Items tagged with Facebook
A new website sponsored by Ubisoft as part of its advertising campaign for the upcoming hacking-themed game Watch Dogs isn't just a plug for the title -- it's a chilling example of exactly how easy it is for companies to mine your data. While I'm normally averse to giving any application or service access to my...
Read more...
Facebook isn't afraid to make a splash, hence the decision back in February of this year to scoop up WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock options. It remains Facebook's largest transaction to date, though it could prove a brilliant move in the long run, especially as WhatsApp keeps attracting more users. As of...
Read more...
Facebook has long been a major competitor to Google from many different respects, and now, things are set to heat up even more. It's being rumored that at the company's F8 conference to be held later this month, the veil will be taken off of its mobile ad network. This is something that's been rumored for a long time...
Read more...
Some might consider it to be a major breach of privacy, but Facebook sees it as a major feature. With "Nearby Friends", the Facebook mobile app will be able to tell you if any of your contacts are - as you'd expect - nearby. This feature was first rumored just over a year ago, and at the time, many were up-in-arms -...
Read more...
There’s a new battlefront in the tech field, it involves air space and the Internet, and it’s an exciting front. Google and Facebook are forerunners here, and the former just snapped up drone maker Titan Aerospace, which the latter was reportedly interested in buying recently. Facebook ended up with drone...
Read more...
Like a scorned ex-lover, the U.S. government might be very interested in your Facebook activity these days. According to a new transparency report published by Facebook, Uncle Sam and his merry band of freedom fighters asked the world's largest social network to provide information on 18,715 user accounts between July...
Read more...
Chances are, you’ve noticed a gradual uptick in the amount of spam in your Facebook Newsfeed. You know the stuff--"like-baiting", spammy links to trick you into clicking on a junk website, and even seeing the content over and over again--and Facebook is trying to get rid of it. “A smaller set of publishers who are frequently and...
Read more...
WhatsApp just refuses to work with pedestrian numbers. Take for example its sale price to Facebook, which is snatching up the instant messaging service for $19 billion. That's a pretty big number, though not as high as the new record the service set in daily messages sent and received, which totaled 64 billion...
Read more...
This isn’t about cool virtual reality games anymore. When the news first broke of Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR, the knee-jerk reaction from many fans of the Oculus Rift was to feel betrayed that this grassroots tech company, funded in part by its individual supporters, was going to be...
Read more...
We’d bet that when Mark Zuckerberg drunkenly dashed off the original Facebook precursor in his dorm room, he never imagined that within a decade he’d be actively trying to connect two-thirds of the world to the Internet and working with NASA to do so, but that is indeed what has transpired. Zuckerberg...
Read more...
Facebook isn't afraid to make big acquisitions. Lest anyone need reminding of that, the social networking service dropped a bombshell on Oculus VR fans by announcing yesterday it had acquired the technology for $2 billion. That's just one example of Facebook's willingness to drop big cash on startups. In April 2012...
Read more...
Facebook is snapping up Oculus VR, maker of the hotly-anticipated Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming headset. For those immediately worried that Facebook will ruin Oculus Rift, fear not: Mark Zuckerberg assured the world in a post that not only will Facebook be accelerating the Oculus Rift gaming platform, it will be leveraging Oculus VR’s...
Read more...
Facebook has endeavored to make coding a more efficient process by developing a coding language called Hack. Facebook has been using Hack internally for quite some time, and now the company is open sourcing the tool for anyone to use. “Hack is a programming language for HHVM that interoperates seamlessly with PHP,” reads the “Hack...
Read more...
The video ads that Facebook began testing back in December are coming. The social network announced that starting today, a “select group of advertisers” will be able to post video ads that will appear in your Newsfeed and last up to 15 seconds. Like the other videos that you see in your Newsfeed, these video ads will autoplay silently...
Read more...
If your company has any sort of web presence, you’re on Facebook, and the company is rolling out changes to its official Pages that are designed to simultaneously make it easier for consumers to find the info they’re looking for and make Page management easier for businesses. The new look features all your Page’s posts just...
Read more...
Facebook’s blockbuster $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp has raised a lot of questions--such as “Why?”--but among those unanswered queries is a concern that Facebook will collect user data for advertising purposes, which some privacy groups argue cuts against expectations that WhatsApp users...
Read more...
Facebook, and every other social network and website where people virtually congregate and communicate, has a delicate balancing act of allowing as much freedom as possible while also ensuring that the environment is a safe and legal one. Facebook is taking a step further in the “legal and safe” direction...
Read more...
If you thought Mark Zuckerberg and company were out of their minds to approve a $19 billion (with a "B") acquisition of WhatsApp, an instant messaging service, you're not alone. Sitting on the other side of the social networking aisle is Google, which knows a thing or two about spending crazy amounts of money on...
Read more...
For the most part, we're taught from a young age to try and work well with others. Sharing, caring, and not hogging all of the spotlight is generally in one's best interest. So much for that. Yahoo has announced that it will cease letting users login to various services (including its popular Fantasy Football and...
Read more...
You have to hand it to Mark Zuckerberg: He is not screwing around when it comes to his ambitious Internet.org venture to connect the entire world to the Internet, at least if the rumors are true that Facebook is going to buy drone maker Titan Aerospace for $60 million. Titan Aerospace makes unmanned aerial vehicles...
Read more...
Oh, so that’s why. Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of mobile messaging service WhatsApp was big news, primarily as it left many of us wondering why exactly the company would spend such an unbelievable sum of money on it. After a speech at MWC in which WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum stated that WhatsApp will soon...
Read more...
One has to wonder if Facebook is feeling any buyer’s remorse, as the messaging service the company just dropped $19 billion to acquire experienced an outage on Saturday, according to reports. WhatsApp didn’t provide much in the way of details beyond a pair of tweets that acknowledged the outage and then...
Read more...