THE VERGE - Feb 11 - Facebook has reportedly set its sights on social audio. The company is working on a copycat of Clubhouse, the buzzy invite-only social audio startup. The Times reports the product is in the "early stages of development," so it's unclear if and when it might launch. The news comes only five days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Clubhouse and participated in a room to talk about the future of augmented and virtual reality.
1,419 posts categorized "Facebook"
Facebook Is Reportedly Working on a Clubhouse Copy
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Signal and Telegram Downloads Surpassed Facebook's Messenger
FORTUNE - Feb 3 - The number of monthly downloads of Telegram and Signal has skyrocketed since Oct and, in Jan, surpassed Facebook's Messenger. The growth in downloads for Signal has been especially pronounced, shooting from ~1.2M a year ago to ~30M by late January. Messenger and WhatsApp are used by 1.3B and 570M, respectively, compared to 46M daily users for Telegram and 13M for Signal. The reasons for the apps' recent popularity regarding concerns over Facebook's privacy practices.
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TikTok Overtakes Facebook for Screen Time
TECH.CO - Jan 19 - TikTok has overtaken Facebook when it comes to how long its users spend on the app. According to the report by App Annie, TikTok screen time has overtaken Facebook for the first time, with its average user managing to fit in 21.5 hrs a month. This figure is up from around 12 hrs average TikTok use per month in 2019, and a 325% increase YoY. While Facebook screen time has also increased, it has done so on a smaller scale, and yet both of these easily dwarf the platforms that follow - Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Whatsapp.
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Report Finds Many Americans Rely on Social Media for News
MEDIAPOST - Jan 13 - 53% of Americans get their news from social media at least some of the time, but an increasing percentage of them feel it is making them more confused about current events. That's the finding of a new report from the Pew Research Center, which has been tracking Americans' use of social media for news for several years. The report suggests that social media is becoming a less reliable source of news for many Americans. Not surprisingly, Facebook is the primary social media source of news, with 36% of Americans citing it the social network as a "regular source" for news, followed by YouTube (23%), Twitter (15%), Instagram (11%), Reddit (6%), Snapchat (4%), LinkedIn (4%), TikTok (3%), WhatsApp (3%), Twitch (1%) and Tumblr (1%).
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Facebook Help Another Company to Build a Social Network to Fight off Antitrust Lawsuit
BUSINESS INSIDER - Dec 25 - The Washington Post reported Facebook offered to give other tech companies access to its code through license agreements to help build a rival social media network. Facebook lawyers proposed the idea to state and federal investigators days before they filed major antitrust lawsuits against the company. The US Federal Trade Commission and 48 state attorneys general filed lawsuits against Facebook on Dec 9 seeking to break off Instagram and WhatsApp. The suits signal a broader effort by the US to strengthen oversight and regulation over Facebook.
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Social Networks Will Experience a Pandemic-Driven Boost in 2020
EMARKETER - Dec 22 - In 2020, there will be ~150M more social network users worldwide than expected before the pandemic. That will lift the total to 3.23B. As a result, nearly 81% of internet users worldwide will be social network users this year. Facebook will continue to dominate global social networking, which will post an 8.7% growth in global user numbers in 2020. Instagram will see the biggest percentage increase of any platform worldwide this year, growing its user base by 22.9%. Snapchat will see global user numbers rise by 16.1%. And twitter growth will be steady (8.4% in 2020).
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TikTok Surpasses Facebook to Become the Most Downloaded App Worldwide in 2020
JAGRAN TECH DESK - Dec 11 - Video sharing platform TikTok has surpassed Facebook to become the most downloaded app on Android and iOS platforms combined. TikTok topped charts despite being banned in India - its largest market outside China - earlier this year in the aftermath of a violent border clash between India and China that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. TikTok now ranks 8th in the list of apps with most Monthly Active Users (MAUs). It is also now the second-highest revenue-generating app from customer's spending, behind only Tinder.
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Facebook Is Working on Neighborhoods, a Nextdoor Clone
TECH CRUNCH - Oct 21 - Facebook has started to test a Nextdoor clone, called Neighborhoods. Neighborhoods is currently live only in Calgary, Canada, where it is being tested before getting rolled out more broadly. Earlier this month during Facebook's Communities Summit, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that there were ~1.8B people engaging with Groups at least once a month on Facebook, with ~70M group admins and moderators. "We're going to make communities as central to the FB experience as friends and family," Zuckerberg said back in 2019 and repeated again this month.
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These Alternatives to Facebook Won't Sell Users' Data
REUTERS - Oct 12 - In 2018, Facebook reported that personal data on 87M users was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. According to the Ponemon Institute, trust in Facebook took a 66% plunge in 2018. Here is a list of platforms where users can interact with their friends and family without their data being stolen and stored on huge servers.
- WT: Social: founded by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, news-focused and free from ads that do not rely on algorithms to fill in top stories and clickbait stories
- Sociall: a new platform similar to other networks with standard features. What sets it apart is its privacy policy. The company does not track users' online activity and doesn't sell users' data to third parties.
- Vero: a social network where users are not bothered by ads; free from data mining and algorithms making it a safer app to use.
- Yubo: a social networking app that does not track its users or throw in ads after every ten seconds. The platform is transparent about its data collecting.
- Ello: an ad-free alternative to existing social networks, similar to a Pinterest-like website showcasing art, photography and fashion.
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Facebook Returns to Its Roots With Campus, a College Student-only Social Network
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 11 - Facebook is launching a new social networking platform, Facebook Campus, which offers college students a private place to connect with classmates, join groups, discover upcoming campus events, get updates from their school's administration and chat with other students from their dorm, clubs or any other campus group. The new platform requires a school email address (@.edu) to join and will live within a dedicated section of the Facebook app. Facebook likely wanted to address its "teen problem". Facebook has been losing its grip on the younger demographic, as they've shifted their attention to other social apps, like YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram. According to Pew Research Center, only 51% of U.S. users ages 13 through 17 said they used Facebook, down from 71% who said the same in 2015. At launch, Facebook Campus is only available at 30 colleges and universities across the U.S.
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Lawsuit Alleges Instagram Harvested User Biometric Data Without Consent
IDROPNEWS - Aug 13 - Facebook again is facing charges for reportedly harvesting biometric data from its users. This newly filed lawsuit targets Instagram. The complaint, filed in the state court system in Redwood, California, claims Instagram violates the state's strict biometric privacy law. This law prohibits companies from collecting biometric data without a user's consent. If Facebook is found guilty, the company could face a fine of $1K per violation or $5K per violation if its noncompliance was intentional. Facebook recently settled a similar suit, also out of Illinois, targeting Facebook's photo-tagging tool. Facebook claimed the suit has no merit but ultimately settled for $550M.
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China's Tencent Is Now Bigger Than Facebook
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Social Networks Aim to Erase Hate But Miss the Target on Guns
ECONOTIMES - July 23 - Mark Zuckerberg recently announced plans to ban a "wider category of hateful content in ads." Twitter, YouTube and Reddit have also taken additional steps to curtail online hate, removing several inflammatory accounts. But they all overlook a gun talk. The word "gun" appears but once in Facebook's policy on "Violence and incitement" to bar the manipulation of images to include a gun to the head. And neither "guns" nor "firearms" are mentioned in Twitter's policy on "Glorifications of violence," or YouTube's guidelines on "Violent or graphic content" or within any of these networks' rules on hate speech. Gun references have become prevalent in social media dialogues involving the nationwide protests over racial injustice, police reform and the BLM movement.
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The Rise of Niche and Vertical Social Networks
FORBES - Dec 21 - According to eMarketer, Facebook lost ~2M users under the age of 25 in 2018, and the number of Facebook users keeps dropping. Other social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn are losing young users as well. The reason is the growing interest in vertical networks. A vertical social network is a specifically targeted social network that connects people with very specific interests, hobbies, and passions. People on vertical networks can receive specific and targeted content on a daily basis and, even connect with people who share the same interests. There is a variety of vertical social networks catering to different individuals, including Behance, StackOverflow, Goodwall and ResearchGate. Behance is an advanced vertical network for creative individuals. It allows artists and designers to showcase their work and discover new art every day. On 2012, Adobe acquired Behance for $150M. StackOverflow provides questions and answers related to code development and the surrounding challenges. Goodwall is a community of 1M students and young professionals who connect to discover opportunities from $1M+ in scholarships to 5M+ jobs and internships. ResearchGate is the platform for scientists and researchers to share research articles.
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Facebook Has Declared War On YouTube
VENTURE BEAT - Feb 3 - Facebook’s autoplay feature on videos is extremely engaging. This key feature is not only pushing YouTube videos off Facebook, but also contributes to an increased rate of video watching and ad revenue from videos. YouTube reacted immediately by autoplaying the “related videos” at the end of each YouTube video play. What YouTube can do, which will have a bigger impact on numbers, is to simply activate the autoplay (not just related videos) in all embeds, without audio, just like Facebook.
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