Items tagged with Social Network
Facebook is approaching 3 billion monthly active users (up from 2 billion in 2017), which is more than the combined population of China (~1.4 billion), the United States (~331 million), and the United Kingdom (~68 billion), to put that figure into perspective. Its massive footprint in the social media space underscores why topics like privacy and security are so important. As it pertains to the latter, Facebook has a few things planned to make its platform more secure in 2021. The importance of account security extend far beyond the inconvenience of having someone breach your account, only to have you reset your password to lock them out. We now live in an era where fake news can have real world...
Read more...
The day of reckoning has arrived for the Google+ social network. Like scores of Google apps and services that have come before it, Google+ never quite achieved the critical success and adoption as originally envisioned. In the case of Google+, a 2018 security breach simply escalated the inevitable. As outlined in an announcement in late January, Google+ account deletions begin today. According to Google, all of your comments and pages will be deleted, and your account will simply vanish into that big digital “cloud” in the sky. Google had high hopes for Google+ when it launched in 2011 as a counter to the incredibly popular (at the time, and still to this day)...
Read more...
Facebook has found itself facing the ire or many users and even the federal government with a potentially record-breaking FTC fine coming for the social network over privacy violations. Facebook also found itself accused of using the viral Facebook 10-year challenge to feed its AI, something it denies. A new report is making the rounds that Facebook is working on something new to woo younger crowds that flock to the web just for laughs. A new meme service called LOL is reportedly in the works as an attempt to reach teens and lure them to the social network. The social media giant has faced an increasingly difficult time luring in younger users who instead turn to alternatives like Instagram....
Read more...
Instagram wants to eliminate bullying on its platform and has announced new tools to do so. The service already has tools that allow people to report bullying, and when reported, the content is removed from the network; the new tool that Instagram is rolling out brings a way to detect bullying in photos. Instagram's new head, Adam Mosseri, says that most of the photos on the network are positive and meant to bring people joy, but on occasion, a photo is shared that is unkind or unwelcome. Instagram is using machine learning technology to detect bullying in photos and captions on photos proactively, and then send the content to the Community Operations team to review. Mosseri says that this change...
Read more...
Facebook, the largest social network on the planet, has been criticized for not doing a better job at thwarting fake news. That criticism is unlikely to subside Facebook's Safety Check feature altered users in Bangkok to an "explosion" in the Thai capital that turned out to be nothing more than fireworks. However, the spread of fake news and bad information led Facebook astray on this one.A protestor on Tuesday threw firecrackers at a government building in Bangkok. The incident triggered Facebook's Safety Check feature at around 9:00 PM local time, which in turn created a page titled "The Explosion in Bangkok, Thailand." People in the area started marking themselves as safe so that friends and...
Read more...
More high ranking officials are leaving Twitter to pursue other opportunities. The latest to jump ship is Twitter CTO Adam Messinger, a five-year veteran at the microblogging company who spent the last four years in the role he is now abandoning. Messinger announced his decision to leave Twitter in a tweet in which he thanked the company's co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. Twitter VP of product Josh McFarland has also decided to leave the company. He will remain in his role until the end of the first quarter, then step into a full-time role with Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley that primarily invests in startup companies and growth stage ventures that operate in...
Read more...
It looks like our would-be robot overlords aren't quite up to the task of running things all by themselves. In what could be considered a test run, Facebook recently announced less human intervention and more reliance on a computer algorithm to its Trending topics feature, a decision it made following a report alleging that its team of news editors had been suppressing stories that would be of interest to a conservative audience. That's fine and dandy, except the algorithm used its newfound power to promote a fake news store about Well, less than a week after slapping the algorithm on the backside and letting it run free, it promoted a false story about Megyn Kelly, a high profile journalist...
Read more...
Two years ago Mark Zuckerberg and the gang introduced an advertising platform called Facebook Audience Network. It was designed to help publishers and developers support their services through targeted ads, which are ads that are determined to be relevant and of interest to the person viewing them. Up until now the Facebook Audience Network was used only to show ads to people with Facebook accounts who visit specific websites and apps, but now they'll follow you across the web. The Facebook Audience Network is also expanding to include those who don't use or aren't connected to Facebook. Through the use of browser cookies, integrated Like buttons, and various plug-ins on non-Facebook portals,...
Read more...
It's difficult enough trying to decipher simple text messages—it's tough to account for tone and sarcasm—but when you throw emoji into the mix, it takes things to a whole new level. Nevertheless, it's the online language of the day, and one middle school student could end up paying a hefty price for posting the wrong combination of emojis to Instagram. The 12-year-old student from Fairfax, Virginia, is being charged with threatening her school after local law officials said she posted a message on Instagram containing emojis of a gun, bomb, and knife. Part of her message also used the world "killing" and "meet me in the library," which ultimately prompted an investigation once the school found...
Read more...
As any parent of a newborn can attest, the overwhelming desire is to be home with your newly minted version 2.0 (or 3.0 or 4.0, etc.), not toiling away at work staring at the clock in hopes of making it speed up. Some companies are keenly aware of this, like Facebook, which just extended its parental leave policy for to cover all full-time employees, daddies included Both moms and dads, including ones in same sex relationships, can take a generous four months of paid time off to be at home with their newborn child, if they're a full-time employee at Facebook. It's a global policy -- it doesn't matter where the employee lives. "This expanded benefit primarily affects new fathers and people in...
Read more...
There's too much fuzzy math involved in figuring out exactly how many people are on Google+, but whatever the actual figure is, Google would like it to be higher. To help achieve that goal, Google is giving its social network a total overhaul, one that will put the focus squarely on two distinct features, Communities and Collections. "Today, we’re starting to introduce a fully redesigned Google+ that puts Communities and Collections front and center," Google stated in a blog post. "Now focused around interests, the new Google+ is much simpler. And it’s more mobile-friendly—we’ve rebuilt it across web, Android and iOS so that you’ll have a fast and consistent experience whether you are on a big...
Read more...
In what Mark Zuckerberg described as a "good quarter," Facebook reported $4.5 billion in revenue during the three month period leading up to September 30, 2015, up from $3.2 billion in the same quarter a year prior. That's a hefty jump and it led to the world's largest social playground posting a profit of $896 million, up from $806 million a year ago. "We had a good quarter and got a lot done," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. Some would call that an excellent quarter, one that was propped up by advertising dollars. Almost all of the revenue Facebook generated came from ads -- just shy of $4.3 billion. That represents an impressive 45 percent year-over-year jump from the $2.96...
Read more...
Ever wonder why some stories show up on your Facebook News Feed while others get buried beneath the pile? It largely has to do with user engagement. When you like, comment on, or share a post, Facebook's algorithm takes note and posts more of that type of content on top of your News Feed. The downside to that approach is that it doesn't into consideration stories of interest that you didn't interact with, and to address that, Facebook is making a change. Going forward, the algorithm will also take note of how much time you spent on a story. It stands to reason that if you consistently spend more time reading about motorcycle stories or games, then you have an interest in those subjects. However,...
Read more...
Shares of Twitter initially rose 7 percent in after hours trading after it was announced that its CEO Dick Costolo had decided to step down, a decision that will go into effect less than three weeks from now (July 1, 2015). Twitter co-founder and chairman of the board Jack Dorsey will step into Costolo's shoes as interim CEO while the microblogging service searches for a permanent replacement."I am tremendously proud of the Twitter team and all that the team has accomplished together during my six years with the company. We have great leaders who work well together and a clear strategy that informs our objectives and priorities," Costolo said. "There is no one better than Jack Dorsey to lead...
Read more...
Social networks are no longer solely about communicating with friends and family, they're also platforms for digesting news. You can even subscribe to daily news feeds from Facebook to help stay current on what's happening around the world. However, as we increasingly turn to social networks for news and civic discussions, are we also creating so-called "echo chambers" in which we're only seeing information from people who share the same views as us? Facebook says no. The world's largest social playground conducted research in hopes of answering that very question, and one of the things it found, generally speaking, we have Facebook friends who claim opposing political ideologies, and the content...
Read more...
In an effort to ensure that the content that matters to you most reaches your eyeballs before all else, Facebook is tweaking things on the backend with three updates, all of which are focused delivering a better News Feed and social networking experience. As such, one of the updates will give priority to the things posted directly by your friends and family.When your best friend Phil or Aunt Mabel post a photo, video, status update, or link, it'll appear higher up in your News Feed so that you're less likely to miss it. This means that pages you follow, whether they're businesses that you 'Liked' or celebrities you stalk, will appear lower on your News Feed. Don't worry, you'll still see them,...
Read more...
Twitter CEO Disk Costolo admitted about his microblogging service that "we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years," which he followed up with a vow to be more aggressive in eliminating that kind of unwanted behavior. Taking a step towards fulfilling that promise, Twitter has made some changes to its violent threats policy.Prior to the policy change, the prohibition on violent threats was limited "direct, specific threats of violence against others." It's now been reworded to include "threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others," which Twitter says better describes the range of prohibited content and reflects its original...
Read more...
Until the grim reaper decides to retire, death will remain the one thing that no living creature can avoid. It's not a comfortable subject for most, though once you accept it's going to happen, you can make preparations, both to make things easier on your loved ones, and in the case of Facebook, to preserve your legacy in the online world. How so? By designation someone as your "Legacy Contact." This is a new feature of Facebook in which people can designate a family member or friend to manage their account once they've gone to the other side. Once Facebook is aware of their passing, it will memorialize their account and hand the reins to their legacy contact. That person won't be able to post...
Read more...
It's a good thing Facebook was only out of commission for an hour, otherwise can you imagine the uproar that would have erupted from the hundreds of millions of daily active users who would have to find some place else to post their pictures of dinner or political rants? Instagram wasn't an option, because that was also down -- both self inflicted wounds, Facebook says. "Earlier today many people had trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100 percent for everyone," Facebook told USA Today....
Read more...
Try as they might, no social network has been able to grow as large as Facebook in the U.S. or threaten its market share, at least not yet. It's especially popular among adults -- based on the latest data provided by Pew Internet, 58 percent of the American adult population use Facebook, which is more than double its next closest competitor. That would be LinkedIn, considered a social network for professionals, which has captured 23 percent of the adult audience. After that, it's Pinterest (22 percent), Instagram (21 percent), and Twitter (19 percent), with the term "adult" being used to describe anyone who is at least 18 years old. Image Source: Flickr...
Read more...
The Internet at large has proved a breeding ground for hoaxes, and the platform of choice these days appears to be Facebook. Makes sense, considering it's audience of 864 million daily active users, and 1.35 billion if tallying active users on a monthly basis. So, if you've used Facebook recently, then you've probably seen friends and family members posting messages forbidding the social networking site from using their posts and pictures in any way without their permission, followed by a warning that you should copy and paste the post to your wall, too. Only you shouldn't, because all it does is alert people that know better that you fell for a hoax.Here's the thing, everyone who signs up with...
Read more...
The rise in popularity of instant messaging apps and photo sharing programs like Snapchat that have built-in text messaging features may be contributing to a mini-exodus of teens from Facebook. Based on figures in a report released by Frank N. Magid Associates Inc., 88 percent of social media using teens between the ages of 13-17 years old spend time on Facebook, down from 94 percent in 2013 and 95 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, Twitter and messaging applications have seen a rise in popularity among the same demographic during the same time period, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. Though to put that in perspective, Twitter usage among 13-17 year olds is 48 percent, still well below that of Facebook....
Read more...
