Pages
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts

Thursday, 21 April 2016

Messenger app for Facebook gets group calling feature

 
Social media giant Facebook has made it known that it's realising a new feature to its Messenger app which will allow users to connect with their group through a VoIP-based group call.

This development was made known in the form of a Facebook post from Messenger chief David Marcus, who also stated that the new feature is expected to hit the app's iOS and Android clients in the next 24 hours.

Users can tap on the phone icon to initiate a group call. The user can then manage individual participants on the next screen. The new feature allows you to talk to up to 50 of your friends at any given time.

If you are not aware yet, the Messenger app has received some useful updates in the past few months like - support for multiple accounts, material design make-over, and Dropbox integration.

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

Unveiling 'NOTIFY' a Notifications App from Facebook

 

Getting notifications from your favorite apps all in one place has always been an issue with smartphone users. Facebook seems to have gotten a solution for that as it unveils 'Notify' - a new app that delivers timely notifications about the things that matter to you, from the sources you love, all in one place.

 Each individual has his/her own interest from sports to celebrity news to movies etc. Whatever your interest - the new app makes it easy to find notifications you are into with a wide selection of great stations across a variety of categories. According to Facebook, you can get updates on its app from these stations all in one place

 i. The Final Scores station from FOX Sports provides end-of-game summaries for your favorite teams.
ii. The Daily AM Forecast station from The Weather Channel sends a local weather forecast at the start of your day.
iii. Hot New Trailers from Fandango gets you the newest trailers for the hottest movies as they drop.
iv. Breaking News from CNN and Top Stories from Fox News deliver the day’s news headlines.
v. The 10 Best Dressed station from Vogue is your weekly digest of the best-dressed celebs.
vi. Daily Meditation from Headspace brings bite-sized guided meditation exercises into your day.
vii.The Flashback station from Getty Images delivers iconic imagery from this day in history.

A user can create your his/her mix of notifications, he/she selects the stations from which he/she wants to receive updates. Sources like the ones above will publish notifications through these stations when there are relevant updates. Notify also provides station suggestions based on your Facebook profile, and it’s easy to discover and add new stations anytime.

Visit Facebook newsroom for more info

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Facebook to introduce self-deleting photos on its Messenger app

 

Users of Facebook in some European countries have reported that a new feature has been introduced in the Company's Messenger platform which allows users to send photos that self destructs after an hour. This feature is similar to Snapchats main feature - self destruct photo or video after some time. Facebook has offered $3billion to acquire Snapchat some years back which the Company's CEO Evan Spiegel refused. We believe the Company is now ready to introduce its own self destruct feature. 

According to Facebook
We’re excited to announce the latest in an engaging line of optional product features geared towards making Messenger the best way to communicate with the people that matter most,” wrote a Facebook spokeswoman in a statement. 
Starting today, we’re conducting a small test in France of a feature that allows people to send messages that disappear an hour after they’re sent. 
Disappearing messages gives people another fun option to choose from when they communicate on Messenger. We look forward to hearing people’s feedback as they give it a try.

Monday, 12 October 2015

Some amazing tips and tricks to improve your daily Facebook experience

 

Some people are so fond of Facebook, yet they do not utilize the full services offered by the social media giant. Today i will like to share with you some amazing tips and tricks you can use to standout from the crowd when it comes to Facebook. 

 Some of this tips were recently introduced while some have been their but untapped. I have talked about some amazing tips in some of my past posts like How to turn off video autoplay, How to find out who viewed your Facebook profile most and many other more. You can go through this five recent tips and tricks to improve your daily use of this network

 i. First and foremost on my list is the one time password feature which available to all users. Most cautious Facebook users feel reluctant or don't often sign into their account on public computers. In order to feel safe and secured about this, Facebook has introduced a one time password that can only be used once. After using this password, it can never be used again. 

 For a user to get this one time password, he/she needs to send a text “otp” to 32665 from the mobile number which is added on his/her Facebook profile. After that the user will receive an eight digit passcode which he/she can use to login into his/her profile. The pass-code will only last for 20 minutes after which it can not be used again.

ii. You can easily track your login location now. It maybe that you observed an usual activity in your profile or noticed that some one is secretly login to your account from an unknown location. The good news is that you can now track the login location. Just follow this steps 

Step 1 - Login into your Facebook account and go to Settings.
Step 2 - Click on Security from the sidebar followed by Edit along with Where you’re Logged In.

You will see every detail of the location your account was logged in.

iii. You can also check your security level on Facebook. This feature lets you know how secured your Facebook account is. You can check it here 


 iv. Are you getting some annoying notifications that you'd like to stop. For wxample if a user tags you in a photo - every comment, likes, shares that happens about the tag, Facebook will send you a notification. Do you know you can stop this by simply following these steps

Step 1 - Open the notification icon. Then click on X (turn off) button in-front of notification that you want to stop the annoying notification.

v. Are you worried about what people might say once you change your relationship status? You can now do this without any of your friends knowing. You can easily do this by following these steps 

Step 1 - Login to your Facebook Account and go to your Profile by clicking on your name.
Next, click on About button on your timeline. After that - from the sidebar, Click on Family and Relationships.
Step 2 - Scroll to Relationship box and there you’ll see a little grey world map icon. Simply click on it.
Step 3 - After that, it will give you different options for your relationship, you only need to change the Public or Friends settings to Only Me. As seen in the image below.


Thursday, 8 October 2015

Facebook unveils 'Doodle' which lets users draw on their photos before posting them

 

Facebook has launched a new feature tagged 'Doodle'. This new feature allows users to add a little artwork to their photos before uploading. It lets users draw and add words or letters to their photos.

 The Doodle feature had been previously loaded onto Facebook's Messenger app, but now the company is going mainstream with it.

According to the company, ''When a user uploads a photo, he/she will be given the option to "edit" it. Then the user will see a "doodle" icon at the bottom right of the toolbar''. A rainbow slider can be seen on the right side, allowing users pick his/her desired colors. This add-on is already available for the iOS and Android operating system.

In another related development, we might soon be witnessing the introduction of emotions to the platform, that allows users to react with icons for laughter, shock, love, anger and more. This new feature is going to go live from Friday this week in test markets of Spain and Ireland. If the test is deemed successful then Facebook is sure to roll the feature out to the rest of the world.

Wednesday, 30 September 2015

Facebook to introduce upload of short films as profile picture soon

 


Social media giant Facebook is set to release an amazing update for its smartphone apps. This new update will allow users to upload a video image profile, as seen in the image above.

 The new update is set to be unveiled as part of Facebook's new tools designed to allow users to personalize their profile in new and exciting ways.

Furthermore to this new feature, users will be able to update profile pictures temporarily - this simply means you can upload your favorite teams picture for a specific time you set and after the time lapses, your old profile picture will be restored automatically. 

Also to be added to this update are better design Improvements to Your Mobile Profile, improved layout and present information about a user and his/her friends in a more visually engaging way.


Profile pictures are now located in the center, and will now be bigger to give users more real estate to show off what you can do with the new features. According to Facebook
We’re starting to test all of these features to a small number of iPhone users in the UK and California, and we’ll be rolling them out to more people soon. We believe these improvements to profile will give people more ways to connect and share with each other, and express themselves in meaningful ways. We can’t wait to see how people use them.

Sunday, 27 September 2015

How to turn off video auto-play on Twitter and Facebook

 

I was a bit perplexed when i stumbled upon a video on twitter the other day that shows the gruesome shooting to death of two TV journalists by a colleague that was fired earlier. It was a horrific footage, now as Facebook/Twitter user imagine your 12 or 15 year old kid stumbling upon such similar video in the future, i am sure as a parent/guardian we wouldn't want that. Due to the introduction of auto-play by media giants Facebook and Twitter, once you are on your wall, an uploaded video starts to play automatically once your scroll reaches it. If you want this to stop, you can take these following steps to stop the auto-play both on the web and app.

 To disable Facebook video auto-play on the web/PC


Login to your Facebook account and click the upside down triangle on the top right corner of the homepage and select Settings. Go to Videos, as seen on the bottom of the list of selections on the left-hand side. In the Auto-Play Videos page, click the button that says Default, and select OFF. Facebook will save your setting automatically. Turning auto-play back on is simply a matter of reversing the process by selecting ON.

To disable Facebook video auto-play for Iphone, Ipad and Android

Enter the Facebook app on your iPhone or iPad and tap the 3-line icon. Select Settings, and tap Videos => Autoplay. select OFF.

By following the same steps, you can switch it on by selecting ON or Wi-Fi only to re-allow video autoplay.

For Android phone or tablet users, enter your device's Facebook app and select the 3-line icon. Next is to tap App Settings. Select Video Auto-play and choose OFF. You can reverse this by following the same steps but select On or Wi-Fi only.

Please note that if you don't see Video Auto-play settings on your smartphone, then log out of the app and then log back in. The option should now be available in App Settings.

To disable auto-play for Twitter on the web/PC




Login to your twitter account and select your profile icon. Select Settings from the drop-down menu. You will be taken to your account page, scroll down or look for the Content section. Beside Video Tweets, 'Video autoplay' is ticked by default by Twitter. Now untick it and tap the 'Save changes' button.

To disable video auto-play for Twitter on Android and Iphone

Enter Twitter app on your smartphone and head to Settings. Go into the General section and select Video auto-play. Several options can  be seen here, like - Never play videos automatically. Now select this to turn off video autoplay.

If you want the autoplay back on, just follow these same steps and choose 'Use mobile data and Wi-Fi' or 'Use Wi-Fi only'.

I hope the steps are straightforward, you can leave a comment about your experience.

Sunday, 20 September 2015

How to find out who viewed your Facebook profile most

 

Most individuals have one time or another been curious about who visits or views their Facebook profile most. Well if you really want to know the individual that views your profile most on Facebook, their is a way out. All you need to do is follow these simple steps:
Note: This can only be done on PC/Laptop.

i. Go to Facebook and click on your profile or directly type facebook.com/yourprofile on your browser to take you directly to that page.

ii. Right click while on your profile page and you will see something like the image shown below


  Now navigate to ''view page source'' and click on it as seen in the image above.

iii. After clicking, a new tab will open with lots of codes as seen in the image below

iv. Press CTRL-F on your keyboard when on that page and a text search box will appear at the top right hand corner as seen in arrow 1 in the image above.

v. Next is to type the word ''initialChatFriendsList'' (do not add the quotes '' '').

vi. You will be taken to arrow 2 in the image above. Now you will notice several list of numbers in front of your search word, copy the first number as seen in arrow 3 and open a new tab in your browser. Type facebook.com/copiednumber and you will be directed to the profile of the person that viewed your profile most on Facebook. The list of numbers shows the profile number assigned to the individual that visited your profile by Facebook. Each Facebook user has this unique number attached to himlher.

To my surprise, when i checked mine, it was a lady. Have you checked yours? Share your experience in the comment box

Wednesday, 16 September 2015

Dislike button to be introduced on Facebook soon - Mark Zuckerberg

 

Its like very soon we maybe witnessing the introduction of Facebook dislike button on the social network platform. This was made known during a Q&A session in its HQ by its CEO Mark Zuckerberg - who also revealed that the feature is in development stage.

 The CEO also stated that the social network did not immediately design the dislike button because it did not want it to become a Reddit-style system of up-voting and down-voting.

If finally the add-on is introduced, we just hope users do not abuse it - because many dislikes on a post can have a negative impact on an individual.

The new add-on is expected to debut soon as Facebook has been working on it for a while now.

Monday, 7 September 2015

What does Facebook think of you?

 

Most of us are unaware that Facebook and other internet giants collects and stores information about our daily activities. Facebook particularly collects and stores your likes, comments and post every day. This is done so as to enable Facebook to serve you relevant ads which it thinks you might like. Some researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed an easy to use online tool that can go through your profile and reveal to you what Facebook thinks of you.

 By making use of your Facebook likes and comparing them to other users on the social network, it will reveal to you a near perfect look at your own personality. 

 The tool code-named 'Apply Magic Sauce' begins with your gender, political view, intelligence, sexual preference and life satisfaction.

Furthermore the tool reveals to you your personality traits - like openness, how agreeable you are, being painstaking and careful, mental or personality disturbance and extroversion.

Most often times, internet users are unaware that data are collected based on their activities online. This has prompted these group of researchers to give users an in-depth look of what this social media giant perceives of them. The website or online tool stated that it will only collect your profile's likes and it will not store any of the information once complete - i think its safe to give it a try. You can visit it here.

Please share your experience by leaving a comment

Thursday, 27 August 2015

Facebook launches 'M' your personal assistant on Messenger

 

Social media giant Facebook has followed the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft to release its own version of personal digital assistant called M. This personal assistant will be available in the Company's messenger app. 

 M completes tasks and finds information on a users behalf. It is powered by artificial intelligence that's trained and supervised by people according to Facebook. Unique in its own way when compared to other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on a users behalf. It can help you get gifts delivered to your loved ones, purchase items, book restaurants, plan your travel arrangements, appointments and many more.

M virtually works like its competitors, like asking you it stuff, and it will answer. Just like others M can also plan things for you. However, it is capable of completing real life events too. Like helping to organize dinner parties to helping you track down an unusual pizza in New York, or even redecorating your office. M even calls your company and endure through the hold times and various automated messages you listen to before you can actually speak to a customer rep.
 
M is not yet available for all as It is only in use by a few hundred people in the San Francisco Bay Area in US. It may likely take a while before this new introduction will be available as its in the testing stage.

Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Facebook rumoured to be working on a human-powered virtual assistant

 

Social media giant Facebook has been rumoured to be working on its own virtual assistant that it will in-corporate with Messenger.

 The virtual assistant code-named 'Moneypenny' by Facebook is rumoured to be powered by humans, distinct from popular virtual assistants like Blackberry's Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri according to rumours.

 We are not yet clear on what kind of features Moneypenny will have, but it is rumoured that, it will allow users "to ask real people for help researching and ordering products and services, among other tasks."

Tech enthusiasts cited three sources briefed about this new service, and they all said that the new feature 'Moneypenny' is being tested internally by Facebook employees. The whole process was stated to work via Facebook's Messenger app.

Just another rumor to surface recently surrounding new projects that Facebook may be working on. However, with no official announcements or confirmations, the tech world will just have to wait and see if Moneypenny will end up being a real human-powered virtual assistant that Facebook releases.

Friday, 10 July 2015

Facebook introduces new ways to control what you see in News Feed

 

Facebook News Feed is one of the most important part of the social network. Facebook has announced that it’s giving its users new ways to tweak what shows up in their News Feed. According to Facebook -
News Feed is a personalized stream of stories that you build from the people and Pages you’ve connected to on Facebook. The goal of News Feed is to show you the stories that matter most to you. To do this, we use ranking to order stories based on how interesting we believe they are to you: specifically, whom you tend to interact with, and what kinds of content you tend to like and comment on.
This new introduction comes by way of a re-invented News Feed Preferences menu. This menu will be  launched on iOS today and will be available for Android and the Web “over the coming weeks”

The new News Feed Preferences allows users to prioritize whose update you see first, effortlessly unfollow people or reconnect with those you’ve previously unfollowed, and discover new pages. In simple terms, to ensure you don’t miss updates from specific friends and pages, you can prioritize them. Hereafter, every time you open Facebook, you’ll see the updates they posted since you last visited the social network at the top of the News Feed, with a star attached (so you know why that’s there). Scrolling down from that, users will then get the rest of your News Feed normally.


“Discover New Pages” can be said to be a collection of recommended pages that Facebook thinks you should like, based on the types of pages you’ve liked in the past. Initially users normally unfollow people from their profile, but with this new update you can choose to do that from the new Unfollow menu in News Feed Preferences too. This new service should be more useful for bulk operations. Users can also see who they have unfollowed in the past, and choose to re-follow them.

Presently to access the News Feed Preferences in the iOS app, tap on More in the bottom right corner, then going to Settings.

Source: Facebook news

Thursday, 9 July 2015

Facebook planning to release its own music video streaming service

 

Facebook recently launched its own video streaming platform and it seems like the social media giant is now rounding up to take on the likes of Apple Music and Spotify.

Tech enthusiasts speaking to Music Ally claims that Facebook has been in talks with music labels in a bid to launch its own music streaming service.

But users might not see the service platform launch anytime soon as, according to the report, the company wants to get the monetization side of its new video platform (which is set give advertisers 55% of ad revenue) stable before delving into a viable audio streaming business.

Users could end up having Facebook entering the music streaming game late, considering how many services are already available to its vast number of users.

For now though, users might be seeing music videos surfacing on Facebook in the next few months, as according to the reports - the social media giant is in final stage with music labels to get their music videos on Facebook.

With such a powerful worldwide user base, release of this service could end up being a stronger threat to YouTube. And with potential for a tied-in video platform, the music service could also be a threat to the likes of Spotify, Tidal and Apple music.

Friday, 26 June 2015

Facebook adds a new feature ‘Add a Link’ that lets you easily find and share Web links

 

Facebook recently unveiled a new feature that allows its users to easily find and share Web links on the social network. Called ''Add a Link'', the new feature is presently only available for IOS users, but will soon launch on Android and the company’s Messenger app as well

“Now, whenever you want to share a specific web link in your posts, just tap the new link icon, type in a few keywords to search for a link from our index of posts, and share it,” the company says. 

So  in earnest, the feature ensures that users won’t have to leave the Facebook app when searching for Web links. For more information about this feature, click the source below...

Source: Facebook

Thursday, 25 June 2015

You can now Sign Up for Messenger, Without a Facebook Account

 
Many chat platforms have been around for a while now, however, with the introduction Whatsapp chat platform some years back everyone was very relieved due to effortless way of adding contacts to the platform. Facebook's messenger has always requested users to login with their Facebook account before you can have access to its service, but that has now changed as the social media giant has made available - sign up for Facebook Messenger without a Facebook account.

If a user now install the Messenger app and runs it for the first time, you will see the screen as displayed in the picture below
A new user can select not on Facebook to be able to sign up with their Phone number. You will further need to state a name and add a photo. Immediately after that, the new user can use Messenger even if he/she does not use Facebook’s social network. Apparently, Facebook users can still log into Messenger with their Facebook details if they so wish. This new addition just allows individuals who for whatever reason do not use Facebook to communicate using its Messenger app.

For now this new functionality is presently only available in the US, Canada, Venezuela and Peru. We forecast the roll-out will hit other countries in the future soon, but Facebook is yet to make any official statement, so it’s not clear when to expect it to happen.


Saturday, 6 June 2015

Facebook Messenger update introduces the ability to send locations as messages

 

Great news for Facebook Messenger users as the Company has released a new update that allows users to send location as part of a conversation in the app. Now users can decide to explicitly send a map of their location or another particular place as a separate message.

This can be done by tapping the More icon or the location pin at the bottom of your screen. If you wish to tell a friend which hotel to meet you at, search for the hotel and send a map of where it is to your friend directly as a message. If you spouse wants to know your location, send a map of where you are to let him or her know how far away you are.

Facebook says with this new update you have full control over when and how you share your location information.

This update is available for IOS and Android for now, you can check your respective stores for the update.

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Facebook introduces video calling in its Messenger platform

 

Following the recent introduction of; 

 i. Voice calling  

 Facebook Messenger has rolled-out the video calling service as well. This new service will become available today for people using the Messenger app on iOS and Android.

This service (Video calls) only work from a smartphone to another smartphone, but it does work even if the person you’re calling is on a different platform – so iOS to Android or Android to iOS. Amazing right!


The big introduction is a geographical one for now, as the new feature will work only if you’re in Denmark, France, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the UK, the US, or Uruguay. For other regions, video calls will be rolled out “over the coming months”.

Messenger video call is easy to start from any chat platform, by easily tapping on the new icon that will show up at the top right as seen in the image above. It’s literally a one-tap affair. With more than 600 million people using Facebook Messenger every month, clearly this new functionality may have an impact on competing services such as Skype. And it’s one more reason not to leave Facebook’s apps.

 Users in Africa can keep their fingers crossed for now and await the introduction of this new feature in our region

Thursday, 9 April 2015

Facebook introduces standalone website for its Messenger service

 

Social media giant Facebook has recently launched a standalone website for its Messenger service. You can access this service through this link Messenger.com and use only that functionality from Facebook’s main site. Facebook is however insisting that this service does not mean Messenger will ever go away from Facebook.com.

However, Messenger was once part of the Facebook apps for mobile, but then it got pulled out, thus forcing users to install the standalone Messenger app alongside the main one. So, in the near future, there’s still a high chance users see something like that happen on the Web too.

For now, though, you can still access Messenger service on Facebook.com and as well as at the newly introduced standalone address. If you go through Messenger.com, your Messenger conversations won’t be interrupted by any other Facebook stuff, which for some users might be a blessing. Newly introduced Messenger.com is all about direct communication with your friends, undisturbed by anything else, while Facebook.com is, well, a lot of things to a lot of people.

This newly introduced Messenger standalone website will support both the recently announced app platform for the service, as well as its easy payments feature. Presently, the website is only available to English-speaking users worldwide. More languages are expected to be added in the near future. What do you think about this? leave your comment

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

''On This Day'' showing you content from the past now on Facebook

 

Social media giant Facebook has introduced a new feature recently to improve its rating as the best social media giant presently. 'On this day' feature as the name implies is about giving you reminders of updates you made on Facebook on that particular day in the past. 
This feature is currently not present globally, but Facebook has promised to make global soonest.


The feature 'On This Day' is created to make it easier for users to reflect back at old photos and memories they’ve formally added or shared to the social network. 'On This Day' is designed to work with the content you posted and as well as things you’re tagged in, be it photos or events.. Although only you can see your 'On This Day page', but you have the option to share the stuff in there with your friends.
An example of how the new feature will be displayed

The new feature brings-up status updates, photos, and posts from friends (in which you are tagged) from one year ago, two years ago, and so on. To view the new page, either click on the 'On This Day' card if you see it in your News Feed, or you can search for “on this day” on Facebook. Preferably, you can just go to www.facebook.com/onthisday.

Once you are on your page, you can choose to subscribe to notifications, as well as delete and edit old posts. This new feature is rolling out globally soonest, on both the Web and mobile, however its not yet in Africa. Keep your fingers crossed till then....

Blog Archive

© Copyright 2015 Innovative Thinking. Designed by Bloggertheme9 | Distributed By Gooyaabi Templates. Powered by Blogger.