Social Media

Twitter’s new, Facebook-style design is now available to all. If you don’t have the new look already, head on over to Twitter’s new profile page and click the button that says “get it now.” [Twitter via Techblock]

Facebook’s Paper has finally added events notifications as well as the ability to insert photos into comments. Hey—it’s almost like real Facebook. Almost.

It’s Time to Ditch Facebook and Start Over

Most of us have had Facebook accounts for the past few years, if not a decade. But time and bloat have turned once-beloved font of nostalgia into an onslaught of faux-sentimental sludge from strangers. So as Facebook stands poised to break itself into a bunch of different apps, we say to you: Screw it. It’s…

Facebook’s cleaning up your News Feed a little, ripping out Like-baiting posts, repeated content, and spammy links.

Report: Facebook Will Pull Chat Out of Main Mobile App

TechCrunch reports that Facebook will be removing chat from its standalone mobile apps in an effort to force people to use its Facebook Messenger application. If true, the move would be Facebook’s latest aggressive play to take control of your messaging life. According to the report, users in Europe have started getting the first of…

Twitter’s Facebook-Lite Look Kicks In Today, With New Profile Powers

That major redesign Twitter was teasing earlier this year? It’s here. And it’s got a few features we hadn’t heard about thrown in for good measure. Welcome to Facewitter, or Twitbook. It’s actually pretty nice! The overhaul isn’t quite as dramatic as what circulated in February, although it’s still a fairly stark change from what…

Facebook Ditched a Fancy Redesign Because Your Computer Sucks

Last year Facebook debuted a nice redesign that featured big, beautiful pictures, seen above. But Facebook never rolled it out. Why? Because most people have crappy old computers. Entrepreneur Dustin Curtis had claimed that the reason for the redesign abandonment was because it didn’t drive enough advertising dollars. But Facebook product designer Julie Zhuo said…

Facebook’s Drone-and-Laser Plan to Give Internet to Everyone

In its quest to get the whole world online, Facebook’s Internet.org project has included partnerships with companies like Samsung and Nokia, as well as with NASA. Now it seems that rumors about Mark Zuckerberg’s drone dreams are true, and the social network giant is planning on internet-delivering drones, satellites, and even lasers. Here’s our first…

Twitter’s Losing Sight of What Makes It So Great

Today, Twitter introduced some major changes to the way it does business. Not only can a single tweet now hold multiple photos (along with 10 tagged friends), but none of that extra baggage takes away any of your precious characters. In other words, Twitter just got a whole lot more like Facebook. https://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-add-multiple-photos-and-tag-people-in-tweet-1552320576 Once confined…

Minecraft VR is the First Casualty of Facebook’s Oculus Rift Buyout

Facebook’s buyout of promising virtual reality company Oculus (makers of the Oculus Rift headset) has split the gaming community right down the middle. And it’s alienated at least one high profile developer — Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft. While some see the social network’s war-chest as exactly what Oculus needs to fast-track the protracted development…

Facebook Could Give You the Oculus Rift You Always Wanted

The news today that Facebook will buy Oculus—the makers of the best virtual reality experience in existence—caused paroxysms of upsetment and surprise. That’s fair! But once the smoke clears, this could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the most promising technology we have. If you’ve been tracking Oculus since its…

Facebook is Buying Oculus Because It Needs a Sci-Fi Toy

Why is Facebook buying the virtual reality company Oculus? Because without a sci-fi toy — like Google’s robots or Amazon’s drones — Facebook had nothing to offer hungry tech journalists who are looking for the next big thing. With Oculus, Facebook gets to trot out the coolest in just-over-the-horizon futurism at a time when their…

Facebook Is Buying Oculus VR, The Incredible Future of Virtual Reality

Completely out of the blue, Facebook has announced that it is buying Oculus VR—the future of virtual reality awesomeness—for $2 billion. What?! https://gizmodo.com/i-wore-the-new-oculus-rift-and-i-never-want-to-look-at-1496569598 Facebook’s plans for the totally rad VR headset aren’t immediately apparent, and the social media giant’s announcement of the acquisition does little to clear it up, citing the possibility of using the…

The Onion Explains Where All “The Teens” Leaving Facebook Are Going

The wonderful thing about internet communities is that it’s very hard to artificially build them, but they arise organically in the strangest ways. And sometimes The Teens, those rapscallions, find the strangest places to commune online. This little farce explores the weird places we decide to talk online. But is it really so far-fetched? [The…

Facebook’s Facial Recognition ‘Approaching Human-Level Performance’

Facebook has been working on facial recognition for years to auto-tag photographs, but has now reached a point where its technology is ‘closely approaching human-level performance.’ In fact, in some ways it might even be better. The social network’s in-house research team has been working on a project called DeepFace: cutting-edge facial recognition software which…

This WhatsApp Redesign Would Make Facebook’s $16 Billion Buy Worth It

Whatsapp has been one of the most talked about start-up giants in recent memory. Building upon the most basic of mobile services, messaging WhatsApp has managed to monetise and evolve the service through cross platform integration and making it free (among many other things). Following the $16billion acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook I thought that…

The Man Who Tried to Invent the Like Button in the 1930s

Think Facebook invented the Like button? Think again. Back in the 1930s one man hoped to create a device that could send feedback to radio stations with the push of a button. He called it the “radiovota.” Get it? The radio… voter. Dr. Nevil Monroe Hopkins, pictured above left, was a research engineer and lecturer…

The NSA Has Impersonated Facebook To Spread Malware

So the NSA is spying on you. You’ve known that for quite some time now. What you might not know much about is exactly how they’re doing, and a new report from Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald offers up some pretty grizzly details about the agency’s worldwide, automated malware network. Did you know, for instance,…

Facebook’s prolific I Fucking Love Science page—which has over 10 million likes—is reportedly making its way to TV with “a mix of live-action, animation and recreations that demonstrate the random manifestations of science that connects us.”

TechCrunch reports that your Facebook news feed is getting a design touchup. Nothing major: new fonts, “bolder” images, and a simplified left sidebar. As for the gloriousoverhaul we were supposed to get last year—still no word.