Buying Music Rights May Be Facebook’s Ticket to Beat YouTube
As app developers know, Mark Zuckerberg will not rest until Facebook is a one-stop online media powerhouse. So how is Facebook going to beat YouTube, one of its biggest rivals for our attention spans (not to mention advertising dollars)? In addition to its new video tab Watch, the platform is trying to broker a deal […]
Facebook and Google Own 8 of the 10 Most Popular Apps
The American appetite for apps has plateaued since last year, but mobile app developers should have no fear: 57% of our digital media usage is spent in apps. It goes without saying that mobile apps are now an integral part of our lives. But which ones are the most used? The answers are, well, less […]
Tech Companies Stamp Out Neo-Nazis After Charlottesville
The events this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, shocked the nation, and Trump’s equivocating response threw salt in the wound. For many years now, the trend of political polarization has made common ground harder and harder to find, but it used to be that denouncing Nazis was as American as hot dogs, sparklers, and apple pie. […]
Zuckerberg Listens to America (But Isn’t Running for Office)
Before he was elected president, Donald Trump was just a businessman (by many accounts, a corrupt and failed businessman) and celebrity with no real experience in the political realm. According to his supporters, what qualified him for office were his willingness to play outside Washington’s established rules and his prodigious deal-making skills — after all, […]
Facebook’s Original Streaming Content Is In the Works
The San Francisco mobile app development community has long known about Facebook’s interest in launching streaming content, but until now details were scant. Plans to showcase original content at the F8 developers conference in April and the Cannes Lions advertising festival earlier this month fell through, leaving the tech industry to wonder if the social […]
Tech Giants Oppose Trump’s Withdrawal from the Paris Accord
The tech industry is by definition fixated on the future, so it’s no wonder that its leaders take the threat posed by climate change very, very seriously. What good is their world-changing technology if there’s no world left to change? So naturally the tech world was outraged by President Trump’s announcement that he would be […]
Leak Reveals Facebook’s Content Moderation Policies
Tasked with monitoring content generated from 2 billion users from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, Facebook’s moderators have a tough, maybe even impossible, job. These reviewers often have less than 10 seconds to decide whether or not content is appropriate, leaving them no time for nuance. The Guardian recently obtained more than 100 internal […]
Facebook’s New Drones Will Bring WiFi When Disaster Strikes
Mother Nature has a cruel tendency to knock out cell towers and other infrastructure after major natural disasters, when they are needed most. When communications are down, it’s extremely difficult for disaster relief efforts to coordinate and for panicked families to reach out to endangered loved ones in the impacted area. Fortunately, Facebook and Everfly, […]
Facebook Announces Brain-Computer Interface Project at F8
The big reveal on day one of Facebook’s F8 developer conference was the company’s new augmented reality platform — maybe not the most mind-blowing news, but certainly an interesting direction for the company and an indication that all the Snapchat aping is building toward something. But as big as its AR aspirations are, they seem […]
Facebook Unveils Augmented Reality Platform at F8 Conference
Ten years after Facebook launched its game-changing Platform, the company is looking ahead to its next big conquest: augmented reality. “If you take one thing away from today, this is it,” said Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday in his keynote address at the annual F8 conference. “We’re making the camera the first augmented reality platform.” The […]