Facebook wants to become that dating site your grandparents can be comfortable using. In an announcement that seemingly no one expected, Facebook's aimed a Cupid arrow squarely at Tinder, Bumble, and others in the happy hearts facilitation industry. "We’re building a feature for dating and relationships within the Facebook app," the company announced. It's rationale is that people already use Facebook to "meet new people", and it wants to do a better job at playing matchmaker. But how will it work? "People will be able to create a dating profile that is separate from their Facebook profile — and potential matches will be recommended...
It's F8 week, and that means plenty of Facebook news. The company's annual developer conference is also pretty important for users of the social network's other properties, as a slew of announcements, projects and roadmaps are usually revealed to the public. For those running businesses and rely heavily on Facebook Messenger, there are two big announcements to be aware of. Be warned: Facebook's shoving AR into everything this year, and its messaging service isn't exempt. Instead, the company's claiming that AR will soon be useful for companies using Messenger as a sales and advertising platform. Through the Camera Effects Platform, businesses can...
Facebook remains the largest country on the planet in terms of monthly active users. This after it released its user figures and financial balance sheets for Q1 2018. The social network sees more than 2.2-billion people logging in to its service on a monthly basis, while 1.45-billion employs Facebook's services every single day. In comparison, China's estimated population stands at 1.414-billion. Both figures for the social network saw an increase of 13% year-over-year. Talking money, its advertising revenue saw a 50% increase year-over-year in Q1 2018. The firm now makes over US$11.7-billion on ad revenue. "Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 91% of advertising revenue...
Brace yourselves if you plan to login to Facebook today, because you might be in for an uncomfortable surprise. The social network announced that it will today inform the 87-million users who were affected by the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The alert will be in the form of a message card at the top of users' news feeds. The company initially believed only 50-million Facebook users were affected by the data scandal. However, last week it boosted that figure by more than 30-million. Around 70-million of those users affected reside in the United States, a million from the Philippines, United Kingdom and...
What does WhatsApp's co-founder Brian Acton, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Playboy's CEO Cooper Hefner, and now Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak all have in common? They've all left Facebook in some capacity. Wozniak, speaking to USA Today, seemingly no longer wants to be the "product" that Facebook sells. "Users provide every detail of their life to Facebook and ... Facebook makes a lot of advertising money off this," he told the publication in an email this weekend. "The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back." "Apple makes its money off of...
If you're still using Facebook Messenger, you can now send 360 degree photos and videos -- in addition to 720p video -- from the Android and iOS app. "For 360 degree photos in Messenger, simply set your phone camera to panorama and snap a photo or capture a 360 degree photo using a 360 photo app or camera. Then share it in Messenger as you would a normal photo," the company explains in an update. As the 360 media you capture isn't reliant on Messenger but your phone's default camera app, this feature might not be supported by all phones. This...
The sleeping social media giant has finally woken up. After offering users lip-service through its nightmarish past two weeks, Facebook is now physically addressing its data issues, beginning with a redesign its apps' privacy settings and the addition of a user info management section. "Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data," writes Erin Egan, the company's VP and CPO, and Ashlie Beringer, VP and deputy general counsel in a joint statement. Here's the extent of the company's latest...
Facebook wants you to forget about its woes just for a moment, and remind everyone that people do in fact still use it. Notably, not just people, local news outlets. After it announced in January 2018 that users across the US will see more local news in their timelines, the company has now extended this tweak globally. "With this update, we’re helping local publishers who cover multiple, nearby cities reach audiences in those cities," Alex Hardiman and Campbell Brown, Facebook's heads of news product and partnerships, respectively, clarified in a statement. "We’ll consider a publisher as local to multiple cities if the...
It's the F-word you've been hearing an awful lot of this week, and its one everyone should be using. Yes, Facebook. Please forgive me for swearing. The social network's still managing the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and recent suggestions that it has been gaining call and messaging data through its Android apps. But the question on everyone's lips is: what does the company know about me? There's a really, really easy way to find out. Here's how to download your Facebook data, step by step. How to download your Facebook data Log into Facebook. From the home page, click the downward-pointing...
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal piqued public panic last week, Facebook is again coming under fire for another user data issue. After the above news broke, Twitter user Dylan McKay published a screenshot detailing a particularly interesting set of data: a log of the outgoing, incoming and even missed calls he had received for two years. He made the discovery after downloading his Facebook data (You can download your own Facebook data right here). "Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file," McKay writes. "Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum." Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file Somehow...
So people are talking about Facebook a lot this week. You know, that social network that only Baby Boomers seem to use now? It somehow has more than two-billion users at present, and that number for data collection firms is a goldmine just waiting to be ravaged. Speaking of which, one particular company through a series of ducks, dips, dives and dodges, has garnered a hefty slice of this information. Here's what you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data siphoning fiasco. What is Cambridge Analytica? Cambridge Analytica is a privately-owned firm based in London, England, but has satellite offices...
Facebook Lite, an Android version of the Facebook experience for lightweight devices and slower networks, will now launch in a gaggle of new countries. Users in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States can now download the app through the Google Play Store. Previously, users were required to download the APK on other app repositories. "To help make sure everyone can have a great Facebook experience regardless of where they connect, we rolled out Facebook Lite as a standalone, native app designed for lower end Android devices on spotty network connections to give people...
South Africa may celebrate National Women's Day on 8 August each year, but on 8 March the globe celebrates International Women's Day. "In 2017, International Women’s Day was the #1 most talked-about moment of the year," Facebook wrote in a post. "It was a moment that rallied the world around empowering women, and that was just the beginning of mounting energy for women’s movements that shows no signs of slowing down in 2018." Today, Facebook released some interesting stats about women on its social network and the impact International Women's Day has had on the site. According to the company, more than 40%...
Facebook's Messenger Lite app -- a stripped down, bloat-free version of the eponymous chat app -- now has video calling. Messenger Lite is the social network's attempt to penetrate the low-network speed, budget smartphone bracket by stripping the Messenger experience to its core. Features like Facebook Stories (formerly Messenger Day) is not available in the app, but it also lacked other useful features like video calling when it launched last year. However, that's set to change. "In 2017, there were 17-billion video chats in Messenger, twice as many video chats compared to 2016," Facebook explains in an update, suggesting that video is one...
The once mighty smartphone and tech giant BlackBerry is suing Facebook's Instagram and WhatsApp for allegedly copying features which first appeared on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Although BBM is no longer developed by BlackBerry, the company nonetheless saw it fit to protect "shareholder assets and intellectual property", a company spokesperson told Reuters. More than 2.1-million people still use BBM in South Africa, BBM CEO Matthew Talbot told Memeburn in a May 2017 interview. According to BlackBerry, Facebook is "using a number of the innovative security, user interface, and functionality enhancing features" within both Instagram and WhatsApp. There are seven patents listed within the filing....
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