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| Facebook Logo |
With the latest version of Home, the first thing you'll see when you wake up your phone is your lock screen featuring a background you choose. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see the time, date, and weather.
Facebook on Thursday posted a YouTube video showing off all the new features. From your lock screen, you can swipe to the right to view featured Facebook posts and press and hold on a photo to zoom out or double tap to like it.
"Having control over what you see in Home is important, so we've made it easy for you to personalize your experience," Facebook software engineer Jenny Yuen said in the video.
From your lock screen, press the vertical "…" button to access Settings, where you can choose which apps you want to connect to Cover Feed, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Flickr. After doing so, you'll see posts from those apps in your Cover Feed.
From the Settings menu, you can also personalize your wallpaper with Facebook photos you have taken, photos of just your close friends, or photos of all friends. When you're browsing through photos you can quickly hide images you don't want to see with same vertical "…" button.
Grab the latest version of Facebook Home from Google Play.
Via : PCMag
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Facebook’s taking on an unlikely target: YouTube.
The social network is not planning to become a video Website, but a leaked pitch deck published by TechCrunch indicates that Facebook would like to be advertisers’ go-to for mobile video ad spend. The presentation, “Facebook for Business: Video on Facebook,” delves into the stats that bolster its claim.
What to Do:Use Facebook with other ad campaigns to maximize effectiveness. Consider Facebook especially when targeting millennials. Compare analytics from Facebook and YouTube campaigns to determine best practices for different demographics and products.
Why Facebook? Three reasons: First, changing consumer behavior means that marketers should “be where people are. Secondly, it allows them to “reach all of the people who matter to you.” Finally, Facebook’s News Feed is “the most engaging digital real estate.”
Facebook claims its ads are 60 percent more accurately targeted than the competition.
The first element, changing consumer behavior, refers to the fact that television is “no longer a guaranteed audience.” According to eMarketer, people will spend more time on digital media than on TV in 2013. Nielsen, which has long released the TV ratings that advertisers depend upon for media buys, recently announced that it would incorporate Twitter messages to create a new metric for rating TV shows based on social engagement.
That digital media includes Facebook. The company reports that people check their phone 100 times a day, and Facebook 10 to 15 times each day. Facebook and Instagram make up 21 percent of total time spent on mobile. In general, eMarketer reports that more than 28 percent of time spent online or on a smartphone is spent on social networking. Social networking ad spending, which was 8.5 percent of total U.S. ad spend in 2012, is projected to hit 12.2 percent by 2015. Digital ad spending in general, which will be $9.5 billion in 2013, is expected to reach $13.8 billion by 2017.
A second element, “targeted reach,” is basically a testament to the 179 million people who use Facebook each month. Per day, it’s 128 million people, 101 million of which are on mobile. Television, according to Nielsen ratings, reaches less people ages 18 to 24 each day than Facebook does. Further, Facebook claims that it can deliver “incremental reach” above TV, increasing its reach primarily among 25- to 34-year-olds, and especially during the day, when it increases reach 125 to 160 percent.
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| There have been concerns over the rise in the number of cases of trolling on Twitter |
Twitter said it was reverting to old rules, under which users are not able to follow an account once blocked.
Blocking is used by people to stop trolls and rude online commentators from interacting with them.
"We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users - we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe," Michael Sippey, Twitter's vice-president of product, said in a blogpost.
"Any blocks you had previously instituted are still in effect."
Source : BBC News
Snowden's revelations have included alleged wiretapping, the storage of phone call records illegally, fibre-optic cable infiltration used to monitor communication on an international scale, and the use of malware to monitor computer networks by the U.S. agency.
According to the latest document leak, the NSA is gathering close to 5 billion records a day on cellular devices worldwide. The Washington Post says large amounts of domestic data is "incidentally" recorded, which allows the agency to track millions of people worldwide based on how and where mobile devices are used.
On the alliance's website, an open letter to President Obama and Congress signed by the firms acknowledges that governments have "a duty to protect their citizens," but argues that Snowden's information leaks over the practices of the NSA and U.S. government in wholesale spying have highlighted "the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the revelations show a "real need for greater disclosure and new limits on how governments collect information." Brad Smith, Executive Vice President of Legal & Corporate Affairs at Microsoft said that "surveillance should address specific, suspicious targets under defined legal process rather than bulk collection of Internet communications."
Marissa Meyer, CEO of Yahoo, said "recent revelations about government surveillance activities have shaken the trust of our users, and it is time for the United States government to act to restore the confidence of citizens around the world." Google CEO and chairman Larry Page commented that user data security was "critical" for firms, but this has been "undermined by the apparent wholesale collection of data, in secret and without independent oversight, by many governments around the world."
"The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual -- rights that are enshrined in our Constitution," the letter states. "This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It's time for a change."
The U.S. President agrees to an extent. During a recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball, Obama said that he plans to "propose some self-restraint on the NSA," and push for "some reforms that that can give people more confidence." At the interview, Obama said:
"All of us spend more and more of our lives in cyberspace. We've got to be in there in some way to protect the American people, even as we're making sure the government doesn't abuse it. The Snowden exposures have identified some areas of legitimate concern, but some of it has also been highly sensationalized.The company alliance states that they are all taking steps to keep user data secure, including the deployment of encryption technology to scupper "unauthorized surveillance on our networks," and plan to push back government requests to ensure they are both legal and reasonable.
The people at the NSA generally are looking out for the safety of the American people. They are not interested in reading your emails or text messages, and that's not something that's done."
Source : ZDNet
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| People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo |
Twitter Inc is tying up with a Singapore-based startup to make its 140-character messaging service available to users in emerging markets who have entry-level mobile phones which cannot access the Internet.
U2opia Mobile, which has a similar tie-up with Facebook Inc, will launch its Twitter service in the first quarter of next year, Chief Executive and Co-founder Sumesh Menon told Reuters.
Users will need to dial a simple code to get a feed of the popular trending topics on Twitter, he said.
More than 11 million people use U2opia's Fonetwish service, which helps access Facebookand Google Talk on mobile without a data connection.
Twitter, which boasts of about 230 million users, held a successful initial public offering last month that valued the company at around $25 billion.
U2opia uses a telecom protocol named USSD, or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, which does not allow viewing of pictures, videos or other graphics.
"USSD as a vehicle for Twitter is almost hand in glove because Twitter has by design a character limit, it's a very text-driven social network," Menon said.
Eight out of 10 people in emerging markets are still not accessing data on their phone, he said.
U2opia, which is present in 30 countries in seven international languages, will localize the Twitter feed according to the location of the user.
"So somebody in Paraguay would definitely get content that would be very very localized to that market vis a vis somebody sitting in Mumbai or Bangalore," he said.
The company, whose biggest markets are Africa and South America, partners with telecom carriers such as Telenor, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel Ltd. U2opia usually gets 30 to 40 percent of what users pay its telecom partners to access Fonetwish.
"For a lot of end users in the emerging markets, it's going to be their first Twitter experience," Menon said.
Source : Reuters
Image Credit : REUTERS/KACPER PEMPEL
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| Massive hack stolen 2 million Facebook, Gmail and Twitter passwords |
Hackers have stolen usernames and passwords for nearly two million accounts at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and others, according to a report released this week.
The massive data breach was a result of keylogging software maliciously installed on an untold number of computers around the world, researchers at cybersecurity firm Trustwave said. The virus was capturing log-in credentials for key websites over the past month and sending those usernames and passwords to a server controlled by the hackers.On Nov. 24, Trustwave researchers tracked that server, located in the Netherlands. They discovered compromised credentials for more than 93,000 websites, including:
- 318,000 Facebook accounts
- 70,000 Gmail, Google+ and YouTube accounts
- 60,000 Yahoo accounts
- 22,000 Twitter accounts
- 9,000 Odnoklassniki accounts (a Russian social network)
- 8,000 ADP accounts (ADP says it counted 2,400)
- 8,000 LinkedIn accounts
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| Topsy specialises in plumbing Twitter data to track user sentiment towards brands like Apple |
Apple has bought social media data analytics firm, Topsy Labs, which specialises in using data from Twitter to track customer sentiment.
Topsy is one of the few firms to have access to Twitter's entire data stream.
It has recently created a searchable database of all tweets sent - more than 400 billion - since Twitter's launch.
Apple did not say how much it paid for the firm, but the Wall Street Journal which first reported the story put the figure at around $200m (£122m).
Topsy competes with firms like DataSift and Gnip to figure out who is influential on Twitter, what terms are trending, and the impact of specific Twitter campaigns.
It is Apple's second acquisition in recent weeks.
Last month, it announced it had bought Israeli firm PrimeSense, which specialises in making 3-D motion detection technology.
Surprise move?
As it confirmed the latest deal, an Apple spokesperson declined to give details of the firm's plans with Topsy.
"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose," the spokesperson said.
However, some analysts said Apple could look to use the data analytics for a variety of purposes, not least a better placement of its products across social media.
"There are millions of people sharing their thoughts on platforms such as Twitter on any given day," Sanjana Chappalli, Asia-Pac head of LEWIS Pulse, a firm specialising in digital marketing services, told the BBC.
"For companies to be able to understand what is popular with these users and what they are interested in, and then use it to their advantage, they need to filter the content and understand it.
"Topsy gives Apple the tools to do just that," she explained.
Manoj Menon, managing director as consulting firm Frost & Sullivan added: "Brands across the world are looking at ways to use the time spent by customers on social media to enhance their brands, and Apple is no different".
Personalised search
At the same time, companies operating internet search engines have also been looking to tap into the social media sector to try and offer more personalised search results to users.
"They are looking at what your friends are commenting on or tweeting about and then giving you similar recommendations when you look for information online," said Ms Chappalli.
She added that search engines such as Google and Bing have been moving in that direction for some time.
"Apple, with its Safari web browser on all its devices, could do with such an analytics capability provided by Topsy to achieve that," she added.
At the same time, some analysts suggested that Apple could also use Topsy's technology to its own data, such as information from the App Store.
"Apple may also be able to provide better user experience to customers by integration of analytical capability to its products and services," said Mr Menon.
Source : BBC News
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| Click on a link and Facebook may suggest a few more articles for you to check out. |
Facebook said Monday that it will start showing members more links to news articles when they visit the social-networking site, especially when they do so from their smartphones. The news-focused alternation marks yet another change to the formula that Facebook uses to pick the content that shows up in the News Feed.
With the adjustment, the social network will attempt to surface more of what it calls "high quality content," or links to newsy articles about current events, sports, or interests. Should a person click on a link to an article, he or she may also find three related articles tacked on to the origin News Feed post, as pictured.
We've noticed that people enjoy seeing articles on Facebook, and so we're now paying closer attention to what makes for high quality content, and how often articles are clicked on from News Feed on mobile," Facebook Engineering Manager Varun Kacholia and Software Engineer Minwen Ji wrote on the company's blog.
Source : CNET
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