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3 Sep, 2014

Auto play maxes data plans

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A study on Facebook Autoplay claims that the feature may be to blame for above normal data usage. It concludes that this feature can cause users to max out their data limits and suffer higher charges more often than before it was rolled out. The Facebook Autoplay feature also sometimes causes videos to play automatically, when a person is at a computer. While this may not be a problem for many computer users, it could still be one for those with the limited data that is offered by many satellite internet providers.

Apologizes for lack of access

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While the company was performing  configurations to the infrastructure of the online service, many users were unable to access Facebook today for approximately 20 minutes. At around 1:00 pm PST service returned to the US, Germany and other places after the short period of difficulty accessing the site. Some users are still having trouble accessing the service:

Earlier today we encountered an error while making an infrastructure configuration change that briefly made it difficult for people to access Facebook.

The incident is under further investigation, and Facebook apologizes to its users for any inconveniences they experienced today.
18 Aug, 2014

Facebook campaign

Robin Williams0 Comments

A Facebook campaign is asking the public to make one last stand in honor of late actor and comedian Robin Williams. The group, Standing Ovation for Robin Williams, is calling for people in San Francisco — and beyond — to stop what they’re doing at 1 p.m. August 18 and cheer Williams for a minute. So far, 30,000 have signed up.

15 Aug, 2014

Satire tag

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Facebook adds a satire tag to help people distinguish between real news articles and satirical articles from sites like The Onion. A Facebook representative says they added it in response to user demand:

We are running a small test which shows the text ‘[Satire]’ in front of links to satirical articles in the related articles unit in News Feed. This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units.

7 Aug, 2014

Buys security start-up

Announcement0 Comments

In an effort to protect the site from cyber attacks, Facebook purchases PrivateCore, a company that builds security software. Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer, says PrivateCore’s technology:

protects servers from persistent malware, unauthorized physical access, and malicious hardware devices.

Based in Palo Alto, CA, the company was started in 2012 by security experts from Google and VMware. PrivateCore CEO Oded Horovitz says the deal gives both companies “a huge opportunity to pursue our joint vision at scale with incredible impact.” Neither company discloses the purchase price.

1 Aug, 2014

911 calls during Facebook outage

Makes Statement0 Comments

Sergeant Burton Brink from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department tweets that people should not call 911 when Facebook is down. He says that multiple people called the emergency line during a one-hour period where Facebook was inaccessible.

31 Jul, 2014

Fire challenge injures teens

YouTube0 Comments

Several teenagers in Cape Girardeau, Missouri are severely burnt after emulating “fire challenge” videos from YouTube and Facebook. They involve people putting alcohol or perfume on their skin and setting it on fire to see if they can handle the pain. Cape Girardeau Fire Battalion Chief Mark Starnes says many people have been taken to the emergency room due to this trend:

These kids are starting to challenge themselves more and more in a very dangerous way. We are starting to get more and more people that are confirmed going to the ER and we’ve had one confirmed death.

22 Jul, 2014

Mentions ‘ill-conceived’

William Shatner0 Comments

In a five-section report Shatner reviews Mentions against the Facebook Pages Apps, comparing feeds, insights, posts and notifications. Shatner notes that Mentions forces him to follow a another celebrity. When the app suggests he follow George Takei he rolls his eyes and follows Robert Downey Jr. instead.

If this app is for celebrities, then why force them to follow another celebrity in order to set up this app?

He concludes:

I’m not quite sure why Facebook released this app. It seems to be ill conceived. I will probably use it to post to my Facebook when I’m on my phone but it doesn’t allow for mail or groups. I will continue to use my regular Facebook App as well as the Pages app.

21 Jul, 2014

Buy Button

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Facebook tests a buy button on Newsfeeds as well as in ads. The company says a lot of parts are still in the works such as the shopping cart process.

 In a perfect world, you don’t have to check out.

That auto-pay option only works if Facebook already has a cusomter’s credit card information on file.

Oculus acquisition complete

Oculus VRAcquisition0 Comments

Regulators approve Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion in March 2014, but it takes time for state and local anti-trust teams to approve the acquisition. The companies release a joint statement:

We’re looking forward to an exciting future together building the next computing platform and reimagining the way people communicate.

Bookmark function for posts

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Facebook creates a feature where users can save posts to read later:

Every day, people find all sorts of interesting items on Facebook that they don’t have time to explore right away. Now you can save items that you find on Facebook to check out later when you have more time. You can save items like links, places, movies, TV and music. Only you can see the items you save unless you choose to share them with friends.

17 Jul, 2014

Mentions app

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The company introduces Facebook Mentions, a new Creative Labs Facebook app that makes it easy for celebrities to interact with fans. At the onset, the app is only available to those with verified US Pages, but the app will be available in other countries in the upcoming months. Administrators of verified pages can now request Mention directly, and public figures can download the iPhone app to request access to the feature.

14 Jul, 2014

Mobile TV study

Nielsen0 Comments

Facebook joins television ratings company Nielsen in studying users’ mobile TV viewing habits. Whenever a user watches television on any device from a network that uses Nielsen to track views, Facebook will also send information about the user’s age and sex. Cheryl Idell, executive vice president of Nielsen, says:

The world is shifting radically, and so we had to evolve our measurement so that we could capture all of this fragmented viewing.

Biggest social media event ever

2014 World Cup0 Comments

Facebook claims the World Cup is the biggest social media event ever. Figures obtained by Reuters shows 350 million users participated in a record Facebook “conversation” with 3 billion posts, comments and likes. Facebook tells Reuters:

We knew the World Cup was going to be big, but this level of engagement is remarkable. It was the highest level of conversation around a single event that we have ever measured…Facebook was the global stadium for the 2014 World Cup.

According to Facebook, Germany’s 1-0 win over Argentina in the World Cup final was the most commented match of the tournament, with 88 million users and 280 million interactions. Brazil’s star Neymar was the most talked about player, followed by Argentina’s Lionel Messi, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Uruguay’s Luis Suárez. Brazil was the strongest voice on the site, with 26 percent of all World Cup interactions. 

9 Jul, 2014

99 Days of Freedom

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A campaign started by Dutch non-profit Just called 99 Days of Freedom encourages people to stay off Facebook for 99 days. They point out that the average user spends 17 minutes each day on Facebook, so 28 hours could be saved by not using the site for 99 days. Merjin Straathof, art director of Just, says:

We found that users have at least a ‘complicated’ relationship with Facebook. We landed on a 99-day period, hoping that such interaction will serve as a support group of sorts.

Jul 2014

Lecpetex botnet destroyed

Illness0 Comments

Facebook works with Greek police to take down Lecpetex, a botnet affecting 50,000 Facebook accounts and 250,000 computers worldwide. Victims receive a private message with an executable file in a .zip folder. When run, the program harvests login credentials or uses the computer’s power to mine cryptocurrency. The botnet is able to infect so many people because it constantly changes to evade Facebook’s threat detection measures:

Over the last seven months we saw the botnet operators experiment with different social engineering tactics, including embedding Java JAR files, using Visual Basic Scripts (VBS), and creating malformed ZIP archives and Microsoft Cabinet files (CAB) . . . The files used in the spam messages were also refreshed frequently to evade anti-virus vendor detection.

2 Jul, 2014

Acquires LiveRail

Acquisition0 Comments

Facebook acquires LiveRail, an advertising technology company that creates video ads for websites and apps. LiveRail customers include companies such as Major League Baseball, Gannett, DailyMotion and ABC Family.

We believe that LiveRail, Facebook and the premium publishers it serves have an opportunity to make video ads better and more relevant for the hundreds of millions of people who watch digital video every month.

Privacy watchdog files complaint

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The Electronic Privacy Information Center files a complaint with the FTC against Facebook for conducting psychological experiments on its users without their knowledge or permission:

At the time of the experiment, Facebook did not state in the Data Use Policy that user data would be used for research purposes. Facebook also failed to inform users that their personal information would be shared with researchers.

Facebook responds:

When someone signs up for Facebook, we’ve always asked permission to use their information to provide and enhance the services we offer. To suggest we conducted any corporate research without permission is complete fiction.  Companies that want to improve their services use the information their customers provide, whether their privacy policy uses the word ‘research’ or not.

Sandberg: No study apology

Sheryl SandbergAnnouncement0 Comments

Facebook is not apologizing for performing a psychological study on nearly 690,000 of  its users in 2012.   Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg explains:

This was part of ongoing research companies do to test different products, and that was what it was. It was poorly communicated. And for that communication we apologize. We never meant to upset you.  We clearly communicated really badly about this, and that we really regret.

 

30 Jun, 2014

Manipulated news feeds

Announcement0 Comments

In January 2012, for one week, Facebook manipulated the news feeds of more than a half a million users to see how postings that were being shown in the news feed effects the types of posts the users themselves would post after viewing them.  The results were published this month in the academic journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.  The findings show users who saw more negative content were more likely to create their own negative posts.  Users who viewed more positive content were more likely to create positive posts.  In response to the many upset users of the site, Facebook Data Scientist, Adam Kramer:

The goal of all of our research at Facebook is to learn how to provide a better service.  Having written and designed this experiment myself, I can tell you that our goal was never to upset anyone.