Facebook wants to be your all-in-one event calendar
In the latest Facebook earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook Events now has 450 million users, a big jump in numbers that he says is now of “global scale.” Of course, any Facebook user can tell you that this momentum with Events has been building for a while now. After all, why use sites like Evite and Eventbrite to organize parties if you can do so on a site that your friends and family likely already use? But the company isn’t stopping there. In the coming weeks and months, Facebook is about to add even more features to Events, with a big push toward creating a bigger separation between public and private occasions.
Aditya Koolwal, the product manager for Facebook’s Events team, says that event listings is perhaps one of the few things that Facebook is uniquely positioned to do really well. Not only do most people use the social network to connect with their friends and family, but also artists and venues that frequently organize events are on Facebook too. Put the two together, and you’ve got the makings of an events juggernaut.
But it wasn’t until a few years ago that Facebook realized this potential. For a while, the Events system on Facebook was just a simple web-invite product geared toward organizing private gatherings like birthday parties. Then Koolwal joined the team a year and a half ago and started looking into how it was actually used. It turns out that more than 50 percent of people used Events for public events, not parties. That includes examples like farmer’s markets, concerts, music festivals, book readings — basically the sort of thing that you would normally find in the calendar section of the local newspaper.
“We realized that we hadn’t really built a product that was for public events,” says Koolwal. “So we decided that we’re going to really pursue private parties and public events as two separate paths.” This means that Facebook is now starting to treat public and private events very differently, presenting and promoting them in distinct ways. You can already see the separation on how it’s marketing the two paths in an events guide that Facebook launched a few weeks ago.
For one thing, public events now have larger header images. Going forward, they’ll also have more context about what the place and event are about. Perhaps you’d see a profile of the artist if it’s a concert, or photos of the venue if you’re wondering what it looks like. Wall posts on public events will be less prominent, because you likely don’t care too much about what strangers have to say about them.
Facebook has also started experimenting with adding events popular with friends or popular nearby in the left- and right-hand side columns of the site. As you might expect, Facebook is using the information it gleans about you — the pages you like, the groups you’re a part of — to suss out what kinds of events you might be into. And if you seem interested in ’em, it’ll surface even more related events for you. You might notice more suggested events in your newsfeed as a result.
Aside from spotlighting events in your newsfeed, Facebook wants to use notifications to keep you up-to-date on the latest goings-on as well. A few months ago, for example, it introduced the ability to subscribe to event calendars, which are sometimes published by performers or venues. So if you’re subscribed to the SF Symphony and there’s a concert coming up this weekend, you’ll get an alert for it. There might be future plans for implementing notifications in events too, like recommendations for what to do this weekend if you’re in town.
One other thing that the Facebook team is changing is this notion of what it means to “connect” to an event. Right now, if you’re interested in an event, your only option of indicating enthusiasm is to select “Join.” In normal parlance, that means that you’re telling the organizer that you’re going to attend. But Koolwal says that in most cases, people select Join not because they’re actually going to attend, but because they’re simply just flagging it for a follow-up. “A lot of what people are doing is collecting options,” he says. “So at a given day, they’ll look at their options and choose the best one.” Right now the company is testing alternate options, like a “Follow” button, where you’ll get event updates and so forth without committing to it, or a “Remind me” link to check out the event closer to the actual date.
Personally, what I really want out of an events site is to give me a tailored list of what’s going on this evening or this weekend in any given city. It’s what I miss the most about Upcoming.org, a social calendar site that was bought and then put out to pasture by Yahoo (although it’s currently being rescued by founder Andy Baio). Koolwal tells me that this is actually Facebook’s eventual goal, but it’s implementing the other changes to first bring greater awareness about events in the first place.
As for private parties, Facebook’s going to be mixing that up too. Starting today, it will start testing new cover art themes for prettying up your party invitation on the Facebook app. It’s something that users have wanted for a while now, says Koolwal. To start, there’ll be 36 themes to choose from, including categories like family, holiday and seasons. It’ll roll out to Android users first and then iOS folks later on.
“We’re the only Facebook team that’s geared towards getting you off of Facebook,” jokes Koolwal. “We’re helping people get outside for a change.”
Filed under:
Internet, Facebook
Tags: facebook
Drinki app will give you a free cocktail for signing into Facebook
The app Drinki, is now available in both Play Store and App Store. The application is available to everyone but you must login with a valid Facebook account. Drinki will give users a free drink as long as the user checks-in with their account.
The app will let users browse nearby bars using your handset’s location services. Once the user is inside the app, he/she is instantly rewarded a completely free drink that can be claimed at just about any bar. If you’re over 21, you have nothing to loose.
When you’re at the bar, let the bartender scan your phone and enjoy. Note that your Facebook account will post on your wall the location in which you are drinking it. This is how the app gets its money.
To get the app, download it on your smartphone or tablet, login and you’re good to go. You are limited to one free drink per bar. Visit their website for more details.
Source: Prnewswire
Come comment on this article: Drinki app will give you a free cocktail for signing into Facebook
Facebook axed internship for student who exposed location flaw
If you’re about to start an internship at one of the world’s biggest social networks, it might not be in your interest to publicly embarrass it shortly before you begin. It’s a lesson that Harvard student Aran Khanna learned the hard way after creating an app that took advantage of a privacy flaw within Facebook Messenger. Khanna had found that, whenever you chat to your friends, the system automatically shares your location. As such, he built a browser plugin, called the “Marauder’s Map,” that showed you where your buddies were as they were talking to you.
According to his explanation on Technology Science, that didn’t go down well with the folks at Facebook, which demanded that he take down the plugin and not speak to the media. Khanna did as he was told, but that apparently wasn’t enough for the leadership over at HQ. Just a few hours before he was due to fly to the West Coast, the student was told that his offer of an internship had been withdrawn.
Facebook, meanwhile feel that the decision was entirely justified, with the company’s Matt Steinfeld telling Boston.com that the tool “scraped data in a way that violated our terms.” He added that “despite being asked repeatedly to remove the code, the creator of this tool left it up.” Whichever side you take, just remember that it’s probably better to wait until after your internship is done before you start airing the dirty laundry.
Filed under:
Internet, Facebook
Via:
Boston.com
Source:
Technology Science
Tags: facebook, Internship, Location, MaraudersMap, Privacy
Facebook is reportedly building a breaking news notification app
Right now, the easiest way to read breaking news on your smartphone is to download a dedicated news reader app, something like Paper or Flipboard — but rumor has it that Facebook is working on something different. According to Business Insider, Facebook is developing a decentralized news app that simply pushes breaking news notifications and links to your mobile device. The app is reportedly in its early stages, but could be a way for Facebook to displace Twitter as a favorite place to look for breaking news.
The app sounds relatively simple: users will subscribe to various news feeds from a curated list and wait. When breaking news hits, those publications will be able to push short alerts to their subscriber’s phones, complete with a 100-character blurb and a link to the coverage on the publication’s website. That’s about it. By reducing the news app to nothing but notifications and links, Facebook doesn’t force publications into formatting their breaking news content for a stylized reader app or its Instant Articles.
On the other hand, you could probably just set up mobile notifications for your favorite news website’s Twitter account, or install their app (you have ours — with breaking news push notifications enabled — right?).
[Image Credit: Getty Images/Tetra images RF]
Filed under:
Misc, Mobile, Facebook
Source:
Business Insider
Tags: apps, facebook, mobilepostcross, news, newsreader, rumor
Facebook may soon be sending you breaking news alerts
Many people get their news from their Facebook feed, but Facebook themselves don’t actually tell you what is going on. That may change as Facebook is said to be making a new app that will send you breaking news directly to your mobile device.
The new app is still in the early stages of development, but the way it will work is by asking users what news topics they want to receive. Whenever some big news story is currently breaking in one of your selected topics an alert will be sent out. The alert will be similar to a Twitter message as it is only up to 100 characters. Anything that interest you, you can click the link to read more. Currently there are only a select few news publications that are available.
The app is very new and still in alpha testing. There is no word on when it will be released.
Source: Business Insider
Via: The Verge
Come comment on this article: Facebook may soon be sending you breaking news alerts
Facebook offers up its autoplay video ads to other apps
If you’re already annoyed with the autoplay video ads in your Facebook timeline, you might want to brace yourself. The social network is opening up that advertising tech to outside apps, or more specifically, to publishers who leverage Menlo Park’s Audience Network for their advertisements. In addition to those clips that play automatically, developers can leverage “dynamic product ads” that serve up content based on your browsing habits, carousel ads with up to five images and the more common (and less annoying) click-to-play videos. Of course, ads, especially on mobile, have been a big money maker for Facebook, and now it’s further expanding that reach.
(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
Since launching last year, the Audience Network has provided publishers and developers with engaging, high performing ad units backed by Facebook’s two million advertisers. Today, we are excited to announce a significant expansion of ad types and formats available in the Audience Network. The goal is even better outcomes for you, your advertisers and the people that use your app.Learn more about how you can enable native video ads for your app – https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2015/08/11/new-formats-for-audience-network/
Posted by Facebook Developers on Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Filed under:
Internet, Facebook
Via:
TechCrunch
Source:
Facebook
Tags: ads, autoplay, facebook, mobile, social, software, video
Facebook oversight lets others find you by guessing phone numbers
Just because you mark some of your Facebook data as private doesn’t mean that you’re hard to track down. Software engineer Reza Moaiandin has learned that it’s possible to scoop up the public details of legions of Facebook users simply by guessing phone numbers with a random number generator. You see, the social network defaults to letting anyone search for you using your phone number, even if it’s unlisted — as there’s no search limit, all it takes is a script to harvest the user IDs for thousands of people. As you can imagine, there’s a real worry that this will not only let black market dealers and hackers collect targets en masse, but help them get numbers to use for phone-oriented attacks and spying.
With that said, this loophole doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re at immediate risk. Facebook tells The Guardian that it has “network monitoring tools” running to watch for suspicious data activity, and its developer kit rules limit just how (and how often) apps can scrape information. The company could theoretically cut off access to an app if it grabs too many profiles too quickly. The concern is that Facebook isn’t explicitly tackling this problem by instituting firm caps on data collection. Even if it’s not possible to circumvent the developer rules, nosy intruders might get lots of information before Facebook cuts them off.
[Image credit: Shutterstock]
Filed under:
Internet, Facebook
Via:
The Guardian
Source:
Salt .Agency
Tags: facebook, internet, privacy, security, socialnetwork, socialnetworking
Internet giants team up to fight child porn through shared lists
The world’s larger online companies have already been doing quite a lot to combat child porn on their own, but they’re now teaming up to fight that sexual abuse across the internet. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo are partnering with the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation to share hash lists (aka digital fingerprints) of blocked indecent images. In theory, the move makes sure that a photo pulled on one site doesn’t simply pop up elsewhere. All of the IWF’s members will eventually use the list, so you could soon see this collective blocking in use at Amazon, Apple, Dropbox and PayPal, among others.
This isn’t a magic bullet. The screening only works when offending images are on the list in the first place, and it won’t function on the Dark Web and other places where peddlers can trade content in relative secrecy. Still, this could do a lot to prevent child porn distributors from operating on publicly operated sites, even through private sharing — they’d have to retreat to those darker corners just to operate at all.
[Image credit: Microsoft]
Filed under:
Internet, Google, Facebook
Via:
BBC
Source:
Internet Watch Foundation
Tags: ChildPornography, facebook, google, hashlist, internet, internetwatchfoundation, iwf, sexualabuse, twitter
Thai man gets 30 years in jail for insulting monarchy on Facebook
While Reddit users continue to complain about their speech being restricted, following moves by the site to finally clean up its most hateful communities, internet users in Thailand continue to face actual limits to their speech. Take, for example, 48-year-old Pongsak Sriboonpeng, who was recently sentenced to 30 years in prison for insulting Thai monarchy on Facebook. That’s actually a reduction from his original 60 years sentence (the Thai government took half off after he plead guilty — how kind!). Pongsak’s lawyer notes that his sentence has broken the record for Thailand’s convictions against the country’s harsh lèse-majesté rules, which makes it illegal to defame Thai royalty. His situation was even worse since he couldn’t appeal the conviction — Thailand remains under martial law following 2014’s military coup. Earlier this year, another Thai man received a 25-year prison sentence for insulting the monarchy.
Filed under:
Facebook
Via:
Ars Technica
Source:
The Guardian
Tags: facebook, Thailand
The surprising joy of Time’s virtual reality cover starring Palmer Luckey
It’s amazing to see Palmer Luckey — creator of the Oculus Rift and custodian of the tech industry’s current obsession with virtual reality — on the cover of Time magazine this month. It’s another sign that virtual reality has a real shot at entering the mainstream conversation, following previous signals like Facebook buying Oculus for $2 billion in 2014, and Sony, Valve, HTC, Samsung and dozens of other companies revealing their own VR headsets. As amazing as Luckey’s Time cover is, it’s also really, really odd. Why is he on his tippy-toes? Does he really need to be squatting like that? What are his hands doing? Where’s the controller? And why the hell is he in front of a fake beach? The world may never know, but through the power of photo-editing tools, we certainly can imagine. See some of our ideas below and please add your own chops in the comments (feel free to use our cutout).
Perhaps Luckey made a new, tiny dinosaur friend in virtual reality.
Such poise, such grace.
Don’t forget your parachute, Luckey! Oh, shoot.
Filed under:
Gaming, Peripherals, HD, Facebook
Tags: facebook, hdpostcross, PalmerLuckey, photoshop, time, TimeMagazine, VirtualReality, vr
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