Items tagged with Facebook
Facebook is wading into treacherous waters. The social media giant started testing out an autoplay video feature earlier this year that would silently play videos as you scroll past them in your NewsFeed. That’s one thing is it’s videos from your friends or family, but it’s quite another when those...
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Instant messaging in some form or another has been around since the dawn of man and woman (slight exaggeration), though don't tell that to Instagram, which yesterday held a major press event to unveil Instagram Direct, its own take on sending messages to friends. While Instagram was super excited to add a feature...
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Computer programming may seem overly complex to learn, like learning a new spoken language, but as time has passed, it has become more inviting and easier to understand than ever. This is a fact that the folks behind Code.org, along with its sponsors, would like to get across. If coding for some reason sounds...
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Google has become infamous for its persons data-mining; it would love nothing more than to understand every inch of you. But while Google's been in the spotlight for this for a good while, I'd bet that the company would jump at the chance to feed off of Facebook's gathered information. Why? Because the best...
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Major tech firms are lobbying for more user privacy as it pertains to the U.S. government's practice of collecting sensitive data. In an open letter to President Barack Obama and Congress, eight technology companies said there's a need to "reform government surveillance" now that the balance has tipped too far in...
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Habitual complainers rejoice, Facebook may soon implement a "sympathize" button so that other users can send their virtual condolences. If you're like me, you probably loathe the idea of encouraging self-pity posts, and while a sympathize button will certainly lead to more of those, there are other scenarios where it...
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Here's a bit of news that's far from deserving of a "Giddyup!": Thanks to the work of a botnet called "Pony", hackers have gained access to credentials for over 2 million individual accounts. These accounts span the entire gamut: Facebook, Twitter, Google (Gmail), and even a payroll service provider - perhaps the most...
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The concept of Facebook is pretty great. At its best, Facebook is a fantastic tool for staying in touch with friends and family scattered all over the world, as well as reacquainting yourself with high school buddies and college cohorts. This is the beauty of Facebook as its most basic, and as you peel away layers...
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Facebook CFO David Ebersman shook things up when he casually mentioned in a recent earnings call that the social network was seeing a drop in daily use among teens, but it’s possible that the reason he was didn’t make a big deal about it is that there’s nothing to be alarmed about. That’s the...
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When the NSA forced several major tech companies including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo to cough up data on their users, one got the sense that it was a situation of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The first round of that battle went to the NSA because it had (some shadily-acquired) court documents...
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Snapchat's founders evidently have some big things planned for their startup, and it doesn't involve selling to Facebook for $1 billion. It takes some mighty big you-know-what to scoff at that kind of cash, especially when you're in your early twenties as co-founders Evan Spiegal (23 years old) and Bobby Murphy (25...
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Here's what isn't surprising: Facebook is trying to take over where the conventional text message left off. Here's what is surprising: that is has taken this long to get to this point. The tried-and-true phone number is a hangover technology from many generations ago, and it's actually quite unfortunate that it's...
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As I sit here writing this, I'm thinking, "Should I depressed that it's a newsworthy topic when Facebook changes its 'Like' button, or just accept that it's a sign of the times we live in?" I'm not sure of the answer, but as silly as it sounds, in this case, a revamped icon is kind of a big deal, and for a number of reasons. The first, of...
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The most surefire way to make teenagers disinterested in something is for their parents to adopt it, and it appears that Facebook is having just such a problem. Facebook has finally admitted that there has been a dip in teen usage--although the company hasn’t provided any numbers. This is a sharp turnaround from Facebook’s position...
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It's not unprecedented for mobile apps to receive billion dollar valuations. One need only look at the sum Facebook paid for Instagram, a mobile photo sharing apps that allows users to add filters to their photography. It's a simple app, but because of its widespread appeal, the developers earned a ginormous payday...
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Teenagers change friends almost as often as some of us change our underwear. Any parent who has ever raised one or is currently trying to understand their teen knows this as well as anyone and have seen first hand how a best friend one moment can become a bitter enemy the next. These fickle beings also change their...
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The problem is a simple one: There are images out there that should not be on Facebook, where they’re viewable by anyone aged 13 and up. However, Facebook has an extremely difficult job to do when it comes to deciding which and what type of images might fall into the “banned” category, and the issue...
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Early this morning, Facebook experienced an outage, leaving many users unable to post status updates, leave comments, upload pictures, and more. According to Downrightnow, the site hit a service disruption, and as of the last update at roughly 8:15am EST, there were still widespread problems. There have been a couple...
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If you're looking for the world's best boss, he may be at Facebook. But, of course, that all depends on your definition of "best." In Facebook's early days, when competition was fierce and Facebook was still proving itself, Mark Zuckerberg would occasionally order a "lockdown." As you may imagine, such a thing was...
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Love him or hate him, Mark Zuckerberg is undeniably a true early 21st century visionary, and Facebook has changed the world. Folks like Zuckerberg shoot first and ask questions later in the sense that they figure out how to implement some amazing idea and then worry about implications and other peoples’ opinions...
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Up to now, viewability of kids’ Facebook accounts was set by default to “Friends of Friends”; now, those aged 13-17 start out with their audience set to “Friends” by default. However, they can also make their posts public, and they can turn on “Follow” to let their posts show...
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If you’re an avid Facebook stalker, here’s some good news: Facebook is removing the feature that formerly let users prevent others from finding them by searching for their name in the Facebook search bar. If you’ve been successfully avoiding old classmates, a crazy ex, your boss, or just the general public on Facebook, you...
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