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Facebook Says Likes Must Have Free-Speech Protection

In a court room in Virginia, Facebook’s lawyers are busy arguing that the social network’s “Like” feature needs to be recognised with free-speech protection under the US Constitution. https://gizmodo.com/your-facebook-like-is-worth-174-17-5995468 The Big Blue is hoping it can reverse a lower court ruling, which arose from a lawsuit which suggested a Facebook “Like” isn’t First Amendment speech.…

How to Handle Instagram Tagging Without Being an Asshole

We’ve all been victims of the distasteful Facebook tag at one point or another, and we’ve all felt that tiny shiver down our spine when that fateful red “1” tells us [insert casual acquaintance] just tagged a new photo of you. That feeling won’t be going away anytime soon—today Instagram’s “Photos of You” tagging system…

Where Do You Chat?

Real-time chat has been everywhere for, you know, forever now and has swallowed everything in its path. Integrating chat platforms and finding a way to coherently deal with texting vs. chatting has become a major issue. Other than venting here in hallowed Gizmodo chatroom posts, how do you manage all the Google chat options, Facebook…

What a Facebook Re-Design Would Be Like in Real Life

By now we’re mostly used to Facebook moving the furniture around every once in a while. We complain for a while, then just deal with it. But in a way, it’s still maddening. Your stuff was HERE and now it’s HERE. (Right, right, glass houses.) But at least Facebook can’t barge in and rearrange your…

Facebook Home Is Now Available For the HTC One and Galaxy S4

Since Facebook launched last month, it’s only officially been available for a small pool of phones. But no longer: it seems the HTC One and Galaxy S4 are now fully Facebooked, too. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-home-review-surrender-yourself-unto-zuck-5994086 Android Central reports that after an update to the official Facebook app both phones—along with the Sony Xperia ZL—are able to run…

The 14 Types of Profile Pictures

Your profile picture represents you. You want to convey that you’re fun, interesting, well-traveled, worldly, witty, or any number of likable, desirable qualities. But we’re also really predictable—our profile pictures can be boiled down into 14 specific categories. Like the cover of a book or a movie trailer, your profile picture tells people what you’re…

Predictions for Privacy in the Age of Facebook (from 1985!)

“The ubiquity and power of the computer blur the distinction between public and private information. Our revolution will not be in gathering data — don’t look for TV cameras in your bedroom — but in analyzing information that is already willingly shared.” Are these the words of a 21st century media critic warning us about…

Instagram Finally Adds a Real People-Tagging Feature (Updated)

The Facebookification of Instagram continues today as the photo sharing service just added an official feature for tagging people photos. And of course, these photos will all be grouped together on your profile page in a “Photos of You” section. Before today tagging people in Instagram posts worked in the @reply style of Twitter. You…

Locked Out of Your Facebook Account? Trusted Contacts Will Save You

Starting today, Facebook is rolling out a new Trusted Contacts feature under your account security settings. Here, you can pick three to five folks who will have the power to help you when you lock yourself out of your account like a dummy. It’s pretty unlikely that you’ll get accidentally locked out of your account…

Facebook’s Messenger Protocol Will Power the Internet of Things

One of the big problems with creating a connected house—where thermostats talk to light swtiches which talk to coffee-making robots—is that there’s a lot of communication protocols, and most of them are proprietary. But never fear, a new standard’s been agreed on: um, Faccebook Messenger. More strictly, it’s the protocol that powers Facebook Messenger’s mobile…

The Next Killer Feature in Smartphones

For a long time now, our smartphones have been getting more and more, well, smart. They do more things. You probably haven’t beaten your phone at chess in years. And the race to cram increasingly granular, eventually useless, features into them has defined the past few years of phone making. Except the next big waypoint…

Would You Ever Use a Facebook-Connected Beer Mug?

In the grand scheme of things, social media is pretty great by most accounts. It’s changed the face of the Internet. Drinking is also pretty great. It formed the shape of the world. So how about Facebook-connected beer receptacles? Two great tastes that taste great together or “noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo*gasp*oooooooooooooo”? Budweiser’s “Büddy Cup” aims to help you…

Your Facebook Like Is Worth $174.17

Are you generous with your Facebook Likes? Do you click that thumbs up button for anything that even just slightly amuses you? Maybe you should start charging for liking things. According to a study, your Likes of a brand on Facebook are worth about $174.17 to that brand. Syncapse, a social intelligence company, conducted a…

Google Bans Non-Play Store Android App Updates

If you use Android, you may have had Facebook updates foisted upon you that didn’t require going anywhere near the Play store. That made Google angry—so it’s banned developers from being able to update apps except from through its store. Previously, if users chose to allow installations from unknown sources on their handset, an alert…

Mathematical Proof That Growing Old Means Getting Boring

What happens when you crunch a heap of Facebook data with one of the most sophisticated computational tools in the world? Mathematical proof of the myriad ways your life gets boring as you get older. As you shed your youth, you can look forward to spending even more time whining about the weather and fretting…

Nokia’s Asha 210 Is a Social QWERTY Phone Two Years Late

Just over two years after HTC released the Status—a QWERTY phone with Facebook integration that never even really mattered at the time—Nokia has decided to roll out its own version: the Asha 210. https://gizmodo.com/the-facebook-phone-review-lets-just-pretend-this-isnt-5821278 Nokia’s social phone does at least take into account current trends: in the West and Latin America, it will have a…

Facebook’s New Logo Takes Flat and Simple to the Extreme

The latest subtle redesign to Facebook’s logo was just noticed by developer Tom Waddington. It’s hard to imagine a simpler symbol than new little favicon cube that’ll live next to the Graph Search bar on Facebook’s revamped site. Move the arrows on the slider above from left to right to see a before and after…

Facebook Messenger users on Android can now enjoy free VoIP in the US.

Facebook’s nabbed yet another Apple employee, hiring Richard Williamson, who led Apple’s mapping efforts. Interesting!

The Best App Developer Is Working For Facebook Now (Updated)

According to a tweet by Facebook product designer and UI guru Mike Matas, his team is now working with influential app designer Loren Brichter. That’s right, the man behind Tweetie and Letterpress is now working for Facebook. We don’t yet know the full nature of Brichter’s relationship with Facebook—whether he has come on as a…