Big news for footballing fans and social media users across the Indian subcontinent this week. Facebook will broadcast every Spanish La Liga football match during the 2018/19 season for free across eight Asian countries. The league features some of world football's most popular players, including Barcelona's Lionel Messi and Real Madrid's Sergio Ramos. For La Liga, the deal will broaden the reach of the league across Asia with minimal effort. "One of our goals for the last two years has been to offer content to the widest audience possible, so partnering with free platforms like Facebook, which has 270-million users in India, is...
Facebook's really worried that Pages with mass followings will possibly fall into the hands of a nefarious super villain. Last week, the social network outlined plans to enforce tighter security for those who admin Facebook Pages with a "large audience". The company didn't clarify how many followers or likes constitute a large audience. Users who manage these pages will be forced to complete "an authorisation process in order to continue to post". This includes enabling two-factor authentication, and confirm their location. This is all in a bid to make it more difficult for trolls to gain unauthorised access to popular Pages. Facebook admins who...
If you love shopping online, especially for cosmetics, but always wanted to try things on before making that risky purchase -- it may soon be possible. Cosmetics brand L’Oreal, with the aid of its recently-acquired AR company ModiFace, has teamed up with Facebook to create augmented reality (AR) testing tool to help online consumers make informed decisions about their make-up. For L’Oreal, it's a play that opens up its product to various social channels, notably Instagram. "We are at that magical moment when technologies have matured enough and consumer appetite for using them is growing everywhere. We are very excited about that...
Instagram and Facebook have released new activity tools that will help you understand and control the amount of time you spend using their apps. You will soon be able to access an activity dashboard on both platforms, where you will find daily limit and reminder tools too. These tools will allow you to see how much time you spend per day, per device, and on the apps, respectively. You can also limit your time, or your push notifications, and even set daily reminders for yourself to assist with time management. You can access these new features in your “settings”. On Instagram the features...
Cell C this week announced tweaks to its WhatsApp data bundles -- now dubbed ShoutOut bundles -- which previously only allowed access to the social chat app. The tweaks come in two forms: the company now allows users to also access Facebook with the bundles, while changes to the data bundle size and price has also been announced. The company's offering three bundles, namely: 80MB with 1 day access for R4 1200MB with 30 day access for R17 4GB with 30 days access for R49 Notably, that middle bundle was previously priced at R15 and offered 600MB. Cell C explains that its R4/80MB...
Not everyone can make it to Johannesburg's Wanderers cricket stadium to watch former US President Barack Obama deliver the 16th annual Mandela lecture, and that's where technology plugs the gap. Today's lecture will be broadcast live on Facebook from 2pm through the Nelson Mandela Foundation's page. "Members of the public who have not been able to secure a ticket to attend the Annual Lecture can watch the event via Facebook Live here at 2pm on Tuesday 17 July," reads a post on the page. Users who don't have a Facebook account but happen to have a set of virtual reality goggles can...
Facebook is pushing an alert to all users tomorrow, but before you freak out, don't worry, it's has nothing to do with your personal data this time around. Facebook users on Wednesday will receive a push alert from the social network to "take action" and follow in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela. The former South African president would've celebrated his 100th birthday on 18 July 2018, and the social network in particular wishes to inspire "its global community to reflect on Mandela's legacy of compassion, justice and care for the community", the company writes in a release. "Nelson Mandela dedicated his life...
Facebook Local is the social network's latest app feeding from its plethora of information. However, instead of allowing you to publish pictures of babies that your other half didn't want you posting, or lending data to Cambridge Analytica, Local lets you search for things to do in your vicinity. Facebook's events section has always seemed an excellent but underdeveloped section of the network, but this new app gives it its own space and chance to become something more than just an addon. Facebook Local is actually a rebranded version of its Events app. It was relaunched in November 2017, but this...
Cash-in-transit heists are no longer a Gauteng phenomenon judging by a dramatic morning on Cape Town's Flats. On Monday around 9pm along the city's busy Jakes Gerwel Drive a cash transit vehicle was attacked. Details are scant at this point, but the aftermath of the heist was clear: the vehicle's flank was torn apart, while cash bills were strewn across the rain-sodden road. Upon hearing the commotion, some onlookers got out their phones and recorded the incident. Clips then made their way onto Twitter and Facebook. Popular group @TrafficWC reposted one of these videos on Facebook which has garnered some 2600 views at...
Facebook today debuted its own game streaming portal dubbed Fb.gg, in a bit to compete with Microsoft's Mixer, Google's YouTube Gaming and Amazon's Twitch. The service is baked into the Facebook experience. You'll need to be logged in to begin streaming, but others' streams can be watched sans account. Beyond that, it pretty much does what every other video streaming service does: allow gamers to live stream a title of choice. At the moment, it seems Fortnite, Mobile Legends and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is among the top picks, appealing to the current battle royale and mobile gaming craze. For now, the experience is...
People are still falling for fake sites pretending to be Facebook, research from Kaspersky Labs suggests. In 2018 thus far, the Russian security company blocked "3.7 million attempts to visit fraudulent social network pages". Notably, 58.7% of these attacks were attempting to direct users to fake FB pages. That's a pretty substantial slice of the pie, considering that VKontakte -- Russia's version of Facebook -- was responsible for 20.8%, and LinkedIn 12.9%. "At the beginning of the year, Facebook was the most popular social networking brand for fraudsters to abuse, and Facebook pages were frequently faked by cybercriminals to try and steal...
Are you still taking personality tests on Facebook? Stop. Actually, throw your computer out the window and set it on fire, because you should really know better. After Cambridge Analytica's data reaping antics were exposed in March and Facebook shamed, you may have thought that your information was safe on the internet. But it's not. According to a new report by New Scientist, at least three million users have had "intimate" data about themselves, and their psychological state, shared online. According to the report, some six million people completed a questionnaire app dubbed myPersonality. Half offered to share the information with the...
Earlier this year and in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that a host of apps prior to the company's policy reforms in 2014 had access to users' data. He promised in a March 2018 post that the company will investigate these apps, and ban those that do not play nice with users' data. Today, the firm gave the internet an update on this audit currently underway. "The investigation process is in full swing, and it has two phases," revealed Ime Archibong, the company's VP of product partnerships. "First, a comprehensive review to identify every app that...
More than 60% of Facebook users in the United States seemingly don't care about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a new survey suggests. Reuters and Ipsos on Sunday released the results of a poll conducted in April querying US social media users' habits a month after the dodgy data revelations. Remarkably, it seems that Facebook experienced very little if any fallout from the news. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook and deleting your account Here’s what you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data siphoning fiasco. Read more... Of the 2194 respondents, 64% suggested that they still use Facebook at least once...
There's a good chance you've met someone new through Facebook, after all CEO Mark Zuckerberg always stated his primary goal is to connect people. But it seems that the company may be connecting the wrong type of people; namely ISIS and other extremists. According to a report by The Telegraph, researchers have discovered that Facebook's "suggested friends" feature -- a feature that's integral to growing the social network's web of relationships -- has introduced extremists to other extremists across some 96 countries. "Facebook, in their desire to connect as many people as possible have inadvertently created a system which helps connect extremists...
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