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06 Aug
8

More Competition in the World of Live-Streaming

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 8-6-2015Live-streaming is something that I have discussed before. Applications like Periscope and Meerkat, which allow users to live-stream video on Twitter, are more popular than ever. Thus, it shouldn’t be incredibly surprising that there are other groups that are interested in getting in on the live-streaming magic. A number of other applications and updates are being released that will allow live-streaming to become available to an even broader audience, with a variety of different nuances and options that make them stand out from their potential competitors.

It’s probably least surprising that Facebook has decided to jump into the business of live-streaming, although they are handling it quite a bit differently than the options that have been available on Twitter. Facebook has added live-streaming as a feature called ‘Live’ to Facebook Mentions, which is the app that allows celebrities to connect with their fans. Thus, the live-streaming function is not available to all Facebook users and is instead only offered to those who have Facebook Mentions accounts. Anyone following these celebrities on Facebook is able to like, comment on, or share these live-streaming videos. The ‘Live’ product manager has stated that this feature may be rolled out to other users in the future, once the company has received feedback from public figures and viewers.

Another type of live-streaming has appeared that’s more accessible for the average person. With Blab, a new app currently in beta, users sign in with their Twitter information and can join a live-streaming video chat of up to four people. Effectively, the app manages to operate as Meerkat or Periscope, only for groups of people. Users can watch the video chat and can mute any of the windows at their leisure. Blab is expected to make waves, in that it could be used for interviews, debates, and other purposes.

23 Jul
7

In the Future of Facebook: A Look Forward

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 7-23-2015As I’ve said many times before, it’s necessary and expected for social media to always be changing. That simply fits with the average attention span of the millennial generation and the overall user base of social media apps, who are always on the lookout for the next big thing. As the biggest social media platform, it’s always going to be important for Facebook to keep up with the times in order to stay relevant in a realm that’s always going to be introducing new types of competition from different angles. Currently, Facebook is working on a number of different major changes and ideas.

Businesses have been able to thrive with successful Facebook pages and Facebook’s next hope is that their users will be able to buy things directly from a business’s Facebook page, without even having to be redirected somewhere else. Facebook has been allowing users to connect their debit and credit cards to their accounts to make payments to other users for some time now. Apparently, the next step will be including a ‘Buy’ button for a number of retailers, which is something that they are currently working on testing. Another feature currently being tested is a ‘Watch Later’ button, which will allow users to save videos they find potentially interesting for later.

One of the most interesting recent developments is that Facebook is working on a personal assistant service that will be able to compete with Siri and Cortana. However, what separates their service – known as Moneypenny – from the others is that it won’t be a virtual assistant. Instead of being powered by computers, the intention is that Moneypenny will have a real human on the other end at all times. Unlike the other things that Facebook is testing, it is likely that Moneypenny may be quite a bit further away from completion, but it’s yet another interesting way that Facebook is trying to stay competitive.

09 Jul
6

Facebook Users Gain More Control over Their News Feeds

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 7-9-2015The newest way that Facebook has changed to provide users with a better experience is by making it easier to control what shows up in the News Feed. The updated version of the News Feed allows users to pick out which of their friends and acquaintances they’d like to see appear more in the News Feed. This feature will allow users to see all of the posts made by certain users. A Facebook user can select any number of their friends and no one but the initial user can see which friends have been chosen.

For a long time, Facebook’s News Feed has mostly been presented as part of an ‘algorithm’ that determines which posts you wanted to see more of based on your likes and interactions on Facebook. However, the people behind Facebook have recognized that this algorithm is far from perfect, which is why giving users a bit more direct control over what appears in their News Feed was a positive step forward for making Facebook more appealing to its users.

The News Feed changes are accessible from the ‘News Feed Preferences’ section of the Facebook app. This section now allows users to prioritize who they see first, unfollow other users to hide their posts, reconnect with those that have been unfollowed, and discover new pages. Though the new features are currently only available on the iOS platform, they are expected to be rolled out to the desktop and Android versions of Facebook in the coming weeks.

18 Jun
8

Facebook Launches Moments for Photo Sharing

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 6-18-2015With the amount of apps Facebook continues to launch, from Rooms to Messenger to Paper, it’s a surprise that we haven’t yet reached a point of Facebook app fatigue. Their most recent app is called Moments, which was launched earlier this week. The purpose of Moments is effectively to be able to easily share any photos that are stored in your phone, using facial recognition software to make private photo sharing even easier.

Moments operates by taking a look through the photos on your phone, checking to see if any of them have your friends’ faces in them. Using facial recognition allows you to easily send pictures of your friends to them without having to share those pictures publicly on your Facebook profile. Pictures can also be shared manually if the facial recognition software does not recognize someone. The primary focus of Moments is to be able to share photos with individuals or small groups of friends, as opposed to the entirety of your Facebook friend list.

There has already been some criticism targeted at Moments, however. Some don’t see why it is necessary to create yet another app to download, when it might be more useful to integrate these photo sharing features directly into Facebook. Others believe that it might be held back due to its unfamiliar sharing format and facial recognition software that leaves something to be desired. In any case, time will tell if Moments manages to flourish on its own or if the features will eventually get moved over to the main Facebook application.

11 Jun
8

Facebook Targeting Other Countries with Facebook Lite

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 6-11-2015After Facebook acquired WhatsApp at the beginning of last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain about how the acquisition of WhatsApp was going to be a step towards helping to connect people in the developing world, the same way that Facebook had been doing in more tech-savvy countries. He stated that his belief was that Facebook’s future would include reaching billions of mobile users and allowing them to connect with one another.

It appears that Facebook is now pushing forward in new ways to get other countries connected. Knowing that data plans are expensive and network connections are slow in many other countries, Facebook has decided to launch a low-resolution, stripped-down version of itself called Facebook Lite. It’s specifically designed to help the developing world get involved with social media. In regards to features, Facebook Lite only offers a bare-bones experience, but this allows the application to work better in other countries, allowing Facebook to tap into untapped markets for social media.

Facebook Lite launched in Asia last week, but the app is expected to eventually make its way to parts of Africa, Europe, and Latin America. The app has been created to take up a small amount of space on a phone, use as little data as possible, and load quickly even when being used on 2G mobile connections. Overall, the app appears like it will be a great way for users in other countries to get connected through Facebook.

04 Jun
8

Facebook Finally Comes Around to Animated GIF Support

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 6-4-2015In the early days of Facebook, people were able to post animated GIFs as they pleased. However, the ability to share these types of images was removed from the social network nearly a decade ago. It is likely that they were removed because they were either too distracting or their presence slowed the site down. In any case, most other social networks have allowed animated GIFs for quite some time now and Facebook is finally rejoining them by allowing these types of images to be shared once again.

People have been clearly interested in sharing animated GIFs on Facebook for a while now. A couple of years ago, a website called Giphy (which specializes in sharing enormous amounts of animated GIFs) created a workaround that would allow people to embed animated GIFs on Facebook. The effort was promptly shut down by Facebook in an effort to keep the site from being cluttered and chaotic, but it seems that Facebook has changed their mind.

There are a few guidelines that will have to be followed with Facebook’s new support of animated GIFs. Specifically, users will not be able to upload them directly onto their Facebook page. Instead, animated GIFs only work when they have been embedded so that they are linking to an outside source. The GIFs also have to end in ‘.gif’ rather than appearing in any other type of link. Currently, the feature works on the website and on the mobile app, though GIFs only work on personal profiles and not brand pages. Though the feature has not yet been rolled out to all users, it should be available to everyone over the coming days.

21 May
8

The Social Networks and Apps You Might Have Missed

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 5-21-2015When we talk about social networks and media, we usually focus on the heavy hitters like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Snapchat, and Instagram. However, there are many other players that are trying to make a name for themselves in the game of social media. Some of them are mere clones of existing social networks, while others really aim to do something special in hopes of getting a chunk of the spotlight. Take Bindle, for instance. It’s a social media app that’s focused specifically on personal group chat, influenced by the chat rooms of old and newer social media. Its popularity seems to have arisen from its simplicity, leaving out all the fluff that many other group chat apps include.

Some newer social networking apps have a focus on anonymity, so that people can have online discussions without revealing their identity. Many of these apps have popped up, but the most interesting recent one would have to be Cloaq. While most anonymous social media apps focus on anonymously commenting on user-generated content, Cloaq actually allows you to comment on various news stories from all around the Internet without revealing any personal information. Of course, in order to be successful, Cloaq will need to have something in place to reduce potential abuse, which remains to be seen.

Yet another intriguing social network would be Nattch, which aims to purge itself from much of the nonsense and distraction that comes along with more popular social networks like Facebook. For instance, it hopes to provide its users with an ad-free interface as well as rejecting links to videos and articles that people have found on the Internet. Instead, Nattch hopes to encourage users to simply share information about their lives, which is similar to what Facebook aimed for when it first launched. All of these social networks are relatively new and could still prove to be rather successful, depending on how large of an audience each of them can pull in.

07 May
7

Checking Back in with Google Plus

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 5-7-2015It’s been a while since anyone has given much thought to Google Plus. Google’s attempt at a competitor to Facebook effectively crashed and burned, after not really providing users with anything that they didn’t already have from other existing social networks. It simply never offered anything that made people want to switch from one social network to the other. After Vic Gundotra, who focused largely on Google Plus during his tenure at Google, announced he was leaving the company last year, some news sources declared that Google Plus was effectively dead in the water.

However, Google has recently announced an overhaul of the Google Plus interface, which is drifting further away from a Facebook clone and actually seems to be emulating aspects of Pinterest. Google Plus’s newest feature is called the Collections tab, which allows users of Google Plus to group similar posts into sections, so that users can easily organize all of the things that they are interested in. These Collections can be shared publicly, privately, or with a specific group of people.

While Google Plus may have massively decreased in use, there were still plenty of people that were clinging to it. Roughly 6.6 million users made public posts in 2015, although that is only representative of 0.3 percent of all Google Plus accounts. However, Google was paying attention to what their loyal users were doing on the social network. These observations ultimately led to the launch of Collections, which is now available on the web and Android platforms and should be available for iOS in the near future.

16 Apr
8

What’s Facebook Letting Us Do Now?

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 4-16-2015The rate at which Facebook seems to be constantly growing and changing is truly astounding. It seems that rarely a week goes by without a new feature being rolled out by the social network. Over the course of the past couple of months, Facebook has released a number of new and interesting features, as well as separate applications that are intended to perform specific functions. One way that Facebook changed things up recently, for instance, is by allowing people to use Facebook Groups to sell things, in a way similar to Craigslist, but with less anonymity.

Another interesting thing that Facebook can now be used for is serving divorce papers via Facebook messages. In this situation, it’s not exactly a feature that was added by Facebook. It’s actually been a court ruling, which allows people to serve legal paperwork such as divorce papers via Facebook, depending on the circumstances. Whether or not this can be considered legal would have to be decided on a state-by-state basis, but New York has confirmed that it can be done.

Outside of the Facebook platform itself, Facebook has been launching some interesting apps that allow users to perform different functions. Riff is an app that allows friends to create collaborative videos by adding clips together; the videos that are created can be easily shared through Facebook and the contributors will automatically be tagged. Another app that Facebook just launched is called Scrapbook, which is effectively a way for children under the age of thirteen to have a Facebook presence, allowing parents to tag photos of their children. Facebook is currently looking into ways to allow a child’s Scrapbook to be upgraded to an official Facebook page once they turn thirteen.

09 Apr
8

Facebook Messenger Gets Standalone Web Platform

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | No comment

Picture 4-9-2015As I discussed last week, Facebook Messenger is going through some pretty big changes right now. With the addition of third-party support, Facebook is hoping to transform Facebook Messenger into its own platform. Yesterday, they extended this idea by launching Messenger.com, a dedicated web presence for Facebook Messenger, separating the messaging functions from the News Feed, notifications, and potentially other distracting information that usually might appear on Facebook.

Facebook users will still be able to send messages from Facebook.com as usual, but Messenger.com has been established as a chat website for those who may need to chat but don’t want to wind up endlessly clicking on the distracting social media content that can often present itself on Facebook. Currently, the features on Messenger.com are still somewhat limited. Users cannot yet send audio messages or send photos directly from their webcams, but it is likely that Messenger.com will continue to expand.

It’s also been confirmed that Messenger.com will allow users to interact via the third-party applications that were discussed last week. Though Messenger.com is only available to English-speaking users right now, Facebook plans to launch the platform internationally over the course of the next few weeks. Interestingly, Messenger.com does not presently feature any advertisements, but one can assume that this is likely to change in the future.

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