized.

“We’ve shown them what we’ve built and we’re just in an ongoing conversation,” Mosseri said. For Facebook Home to make it onto the iPhone it may have to be tailored to Apple's operating system, he noted. “It may or may not be Home,” he said. “We could also just bring some of the design values to the iOS app. That might be how it ends up. Or we could build just the lock screen. Maybe then it’s not called Home, it’s called something else.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that Facebook is integrated into iOS and says, “We have an active dialogue to do more with them.”

Would you be interested in seeing 'Facebook Home' as part of iOS 7?

Facebook Home Pre-Release Has Been Leaked

A pre-release version of Facebook Home has been leaked ahead of its April 12th release date, according to MoDaCo.

In order to use the leak, you need an Android device with a maximum resolution of 1280x768 and the ability to completely uninstall your existing Facebook app. This is important, as the leaked APKs are re-signed and can't just be installed over the top of an existing installation. This will automatically exclude some devices which have Facebook installed in the base ROM. If you're on a Nexus device you're good! Even if you do have Facebook in ROM, provided you are rooted there are workarounds - i'll detail these in the comments. If you have any problems installing post below and i'll help if I can.

The leak consists of 3 APKs: 
● The main Facebook app ('katana')
● The now-integrated-with-your-SMS Messenger app (orca) 
● The Home / Launcher 'shell' app (home)

More details on Facebook Home can be found here. Bringing Facebook Home to iOS would require a partnership with Apple which at this point appears unlikely.