Social Media

Facebook’s Reader App, Called Paper, Is Official–and It’s Beautiful

After much speculative rumor, Facebook this morning announced the arrival of a new standalone iPhone app called Paper. https://gizmodo.com/rumor-facebook-could-launch-a-flipboard-like-reader-th-1501734936 Available February 3rd on iOS, it looks like it’ll be rather more than just a plain old reading app. Rather, it looks to provide most of the content that people use Facebook for day-to-day, but in…

Mark Zuckerberg Talks Fragmenting Apps, Anonymous Facebook and… Poke

Ahead of Facebook’s 10th anniversary on February 4th, Bloomberg Businessweek scored an interview with Mark Zuckerberg to chat about the company’s future. Here are some choice cuts from the social network’s head honcho, before you go read the whole thing. On a shift towards fragmenting Facebook’s apps: “We just think that there are all these…

Facebook’s New Cold Storage: 10,000 Blu-Ray Discs, 1 Petabyte of Data

Facebook has a whole heap of data to store, but much of it sits so deep within our profiles that it rarely need to be served. So the social network has been trying to develop cold storage systems to file older content away—and a new prototype uses Blu-Ray discs. Whilst talking at this year’s Open…

Facebook Could Die Out Like an Infectious Disease By 2017

If you view Facebook as a plague on social dynamics, you might not be far wrong. Researchers from Princeton University claim that the social network’s popularity has spread like an infectious disease—but, as we slowly become immune to its charms, it will die out. By comparing the uptake of Facebook to growth curves of epidemics,…

Facebook Now Shows You Personalized Trending Topics In Your News Feed

Facebook will start showing you trending stories to the right of your News Feed, just under where you’re used to seeing notifications about your friends’ birthdays and upcoming events. Twitter has been showing trending topics for years, but Facebook’s trends promise to be personalized to your interests, so maybe they’ll be better? Not everyone on…

Rumor: Facebook Could Launch a Flipboard-Like Reader This Month

Rumors have swirled for some time about the fact that Facebook might be developing a Flipboard-style news reader. Now, a report from re/code suggests that the social network might launch such a service, called Paper, this month. According to “sources familiar with the matter” that spoke to re/code, the service will be “similar to Flipboard”…

How Conservatives Hijacked a Pro-Obamacare Facebook Meme

We all have those Facebook friends—friends with Very Strong Political Opinions they just can’t keep to themselves. While the political memes popular on Facebook pander shamelessly to people who already agree, sometimes the memes get twisted. And mutated. And even co-opted by the opposite party. Facebook’s data science team has a fascinating post about the…

Everyone You Should Unfollow and Unfriend for 2014

There’s no better time than the new year to start afresh, and today, we ask you to turn your attention not within but without. More specifically, it’s your Twitter and Facebook friends we need to talk about. That’s right—it’s time to trim the fat. You’ve been racking up social media accounts for years now, and…

T-Mobile’s GoSmart brand of plans is about to get a new trick: looking at Facebook without chewing up your mobile data. Starting next month, folks on GoSmart plans will get unlimited access to anything and everything on Facebook, no data plan required. [AllThingsD]

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet has ruled that Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and dozens of banks must face a lawsuit, accusing them of misleading investors about the social network’s economic health during its IPO. Ouch.

What Facebook Tells Us About the Hidden Paths of Mass Migration

The basic shape of urban growth is easy to spot; we look at the fastest-growing cities, for example, or immigration numbers. But yesterday, Facebook’s Data Science team revealed a less obvious pattern: Mass coordinated migration, where a group from the same city moves to another. Who are the winners and losers in this urban game?…

Facebook Video Ads Are Here (And This Is What They Look Like)

Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal published a rumor suggesting that Facebook would announce its new video ads this week. Now, Facebook has made the launch official—and here’s how they look. https://gizmodo.com/wsj-facebooks-autoplay-video-ads-will-arrive-this-wee-1484751579 Facebook is rolling out the ads from this Thursday as a”test”, starting with mini-trailers for the upcoming movie Divergent. They will play automatically…

WSJ: Facebook’s Autoplay Video Ads Will Arrive This Week (Updated)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that long-rumored Facebook autoplaying video ads should arrive this week. Great. https://gizmodo.com/report-automatic-video-ads-with-sound-coming-to-you-5969497 The newspaper claims that Facebook will roll out the video ads on both web and mobile devices later this week. Those “people familiar with the matter” claim that Facebook will announce the arrival later today, and then…

Report: Facebook Testing Instapaper-Style “Save For Later” Button

Tech blog MyTechSkool has pictures of an alleged new feature being tested in Facebook, where users can bookmark articles from the newsfeed for later reading. As described by MyTechSkool, the feature saves the actual article, rather than the Facebook post containing it, to a new Saved Links tab. It can also indicate on your timeline…

Facebook’s Giant New Data Center Will Be Powered By Wind

In a post today on Facebook, the company’s Data Center Energy Manager Vincent Van Son announced that its new data center in Iowa will be powered solely by wind energy drawn from a nearby farm. That’s right: Our insatiable hunger for online validation is indirectly helping to support sustainable energy. Facebook’s fourth data center—which will…

Facebook Rolls Out a Brand New Like Button for the Very First Time

Facebook’s “Like” button plugin has become so ubiquitous across the internet that you probably don’t even notice it sitting on the bottom of nearly every single site you visit. Now, though, that little button is going to stand out quite a bit more—because Facebook has unveiled its first new “Like” and “Share” buttons since its…

Will There Ever Be More Dead People Than Living Ones on Facebook?

Currently, there aren’t many dead people on Facebook, which is largely because its user base is so young. But time marches on and death is inevitable, so will there ever be more dead than live people on the social network? Long answer short: yes. And it’ll probably happen in either the 2060s or the 2130s,…

Facebook Is Testing Software That Tracks Your Cursor’s Every Move

When most people hear that Facebook upgrades are on the way, they’re probably not hoping for more tracking software. But according to a new Wall Street Journal report, that’s exactly what they’re going to get. Facebook’s analytics chief Ken Rudin recently opened up to The Journal about how the social network plans to track user…

Folks from Facebook apparently met with BlackBerry last week to discuss the idea of a potential bid for the company. Really?

Thank God for Moms on Facebook

We’ve all heard people long for Facebook’s lawless pre-parent days. Back then, it was anything goes—a land filled with photos of keg stands without consequence and all the cussing you could muster. Those people are wrong. Facebook is better with moms. Moms are awesome. Moms on Facebook are even more awesome. Do they embarrass you?…