Facebook’s News Feed revamp: 5 things you must know

This is what the new News Feed looks like. Screengrab via Facebook.

Facebook has launched a new design for the News Feed. The design which aims to give a more unified experience to Facebook users across tablets, mobiles, desktops and PC’s will divide your feed into content based and give greater prominence to photos, links etc.
Here are five things you need to know about the News Feed.
Content based feeds:  In the new design, there won’t be just one News Feed. Content based Feeds coming up as well.
These have been named as follows:
All Friends: A feed that shows you everything your friends are sharing from status messages to links etc.
Photos: A feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the Pages you like on Facebook.
Music: A feed with posts about the music you listen to, music that your friends listen to, information about your favourite artists and what they share on Facebook.
Following: This feed with the latest news from the Pages you like, celebrities, and other important people you follow on Facebook.
The top of the page has a switcher with a list of feeds. Mobile will also have this option of different feeds.
Bigger, bigger photos on the site: This change will apply not just to pictures shared by your friends or people you follow, but in thumbnails, etc as well.
For instance, if you are following Firstpost and we share a link, the Thumbnail for that article will get bigger. Also if say one of your friends adds a new friend on Facebook, you will be able to see the whole cover photo for that person on your News Feed and not just his or her profile picture.
As far as upcoming events go, the Thumbnail size is much much bigger the design, thus ensuring that the events line up have a prominent spot on your News Feed.
Same design across the board: Not just the News Feed but the whole site is now going to look the same across the board, be it on your iPad, your smartphone or your PC/Desktop. For instance like in mobile and tablets, the desktop version of the story will have the “New Stories” pop up on top. You can just click on it to jump right to the new stories.
The left hand side bar menu that appears on mobile and tablets will soon be available on Desktop. Chat tray will get more prominent on Desktop as well.
Third Party content will get more prominent: For instance, if you share a lot pictures from Pinterest, they are going to get bigger and more prominent.
If you check into a place, it won’t just reflect as so and so checked in here, but a wide-detailed map will appear alongside as well. If you like or check into a restaurant, you will see the cover photo for that place’s page.
Photo Albums will also get a facelift on the News Feed and will get much bigger display with a larger boxes for pictures.
Links published by online websites will get a longer summary with the logo of the publisher in the corner, a bigger thumbnail for prominence and more space for summary.
When it is coming: If you hate this design, and think Facebook is going to get more complicated than ever, don’t worry, the design will take some time to roll out for everyone. Facebook is currently only testing it on a couple of users and you have to sign up for a wait list here.
Facebook states that the new design is aimed at getting rid of the clutter. But we don’t know for sure how ads and sponsored stories will appear on this news design. That is one source of ‘clutter’ that Facebook can’t afford to get rid of right now.

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Facebook to showcase new look for newsfeed on March 7

Facebook Inc will unveil a new look for its popular 'newsfeed' next week, the latest move by the Web company to revamp key elements of its 1 billion member social network.

Facebook will showcase the newsfeed makeover at a media event on March 7 at its Menlo Park, California headquarters, the company said in an emailed invitation to reporters on Friday.

The event will be Facebook's second high-profile product event this year, following the rollout of its social search feature in January.

Facebook's newsfeed, which displays an ever-changing stream of the photos, videos and comments uploaded from a user's network of friends, is one of the three "pillars" of the service, along with search and user profiles, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said.

The last major update to Facebook's newsfeed was in September 2011. Since then, the company has incorporated ads directly into the feed and the company has shifted its focus to creating "mobile first experiences," as more people now access the social network every day on mobile devices than on desktop PCs.

The mobile version of Facebook still lacks many of the features available on the PC version, said Brian Blau, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner. "So maybe this is a way to bring some of that together," he said.

Shares of Facebook, the world's No.1 social network, were up nearly 2 percent, or 52 cents, at $27.77 in midday trading on Friday.

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Facebook announces partership with telecom operators to provide free messenger service

Facebook has announced partnership with 18 telecom operators in 14 countries to provide free messenger service. The subscribers of these network service providers will get free or discounted data access to Facebook Messenger regardless of the operating system platform.

The list includes Airtel and Reliance in India, TMN in Portugal, Three in Ireland, Vivacom in Bulgaria, Backcell in Azerbaydzhan, Indosat, Smartfren, AXIS and XL Axiata in Indonesia, SMART in Philippines, DiGi in Malaysia, DTAC in Thailand, Viva in Bahrain, STC in Saudi Arabia, Oi in Brazil, Etisalat in Egypt, and Tre in Italy.

Facebook is now considered as a serious competitor to mobile-messenger services like WhatsApp, Viber, LINE and so on after launching Facebook messenger last year. This app also lets you subscribe to the messenger service by only using your mobile number without logging into your Facebook account. This move might generate a new trend in mobile-messaging as Facebook already has 1.06 billion monthly active users including 71million in India.

Following the partnership, Reliance Mobile has already launched ‘Facebook Messenger Plan’ which offers unlimited access to Facebook (including Messenger) for Rs. 16 per month. Facebook also has already enabled free voice calling for its users in Canada and the US on iOS platform. This service is not yet enabled in other countries considering it might threaten the profits of telecom operators worldwide.

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Facebook blocks access to NBC.com over security scare

 
US media company NBC Universal said late on Thursday that its NBC.com website was safe to visit following a security scare prompted by reports that it was infected with malicious software designed for banking fraud and cyberespionage.

"A problem was identified and it has been fixed," an NBC Universal spokeswoman told Reuters. She declined to elaborate on the nature of the problem.

Earlier on Thursday, several security experts had advised internet users to avoid the site altogether, saying it had been compromised by malicious software.

The Dutch computer security firm SurfRight said on its HitmanPro blog that the site of its NBC television network was tainted with viruses known as the Citadel and ZeroAccess that are used for banking fraud, cyberespionage and other computer crimes.

The NBC spokeswoman said she could not confirm whether any users had been infected. But she said that no account information about users of the site had been compromised.

Earlier in the day, Facebook blocked users from accessing the NBC.com website following reports that the site was infected with a computer virus.

Facebook users were told "This link has been reported as abusive" on Thursday when they attempted to access the NBC.com website.

NBC is controlled by Comcast, which is buying out minority owner General Electric.

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Facebook adds free calling to iPhone, iPad apps

Facebook on Friday allowed users to make free calls to friends using the social network's application tailored for iPhones or iPads.
An updated Facebook app for the popular Apple mobile devices shows when friends are online and then gives the option of ringing them up by tapping an icon on the screen.

Calls are routed over the internet using telecom service data plans or connections to Wi-Fi hotspots. Facebook introduced a version of the feature earlier this year in its messenger programme.

Upgrades in the Facebook 5.5 app included a button designed to make it easier to Like online content and post comments at the social network.

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Apple, Facebook were attacked via iPhone developer site

The hacking saga at major technology companies continues, with Apple revealing that computers of some of its engineer were infected by the same malware that was used to attack computers at Facebook and possibly Twitter.
Last week, Facebook had revealed a detailed hack-attack on its computers but assured that no user details were stolen. To know all the details of how the Facebook attack was orchestrated, view our detailed piece here.
According to Reuters, which broke the story first, the malware was distributed at least in part through a site aimed at iPhone developers, which might still be infecting visitors who haven’t disabled Java in their browser, the person close to the case said.

Ars Technica has reportedly identified this website citing sources who are investigating the case. The report on Ars says this is website is iphonedevsdk.com. Users must note that they should not visit this site as it may still contain active malware that could lead to infection.
The report goes on to say that in this case, the site, which hosts a Web forum for iPhone developers, netted the hackers access to the computers of software engineers and developers working on mobile application projects for a number of companies, including Facebook. The exploit was the source of the attack on Twitter that led to the theft of Twitter usernames and passwords, according to a source familiar with the attack, and was used to infect computers belonging to Apple engineers. 
AllThingsD is also reporting that this is the site that was used in the hack attacks.
The report on AllThingsD, also has an update from Ian Sefferman, who is owner and operator of the site iPhoneDevSDK. He said, “We’re investigating Facebook’s reports that iPhoneDevSDK was hosting an exploit targeted at Facebook employees. We’re actively ensuring that is not the case Facebook originally noted that they immediately reached out to other affected companies, but we were never contacted by Facebook, any other company, or law enforcement.”
Apple had a statement said that “Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers. The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers. ”
Apple said that there was no evidence that data left Apple.
Once again the weak link in these hacking attacks seems to be the Java installed in web-browsers. One of the steps that you can take to avoid such malware is to disable Java on your web-browsers completely. Oracle has released an update patch on Java on Tuesday and Apple has also released a similar patch.
In the meantime, its best to take precautions and do a full malware sweep of your computer.

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How was Facebook hacked? All you need to know

On Friday, Facebook announced in a blogpost that it was the victim of a sophisticated hack attack last month which affected the computers of some employees. However, the company assured users that the attack was quickly discovered and that no user data was compromised or stolen from its servers.
The blogpost said that the attack took place when some employees visited the website of a mobile developer which had been infected.
The post reads,
This website in turn allowed and hosted an exploit which then allowed malware to be installed on these employee laptops. The laptops were fully-patched and running up-to-date anti-virus software. As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day.
Facebook has called in the FBI to investigate the attack on its servers.
So how did the attackers gain access to the laptops of Facebook employees?
According to an interview in Ars Technica, Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said, that “The attack was injected into the site’s HTML, so any engineer who visited the site and had Java enabled in their browser would have been affected, regardless of how patched their machine was.”
Facebook’s blogpost also pointed out that the company had flagged a suspicious domain in our corporate DNS logs and tracked it back to an employee laptop.
The attackers used a “zero-day” (previously unseen) exploit to bypass the Java sandbox (built-in protections) to install the malware. The malware was also able to install itself on both Apple and Windows machines, states the report in Ars Technica. Facebook also reported the bug to Oracle, and they provided a patch for the same on 1 February, 2013.
Facebook also pointed out that they were not the only ones who were attacked. As the Ars report points out, Facebook discovered traffic coming from several other companies and it also notified those companies of the attack and the report also points out that the attack took place in the same period as the attack on Twitter.
Earlier in this month, Twitter too had claimed that over 250,000 accounts were affected in the attack, although it did not specify any details or methodology of how the attack was orchestrated.
The attack on Facebook raises a lot of privacy fears for users, especially as the site has over a billion users, each with their personal photos, data, etc. As this post on TechCrunch points out, Facebook has a lot more to lose from getting hacked.
One also can’t forget that the hacker exploited Oracle’s Java to launch the attack. Security experts have already warned that Java isn’t secure and that users should disable the software on their web-browsers.

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Facebook hacked, says no user data compromised

   

Facebook says it was recently hacked, though it says no data about its more than a billion users was compromised.

The company described the "sophisticated attack" in a blog post on Friday, saying it took place in January when a small number of employees visited a compromised website that installed malware on their machines.

"As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement and began a significant investigation that continues to this day," Facebook Security said in the post.

Facebook, the largest social network in the world, is the latest high-profile site to be hacked this year. Twitter announced a similar intrusion earlier this month, and major news organizations including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have also admitted to being hacked.

The news sites attributed the breaches to hackers working for the Chinese government, but neither Facebook nor Twitter mention China when describing their attacks.

"Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well," said the blog post. "As one of the first companies to discover this malware, we immediately took steps to start sharing details about the infiltration with the other companies and entities that were affected. "

Unlike Twitter, Facebook said it has found no evidence that any user information was compromised. Twitter said that user names, encrypted passwords and e-mail addresses for as many as 250,000 users were potentially grabbed by the hackers. It reset passwords for all affected accounts.

The string of hacks have primarily exploited vulnerabilities in the programming language Java, which is installed on most computers by default. Facebook said the site responsible for its attack took advantage of a previously unknown Java vulnerability, which Oracle patched on February 1.

In January, the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert about the security-challenged software and recommended people turn it off on their computers. Apple turned off Java by default for its OS X users as a precaution. Full instructions on how to disable Java on any computer can be found on Oracle's website. If you must use Java, make sure that you have downloaded the latest updates, which include key security patches.

Facebook said it will continue to work with law enforcement and others in the industry to prevent future attacks. 

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Facebook's 9th birthday: Milestones in the history of the social networking king

Facebook, the world's most popular social networking site, has turned nine today. With over one billion active users, the social networking giant still continues to grow, since its launch on February 4, 2004.


Some key developments in nine years since Facebook's creation:
February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard University.
 March 2004: Facebook begins expansion to other colleges and universities.
June 2004: Facebook moves headquarters to Palo Alto, California.
September 2004: Facebook introduces the Wall, which allows people to write personal musings and other tidbits on profile pages. Lawsuit filed against Facebook claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from a company co-founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a third person at Harvard.
September 2005: Facebook expands to include high schools.
May 2006: Facebook introduces work networks, allowing people with a corporate email address to join.
September 2006: Facebook begins letting anyone over 13 join. It also introduces News Feed, which collects friends' Wall posts in one place. Although that led to complaints about privacy, News Feed became one of Facebook's most popular features.
May 2007: Facebook launches Platform, a system for letting outside programmers develop tools for sharing photos, taking quizzes and playing games. The system creates a Facebook economy and allows companies such as game maker Zynga Inc. to thrive.
October 2007: Facebook agrees to sell a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft for $240 million and forges advertising partnership.
November 2007: Facebook unveils its Beacon program, a feature that broadcasts people's activities on dozens of outside sites. Yet another privacy backlash led Facebook to give people more control over Beacon, before Facebook ultimately scrapped it as part of a legal settlement.
March 2008: Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer, snatching the savvy, high-profile executive from Google Inc.
April 2008: Facebook Chat introduced.
February 2009: Facebook introduces "Like," allowing people to endorse other people's posts.
June 2009: Facebook surpasses News Corp.'s Myspace as the leading online social network in the US.
August 2010: Facebook launches location feature, allowing people to share where they are with their friends and strangers.
October 2010: Release of "The Social Network," a movie about Zuckerberg and the legal battles over Facebook's founding. It gets eight Academy Awards nominations and wins three.
June 2011: Google launches rival social network called Plus. The Winklevoss twins end their legal battle over the idea behind Facebook. They had settled with Facebook for $65 million in 2008, but later sought more money.
September 2011: Facebook introduces Timeline, a new version of the profile page. It shows highlights from a person's entire Facebook life rather than recent posts.
November 2011: Facebook agrees to settle federal charges that it violated users' privacy by getting people to share more information than they agreed to when they signed up to the site. As part of a settlement, Facebook will allow independent auditors to review its privacy practices for two years. It also agrees to get approval from users before changing how the company handles their data.
December 2011: Facebook completes its move to Menlo Park, California Its address is 1 Hacker Way.
January 2012: Facebook begins making Timeline mandatory.
February 2012: Facebook files for an initial public offering of stock.
January 2013: Facebook announced the launch of Graph Search that allows users to search anything their Facebook friends have shared, including photos and posts.

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Coming soon to Facebook: more action, battle games

When nWay began a trial of its dark, sci-fi combat game "ChronoBlade" on Facebook last year, the San Francisco-based start up felt sure it had a hit on its hands.

"First of all, what comes is, 'Wow, I had no idea you could actually do a game of this quality on Facebook,'" said Dave Jones, Chief Creative Officer of nWay, who has worked on "Grand Theft Auto" and "Diablo."
Then came some resistance: Jones admits some potential investors and partners questioned how an action-focused game with slick graphics can play to a Facebook audience more accustomed to "Farmville" and other less time-consuming casual games. Others wondered how the game – which launches this spring – would gain significant users and revenue on the social network.
But Facebook Inc is betting nWay and a clutch of other developers this year can extend console-style action games beyond Microsoft Corp's Xbox or Sony Corp's PlayStation onto the world's largest social network.
Facebook is spearheading the launch of 10 high-quality games created by third-party developers in 2013 that squarely target so-called hardcore gamers, an atypical audience overlooked thus far against the wealth of family-friendly offerings like Zynga Inc's "Farmville" that now dominate the social network's gaming landscape.
The effort, which began late last year but will accelerate in 2013, is part of Facebook's ongoing objective of making sure its 1 billion-plus users log in and spend more time on the network, which in turn boosts ad revenue. Facebook also takes a cut of its applications' revenue.

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Reliance’s offer: Unlimited usage of Facebook Messenger at Rs 16 only

Reliance has launched a new plan for all prepaid users. This plan will let them make unlimited usage of the Facebook Messenger app at Rs 16 per month only.

The offer is valid for Reliance GSM subscribers across the country. The Facebook Messenger Plan has a validity period of 30 days from the date of recharge and the plan is auto-renewed every 30 days unless you unsubscribe.

The Facebook Messenger app. Image courtesy: Facebook.

The Facebook messenger app is available for Android, BlackBerry and iOS users. Recently Facebook gave Android users in India the option to download the app and log in with just their name and mobile number. Previously you needed a Facebook account to use the app.

The Facebook Messenger App is currently at number 5 in the top free Android apps.

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Facebook to charge for message delivery to strangers

Facebook users in US maybe charged a one-time fee of one dollar to send a message to another user's inbox who they aren't friends with, in a new option that is being tested by the social media firm.

Currently, if you send a Facebook message to someone you're not connected to, it may end up in the 'Other' tab, an oft-overlooked subsection of the inbox that basically serves as a spam folder, depending on whether you have mutual connections.

With the new option, however, you would be able to pay a premium to ensure the message ends up in the main inbox where it is likely to be seen by the recipient, Stuff.co.nz reports.

According to the report, Facebook said users will have the option to mark the incoming message as spam and move it to the 'Other' tab, which means the sender will be unable to reach their inbox afterwards.
However, if the recipient doesn't take any action, the sender will be able to continue messaging that user's inbox an unlimited number of times after paying the one-time fee, the report said.

"Today we're starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance. This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with," Facebook said in a blog post.
The feature has only been turned on in the US so far, but the company added: "We'll continue to iterate and evolve Facebook Messages over the coming months.

Facebook is billing the change as an attempt to crack down on spam by seeing if "imposing a financial cost on the sender" serves as a deterrent to sending unwanted messages, the report added.

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Facebook to take on Snapchat with its new app

Facebook is all set to contend against the photo sharing service Snapchat that allows users to send impermanent photo messages to one another. Your chat partner can view the photo for an alloted amount of time.
According to a report from AllThingsD, the social networking giant is testing its built-in-house version of a Snapchat-like app.
It further says that Facebook plans to launch the app in the coming weeks, sometime before the end of the year. However, AllThingsD does not have any information about the name of the app.

"After a user opens the new app, they're presented with a list of their current message threads between them and their friends. Hold your finger down on one of the threads, and a timer comes up to ask how long the message should be viewable. From there, you're able to send the message which, just like on Snapchat, will only be viewable for a fixed period of time," said AllThingsD.

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