Stop pretending to be in Singapore on Instagram
If you were looking to juice your Instagram metrics, then changing your (digital) location as Singapore was a nifty shortcut. According to the Telegraph, the photo-sharing network’s algorithm was more likely to put you on the Explore page if you were in the country. Unfortunately, the Facebook-owned company has now spotted the problem and squashed it, so you’ll have to stop trying to pretend your bathroom selfies were taken on the island.
A few days back, Mic. spoke to various high-profile names on the service who found that they saw spikes in likes and comments when they lied about their location. According to one anonymous source, they would tag their images as Singapore, Singapore, or Sentosa, Singapore. That data would be left up for the first 12 hours before the creators would amend it back to its authentic locale.
Nobody’s sure as to what caused the bug in the first place, although there’s a theory that the company’s slow-rollout of its algorithm-based feeds caused it. We’ll probably never know for sure, but you can stop lying about where you are for popularity. Instead, you’ll have to go back to exaggerating every other facet of your lives on social media in the hope that people slam their hand on that heart button.
Source: Telegraph
Gear VR gets social with Oculus Rooms and Parties
A few months ago at Oculus’ annual developer conference, the company announced a couple of social VR features known simply as Parties and Rooms. Parties is basically built-in voice chat, while Rooms is a virtual hangout space. Today, those features are finally live, at least for the Gear VR; Rift users will have to wait until 2017. Combined, Parties and Rooms are part of Oculus’ continued efforts to prove that virtual reality can be used not just to play games, but also to connect people from around the world.
I had the opportunity to try out both features earlier this week in a short demo in San Francisco. Once I put the headset on and launched into the Oculus Home screen, the Parties interface appeared on the right. It looks very much like any other social chat app; you can see a list of your friends as well as who’s online at the time. You can also see the title of the game they’re playing, if any. To start chatting, tap on the Party tab, choose who you want to add and then hit “Start a Party.” If you’re invited to a party, joining it is also as simple as tapping a button. “Think of it like a phone call,” said Madhu Muthukumar, a product manager for Oculus. Right now you’re only able to chat with up to four people, though Oculus might increase that number in the future.
But while Parties is like making a phone call, Rooms is akin to inviting your buddies over. Once you have your Party all set up, maybe you want to “see” and interact with your friends instead of just hearing their voices. If that’s the case, you can join a Room right from the Parties interface. I was invited to a Room by Mike LeBeau, a product manager for Oculus who was in London at the time. As soon as I accepted, I was transported to a virtual living room of sorts. Before I knew it, I was hanging out with virtual avatars for both LeBeau and Muthukumar, and I, too, was an avatar.
The virtual Room is separated into a few different areas. In one you can change the appearance of your avatars; in another space you can watch videos together; the tabletop area is where you play simple board or card games; and there’s yet another space dedicated to just sitting around and chatting. In front of each avatar is a floating tablet of sorts, which essentially acts as your controls. You can also teleport from one area to another by selecting it with your gaze and tapping the headset’s touchpad.
What I found particularly interesting is that the virtual avatars moved around as they spoke. They would look directly at me as they were speaking to me, and their mouths moved in sync to what they were saying. LeBeau tells me that the avatar movement mimics what you’re doing with your own head, thanks to the accelerometers and gyroscopes in the phone. Similarly, the mouth movement is synced to the sound the software picks up from the microphone. It seems odd to say this, but just those simple head and mouth movements made me feel like we were right there in the room together, even though we were in completely separate locations.
Oculus has experimented with social experiences before, like Oculus Video where you can watch movies together. But Rooms and Parties is the next step. “We want you to feel like being in VR is sort of the same as being in real life,” said Muthukumar. “You can hang out, watch videos together, play games and talk with your friends.” Additionally, if you get tired of the virtual avatars, you can also have the entire Party leap into a multiplayer game together, as long as the title supports it.
Right now, Oculus’ social efforts are completely separate from the social VR experience we saw from Facebook, where you could “travel” to locations together and take virtual selfies with your pals. Still, that’s where Oculus also wants to be. “That’s the aspirational push-the-envelope of VR. It’s what we all hope it can be,” said Muthukumar. “We both [Facebook and Oculus] believe that VR will be best when people connect human experiences.” But in order to get there you have to take baby steps, which is what Rooms and Parties represent.
“It’s cool to ‘meet’ someone who’s literally all the way from somewhere else in the world,” he said. “We’re excited about it. We think there’s some early magic here.”
Facebook Messenger gets a new camera with special effects
Facebook definitely isn’t depending solely on Instagram to take on Snapchat. It’s introducing an upgraded camera in Facebook Messenger that promises to not only be simpler, but help you spruce up your shots with Snapchat-style effects. The camera is quicker to access wherever you are in the messaging app, and shooting video is just a matter of holding down the conspicuously-placed shutter button. And the effects? You can now add 3D masks and special effects, such as turning yourself into a holiday-appropriate reindeer or adding a prop. There’s also a new picker that helps you find “thousands” of art objects and effects.
This attempt to jazz up your conversations applies to text, too. If you tap the palette icon near the shutter, you can add art and stickers to your written words.
Both Android and iOS users should see the features arrive in Messenger today, although holiday-themed effects will have to wait until December 21st.
The additions are clearly meant as hedges against Snapchat’s colorful, goofy conversations, although that doesn’t appear to be the only goal. To some extent, this is a response to Apple Messages, Google Allo and other relatively straightforward chat apps introducing some fun-oriented features. Facebook Messenger isn’t strictly boring, but it’s easy to imagine chatters drifting toward the competition if they find conversations more exciting in those rival apps.
Source: Facebook
Instagram hits 600 million users as its growth speeds up
Instagram’s growth isn’t slowing down just because it reached the half-billion user mark… if anything, it’s gathering steam. The image-centric social network reports that it now has over 600 million users, the last 100 million of which joined in the past 6 months. To put it another way, Instagram’s growth is accelerating — when it reported the 500 million figure, it had taken 9 months to garner the last 100 million. But what’s creating this momentum?
It’s not clear how many of those people are active. With its last update, Instagram noted that 300 million used its apps daily. Most of the 600 million total are likely very active, then, but there’s a chance that some of its new users only occasionally check things out.
The service doesn’t directly attribute its success to specific factors, but there are a few factors likely at work. For one, Instagram’s obsession with beating Snapchat is likely paying dividends. Why split your time between two services when you can create Stories or send disappearing photos in the same place you share many of your other shots? Twitter’s decision to effectively kill Vine may have helped, too, by drawing in people who needed a new home for their looping videos. Throw in increased media use of Instagram and ever-improving phone camera quality and it’s easy to see why Instagram would have room to grow. The question: are Snapchat-like features and live streaming enough to keep the gravy train going?
Source: Instagram Blog
Facebook is using third-party fact-checkers to fight fake news
Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg previewed a number of steps the social network would take to combat fake news. Today, the company provided an update on the initiative which starts by making it easier to report a hoax. You can report what you think might be a fake news story by clicking in the top right corner of the post. If enough people do just that, Facebook will send the link to a third-party fact-checker to determine if it really is fake.
Facebook will also start flagging disputed stories from those fact-checkers. You’ll still be able to read and share the link, but each one will be labeled so you and your friends know exactly what you’re getting into. They will also appear lower in the News Feed. So, who’s doing the checking? Facebook is working with Poytner’s International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to determine if a story is real or not.
The company also says it noticed when people read a story past the headline, it makes them less likely to share it. Facebook plans to use this behavior to determine if what appears in the News Feed may be misleading in some way. Finally, as previously reported, the company will also cut off the financial incentives for spammers posting fake news and grabbing a share of ad revenue. Sure, this is just a start, but Facebook says it will continue to combat the problem to improve “the quality of our service.”
Source: Facebook
Facebook Messenger test hints at a bigger role for AI
Facebook wants its M chat assistant to be useful for much more than shopping and travel recommendations. It’s testing an M suggestions feature that has the artificial intelligence offer actions depending on the circumstances in your chat. Some will be familiar: if a friend asks where you are, it’ll give you a Google Hangouts-style opportunity to share your location. Others are more creative, such as suggesting stickers in response to common phrases like “thanks.”
Only a handful of people in the US will see the suggestions right now, and it’s not certain how quickly it will expand. Messenger team lead David Marcus is optimistic, however. He tells BuzzFeed News that M suggestions may well accelerate the deployment of Facebook’s AI by making it available to a much wider audience than the M assistant you see in testing right now. It won’t be as deep as a direct interaction with M, but it would certainly be more accessible — important when Google is ramping up its own AI chat helpers.
Source: BuzzFeed News
Facebook considers video push with scripted shows and sports
Facebook’s video push has been well documented, but the effort has primarily relied on content produced by others thus far. Now the company says it’s in talks with television studios and other producers about licensing shows to give that video initiative a boost. According to Recode, Facebook’s plans include scripted shows, game shows and sports coverage as part of an effort to explore different video formats.
The social network has already opened its wallet to boost live video content on the site, offering a range of media companies millions to stream there. College Humor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, who joined Facebook this year to work on video, says the idea here is to “kickstart an ecosystem of partner content” for that dedicated Video hub that has begun rolling out on the site.
Van Veen explains that the the current talks include funding for original content and licensing rights to scripted, unscripted and sports video from other producers. Of course, the company is interested most in video that leverages “the social interaction unique to Facebook.”
Though Facebook has insisted it’s not a media company, this video push could signal a change in that mindset. Now that Facebook is already paying for more live videos indicates the change has already started. Recent reports say that the company could use curated articles to help it combat fake news, adding another layer to its relationships with media outlets.
It will be interesting to see how this video effort develops and what kinds of shows will surface in that tab. With Twitter already having a deal in place with the NFL to stream live games and talks with other leagues reportedly in progress, Facebook will need to have some attractive viewing options if it wants users to do more than offer a passing glance at videos in their News Feed.
Source: Recode
Instagram now lets you bookmark photos and videos
For some, Instagram is a place to see what your friends and family have been up to. For others, it’s an app for marvelling at beautiful food, furniture and places captured by skilled photographers. Like Pinterest, these photos can serve as inspiration for users’ own dreams and personal projects. With this in mind, Instagram is adding a bookmark icon underneath each post in your feed. Tap it and the relevant photo or video will be added to a private page accessible from your profile. There are no folders or “boards,” so everything is lumped together, but it’s certainly simpler than keeping a text document full of random Instagram links.
Source: Instagram
You can now livestream directly from Twitter’s mobile apps
The line between Twitter and its livestreaming service, Periscope, is beginning to fade. Starting today, anyone can broadcast by hitting the compose tweet button inside Twitter’s iOS and Android apps, followed by the “Live” button. Instead of being bounced to the Periscope app, however, you’ll now start start a livestream immediately. The functionality is still “powered by Periscope,” and indeed the experience is mostly the same as before — you write a quick caption before you go live, and then registered users can leave hearts and comments while you stream. Is this a direct reaction to Facebook Live’s growing popularity? Almost certainly.
Periscope as a self-contained service won’t be disappearing anytime soon, however. “Our apps and web player on periscope.tv remain the best place to search and discover Periscope content,” the team said in a blog post. While that may be true, the reasons for downloading and using the Periscope app are now greatly reduced. All but the most diehard Periscope fans will be better served by the Twitter app, streaming from the compose interface and watching the broadcasts that pop up in their feed.
For Twitter, it’s an opportunity to reinforce video and livestreaming as a fundamental part of its service. The company has inked a few broadcasting deals, spanning the NFL, Wimbledon tennis and the US Presidential debates, but much of its value comes from user-submitted contributions. That’s what makes it such a valuable tool for activism, citizen journalism and general public debate. The rise of Facebook Live threatens to erode that utility, while publishers, celebrities and brands hunt for larger audiences. Twitter and Periscope’s fusion was inevitable — the question is how long the company keeps the latter around as a standalone entity.
We all saw what happened to Vine.
Facebook’s standalone Events app arrives on Android at last
It’s taken a bit more than two months, but Facebook has finally brought its standalone Events app to Android. Having debuted in October this year, Events lets you stalk see happenings that your friends are interested in attending, as well as affairs hosted by Pages you like and updates from parties you’ve already RSVPed to. You can also look for recommendations of upcoming things to do based on time, location and your interests.
Like the iOS version, Events for Android also lets you add your phone’s calendar to see if you have any conflicts with what you’d like to attend. Unfortunately, Play Store reviews indicate that users aren’t very pleased with the app’s UI so far, saying it looks like a poor port from the version made for Apple devices. You might want to wait just a tad longer before relying on the new app to organize and suggest items for your calendar.
To be clear, you could already look up happenings from your browser or Facebook app, but this service makes it easier to find something to do that might be more relevant to your location or interests. The social network said Events already sees 450 million users worldwide, making it a very useful tool that harnesses its massive footprint to provide comprehensive listings. That utility and potentially vast audience could give Events a longer shelf life than Facebook’s other short-lived standalone offerings.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: Events from Facebook (Google Play Store)
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