Facebook today is rolling out a number of improvements to its “Slideshow” ads, announced last fall as a means of offering an alternative to video ads in developing markets where bandwidth may be limited. The company this morning says that advertisers will now be able to create these ads right from their phones, as well […]
“What if I figured out a way to take Facebook from 2004 and bring it to 2016? What if every field in your profile was a full video?” asks Facebook’s 19-year-old product prodigy Michael Sayman. The answer is Lifestage, a standalone iOS app for people 21 and under, which Facebook is launching today. It asks […]
Every day, billions of pieces of content are shared on Facebook. To keep up with the data, Facebook has been using a variety of tools to classify text. Traditional methods of classification, like deep neural networks are accurate, but have serious training requirements. In an effort to classify both accurately and easily, Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Research […]
Not to be outdone by Twitter – who, yesterday introduced followable Moments and other means of tuning into Olympics news via its network – Facebook is rolling out a number of ways for its users to show support for their favorite teams plus track the Olympics news they care about in a dedicated section of the News […]
This is where Facebook will prototype its solar drones, Internet-beaming lasers, VR headsets, and next-gen servers. The problem with moving faster than most companies is that Facebook was plagued by delays whenever it had to outsource prototyping and testing of its gadgets and gizmos. With so much hardware on its 10-year roadmap, and quarter after […]
Snapchat opens to the camera by default to spur content creation, and now Facebook is trying the same starting with an Olympics-themed test in Brazil and Canada. Instead of just the “What are you doing?” text status update prompt, users will see an open camera window as Facebook executes on Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to put […]
News outlets may get back some of their mojo stolen by a June Facebook feed algorithm change that preferred friends over publishers. Today Facebook will start predicting stories that are informative and highlighting them to people if they’re “related to their interests, if they engage people in broader discussions, and if they contain news”. Facebook […]
As you may have noticed over the last few days — I sure did — Facebook recently incorporated a sneaky change to the way its ads are displayed that disguised them as ordinary content and circumvented ad blocking software in browsers. Ads crowded the streams of even the most vigilant users. But this hell on […]
Facebook can’t build everything. For a decade, its strategy has been to provide the canvas, then let developers paint it however they want. That’s because there’ll always be another game. Another app. Another… selfie filter? The hot trend in consumer social networking has progressed from text update sharing to gaming to one-off utilities to basic […]
Adblock Plus launched a workaround to Facebook’s ad block bypass today that ham-handedly removes posts from friends and Pages, not just ads, according to a statement provided by Facebook to TechCrunch. “We’re disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don’t just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages. This […]