It's about to get easier to donate money to non-profits via Facebook
Facebook is known as The Social Network, but it's about more than just being social. It's also used by businesses, charities, and other organizations to promote products, services and causes. To make it easier for non-profits to raise money Facebook is introducing a Donate Now button.
This is something that makes life easier for the donor and the recipient. Many non-profits are small operations which may not want to go to the trouble of setting up a fully-fledged website with a donation page. For people who discover a worthy cause through Facebook, it makes sense to be able to hand over some money through the same medium.
As stock markets tumble, Kim Dotcom recommends Bitcoin -- again
Kim Dotcom -- he of Megaupload/Mega infamy -- has been out of the headlines for a while, but he's creeping back into the public eye once again with the launch of a new music streaming service, Baboom.
However, Dotcom is not just interested in promoting his latest venture, he also has a lot to say about many aspects of the tech world.
Back when he launched file sharing site Mega, rebuilt from the rubble of Megaupload, Dotcom was a proponent of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Now he's at it again, advising people to invest in Bitcoin in the wake of the Chinese -- and then global -- stock market tumble.
Does diversity in tech actually matter?
Diversity has become something of a buzzword in tech, and it's one that companies are only too keen to bandy about at every opportunity. The likes of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon are eager to demonstrate how diverse a workforce they have built up -- but the fact of the matter is that they have all failed abysmally.
This much we know. We've seen that Facebook's workface is far from diverse, Amazon is about as white and male as it gets, and that Apple wants people to believe it's doing everything it can to foster greater diversity. Its latest report shows that the number of female, black, and Hispanic employees has increased but Tim Cook wants to do more. But the big question is: does diversity matter?
Facebook looks for ways to boost its ad revenue in India
Facebook is attempting to boost its advertising revenue in India after struggling in the Asian country.
The social network is offering businesses free email support regarding marketing questions and advice on how to increase sales.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo collaborate to fight child sex abuses images
The Internet Watch Foundation today announced that it is working with some of the biggest names in technology to stamp out child sex abuse images online. Part of the problem with stemming the flow of such images is that once they are removed from one site, it takes little time for them to reappear elsewhere.
Working in conjunction with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the IWF says that it intends to share image hashes with a view to making illegal images faster to identify. Three different types of hash will be created -- the familiar MD5 and SHA-1, as well as Microsoft's PhotoDNA -- helping to improve rates of detection.
Facebook's privacy settings allow for harvesting data through mobile numbers
If you've added your mobile number to your Facebook account, you might want to reconsider in light of a new security exploit. A software engineer was able to access user data just by entering their mobile number. Profile pictures, names and locations were all accessible even for users who had not made their number public.
There is potential for such harvested data to be misused by malicious parties, as it provides an easy way to link a mobile number to an individual. Reza Moaiandin was able to use a special tool to quickly generate tens of thousands of numbers which, when passed through a Facebook API, fed back the associated user profiles.
Oculus will let you enjoy VR movies with friends
Facebook-owned Oculus plans to make going to the virtual reality cinema a bit less of a lonely experience, by adding a new multiplayer mode to sit in the cinema with friends.
The movie will play at the same time across all Oculus VR headsets, and the user will be able to see friends sitting next to them in the VR cinema. This might be a weird experience, but it is part of Facebook’s goal to make VR a more social experience.
Facebook Live lets celebrities broadcast live video
Facebook has become much more than just a social network for connecting with friends and family, evolving into a way to get in touch with companies and even celebrities. Today the site announces that celebrities are now able to share live video from the Facebook Mentions app directly to fans.
Regular Facebook users need do nothing more than follow the celebrities they are interested in, and any live video that is broadcasting by someone they follow will appear in their news feed. While comparable to the likes of Periscope and Meekat, Facebook Live is not a direct competitor as it is only available to those with verified accounts -- but it also has features that neither of these services offer.
The usual suspects top Forbes' Richest People in Tech list
Forbes today unveiled its inaugural 100 Richest People in Tech list. Comprising 100 billionaires, the top of the chart is dominated by all of the names you would expect to see -- Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page take the top five slots.
It's not just the names that are familiar. The US is the dominant country in the chart, with more than half of the list filled by American billionaires. The image of California as being the center of the world of technology is borne out by the fact that 49 of the top 100 hail from the western state. So, yes, Bill Gates tops the charts with $79.6 billion, but where are the other big names?
Facebook uses Lollapalooza to showcase new live streaming feature
If you can't make it to Lollapalooza this year, there's no need to be jealous of your friends who are attending. At the music festival, Facebook has started testing a new feature that allows people to live stream events on the social network, taking on the likes of Snapchat head-on.
Music festivals are far from cheap -- a full weekend pass costs $275 and that's before you factor in travel, food, and so on -- so the prospect of a social powered livestream will appeal to many... particularly those to whom the idea of camping is abhorrent. Facebook's Place Tips feature can be used by those in attendance -- including performers -- to post videos, photos and updates that can be enjoyed by those who chose to stay at home.
For some Facebook users 'hide' may no longer mean hide
What do you do if a story appears in your Facebook that you're not interested in? You might just ignore it, or you might try to train Facebook about your preferences by selecting the 'hide' option.
But if you're the sort of person who hides a lot of stories, Facebook might start placing less importance on your dislikes. This might sound counter-intuitive, but Facebook is convinced that it makes sense, saying that for some people opting to hide a story "isn't as strong a negative signal". So who are these people?
Half of all Internet users are on Facebook
Approximately half of the world’s online population accesses Facebook on a monthly basis, the social media giant has reported.
By the end of Q2 2015, 1.49 billion people accessed the website at least once in a month, up 13 percent from the same period last year and representing half of the estimated global online population of 3 billion, Facebook said.
Facebook makes new security checkup tool available to everyone
A couple of months ago Facebook started to talk about a new security tool. It was initially only made available to a select group of users, but today it rolls out to all.
The aptly-named Security Checkup gives Facebook users the opportunity to double check the privacy and security settings they have in place, helping to ensure that private information is not shared with too large an audience. It can also be used to monitor logins and check for suspicious account activity, acting as a handy centralized hub for everything security-related.
Facebook dominates social website logins [Infographic]
Customer identity management firm Gigya has released its Q2 "landscape of customer identity" figures, showing how consumers are using third party identity providers such as Facebook and Google+ to log into other websites.
Facebook continued its dominance, now controlling two-thirds of all social logins, followed by Google+ (20 percent), Twitter (six percent) and Yahoo (four percent).
Internal training documents reveal how Facebook tackles diversity, bias, and discrimination
Workforce diversity is something that has been brought into sharp focus in recent months as companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook reveal the make-up of their staff. White, middleclass, male employees dominate the world of technology, and this is certainly the case at Facebook -- even if a redesigned icon was an attempt to bring women to the fore.
Now the social network is embarking on something of a PR campaign, desperate to prove that it is doing everything it can to develop as diverse a workplace as possible. Today Facebook publishes sections of its employee training program that aims to eradicate the 'unconscious bias' that leads to -- in Facebook's words -- 'black sounding names' getting fewer callbacks than 'white sounding names'.
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