Easily share you photos privately with Facebook’s Moments
Do you want a way to share your pictures privately without having them disappear? The folks at Facebook Creative Labs have released just the thing. Moments is a standalone app that allows you to share your photos with your friends, or receive photos of yourself from friends, without worrying about them disappearing.
The reason why the whole “not disappearing” thing is relevant is due to the popularity of SnapChat, and the fact that all of the images that you receive, vanish after being viewed. If you take them, they don’t vanish, but if you happen to go out with your friends and someone takes a picture or video, then sends it out via a Snapchat story, it’s gone once viewed. Of course you can take a screenshot, but that’s more annoying than it is helpful.
Syncing photos with the Moments app is a private way to give photos to friends and get the photos you didn’t take. Moments groups the photos on your phone based on when they were taken and, using facial recognition technology, which friends are in them. You can then privately sync those photos quickly and easily with specific friends, and they can choose to sync their photos with you as well. Now, you and your friends have all the photos you took together.
Something else that is cool is the fact that Moments keeps all of your images organized, and those images are able to be searched within. So, if you want to find a specific image of someone, you can search for their name, and once the photo is tagged correctly, those images will pop up with Moments. At least Facebook is doing one thing that’s pretty awesome for their users.
Moments is available today on both iOS and Android for free, and you can download it right now.
The post Easily share you photos privately with Facebook’s Moments appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Share event photos with friends via another new Facebook app
Facebook’s Creative Labs has produced yet another app that feels like it should be a feature within the main Facebook app rather than another icon taking up space on your smartphone. The new Moments app creates shared photo albums from a group of people at an event. Photos are curated using location information and facial recognition, individuals can share and see photos from friends that were at the same place at the same time. So instead of everyone taking a photo of a sunset, one person can take it and share it with the group via the standalone app. The technology used in the app is based on the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) team’s work. While the pitch is to share photos privately, shared photos can be uploaded to Instagram and downloaded to a user’s camera roll. So they’re private until a friend decides to put that weird face you made on their Instagram feed. Moments is available today for iOS and Android in the United States and will be rolling out to other regions over time.
Filed under: Software, Facebook
Source: Facebook
Facebook to start measuring time spent on stories
Facebook has announced a new metric they will start measuring in order to “improve” the news feed presented to users. In the past they have used things like commenting or liking or sharing a post to help determine what stories may be most relevant to users. Recognizing that some stories may be of interest but do not create any of those actions, Facebook will start measuring the time spent viewing a story to improve the News Feed.
Part of the impetus for this change is a survey Facebook conducted to ask users to rate their experience and share ideas on how it can be improved. As a result of that input, Facebook determined that some users find information to be very interesting and meaningful, but they are not interested in liking or commenting on it.
Facebook indicates the change to start measuring how long users stay on a story or reading comments has already started to rollout and will continue over the next several weeks. Although Facebook does not explain details as to how their measurements will make a distinction, they do indicate that Pages should not expect any significant changes in distribution as a result of this update.
source: Facebook
Come comment on this article: Facebook to start measuring time spent on stories
Facebook to improve your News Feed by factoring in how long people view a post
While it may seem like your Facebook News Feed stories are selected completely random, the equation the social network uses is far from complicated. They just take into account interaction – so, how much other people like, share or comment on any given story. But we can all agree that only tells Facebook a fraction of the information needed to decide if a post is important or not.
Do you always like, comment or share posts you are interested in, anyways? In fact, you may not even “like” these publications, yet still find them interesting to read or view. This is why Facebook has decided to improve your News Feed by considering a fourth factor when deciding whether a post is important enough to steal a bit of your time or not – they will now take into account how long people spend looking at these Facebook posts.
So the idea is that Facebook can actively measure how long each user spends looking at a specific story, in comparison to others in their News Feeds. So if you are scrolling down and happen to stop and look at an image for a few seconds, big brother Facebook will know and make it more likely that the same publication shows up in other people’s News Feeds.
In terms of topic quality, this seems like an awesome idea. It will take advantage of a whole new dimension that was completely dismissed in the past. Granted, some of you will hate the idea of Facebook knowing even more information that it already does. It can be a bit creepy, but all in the name of a better feed.
Facebook has been constantly trying to improve News Feed quality, and they even made it so you could report hoaxes. This is just another step to a perfect feed, so I am all in. Are you? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think about these changes!
Facebook tweaks your newsfeed by how long you read each post
In an unsurprising revelation, it turns out your Facebook news feed is watching you almost as much as you watch it. The Menlo Park-based company announced today that it is “improving” its news feature by taking into account not just whether someone liked or commented on an article but also by how much time they spent reading it. “Just because someone didn’t like, comment or share a story in their News Feed doesn’t mean it wasn’t meaningful to them,” Facebook explains.”There are times when, for example, people want to see information about a serious current event, but don’t necessarily want to like or comment on it.”
This relevance weighting adjustment is more than just a fancy digital timer. To account for slow internet connections, the system will compare how long you look at a particular story versus your general browsing habits. The company says that this way, it can better identify which posts are actually important to you. The feature is currently rolling out and will continue to do so over the next few weeks, so you can judge for yourself its impact on what you see.
[Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images]
Filed under: Internet, Facebook
Source: Facebook Newsroom
Oculus Rift teams up with Xbox for game streaming, controller
Gamers picking up the first consumer Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will notice a very familiar controller scheme — the company just announced it will ship with an Xbox One wireless controller and adapter packed in. Although it doesn’t support plugging into game consoles directly, Oculus and Microsoft announced that the headset will support the new Xbox-to-Windows game streaming in a VR environment. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to include plans for full VR games like the PS4 and Project Morpheus, as what we saw during the presentation amounted to a virtual living room setup watching the game on a big screen. Aside from the Oculus Cinema gaming setup, the Rift is said to work “seamlessly” with Windows 10, so we’ll see what kind of combinations come from the two in the future.
Developing…
Doodle Draw is the first playable game within Facebook Messenger
With all the games and everything that are available to play on Facebook, you would’ve thought that there would be some type of game to play within Facebook Messenger. Well as of today, that dream is now a reality.
From within Facebook Messenger, you can now play a pretty obvious clone of the popular app, Draw Something. Of course for copyright reasons, the name of this game is Doodle Draw, but the concept of Doodle Draw is essentially the same.
The goal of the game is simple. You are given a topic or noun to draw, and once you’ve completed your version of the drawing, it is sent to the person you are messaging, and then it’s up to them to figure out what in the world is going on. This is all completed within the Facebook Messenger app, so that you don’t need to download an extra application or anything of that nature.
In order to start playing Doodle Draw, you must download it within the Facebook Messenger application and you’re off to the races. You will be able to use different colors, so that you don’t have to worry about drawing a boring old black and white whale or anything like that. You aren’t given the whole Crayola catalog, but enough colors to make it worth while.
You can download Doodle Draw from within the Facebook Messenger app list today, and get started on playing some more games with your Facebook friends in a new way.
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Facebook Messenger crosses 1 Billion downloads on Playstore
Facebook has recently announced that the Android version of their Messenger app has been downloaded over 1 billion times. Facebook’s VP of Messaging Products commemorated this landmark in a Facebook post yesterday.
“Happy to make it to the very exclusive Android 1 billion+ downloads club.” – David Marcus
Facebook Messenger has provided us with a indispensable replacement for text messaging, phone calls, video calls and picture sharing as well. We can send gifs or voice clips just like the other hoards of messaging apps like Whatsapp and Viber. Recently, Facebook also integrated an improved location sharing option in the app.
These new features and the constant improvement in the app have played a big part in Messenger’s reach to 1 billion downloads. This clearly shows how Facebook has become such a routine part of our lives by keeping us connected to so many people.
Still not using Messenger? Grab it from the link below.
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Facebook Messenger has its first game
Facebook recently revealed that it would open up its Messenger platform to third-party apps, and we’re now seeing how you’ll be gaming on it. Facebook told TechCrunch that Doodle Draw is the first “true game,” for Messenger — until now, it’s only permitted GIFs, audio and the like. I gave it a whirl, and it’s basically a social version of “Pictionary.” It suggests a word, then you draw it on the screen and share it on Facebook or privately to friends on Messenger. From there, they try to fill in the blanks and guess what it is. In short, it’s a droll simple game, exactly suited for a chat tool like Messenger.
As TechCrunch pointed out, however, there is one worrying aspect to it. You can earn points by getting friends to participate, which might convince some folks to spam their contacts. So far, Messenger — which now has some 600 million users — has been relatively free of ads. In contrast, most of us have been bugged on Facebook by someone trying feed their Candy Crush addiction. Facebook has put a lid on that as of late, so hopefully they’ll keep a close eye on Messenger spam as well.
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Facebook
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Google Play
Oculus accidentally reveals an early VR controller concept
The Oculus VR crew has been doling out hints about what the mainstream version of its headset will do, but the controller? It’s been pretty tight-lipped so far. However, the company just gave an inadvertent clue as to what it’s been working on. Fans have discovered a concept image that Oculus’ Palmer Luckey says is an early “placeholder” for the company’s controller work. The peripheral is “nowhere close to final,” the executive adds, but it’s implied that some of the underlying ideas will show up in the products you see at Oculus’ big consumer event on June 11th. Not that it spoils much — it’s little more than a touchpad with basic navigation controls, so the odds are that there are some surprises left in store.
Filed under: Displays, Peripherals, Wearables, Facebook
Via: Road to VR
Source: Reddit
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