Facebook is not only central to the world of modern technology in general, but also a significant part of the lives of its one billion (and counting) user base. One of the key elements of the world's foremost social networking service is the famed News Feed, and Mark Zuckerberg's team has just sent out invites to various members of the press inviting them to an upcoming special event, in which many significant changes to the News Feed will be showcased. The event will take place on March 7th at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters, and although specific details remain under wraps for the time being, the very fact Mark Zuckerberg's company has opted to host the event at its HQ suggests whatever is announced will be of great significance.
There have been signs over the past few months that an Instagram Web service was drawing ever closer to completion. For a while now, it has been possible for Instagrammers to check photos and view profiles through an ordinary browser, but as of today, the beloved Feed - which serves an almost identical purpose to the News Feed of Facebook, it's now-owner - has now also been unleashed online.
Facebook has today shared its financial stats for the fourth quarter of last year, and in doing so, has dropped yet another installment of its ever-impressive user statistics. As has been the case consistently over the past few years, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has exceeded quite a few milestones, and the world's most popular social network of all time has has now passed the 1.06 billion monthly active user (MAU) mark.
Facebook may have begun as a mere social network, or a photo sharing website in its days of utmost infancy, but it has come a long way since. While the primary function was, and remains, connecting people (and I don’t intend to bag Nokia’s tagline here – they have their own story), the mediums of connection have evolved a lot over the past few years.
The standalone Facebook Messenger app has proved to be an extremely worthwhile addition to the company's ever growing range of mobile apps. Although it has already achieved enviable success through download and user adoption rates, it seems that Facebook is intending to build on the Messenger platform by announcing a native iPad version of the app, a first official glimpse of which could potentially be seen during their planned event tomorrow.
Facebook is on the modification path once again and are currently in the early stages of rolling out some Timeline based changes that will see profiles adopting a new single-column based Timeline setup. Facebook is hoping that the changes will provide a less cluttered user experience and allow those affected members to not only find and locate their favorite pages a lot more easily, but also promote communication between those they are connected with.
Regular Facebook users have become accustomed to receiving user interface and functionality based updates on their accounts during the course of 2012. Although Facebook has added a number of different treats and tweaked the web interface visually a number of times, it looks like they aren't quite done for this calendar year just yet. Users will begin to notice that their accounts are starting to receive an interface based update that affects the publisher box and allows those signed-in to drag-and-drop multiple photographs to initiate a bulk image upload process.
If you are an Angry Birds and Stars Wars fan, then chances are high that you were overwhelmed with excitement when Rovio signaled their intention to release an entire themed version of the smash-hit mobile game thanks to a deal with Lucas Entertainment. The Stars Wars version of the game has since landed on the iOS and Android platforms and continues where previous versions of the franchise left off, but the news is filtering through today that Rovio has brought their latest Angry Birds creation to another one billion people, with the immediate release of the game as a Facebook application.
Those who actively pay attention to the happenings within the social networking world, then you may recall Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo making some murmurings a while back regarding a new functionality that would be coming to Twitter accounts to afford users the option to download all of their tweets. It seems that the latest update to the Twitter website would suggest that the company is staying true to their CEO's word and have started offering a select bunch of users the ability to get an archive of all of their tweet history.
When you're running a service for over a billion active users, the emphasis on privacy and security are perhaps even greater, and Facebook has always been diligent in its quest to maintain the privacy of its extensive user base. Today, the world's foremost social network announced a bunch of new privacy features, as well as other general alterations in a press statement entitled "Better Controls for Managing Your Content". Here, we summarize what these changes mean for you.
