Articles about Facebook

With Android handsets and iPhones taking the lion's share of the smartphone market, Windows Phone is quite often overlooked by most consumers in their purchasing decisions. The popularity, or lack thereof, of devices running Microsoft's mobile OS likely plays an important part but it also detracts folks from getting the smartphone that may be right for them. Ask yourselves how many of your acquaintances have been in this position.

Many do not even take Windows Phone into consideration and the ones that do easily find a couple of reasons to dismiss the platform and jump on the Android or iPhone bandwagon. Yes, Windows Phone may not be the right answer for everyone but it might be for more people than naysayers think. And I have got 10 good reasons why consumers should give Windows Phone a chance.

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Facebook fans running Microsoft's tiled OS need no longer turn to third party solutions -- the official Facebook app is now available in the Windows Store.

It has been a very long time coming, but the social network finally has its own official app, arriving just in time for the release of Windows 8.1. The app has the look and feel of Modern UI apps and includes a live tile that is used to display updates.

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It looks as though Facebook is trying to help reduce the costs of using the social network on the move with its acquisition of Onavo. Onavo specializes in mobile data compression and data usage tracking, with a goal of helping people use mobile data more efficiently. The company has an office in Tel-Aviv, and this is to be turned into Facebook's Israeli office.

The acquisition comes a couple of months after Mark Zuckerberg launched Internet.org with a view to making the internet available to a larger number of people around the world. Onavo joining forces with Facebook is not unrelated, and the company says it is "eager to take the next step and make an even bigger impact by supporting Facebook's mission to connect the world".

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My first contact with Microsoft's homebrew Facebook app for Windows Phone 8 revealed one of the least desirable social experiences that a smartphone user can have on any modern mobile platform. The first iterations of the company's offering were terrible, but luckily things started to pick up after the beta version that arrived in late-April.

Microsoft released a couple of major updates since then, bringing the Facebook experience on Windows Phone 8 to a decent level of usability. Some oversights can still be pointed out, such as the lack of a built-in security code generator but, generally speaking, all the important bits are there. And, today, Microsoft issued another update which brings the version number to 5.1. Let's take a look at what's new.

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According to a new report by the UK media regulator Ofcom, tablets are becoming the must have device for children, displacing the smartphone for younger age groups.

Around a quarter of children aged 12-15 (26 percent) and 18 percent aged 8-11 now have their own tablet computer, while household ownership of a tablet has more than doubled since 2012 to 51 percent up from 20 percent. Use of a tablet computer at home has tripled among 5-15s since 2012, 42 percent up from 14 percent, whilst a quarter of 3-4s now use a tablet computer at home.

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Facebook's Graph Search is being updated to include more information from the social network. The personalized search engine previously allowed for searching of people, photos, places and interests when it was launched back at the beginning of the year. Now posts from you and your friends as well as status updates can be included in searches allowing you to get even more specific about what you're looking for.

Also included in the update is the ability to search for status updates, photo captions, check-ins and comments. There are various ways in which searches can be used to hone in on the content you're looking for, and natural language searching is the order of the day. Want to see the posts your online contacts have made about Microsoft's latest operating system? Just search for "posts about Windows 8.1 by my friends". Results can be limited by date as well, so you could search for "posts about Nexus 7 from the last month".

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It's extremely irritating. You change your Facebook status and immediately notice that you've made a stupid spelling mistake. This could come as a result of a slip of the finger, or your phone's autocorrect might be to blame. You could, of course, simply delete the status update and recreate it without errors. But what about if you've already managed to amass dozens of comments that you don’t want to lose?

Now there's no need to fret because Facebook has made it possible to make edits to statuses. At least this is the case if you're using the Android app or the website -- iOS app users will have to wait a little longer for an update. This is great news! No more stupid typos! No more statuses that sound like they were written by someone with their eyes closed after an evening of heavy drinking! Or is it such great news?

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Facebook wants to show you more relevant ads. Advertisements are the price we pay for free online content and services, and there are no signs of it vanishing any time soon. Even though this is something internet users have accepted for some time, there are often complaints about the unsuitability of ads. Far fewer people have a problem with seeing adverts for products and services they might genuinely be interested in than those that have no relevance to their lives.

In a blog post Engineering Manager for News Feed Ads, Hong Ge explains that Facebook would like to ensure that the ads that make it into your timeline are more relevant. If you're anything like me, you've probably built up something of a mental filter for "pointless" ads, and maybe even those that might be of interest, but Facebook is keen that you see more ads and that you respond to them positively.

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Big news came from Apple and Microsoft this week. Microsoft seemingly had a change of heart; having previously said that Windows 8.1 RTM would not be made available before its official launch date, the company announced that it would be released to people with TechNet and MSDN subscriptions.

The same group of people also gained access to the pre-release version of Skype. Microsoft was clearly in a very giving mood this week as the company also announced that it was giving free copies of Office 365 to non-profit organizations.

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A new feature is rolling to Facebook mobile, a feature that has been designed to provide "an easier way to watch video". "How could a video possibly be made easier to watch?", you may well ask. "All it takes is a quick tap to start playback!" The new feature will play videos as soon as you see them in your news feed -- no need for a tap.

Videos start playing silently and if you're not interested in watching you can just keep scrolling by. But if a video does take your fancy, how do you think you view it with sound and in full screen mode? That's right… you tap on it. Just like you do at the moment. The feature is not yet available to everyone, but if you don’t see it in your account on your mobile handset, you can check out a video of what it looks like in action.

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Social Fixer is a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox and others. It exists to make Facebook a more pleasurable experience, by ironing out annoyances and adding extra features. In theory this means Facebook users are happier and therefore use the site more -- everyone's a winner. The tool is free and over the course of four years its developer, Matt Kruse, built up a following of hundreds of thousands of users. Now Facebook has wiped that out.

The Social Fixer tool still exists and still offers the same options as it did before, but it no longer has a Facebook presence. Back on 2 September the Social Fixer Facebook Page (which is still inaccessible) was "unpublished" by Facebook. The reason specified was that the page had been flagged up for spam -- this is something Matt vehemently denies ever engaging in.

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Facebook is making it easier for news outlets such as BskyB, CNN and NBC to integrate conversations from the social network into their broadcasts. Using the Public Feed API, broadcasters are now able to display a real-time feed of posts that contain a specific word. Considering that, according to Facebook's own figures, last week's kick-off of the new NFL season resulted in over 20 million likes, comments and shares, that's a lot of data to be dealing with.

There is also the new Keyword Insights API which can be used to determine how many posts mentioned a particular term in a specified timeframe. But the API goes further than this, also making it possible to filter results -- allegedly anonymously -- based on gender, age and location. At the moment both of these APIs are only being made available to a limited number of partners, but the list is certain to grow over time.

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Looking at the biggest stories on BetaNews from August, 25 - 31, 2013. For the second week running, Microsoft managed to steal many of the headlines. After going gold, RTM, or however Microsoft now wants to refer to it, Windows 8.1 was released to OEMs. Depsite reaching this important milestone, developers were… irked, shall we say, to learn that they will not be able to get their hands on the completed code until it is released in October. At least that would be the case had the bits not leaked online very quickly. It was a Chinese version that was made available for unofficial download first, but an English version wasn't far behind.

I have previously pondered the popularity (or otherwise) of the Surface Pro, and this week Derrick stood firmly behind Windows RT positing five reasons it is destined to succeed.

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Just a couple of days ago Facebook was in the headlines after being ordered to pay out $20m for putting user data to work in advertising campaigns. Now the site is proposing a set of changes to the documents that govern the way user data is handled as well as determining who has access to it.

At least some of the suggested changes come as a direct result of the court ruling including re-writing the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. The new document includes a clearer explanation of the fact that in using Facebook users are granting permission for their name, profile picture and content to be used "in connection with ads or commercial content". It is good to see, however, that "when you limit your audience, we’ll respect that choice".

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A US judge rules that Facebook must pay out $20m as the Fraley vs Facebook class action draws to a close. The lawsuit was taken out by users of the social network whose pictures were used without consent in "Sponsored Stories" advertisements. While up to 150 million Facebook members were affected, only approximately 614,000 who filed a claim will receive any money.

It’s hardly a massive windfall. The $20m is to be divided not only between the successful claimants, but also used to pay for lawyers and administrative costs. Users will be paid $15 each -- not even enough to buy half of a share in Facebook.

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