Oculus wants to make sure the next computing platform isn’t dominated by white males like the last ones. The company has announced it will put $10 million toward supporting VR app and video creators of diverse backgrounds, including women and people of color. This comes alongside Facebook and Oculus committing to invest another $250 million […]
650 million people use Facebook Events — 100 million every day — but it’s a smaller sect of hardcore extroverts who discover these parties and meetups, then invite everyone else. Now Facebook is giving its most outgoing users a dedicated app for browsing and searching for stuff going on nearby. And thanks to the Facebook […]
Shake your fist and your VR avatar’s face will turn “angry.” Put your hands on your face Home Alone-style to express “shock.” Triumphantly thrust your hands in the air and your virtual self’s face will show “joy.” These are what Facebook calls “VR emoji,” and they’re the company’s vision for how we’ll convey emotion in […]
Facebook’s chat app wants to help you and your friends decide where to go for dinner or what movie to see, then use machine learning to remind you to pay them back. Today Messenger users on iOS and Android in the US get two new features which could roll out to other countries if they […]
Facebook sees 30 million updates to profiles each day, but it can’t build every tool to keep your photos and videos interesting. So today it’s globally rolling out its Profile Expression Kit to all developers. This makes it easy to add media like Vine videos, Boomerang GIFs, Beauty+ enhanced selfies, MSQRD face filters, Lollicam stickers, […]
Facebook has been ordered to stop harvesting the data of WhatsApp users in Germany. The move follows the latter’s shock announcement last month that it would start sharing user data with its parent company, Facebook, including users’ phone numbers and last seen time in the app. Stated uses for the data includes marketing/ad targeting. Shock because, back at the time […]
450 million people already visit “buy and sell” Groups on Facebook each month, and now the company is launching a whole tab in its app dedicated to peer-to-peer shopping. Facebook Marketplace lets you browse a relevancy-sorted feed of things to buy from people who live nearby, and quickly list your own stuff for sale. Integration […]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise August/September trip to Nigeria and Kenya put the global spotlight on Africa’s emerging IT ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, when one of the world’s most recognized tech entrepreneurs pops up at startups and tech hubs few have heard of it draws attention. News of Zuckerberg’s unannounced visit broke with social media photos of […]
Facebook is stealing the Stories format and invading countries where Snapchat isn’t popular yet. Today in Poland it launched “Messenger Day”, which lets people share illustrated filter-enhanced photos and videos that disappear in 24 hours, just like on Snapchat. By using the international popularity of Messenger to spread the Stories format, Facebook could boost retention […]
A dramatic privacy about-face by messaging app WhatsApp this summer, in which it revealed an update to its T&Cs would for the first time allow the sharing of its user data with parent company Facebook, is getting the pair into hot water in Europe. This week Facebook was ordered to stop harvesting data on WhatsApp users in Germany by the Hamburg city DPA, which hit […]