Dear Veronica: Facebook follows and ghost girlfriends
We kick off the show today with a great question about the creepiness factor of the Facebook “follow” button. Does it bother you when random strangers comment on your Facebook posts? Well, it shouldn’t, and I’ll tell you why.
We also cover the best alternatives to TweetDeck, and how to deal with an unruly ghost girlfriend. You know the type. Send in your questions to #DearVeronica on Twitter, and please send me in some holiday tech support horror stories! I’ll be reading them on the show for the rest of the month!
Facebook’s Security Check comes to Android
Facebook’s account security feature, dubbed Security Check, landed on Android this Tuesday. It allows users to quickly review their current account settings and tighten sharing controls, log out of the network on unused devices, enable login alerts and change their passwords. The service came to Facebook’s desktop version this July and will reportedly arrive on iOS next.
[Image Credit: Getty]
Source: Facebook
Facebook shutters Slingshot and other Creative Labs apps
Facebook isn’t throwing in the towel when it comes to experimentation, but it has shuttered the project that sought to encourage it. Three apps born from its Creative Labs have been pulled from their respective app stores and the website for the initiative itself is no more. Creative Labs began as a way to encourage experimentation among the social network’s employees through hackathon-type sessions, and it led to the development of Slingshot, Rooms and Riff. Slingshot is perhaps the most recognizable of the three for its attempt to take on Snapchat in the realm of ephemeral messaging. Facebook says that since those apps launched, it has pulled features from each into its core Android and iOS app.
Source: CNET
Facebook is shutting down its Creative Labs division
Facebook started Creative Labs to act like a start-up within the company. It was used to push employees to try new things with innovative new mobile software. However, Facebook has been watching how these new apps have been doing and has decided to pull the plug.
Starting today, Slingshot, Rooms, and Riff have been pulled from app stores on iOS and Google Play.
Facebook commented, saying the apps have not been updated in a long time and they decided to pull them.
“Since their launches, we’ve incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps,”
Creative Labs has been around for two years as an experiment. However, most of the apps created out of it mainly copied features from other apps. Slingshot was created by Joey Flynn and Rocky Smith, which grew into 10 people over two years, but the idea was to take photos and send it to friends in hopes that they respond back with a picture message. Basically, what Snapchat already does. Also, Facebook didn’t really promote it too much.
Rooms had potential as it tried to take normal forum post and reimagine them. However, for unknown reasons, to join a forum you had to take a screenshot of a QR code.
Facebook has said it will continue to experiment with new apps, and support current apps like its Paper newsfeed-reading app. Of course, it will still work on features for much larger apps like Instagram’s Hyperlapse video.
Source: CNET
Come comment on this article: Facebook is shutting down its Creative Labs division
Facebook Ends Creative Labs Initiative and Shuts Down Slingshot, Rooms and Riff
Facebook today ended its Creative Labs project, which was designed to allow its engineers to come up with unique and innovative smartphone and tablet apps. With the shuttering of Creative Labs, several of the apps that came out of the program are being shut down and removed from the App Store.
Slingshot, Rooms, and Riff, all apps that were released across 2014 and 2015, are no longer available in the App Store. Slingshot, announced in June of 2014, was an ephemeral messaging app modeled after Snapchat, but with a slight twist. Before viewing a message or a photo, the recipient was required to send a message back.
Rooms, launched in October of 2014, allowed users to create anonymous invite-only chat rooms based around specific themes, while Riff, announced in April 2015, was designed to let users create collaborative video mashups with their friends.
Despite being backed by Facebook, none of the now-defunct apps managed to catch on with users and thus received a limited number of updates from the company. Riff, for example, was never updated since it was released in April, and Slingshot and Rooms were last updated in March and July of 2015, respectively.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the end of Creative Labs in a statement to CNET, noting none of the apps had been updated for some time and many of the features have been added into the company’s primary apps. “Since their launches, we’ve incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps.”
While none of the apps are available for download, Slingshot continues to be functional for existing users for the time being, while Rooms will be available until it’s closed on December 23.
Paper, the first and most successful app to come out of Facebook’s Creative Labs effort, remains available in the App Store.
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Recommended Reading: Don’t try to shop on Facebook or Twitter
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you’ll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
I Tried Holiday Shopping on Facebook and Twitter and Got Nowhere
Kurt Wagner, Recode
Facebook and Twitter may be testing options for buying products from ads and sponsored posts, but don’t try to take care of your holiday list that way. As Recode’s Kurt Wagner discovered, those buy buttons are pretty much non-existent unless you’re in the test group. In fact, he didn’t even stumble across a misplaced option to purchase in the News Feed.
‘Rock Band VR’ is coming from Oculus and Harmonix in 2016
Oculus VR’s Palmer Luckey was going to be at The Game Awards but we didn’t know why. It turns out that he was going to appear onstage and debut Rock Band VR. All we know for now is that it’s coming next year and that, well, you’ll play a version of Rock Band in virtual reality, and that Dragon Force’s epic speedmetal track “Through the Fire and Flames” is going to be featured. So there’s that. Are you ready to play virtual instruments in virtual reality?
Facebook locks down Belgian site following tracking lawsuit
It’s not altogether surprising that a website some use to scrapbook their entire lives be regularly held to account over its privacy policies. Facebook’s ongoing legal predicament in Belgium isn’t concerned with how it treats users, though, but how it tracks any visitor to its pages, logged-in or not. After the country’s privacy watchdog concluded Facebook was violating European Union law by tracking non-users through persistent cookies without their consent, the social network found itself on the wrong end of a lawsuit. A Belgian court demanded Facebook stop the practice, and pre-empting the order coming through this week, the website has gone into lockdown. So for now, only visitors from Belgium that are logged-in to the platform can view Facebook pages.
Source: BBC
Facebook pokes at Periscope with live video feature
Facebook rolled out a pair of new features on Thursday that position the social network as a breaking news outlet. The first feature, dubbed Live Video, does just that — enabling users to post and share live video feeds to the site. It appears to be very similar to Periscope’s offering with live viewer counts and rolling comment feeds. It is being trialed right now in the US but only for iPhone users.
Mark Zuckerberg will donate 99 percent of his Facebook shares
While birth announcements are common on Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg’s post is a little different than most of the new parent pics in your newsfeed. That’s because along with welcoming daughter Maxima to the family, he and his wife Priscilla Chan announced their commitment to give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares — currently worth about $45 billion — to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative that will try to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.” The two joined the Giving Pledge in 2010, promising to use most of their wealth for philanthropic efforts, and today’s announcement sheds more detail on how that will happen.
Source: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), SEC
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