Facebook has employed a rather odd approach to the mobile market and it seems to be betting on quantity, rather than quality for quite some time now. When the social media giant decided to detach the messenger from its main application, thus making it all that less appealing to most users it sparked an avalanche of complaints with a lot of subscribers rage-quitting on the main app.
Facebook surely must have felt the negative consequences and while initially it seemed like a good enough marketing step to promote the messenger itself the detrimental effect have apparently caught on as a new application has silently made its way to the Google Play Store. It is essentially a lightweight version of the social platform that aims to offer services to low-end devices at faster speeds and best of all, with lower bandwidth. Read more »
In an effort to clamp down on false news appearing in your News Feed, Facebook is rolling out a new feature that’ll allow you to flag scams or false stories as hoaxes, although the company is stopping short of removing such posts, and has made it clear that it will not be reviewing content and making a determination on its accuracy.
To report a story as false, all you’ve to do is to select the relevant option (see image above) from a list that appears when you choose to hide the story. If too many people flag a post as false or choose to delete it, it will get reduced distribution in News Feed, the company says, adding that posts that receive lots of reports will be annotated with a warning that many others on Facebook have reported it. Read more »
Bangladesh has blocked instant messaging and VoIP apps in the country, according to officials in the country. This includes the top five services in the country, namely, WhatsApp, Viber, Tango, LINE, and mypeople.
Out of these, Viber and Tango had been previously banned until January 21 midnight but that list has now been expanded to include WhatsApp, LINE, and mypeople as well. The ban is enforced by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) over security concerns by the government. Read more »
Facebook may be ubiquitous in people’s personal lives, but not that much when it comes to intra-office communications. The company obviously wants to change that, so it’s launching Facebook At Work.
This is best described as the social network for your workplace. It has mobile apps for Android and iOS, which should launch today, as well as a website that’s accessible from computers. It looks like Facebook, but will get your company’s branding. Oh, and Facebook won’t show ads inside it, nor will it track what you do or hold your data. Read more »
Facebook will start showing AMBER Alerts to its users in their News Feeds. This will happen on both the Web and inside Facebook’s mobile apps for iOS and Android. Obviously, you’ll only see those alerts that are relevant to your location.
AMBER Alerts have been issued in the US since 1996. It’s a child abduction alert system, in case you didn’t know. So far AMBER Alerts have made it to radio and TV stations, and even digital road signs and LED billboards in some places. They are also sent via email and SMS, and have recently been expanded to appear in Google searches and in Google Maps. Read more »
You may remember Falcon Pro as the popular but ill-fated app on the Play Store that had to be pulled by the developer after it hit Twitter’s asinine API limit. The app has since then been available for free from the developer’s website, assuming you could work your way around the little easter egg to unlock and use the app.
The developer has now released a brand new Twitter app called Falcon Pro 3, which despite the name is not an update to the previous app but a new app altogether. The developer has made the app free to download but you will have to pay $3.99 to add the first Twitter account and every subsequent account will cost you $1.99 extra. The developer sayS, “This is the best way I could think of to deal with Twitter limitations and ensure continuous support.” Read more »
Mobile messaging service WhatsApp now has over 700 million monthly active users, up from the 600 million the company reported around four months ago. The announcement was made by co-founder and CEO Jan Koum in a Facebook post, where he also revealed that WhatsApp users are now sending more than 30 billion messages per day.
“Most of all, we’re grateful that so many of you are using WhatsApp to stay in touch with your friends and family, business colleagues and classmates,” Koum said. Read more »
Nowadays the pre-roll ad model is widely used with video content. Just think how many times you’ve had to sit through an ad before a YouTube clip started playing for you (unless, of course, you’ve subscribed to YouTube Music Key, which makes the ads go away). Facebook, however, has another idea that it’s started testing.
These are ads that play after you’ve watched a video, and not before. At first blush, this might seem like a very counterintuitive idea, since many claim that pre-roll ads work exactly because you have no choice but to sit through them until the video you want to see starts. Read more »
Facebook added auto-enhancement of photos to its already rich set of tools for sharing your life’s moments with the world. The feature is available only for iOS devices for the time being – it will arrive on Android at a later stage.
The new Facebook photo sorcery resembles the Auto Awesome feature of Google Photos. Read more »
Moving steadily on with its newfound commerce focus, Twitter has today announced a new service called Twitter Offers. This basically means businesses can embed discount coupons into tweets, but redeeming them is easier than if you were to use actual coupons.
Twitter Offers comes after the Twitter Buy button started appearing for certain users, letting them buy stuff directly from tweets. Read more »
The makers of the popular instant messaging app Viber announced Public Chats. Dubbed social entertainment channel by its makers, the feature allows users to share conversations and content on mobile devices.
Public Chats will include live discussions with personalities and various celebrities. Read more »
This year Facebook has pushed its Messenger app for mobile more than ever, even forcing people to use only that for messaging one another. And now the social network has announced a new standalone mobile app that focuses on one single aspect of your Facebook experience. In this case, we’re talking about Groups.
In a move that sounds like an April Fool’s joke, Snapchat has launched a new feature called Snapcash that will let you send money to your friends by adding a dollar sign and entering an amount in your pictures. Yeah, it’s totally legit.
Snapchat has joined forces with Square, makers of the popular Square Cash, to let you add your debit card to the app and then send money to your friends. As mentioned before, it’s as simple as adding a dollar sign and the amount in your messages and sending it to your friends and the money is transferred from your bank account to theirs. The payment part is handled by Square, who has more expertise in this matter than Snapchat. Read more »
The Financial Times has spilled the beans on an upcoming effort from Facebook to create a social network for professional users. It’s going to be called Facebook at Work and its aim will be to separate your personal profile from your work-related one.
The service will look similar to the current Facebook design. It will be enhanced however, to handle large documents and allow you easily to collaborate and communicate with your contacts. Read more »
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