Facebook’s new live streaming feature takes on Snapchat

Facebook is constantly experimenting and adding new features to keep users glued to the popular social media network. This Friday, Facebook has rolled out yet another new feature that allows you to watch live events sitting at home. The new service has made its debut with Chicago’s Lollapalooza music festival wherein live event feed is streamed and Facebook users in the US can watch curated photos, videos, public posts and updates published by users, artists and bands at the music festival.

The music festival is being made available on Place Tips, a feature launched by Facebook in January by which users can get information about their friend’s current location. The live streaming is however new. “This Place Tips Lollapalooza experience is just one of the many ways Facebook is trying to help people get the feel of an event when they’re not there,” a spokesperson from Facebook told wsj.

The new feature is a lot like Snapchat’s “Our Story” feature launched last summer by which people attending an event can post pictures and videos of the event into a live stream and users can tap into it from distant locations to watch them. Facebook says that live streaming from Lollapalooza is different from Snapchat’s feature as it also includes content posted by your friends who are attending the music festival.

Twitter is also planning to join the competition with live event coverage by the end of the year. Twitter’s new feature is called “Project Lightening” that will show up a new button to the users on their homepage by clicking which they will be able to see content from live events. Twitter’s Periscope app allows live video streaming from iPhone. Meerkat is another mobile app that allows users to stream live videos over Twitter to their followers.

Facebook says that Lollapalooza is just a test and it will continue to develop the feature for other applications in future.

Facebook’s new live streaming feature takes on Snapchat

Facebook Rumored to be working on Virtual Assistant Named MoneyPenny

Virtual Assistant feature is available in most platforms nowadays such as Microsoft with Cortana, Google Now and Apple Siri, therefore, it is not surprising if Facebook will be joining the trend soon. According to a few rumors, Facebook is currently working on a virtual assistance feature for its Facebook Messenger. It will go by the name of Moneypenny.

For some of you which have not watch “James Bond” movie before, Moneypenny is James bond’s boss and the head of MI6, the organization which James Bond’s work for. The difference of Moneypenny from other virtual assistant feature such as Cortana or Siri is that Moneypenny is designed for smaller task which is to help the users to find real people who can help with research or shopping. However, there is no further detail available until now regarding how it works or when it is going to be released.

Apparently, Facebook is not the only one who is working on virtual assistant feature for its platform. It seems like Amazon is also working on it too. The difference is that Facebook is using real people which the others is using programs to process and answer other users’ questions. On top of that it seems like Facebook is also adding a few more new features such as video chats and money transfer to its Facebook Messenger apps.

With all these features available, Facebook Messenger apps is going to be more fun to use.

Facebook Rumored to be working on Virtual Assistant Named MoneyPenny

New Floating Video Player Feature Will be coming in Your Facebook Page

In line with Facebook’s effort to have a better video sharing service, apparently the social network is currently testing on floating video player functionality.  Therefore, when you saw an interesting video on your Facebook’s News Feed page, you can watch it while scrolling through your News Feed page.

This is made possible by introducing a new video detach button and when you click on the button, the video will detach itself and move around while you scrolls up or down your Facebook’s News Feed page. The video will not stop playing as long as you stay at the same screen. Apparently this feature is not available for everyone yet. If you are lucky enough, you will see the button alongside with the playback controls. On top of that, it is only available when you are accessing Facebook on the desktop version as this feature is not available on mobile Facebook or apps for smartphones and tablets yet.

The floating video player will have basic and minimal playback interface such as the usual play/pause and close buttons, however, there also will be a Like and Share buttons as well.  In the future, hopefully, the floating video player can be moved outside the browser so that it can be played even though the user is accessing other website.  Another improvement that can be made is for the size of the floating video player to be a little bit bigger or allow users to resize it on their own.

This new functionality is seen as Facebook’s way to sell marketing space for advertisers.

New Floating Video Player Feature Will be coming in Your Facebook Page

Payments through Facebook Messenger now available to users in the US

In March this year, Facebook had announced addition of a new payment feature in its Messenger by which users could send and receive money between family and friends in an easy and secure way. Moreover, it is free. The social networking giant has now announced that the “Messenger person-to-person payments” will be available to all the users in the US. They just have to add their debit card and the payment can be made in a few clicks.

When you want to make payment, just click on the dollar icon “$” in the Messenger conversation. Enter the amount you want to pay and click on the “Pay” icon on the top right hand corner. The money is transferred from your account to the recipient’s account within one to three working days depending on the bank.

You can check out the Messenger payment process through the following pictures or the video at the end of this post:

Before making the payment, users have to register with their Mastercard or Visa debit cards. Users receiving the money for the first time will also have to register their debit cards before they can accept the funds.

Facebook assures the users such payments made through the Messenger are secure as all the information is encrypted. Facebook says that they have been handling payments by advertisers and game players since 2007 and processes over 1 million transactions daily.

They say,” We use layers of software and hardware protection that meet the highest industry standards. These payment systems are kept in a secured environment that is separate from other parts of the Facebook network and that receive additional monitoring and control. A team of anti-fraud specialists monitor for suspicious purchase activity to help keep accounts safe.”

Facebook Messenger is now an independent service as even non-Facebook users can sign up for it. Currently, Facebook Messenger has about 700 million users behind only to WhatsApp which has also been acquired by Facebook now. This new money transfer facility through Messenger to family and friends would be a very easy and convenient feature for its users.

The new payment feature in the Messenger is rolling out now in the US across desktop, Android and iOS devices.

Check out the video here:

Messenger P2P PaymentsWe’re happy to announce that Messenger person-to-person payments are now available to everyone in the U.S.! Add your Debit Card and pay anyone on Messenger in a few taps. Money goes straight from your checking account to the recipient’s checking account. Easy and safe. As always, give it a try it and let us know how we can make even better for you!

Posted by David Marcus on Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Payments through Facebook Messenger now available to users in the US

Facebook introduces Moments App to share photos privately with your friends

Facebook has introduced a new photo sharing app Moments that enables smartphone users to share photos of an event privately with friends who are in those photos and also get photos of themselves from their friends’ mobiles easily.

Almost everyone has a smartphone these days and it has become easy to capture important moments of our lives on phone. In an event or a group outing, we see that everyone tries to capture the same group pics in their respective phones to have a copy for themselves otherwise they face the tedious task of contacting friends separately and take photos from them. And even if they do manage to get copies of some pics from friends, they find it difficult to organize these photos at one place in the phone. Now Facebook’s creative labs have come up with Moments, a standalone photo sharing app that makes all this easy and offers “A private way to share photos with friends.”

Moments app offers a quick and easy way to share photos using facial recognition technology to find who is in which photo and then groups them accordingly. It then allows you to sync the photos with those friends privately. Similarly, you can get back your own photos from them. On top of it, these synced photos get organized making it easy to search through them for specific photos.

Initially, Facebook has launched the Moments app only in the US but has plans to roll it out in other countries soon. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices and can be download from Google Play Store and iTunes respectively.

    

Facebook introduces Moments App to share photos privately with your friends

Russian Internet Authority Sent Official Notice to Facebook, Twitter, Google

Russia has passed a number of laws in the past year. It is seen as nothing less than a censorship. On top of that, recently, Russian’s federal office which handles communications, mass media and information technology which basically handles everything from telecommunications and internet sector, Roskomnadzor, has sent official notice to Google, Twitter and Facebook.

The official notice requests the three big companies to comply with national legislation to provide information on Russian bloggers who have more than 3,000 readers each day as well as to close site which the Russia’s internet authority seen as “unsanctioned protests and unrest”. There is a legislation law which was passed last year which stated that bloggers with large leaderships are required to register with a government agency and have their identities verified. Another legislation which was also passed last year mentioned that the Russians prosecutors are allowed to block sites without a court order.

Google announced in the company’s transparency report which is published twice-per-year that the company has responded to 5% of the total of 134 information requests from the Russian government during the second half of the year of 2014. Twitter is reported that the company has rejected 108 requests whereas Facebook, on the other hand, has declined to comment on the two requests that the company received last year.

As the three companies use encryption protocols to prevent the Russian’s agency to block specific sites, the only option that they have is to block the sites entirely. Ampelonsky, Roskomnadzor’s spokesperson mentioned that the agency realized that the three companies were registered under U.S. jurisdiction, however, the three companies should demonstrated equal respect to national legislation and if they did not, then the agency would need to apply for sanctions. There is no further information what the sanctions will be.

Russian Internet Authority Sent Official Notice to Facebook, Twitter, Google

Some of Facebook’s Toughest Interview Questions

Employees on Glassdoor have voted Facebook as the No.1 company to work for overall. When you work in Facebook as an intern, you already make $25,000 more than the average citizen. However, it is not really easy to get a job there as there are some tricky questions that you need to answer first. In this entry, we are going to show you some of the interview questions from Facebook so that you can get ready in case if you are interested in working for the company.

“There is a building with 100 floors and you are given 2 identical eggs. How do you use 2 eggs to find the threshold floor, where the egg will definitely break from any floor above floor N, including floor N itself”  or “How many birthday posts occur on Facebook on a given day?” These type of questions are some of the possible questions thrown to a Data Scientist candidate.

“If you were going to redesign an ATM machine, how would you do it?” or “Should Facebook continue to add features or rely on 3^rd party apps?”  This question is an example of question that is asked for Product Designer candidate.

Other questions for other position, such as User Operations Analyst candidate, for example, if you were an animal what kind would you be and why?

It seems like it is not the usual type of interview questions and in my opinion there is no wrong or right answer.

Some of Facebook’s Toughest Interview Questions

5 interesting Facebook tricks you should know about

Facebook is one of the most popular social media networks that allows us to easily connect with our family and friends residing in any part of the world. We can share status updates, photos and videos as well as comment on their posts and chat with them.

However, there is a lot more to Facebook than doing just that. Here are 5 Facebook features that might interest you:

1. Facebook tells your friends your location

You can share so many things on Facebook with your friends – your news, events,thoughts, photos and videos. You can now also share your location using the ‘Nearby Friends’ feature. It is an Android and Facebook app that alerts you when any of your friends is nearby.

This app is presently available in select areas only and to check if ‘Nearby Friends’ is available in your area, you can open Facebook in your phone and click the icon having 3 horizontal lines present in top right corner in Android phone and bottom right corner in iPhone. Then select ‘Nearby Friends’ and then ‘Turn On’.

You can also choose who all can see your location. By default, only your friends can see it, not everyone. You can select a list like family or any list of friends you have created and only the people in that list will be able to see your location. You can also share your location temporarily with anyone you wish to. For this, go to Nearby Friends, find the friend you want on the list, click the arrow icon in front of their name and then choose how long you would like to share your location with them.

2. Facebook allows you to use emoticons and stickers

Facebook has hundreds of emoticons which you can send to friends via comments or chat. Apart from the usual smileys and hearts, these emoticons include emojis for so many other things like flowers, vehicles, professions, food, buildings, holidays etc.  Facebook has now added stickers too. If you want to send an emoticon or sticker to a friend, click the smiley in the comment or chat window. It will show you some default emoticons and stickers from which you can choose. If you want more options, there is a sticker store. To download more sticker packs, you can click the blue plus sign shown on the sticker window’s top right corner.

These smiley faces and emojis look cute but sometimes when you see a lot of them everywhere, they can be annoying. You can remove these stickers by using browser app ‘Unsticker Me’ for Firefox and Chrome. It will convert the sticker images to say [sticker].

3. Facebook tracks you but you can stop this tracking

Facebook shares your information with advertisers and marketers and in turn gets from them whatever information they have about you. This way, your detailed profile is built by them that includes your likes, dislikes, choices, browsing habits etc. and it helps them to target you with relevant ads. Advertisers are raking in millions this way.

You can escape from this tracking by opting out of the ad network. Facebook and several other companies have formed a Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). There is a tool available on the DAA website by which you can opt out of the advertising network. You can choose Facebook and/or other companies where you do not want to see targeted ads. You can even choose all the companies participating in the network.

4. Facebook allows you to check your privacy settings

Online privacy is extremely important and Facebook has introduced a Privacy Checkup tool for it. Many people don’t know about it but if you want to find it, click the ‘lock’ icon on top right corner and then click Privacy Checkup. You can now choose who can see your posts, your personal info and manage your installed apps.

5. Facebook spills your secret

When you open a Facebook message, you will notice a text saying ‘seen at’. It tells the sender that the recipient has seen the message and when they have seen it. If you don’t respond immediately to it, it might cause a misunderstanding because the sender might think you are ignoring them.

Chrome browser has an extension ‘Facebook Unseen’ by which Facebook will not know when you have seen the message. For Android and iOS, Privy Chat or Unread could be used.

5 interesting Facebook tricks you should know about

Only 14% of teens name Facebook as the top social network

Facebook is currently the most popular social network the world over but if you ask the teens, they may say differently. A recent survey by Investment Bank Piper Jaffray finds that Facebook is losing its charm among the teens while Instagram and Snapchat are fast growing in popularity.

The survey titled “Taking Stock With Teens” in which 6,200 teens with average age of 16 were surveyed, has found that only 14% of the US teenagers regarded Facebook as the “most important social network.” This was 23% last year and 33% in 2013 indicating that Facebook is fast losing popularity among the US teenagers.

So which social network is regarded by the teens as the best? Well, the Facebook owned Instagram was chosen as the top social network by 32% of the teens while 24% chose Twitter. Facebook with 14% came at third place closely followed by Snapchat with 13%.

Piper Jaffray releases this survey twice a year and it is closely watched on Wall Street. Companies use the findings to get an idea about teens’ spending pattern and brand preferences while investors use them for making their stock buying decisions.

Survey results released by Pew Research Center tell a different story. Their survey found Facebook to still be the top choice of teenagers with 71% teens aged between 13 and 17 using it. 52% of them used Instagram and 41% used Snapchat.

Only 14% of teens name Facebook as the top social network

Facebook is retiring its “Like Box” Plugin

Facebook is announcing that the company is retiring the “Like” box plugin starting from June 23.  The “Like” plugin is normally found in other websites outside Facebook. This plugin is used for social optimization such that it will get new users who like your website on Facebook as well. On top of that it is also very easy to use. You just need to install the plugin and add Facebook “Like Box” widget to the sidebar and set some setting such as Page ID, Facebook like box width, height, etc and you can use it readily.

Instead of using the widget, Facebook would like the developers of other websites to use new Page plugin as it gives visitors a preview of the page online so that they can know roughly whether they will like the page before they click on the page. The new Page plugin is richer in content and it looks like an embedded Twitter feed of Facebook posts. Therefore, it is cleaner, prettier and better than the previous “Like Box” widget.

To use the new Page plugin, you will also need the latest Graph API. Unfortunately, the older code relating to “Like Box” plugin and the previous version of “Graph API” has been removed as well.

Facebook is retiring its “Like Box” Plugin

Snapshot of Oculus Founder’s Life after Facebook Bought his Company for $2 Billion

Not many people know Palmer Luckey. He is the person who created his first virtual reality headset and eventually makes a company out of it. He is only 22 years old. Last year, Facebook bought his company for $2 Billion, making his wealth swollen to more than $500 million, according to Forbes estimation.

Let us take a look how his life has changed after the bought over.

Luckey currently lives in Silicon Valley town. Some of the known figure who is also lives in the area such as Google chairman, Eric Schmidt and HP CEO Meg Whitman. Apparently, he spends a lot of time in executive-level suite in Facebook Headquarter in Menlo Park.

Luckey is a laid-back person. He is known for his casual look. On a typical day, he wears a Hawaiian shirt and sandals. If possible he prefers to be barefoot. In an interview with Telegraph, “We invented shoes to protect our feet from the harsh environment, but I live in modern-day California. It’s pretty safe here. Nothing’s going to happen if I take them off”.

After the Facebook deal, he bought a $120,000 Tesla Model S. He also drives 1986 GMC van which comes with a red shag carpet inside.

He spent the last year traveling, recruiting engineers and demoing in Rift. He also traveled to Cologne, Germany where the Gamescom exhibition took place. In October, his work in virtual reality has been honored by Smithsonian with an American Ingenuity Award.

Overall, Palmer Luckey tends to shy away from the media as he figured that it was not really about him but it was about something bigger than any of us.

Snapshot of Oculus Founder’s Life after Facebook Bought his Company for $2 Billion

Facebook Shown Drone Prototype which Wingspan Greater than Boeing 737

In the annual F8 Developer Conference in San Fransisco, Facebook showed the photos of its own drone prototype which operates on solar power. The drone prototype is part of a bigger project which purpose is to bring web connectivity to billions of people worldwide without the internet.  Currently, the project which is led by Facebook, Internet.org, has already bringing in free internet data to four African countries, Colombia and India.

The final design of the drone will be a V-shaped with a wingspan greater than Boeing 737 and a mass greater than a small car. On top of that it will be powered by solar panel and has the capabilities to stay at the altitudes of more than 60,000 feet for moths at a time. It will be an unmanned device. The drone has completed its first test flight in United Kingdom. When the drone flew by a location, it will beams internet access to the people on the ground.

The drone prototype goes by codename “Aquila” which is named after Greek mythology who carried Jupiter’s thunderbolts. About a year ago, Facebook announced that the company was building drones, satellites and lasers in the attempt to bring internet to everyone. On separate note, Facebook also announce that Oculus Rift, which is also owned by the company, is working on a project which could inject virtual reality gaming into the mainstream.

We cannot wait to see the end result.

Facebook Shown Drone Prototype which Wingspan Greater than Boeing 737

Riff is the Latest Facebook App Allows Users to Make Videos Together

Facebook is all about connecting with people in a fun way. It seems like Facebook employees are busy working on a side project – Riff. Riff is similar to Vine, one of the most popular mobile apps which focus on video creation. However, with one big difference which is Riff does not limit of the video length like Vine does. Vine has a minimum 6-sec video length.

How does Riff work?

It starts by somebody creating a video and give a topic into that video. In this case, #AprilFool. Therefore, your friends will then able to add in their own version into that video and share it to their friends’ friends. Your friend’s friends will then able to add in their own version to the same video and share it to their friends too. And the list goes on and on. The video result from a group of friends will then able to be shared to the Facebook or anywhere in the internet at any convenient timing.

Here is an example of a video which is created for Riff so that you can get a hang of what Riff does.

Download Riff on Play Store and Apps Store.

 

Riff is the Latest Facebook App Allows Users to Make Videos Together

Everything about Facebook announcements at its F8 Conference

At its annual two-day long F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, Facebook announced a number of new features and other stuff. Although the announcements are meant mostly for developers and app designers, FB users will also get benefited eventually.

Facebook announcements include a major update to its chatting platform, the Facebook messenger. Users will now be able to send photographs, music, GIFs as well as integrate with apps such as The Weather Channel, ESPN, Giphy and others. Enhancements were also announced for Facebook’s analytics platform and its video player. The social network giant is also going into Internet of things.

Here are the details:

Facebook Messenger unveiled as a platform

Facebook officialy opened up its Messenger Platform for developers who will now be able to add messenger features to various iOS and Android apps. So the Messenger service will enable users to do much more than just chatting with others.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his F8 keynote, “It’s a new platform that developers can use to build apps that help people connect”.

Developers will now be able to add the Messenger button to other apps for example a movie ticketing service app. After purchasing a movie ticket, the customer can share the details with friends on FB.

Though Facebook’s new platform is available to all developers, it has already partnered with 40 companies including ESPN, Giphy, The Weather Channel and Imgur. Most of them are about photos and entertainment. Some apps are adding Messenger as an additional feature while some apps have been developed specifically for the Messenger platform.

Facebook Messenger Business

This is an interesting new feature in the Messenger Platform. Users will be able to communicate with retailers by sending direct message through the messenger. They will be able to make reservations and also check shipping details.

Facebook says that users can now have personal conversations with companies’ representatives. They can now get immediate responses to their queries and requests.

Support for 360 degree videos

Mark Zuckerberg announced that soon spherical 360 degree videos will be supported in Facebook’s newsfeed. 24 high-resolution cameras will be used to shoot the videos and users will be able to use their mouse cursor to pan around it. Such spherical videos may look odd on a flat screen but will work very well if you put on a VR headset.

Embedded Videos

In direct competition to YouTube, Facebook will also be allowing its users to embed Facebook videos in other websites.

Refreshed Comments

Facebook’s comment feature is getting an update. When users comment on a webpage, it will show up on the official shared story on FB page also.

Analytics for Apps

Facebook is offering a new tool to developers – Analytics for Apps which will tell them the demography about the people using their apps, whether males or females, teenagers, older people etc.  The info will help developers and marketers to know their audience.

Mobile Ad Exchange with LiveRail

Facebook bought LiveRail last year. It is a monetization platform that helps publishers to manage their video ads so that the relevant ad appears for the users. In the new update, LiveRail’s capabilities have been extended to mobile display ads. Publishers can now fill ad spaces for mobile display ads too.

In addition, LiveRail will be using anonymized Facebook user data to help publishers target their ads in a better way on platforms other than FB.

Parse for Internet of Things

Facebook is doing its own bit for the “Internet of Things” (IoT) vision where all the objects, animals and humans will be part of a huge network which will facilitate exchange of data  without the need for human to human or human to computer interactions.

Facebook has introduced SDKs for its Parse mobile app development suite, that will support IoT by helping developers to incorporate data from web-connected devices into their apps. The platform is compatible with Arduino first and other platforms will follow.

Everything about Facebook announcements at its F8 Conference

Block Facebook Game Invites With This Simple Method

People usually get annoyed by the invitation of Facebook game requests, and most of them are from the people whom user doesn’t know. Are you one of those users? Then a simple solution is written below to get a break from all those annoying requests.

How to put a Stop to Game Requests on iPhone’s Facebook Application

1. Open the application of Facebook.

2. Tap on the “More” button located in lower right area of the application.

3. Go down till the bottom of the list appears and hit on Settings.

4. Then tap on the Notifications button

5. Just below the section there is a button “How You Get Notifications,” choose the Mobile Push.

6. Unmark the options of Application Invites and Application Requests.

That is the way to get rid of the game requests, in a more simple way a picture below represents that how could it be done.

 

In order to put a stop to further types of notifications which also include notifications of mobile, then follow the above five steps and on sixth step instead of tapping on Mobile Push hit “On Facebook” or “Email”, you will not receive notifications that you don’t like.

If a user is just looking up to turn-off some random apps that are displayed in the notifications box, then there is an easy and immediate way out, just go over notification and select the “x”. The picture given below, shows how it can be done.

Well there are all the solutions, after implementation the user will get rid of the annoying invitations. Good Luck.

Block Facebook Game Invites With This Simple Method

Facebook and LinkedIn team up to get more women to study technology

In a bid to boost the number of women working in the technology sector, Facebook and LinkedIn have teamed up to induce more college going girls to study engineering and computer science. Looking to the dwindling numbers of women opting to study technology and engineering, they want to introduce mentoring and training programs for women at college level in the US so that these women will be qualified to eventually fill thousands of new jobs in the Silicon Valley, which has been dominated by men since long.

In an interview given to the Associated press, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg and LinkedIn’s CEO Jeffrey Weiner announced that together, both the companies will be launching mentoring sessions as well as training and other support programs in colleges so that more women get involved in studying technology.

Currently in Facebook, 31% of total employees and 15% of those employed in tech jobs are women. In LinkedIn, women make up 39% of the company’s total work force and 17% of the total tech employees. The situation is somewhat similar in most of the other Silicon Valley companies.

“A lot of our consumers, at least half, sometimes more, are women. We build a product that gives people a voice. We know we can’t build a product for the world unless our teams reflect the diversity of the people who use the product,” said Sandberg.”But the talent pool is shrinking: The percentage of people enrolled in undergraduate computer science programs who are women peaked at 35 percent in 1985 and is now down to about 17 percent.”

Weiner too said that LinkedIn needed gender equity to serve the users in a better way. “To limit the perspective of the people building our product and services, if that’s too narrow, it’s going to lead to suboptimal outcomes,” he said.

Facebook and LinkedIn have not disclosed how much they were going to spend on this initiative but they have said that the investment focuses on peer groups and mentoring. The mentoring sessions have already been established through Lean In Circles which offer women inspiration and support to help them to pursue their ambitions.

Source Huffington Post

 

Facebook and LinkedIn team up to get more women to study technology

Study Shows Heavy Facebook Usage Can Lead to Depression

A study recently reported that users who are accessing Facebook frequently are much likely to report feelings of depression. The study was conducted by surveying 736 college students from a large Midwestern university who used Facebook on an average of two hours every day. The students who took part of the survey are of average age of 19 and consisting of seventy-eight percent of white Americans and 68 percent are females.

Some of the survey questions indicate how much the participants use Facebook and what they do on the social network. On top of that there are also questions such as what is the rate that they agreed with statements which links to envy such as “I generally feel inferior to others” or “It somehow does not seem fair that some people seem to have all the fun”.  Furthermore, there are also questions which are linked to depression such as “I was bothered by things that usually don’t bother me” or “I talked less than usual”.

The researchers concluded that despite heavy usage of Facebook does not linked directly to depression, however,  frequent users who experienced feeling of envy is more likely to correspond to statements which linked to depression. One of the reasons could be that they are comparing their own lives with their friends’ photos of luxurious holidays or status updates about good news and so on.

The positive result of the study is that the users can avoid the negative impact of Facebook usage by the way they consume the information. As long as they think positive about it, then things should be alright. The research team published their result in February edition of the journal Computers in Human Behaviour.

Study Shows Heavy Facebook Usage Can Lead to Depression

Sony’s leaked Emails reveal Snapchat turned down over $3 Billion Facebook offer

Apparently, Sony’s leaked emails have revealed the whole story behind Snapchat’s rejection of Facebook’s acquisition offer of $3 billion. Last month, hackers attacked Sony Pictures Entertainment’s email system and stole massive confidential data which has leaked out this story among others.

According to Business Insider, the leaked emails suggest that the Facebook offer to Snapchat was even more than $3 billion. The information has come from emails between Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel and Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton who is also on the board of Snapchat, and other Snapchat board members.

Malcom Gladwell sent an email to Michael Lynton asking if the company “was crazy to turn down $3 billion,” to which Lynton replied,” if you knew the real number you would book us all a suite at Bellvue.”

The leaks have also revealed an email written by another Snapchat board member Mitch Lasky saying that Snapchat CEO Spiegel would have gotten $1 billion if the Facebook-Snapchat deal had gone through.

According to the report, the email says, “Evan proposed a new deal today to Tencent and DST that includes $40MM in secondary for him and Bobby. Never told me … in fact told me the exact opposite. When I confronted him about it, he said, “well I just turned down a billion from Zuck.”

As per another email by sent by Lasky, Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg blamed Snapchat for leaking the news about their deal to the press. It is said that Zukerberg was disappointed that the deal didn’t go through and accused Snapchat for leaking about the deal purposely to boost its fundraising efforts.

Sony’s leaked Emails reveal Snapchat turned down over $3 Billion Facebook offer

WhatsApp to come out with a web-based chat service?

WhatsApp is the most popular mobile instant messaging service today, free and available on all major mobile platforms such as Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian. There are rumors that we would soon be seeing it on the web. According to rumors, a web version of WhatsApp has been developed by which WhatsApp messages could be sent through a computer and it is called as “WhatsApp web”.

Two different versions of WhatsApp messenger app are available – One through its own website and the other through Google Play Store. When folks at AndroidWorld compared the website version of December 9 (2.11.471) and Google Play Store version (2.11.432), they found several strings in the app mentioning “web_session” and “whatsapp_web” as can be seen below:

They also found evidence for this in images and layout files in the installation package. Below is a screenshot showing web session in a computer. It shows the list of computers that are logged in to WhatsApp Web and has a button below from where you can log out of the WhatsApp Web from all computers.

This seems to be a testing phase and very little info is available at present. Guys at AndroidWorld also found that in version dated December 11, there were no references to WhatsApp Web. Maybe the WhatsApp people want to maintain secrecy about it and so they have removed it.

It may be kept in mind that developers keep experimenting on various ideas and all of them don’t necessarily bear fruit. So this WhatsApp web may or may not see the light of the day.

WhatsApp, which had over 600 million active users as of October 2014, has been acquired by Facebook this year for about $22 billion, a $3 billion increase over the original agreed amount of $19 billion.

WhatsApp to come out with a web-based chat service?

"Facebook at Work" all set to enter your office space

After spreading its tentacles in your personal social world, Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook is planning to enter your office space too. According to a report in Financial Times, Facebook is developing a new version of its website that could be used at workplace. The new site “Facebook at Work” will look and work just like the existing Facebook but you will be able to connect only to people with whom you work.

“Facebook at Work” will help office employees to add and maintain professional contacts, read updates, chat with colleagues, edit documents and collaborate with each other. It will supposedly be a mix of Facebook, LinkedIn. Google Drive, Slack etc. This new version will is expected to be released in January 2015.

The social network market is quite saturated now and Facebook seems to have realized that it must seek other greener pastures if it wants to grow. The Enterprise Software market is huge and growing. Data collected by Gartner shows that there was a spending of US$300 billion in Enterprise Software in 2013 which was expected to grow by 6.9% in 2014 to US$321 billion and by 7.3% in 2015 to reach US$344 billion by the end of 2015.

According to Business Insider, enterprise social networks such as Slack and Yammer are doing great business. Slack is a team communication app founded just nine months ago and it recently raised $120 million with a valuation of $1.2 billion. Yammer is an enterprise social network set up in 2008 and acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion.

“Facebook at Work” will initially be offered for free and will not have any ads. Although this might change later when the service picks up in popularity and business. It is currently in testing phase and is being tested in a few companies. Actually, Facebook staff has been using such a site internally since quite a few years for working in collaboration. Based on this, they are developing the new product.

"Facebook at Work" all set to enter your office space