by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Although Facebook ‘Stories’ is not as popular as it is on Instagram and WhatsApp, the social media giant is convinced that the feature can fetch money through effective advertising and due to this, the company might soon launch it on desktop.
The company said that the narrative, ephemeral, camera-first format is the future of sharing… and advertising, Tech Crunch reported late on Thursday.
The report said that Facebook was doubling down on ‘Stories’ by testing the ability to create them from desktop and a much more prominent placement for viewing it atop the News Feed instead of in the sidebar.
“We are testing the option to create and share ‘Stories’ from Facebook on desktop and are also testing moving the Stories tray from the top right corner to above News Feed, just like on mobile,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Previously users could only consume ‘Stories’ on web that had to be created on mobile.
Brands, Event promoters and Group admins who manage their Facebook presence from desktop might embrace ‘Stories’ more now that they can post from there, too, the report pointed out.
Advertisers are likely to be more comfortable after getting Stories on desktop.
Moreover, a Digiday report said that Facebook was also building an augmented reality (AR) team in London to help it pitch sponsored AR filters to advertisers.
Facebook users will be able to upload photos or videos, or shoot them with their webcam to post from desktop. That could attract the monologue-style YouTube vloggers who have trained themselves to talk into their computer.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Networking, Online Marketing, SMEs, Social Media, Technology
Bengaluru : Facebook and YouTube have become the platforms of choice for the Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), accounting for 80 per cent of their total social media traffic, followed by Instagram, Blogger and Quora, a report said on Wednesday.
According to Bengaluru-based integrated solutions provider Instamojo, Facebook and Youtube drive the highest traffic at 60 per cent and 20 per cent respectively, followed by Instagram (7 per cent) and Blogger (5 per cent).
Q&A platforms such as Quora accounted for 3 per cent of the total traffic.
“Social media channels have allowed merchants to tap into a wider audience and digital payment platforms have eased the process of collecting payments,” Sampad Swain, CEO and Co-founder, Instamojo, said in a statement.
Instamojo witnessed a 100 per cent growth in social media traffic as compared to last year. The company works with over three lakh MSMEs.
According to the company, 80 per cent of micro-businesses today use social media to grow and sustain businesses.
Currently, MSMEs in the education sector use YouTube to upload tutorials and monetise through their content on the platform.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Marketing Basics, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
London : Facebook was on course to lose 17 billion pounds ($23 billion) of its value after it announced it was making changes to its News Feed feature that will allow users to see more updates from family and friends than posts from businesses, brands and media.
Facebook share fell 4 per cent within hours after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes to make the social network more meaningful, The Sun reported.
This could also result in lining them up for its worst financial position in more than three months — and Zuckerberg losing $3.3 billion of his own personal net worth.
“One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent. We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us,” Zuckerberg posted on Facebook late on Thursday.
The CEO said that Facebook has got a feedback from the community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.
“We’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions,” he said.
“As we roll this out, you will see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people,” Zuckerberg added.
This planned change sparked fears people will spend less time on the site, leading to its share stock suddenly dropping.
Zuckerberg admitted that the new changes might not pay off at first, but believes it is important users have more meaningful social interactions, The Sun said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Muslim World, Social Media, Technology
By Qais Abu Samra,
Ramallah, Palestine: Facebook has unilaterally closed several pro-Palestine pages for “incitement” in a move Palestinians describe as a flagrant violation of the freedoms of opinion and expression.
According to Palestinian daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Israeli officials — including Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — recently met with Facebook representatives who were threatened with prosecution if they did not meet Israeli demands to delete the accounts of several Palestinian activists.
Within the past four months alone, the paper reported, Shaked submitted 158 separate requests to Facebook officials for the deletion of content on different pro-Palestine Facebook pages.
According to the newspaper, Facebook has so far complied with almost all of Shaked’s requests.
Ghazi Bani Odeh of the Palestinian Center for the Development of Media Freedoms, an NGO, said Israel was relying on a series of “understandings” — reached with Facebook two years ago — to remove any content deemed “incitement to violence”.
Such an arrangement “profoundly affects free expression”, Bani Odeh told Anadolu Agency, going on to assert that “dozens” of pro-Palestine Facebook accounts had been recently shut down as a result.
Last year, he added, Facebook had closed the official page of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement after it posted a photograph of a rifle-toting Yasser Arafat.
According to Bani Odeh, Facebook has never taken similar action against what he described as “dozens” of Israeli Facebook pages known for inciting violence against Palestinians and their property.
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Media, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook is testing a new feature where it will have city-specific local news, events and announcements available on its platform.
The test is currently live for a new section called “Today In” in six US cities, CNET reported on Thursday.
Users in test markets will be able to access the feature through the bottom-right menu button on Facebook.
A machine learning (ML) software will power the “Today In” section, helping a team find local content.
Local news publishers will be approved by Facebook’s News Partnerships team.
The move comes as part of Facebook’s Journalism Project announced in January last year to curb the spread of fake news on its platform and build out local news partnerships.
Last year, the social media giant also tested products to connect its users to local news.
—IANS
