How Mobile App Developers are Making Livestreaming Take Off
Livestreaming has had a rough road to the mainstream. Apps like Meerkat and Periscope have struggled to maintain consistent growth. Even when integrated with Facebook via Facebook Live, mainstream app users have generally been bewildered by the concept of livestreaming. Part of the reason for that speed bump has been the constant pressure on app […]
Zuckerburg Authorizes $6 Billion Facebook Stock Buyback
Big news is coming for social media giant Facebook in the first quarter of 2017, as founder Mark Zuckerberg has authorized a huge stock buyback. To the tune of $6 billion, the move is being reported as a reaction to Facebook’s slowed growth (to be fair, most people in the world use the platform at […]
Facebook Eyes LinkedIn with New Recruitment Features
Facebook’s app development team has been in the news lately for their “memorial page” banner error, but there’s something much more meaningful that tech pundits should be focussed on: new features that promote job-hunting on the platform. As LinkedIn adjusts to life under Microsoft, Facebook is seizing the moment to start an unexpected race with […]
Facebook Messenger Launches In-App Games to Take on Apple
It sometimes seems like Facebook gets a cut of virtually every market these days, from media to communication. One market they’ve had trouble breaking into, however, is the mobile gaming industry — particularly ironic, for anybody that’s tired of getting Farmville requests from vague acquaintances. With the launch of “Instant Games” within the Messenger app, the […]
Instagram Introduces In-App Shopping for Brands
If Twitter is the poster child of angry users and poor monetization attempts, Instagram is the opposite — a massive mobile app startup that’s somehow perfectly balanced monetization and user experience. That balance in on display currently as the company just launched “shoppable tags,” which allow select brands to display purchase information embedded within tags […]
UK Data Spying Case Shocks and Outrages Tech Community
While much of the app development community assumes the Snowden disclosures only really applied to NSA operations in the US, the UK was also found to be conducting illegal data collection operations. From 1998 to 2015, the UK’s collection program collected massive amounts of private data including location and call records from every phone in […]
Facebook Launches “Lite” Messenger Version For Old Devices
Designing for a cross-platform world can be difficult for startup app developers, especially when you consider the severe limitations of “legacy” devices compared to the incredible computing power, memory and storage capacity of the smartphones now considered standard by the US public. Facebook recently launched a standalone app for messenger users on older devices, showing […]
Facebook Messenger Opens Native Payments to Bot Developers
There’s been a lot of chatter about the “bot revolution” the past few months, but the spread of bot app usage among mainstream mobile app users has been slow at best. Part of the reason behind that, at least on go-to messaging platform Messenger, is the limitation on payments. Specifically, in order to make a […]
Facebook Algorithm Change Is Opportunity for Digital Brands
Facebook recently made another major update to their News Feed algorithm, penalizing news sources responsible for headlines like “You’ll Never Look At Your Friends The Same… Once You’ve Searched This Site!” For many brands on Facebook, updates to the algorithm spell disaster. Impressions on existing page fans are at an all-time low, and Facebook is […]
Facebook Promotes fbStart at Global Entrepreneurship Summit
President Obama and Mark Zuckerburg shared the stage at last week’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit to draw attention to tech and small business in the American economy. While the thrust of the talk was aimed at increasing support and diversity among startups and mobile app developers, Zuckerburg used the stage time to promote a little-known but […]