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Facebook Messaging VP David Marcus joins Coinbase board
Coinbase is growing up fast — or at least trying to. As an emblem of its current effort to accommodate the massive demand on its platform, the mainstream U.S. cryptocurrency exchange just added Facebook Vice President of Messaging Products David Marcus to its board of directors. Read More
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How hate speech crowdfunding outfit Hatreon crept back online
If you want to make a living creating white supremacist content, you’re probably not going to do it via sites like Kickstarter and Patreon, which prohibit hate speech. Fortunately there’s Hatreon, a hate speech crowdfunding site that, despite having been booted from the web by a couple hosts, is back online and eager to let you back your favorite xenophobe. Read More
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Twitter officially launches ‘threads,’ a new feature for easily posting tweetstorms
Twitter today is announcing the launch of a new feature that will allow people to more easily post tweetstorms – that is, those series of connected tweets that have grown to become a popular workaround for getting past Twitter’s character count limitation in order to share longer thoughts. The company confirmed last month it was testing the feature – which it’s now… Read More
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Storify’s standalone service is shutting down next year
Storify’s eventual shuttering has been a long time coming. The social timeline curation service was acquired by commenting platform Livefyre back in 2013, which, in turn, was picked up by Adobe in May of last year. In a pithily worded note on its homepage today, the service announced that it will cease to exist as a standalone offering starting next year. The process of disappearing from… Read More
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Facebook opens AR platform and ‘World Effects’ to all developers
Facebook is trying to close the augmented reality gap with Snapchat with the help of an army of third-party developers. Today, eight months after debuting its Augmented Reality Camera Effects platform and AR Studio tool at F8, Facebook is allowing all developers to start building AR experiences for its Facebook Camera. That includes “World Effects” that augment your environment with… Read More
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Facebook will no longer always divert international advertising revenue to Ireland
Facebook today said it is shifting to a “local selling structure” in countries outside the U.S. That means that rather than directly route its revenue to its international headquarters in Dublin, local policymakers and governments will potentially get an opportunity for greater visibility into the company’s revenue related to local advertising sales. Read More
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Facebook bats back after a second former exec accuses it of negatively impacting society
Yesterday, The Verge published comments made by investor and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, quoting his interview last month at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he echoed recent comments made by former Facebook president Sean Parker that the platform is having deleterious effects on society. Read More
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Instagram becomes an interest network with hashtag following
Instagram has always been a social network where you follow friends and creators, but today it’s evolving with a new way to follow hashtags so you see top posts and Stories about a topic on your home page. Rather than having to dig this content out of search or the Explore tab, you can see the best #Slime videos or #FloralNails tutorials no matter who posts them. Read More
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Tinder is testing a feed of real-time updates from your matches, including posts from Instagram and Spotify
Tinder announced today it’s beginning a test of a new feature called “Feed” designed to help users learn more about their matches. The Feed, which will appear as a tab on the Messages screen, will include real-time updates from those you’ve already matched with, including things like recently added Tinder photos, plus Instagram posts and your Top Artists and Anthems… Read More
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Homeis, a culture network for immigrants, launches and nabs $4m seed round led by Spark Capital
Immigrating to a new country is one of the most challenging experiences any person can face. In a single instant, your social networks, your ability to communicate, and your knowledge of how a society functions disappears, and nearly everything has to be learned from scratch. That extraordinary dislocation is one reason why ethnic enclaves exist in large cities like New York City or San… Read More
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Nextdoor raised about $75 million to connect neighbors
Nextdoor, the neighborhood social networking site, raised about $75 million in a funding round, The Information reported, estimating that the valuation is $1.5 billion. The round was confirmed by TechCrunch. This adds to the over $200 million that the San Francisco-based company has raised, dating back to 2010. Its last reported round was in early 2015 at a $1.1 valuation. The report says… Read More
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Facebook is trying to make the Poke happen again
Facebook’s “Poke” feature has never really gone away, but now the social network is giving it a more prominent placement – and is even considering expanding the set of casual greeting options to include others, like a wink, wave, high-five or hug. Though Facebook had never really discontinued the age-old feature, which serves as a quick way to get someone’s… Read More
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Crunch Network
Is Trump a Twitter addict?
The president of the United States cannot seem to stop tweeting. Despite stern advice from his advisors and opprobrium from the world, not a day goes by that POTUS doesn’t escalate some tension in 280 characters. Each of us can relate to making a social media post we regret later and vowing never to do it again — but few of us do it on such a public scale. But is it addiction? Read More
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Time’s up for the Ticker? Facebook appears to axe feed for tracking your friends’ activity
As Facebook continues to tinker with its layout and services to spur more interactions and engagement, it seems that not even the most well-known or oldest features are spared. In the most recent development, it looks like Facebook has quietly removed the Ticker, the box that used to appear to the right of your News Feed to summarize what all your friends have been liking, commenting on… Read More
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These are Facebook’s internal policies on harassment and bullying
Facebook, in a similar manner to what it did with its internal policies around Managing Bias, is making publicly available its policies on harassment and bullying. Facebook also has outlined its investigation process as a result of harassment or bullying allegations. Read More
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Facebook Sound Collection lets you add no-name music to videos
The right soundtrack can make a boring video interesting. So after years of reported discussions with the record labels, Facebook is launching video editing tool Sound Collection for inserting into Facebook and Instagram clips “songs, vocals, noises, and instrumental tracks spanning genres like hip hop, pop, jazz, country, and more.” Read More
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Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news
“We plan on making Bitmoji obsolete,” says Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies. Bragging about beating one of the world’s top apps before his has even launched is emblematic of Nigam’s and Genies’ brash style. But with $15 million in funding at a valuation over $100 million, top investors like NEA and Hollywood royalty like CAA are buying into the avatar startup. Read More
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Facebook adds support for live streaming and video chats to Messenger games
Last November, Facebook launched Instant Games, a new platform for gaming with friends inside the Messenger chat app. Today, the company is announcing a couple of notable new features for this gaming platform, including support for live streaming via Facebook Live and video chatting with fellow gamers. The idea with Instant Games is to boost people’s time spent in Messenger by giving… Read More
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