Although Facebook is used every day of the week to upload photos and send millions of chat messages through the website and the company's various mobile apps for different platforms, there are still things that users simply don't like about the service which Facebook offers. Although it isn't brand new, one feature that seems to irk a lot of people is the read receipt status indicator that appears in Facebook Messages that shows when a message has been read, or otherwise commonly known as “seen”. If that bothers you, then it's now possible to install a simple browser extension to disable the feature when using Facebook chat through the website.
It has always been a subject of curiosity as to why Facebook decided to make its Messenger feature a separate entity on mobile devices. The fact the version 1.0 of Facebook Messenger was riddled to the core with bugs certainly didn't help, but while many had seen the move to separate the two as merely arbitrary or for purpose of vanity, it appears there is, after all, some method to the madness. The Android department of the Facebook Messenger app will soon be releasing an update fairly soon to users in select countries, and intriguingly, it will no longer require users to own an account to log in and get chatting. A direct challenge to the likes of WhatsApp and the traditional SMS app? We think so.
Although Facebook currently holds the title as the world's largest social network with over one billion active monthly members, it doesn't mean that success is guaranteed. The face of companies such as Facebook and Twitter are constantly evolving to meet the demands of their user base, so it stands to reason that Facebook will be continuously trying to innovate and add new technologies and services to their social experience, one of which is the Photo Syncing feature we reported on last week. Although Photo Syncing was initially in a private beta stage with a select few iOS users, Facebook have now rolled the service out on a large scale to all compatible iOS and Android devices using the official Facebook app.
Firefox may not be your browser of choice, but considering it has been placed onto a fairly frequent update schedule and is benefitting from a number of impressive changes and feature additions, then it could be worth checking out for those who are growing tired of using the likes of Google Chrome, Safari or dare I say it… Internet Explorer. Being able to stay in touch socially with through the likes of Twitter and Facebook is always important to a lot of people, so it may come as a surprise to some to learn that Firefox 17 brought with it a hidden feature that extends into Facebook.
It shouldn't come as any surprise that Facebook prefers that their employees fulfill their smartphone needs by using an Android device, after all, they originally took steps to convince workers to move across to an Android device back in August of this year. It makes sense that the Palo Alto company wants their own employees to extensively test their Android app variant, but it seems that they are once again attempting to switch employees over to Android in an internal campaign they are referring to as "Droidfooding".
We are all well aware that Facebook is the largest social network in the world with over one billion active users, but it has only been over the last few months that we have seen a noticeable change in the company’s strategy as the Palo Alto based network has moved to pay more attention to its vast number of mobile users. Updates to both the iOS and Android official apps have brought greater stability and increased browsing experiences, and it now seems that Facebook is going to be focusing on enhancing their iOS mobile photo upload experience by trialing a Photo Sync feature that borrows a fair amount of its power from the previously created Android functionality.
Although Facebook's IPO may not have taken off as successfully as Mark Zuckerberg and his team would perhaps have liked, there's little doubting the work ethic of Facebook in 2012. The mobile app finally seems to have been taken care of, and among a continual stream of new features and performance enhancements, the News Feed now supports the use of emoticons in comments.
With the world's number one social network having "languished" on 900 million+ active users for a good while now, it was only a matter of time before Mark Zuckerberg's creation passed the landmark billion, and as revealed today by an official note, that impressive feat was surpassed last month. Having only reached 100 million monthly active users in 2008, the growth has been nothing short of incredible, and although the well-documented IPO earlier this year didn't pass without hiccup, the web's newest stock market company continues to go from strength to strength.
Twitter may be in the midst of a rather dramatic fall from grace amongst the technology community, but the company has announced at least one piece of news which is certain to bring a smile to the faces of the Technorati.
Social networking sites have become such an integral part of our every day lives that I actually struggle to clearly remember a time when they weren't around. The need to be social has, and always will be, a part of our genetic make-up as human beings, but that has been accelerated to a whole new level thanks to the likes of Facebook and Twitter which allow us to easily connect and interact with people all over the globe. Facebook is by far the largest of the world’s online social portals, boasting over 900 million registered members, connecting people from all over the world together through common friends and interests.
