by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Investing, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : A day after Facebook was criticised by a former employee for its “black people problem”, the social networking giant announced an investment of $1 million in CodePath.org to boost computer science education among underrepresented minorities and women.
CodePath.org is a US-based nonprofit that provides computer science education to female and minority students at universities around the country.
“Today, we’re excited to announce that Facebook has invested $1 Million in CodePath.org to help us expand from serving 400 students to over 1000 per semester in the next year,” Michael Ellison, Founder at CodePath.org, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
“The funding will also allow us to create courses that target underrepresented minorities and women during their freshman year and expand our number of college partners,” she added.
The funding is aimed at broadening the scope of new students from underrepresented communities, decrease attrition as well as bridge the gap between traditional computer science curriculum and practical software engineering job responsibilities.
“The funding will also allow us to create courses that target underrepresented minorities and women during their freshman year and expand our number of college partners,” Ellison said, adding it will help cultivate a bigger pipeline of underrepresented software engineers.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mark Luckie, former strategic partner manager for global influencers at Facebook, accused the tech gaint of having a “black people problem” as it fails to give enough support to its black employees or users.
In a memo circulated to all Facebook employees early this month shortly before he left the company, Luckie, wrote that many black people felt they were marginalised and feared to speak up about their experience at the company, Xinhua news agency reported.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook reported $13.5 billion in revenue with a net income of $5.1 billion ($1.76 per share) in the third quarter that ended September 30.
The monthly active user (MAU) base reached 2.27 billion — an increase of 10 per cent year-over-year while daily active users (DAUs) were 1.49 billion — an increase of nine per cent (YoY), Facebook said in a statement late on Tuesday as its shares went up three per cent as trading closed.
In terms of regional ad growth, Asia Pacific was strongest at 38 per cent, followed by Europe and North America at 34 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively.
“Our community and business continue to grow quickly, and now more than 2 billion people use at least one of our services every day,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.
“We’re building the best services for private messaging and stories, and there are huge opportunities ahead in video and commerce as well,” he added.
The company said more than 2.6 billion people now use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger (our “Family” of services) each month, and more than 2 billion people use at least one of our Family of services every day on average.
The social media giant now employs 33,606 people and majority of new hires in the past year have been in technical functions.
According to David M. Wehner, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Facebook, DAUs reached 1.49 billion — up nine per cent compared to 2017, led by growth in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.
“Mobile ad revenue was $12.5 billion, up 40 per cent, and represented approximately 92 per cent of total ad revenue,” Wehner said during an earning call with analysts.
“In Q3, the average price per ad increased 7 per cent and the number of ad impressions served across our services increased 25 per cent driven primarily by Feed ads on Instagram and Facebook,” he informed.
Facebook said it expects total revenue growth rate in Q4 will decelerate by a mid to high single digit percentage compared to the Q3 total revenue growth rate.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Deepening their partnership on development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Google is integrating Facebook’s open source Machine Learning (ML) PyTorch framework across its software and hardware tools for AI development.
PyTorch is a deep learning framework designed for easy and flexible experimentation and Facebook on Tuesday announced the preview release of an updated version of the framework – PyTorch 1.0.
The new partnership is aimed at making PyTorch framework work with Google’s custom computer chips for ML, dubbed Tensor Processing Units, or TPU, Fortune.com reported.
“In conjunction with today’s release of PyTorch 1.0 Preview, we are broadening support for PyTorch throughout Google Cloud’s AI platforms and services,” Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Google Cloud wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
ML developers use many different tools, and Goolge has integrated several of the most popular open source frameworks into its products and services, including TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, and XGBoost.
“Today, we’re pleased to announce that engineers on Google’s TPU team are actively collaborating with core PyTorch developers to connect PyTorch to Cloud TPUs,” Sheth said on the blog.
“The long-term goal is to enable everyone to enjoy the simplicity and flexibility of PyTorch while benefiting from the performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency of Cloud TPUs,” he added.
PyTorch 1.0 accelerates the workflow involved in taking breakthrough research in AI to production deployment, Facebook said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : Facebook has launched in the US free online education programme CodeFWD to increase the numbers of underrepresented and female students interested in pursuing computer programming.
“We’re working on a number of initiatives like CodeFWD to widen the pipeline of diverse talent studying computer science so the next generation of tech innovators reflects and incorporates diverse perspectives, building a future that benefits us all,” Lauryn Ogbechie, Education Partnerships Director at Facebook, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Created in partnership with connected toys maker Sphero, CodeFWD by Facebook, has been designed for both English and Spanish speakers.
It is a three-step programme where educators and organisations introduce computer programming to 4th to 8th grade students.
With the first module “I do”, CodeFWD prepares educators to introduce the basics of computer programming to their students, even as they may be discovering the concepts themselves.
The “We do” module lets educators and students learn together. And the “You do” is designed to help students practice their new skills.
“After completing these three steps, educators who want to continue developing their students’ coding skills using a tangible, hands-on product can apply to earn a free classroom set of programmable robots from our partners at Sphero,” Ogbechie said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : In order to further secure candidates and campaign staff vulnerable to hackers and nation-state actors during the elections, Facebook has introduced additional tools to protect political campaigns in the US and around the world.
The social media giant has launched a pilot programme to expand its existing protections for users associated with US political campaigns ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections.
“Candidates for federal or statewide office, as well as staff members and representatives from federal and state political party committees, can add additional security protections to their Pages and accounts,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook, wrote in a blog post late on Monday.
“We’ll help officials adopt our strongest account security protections, like two-factor authentication, and monitor for potential hacking threats,” Gleicher added.
Over the past year, the company has invested in new technology and more people to stay ahead of bad actors who are determined to use Facebook to disrupt elections.
“This pilot programme is an addition to our existing security tools and procedures, and we will apply what we learn to other elections in the US and around the world,” said Facebook.
“As we detect abuse, we will continue to share relevant information with law enforcement and other companies so we can maximise our effectiveness,” it added.
According to a report in Download, a working paper released last week revealed a significant drop-off in the engagements 570 fake news sites received on Facebook since the 2016 US presidential elections.
“At its peak, there were 200 million monthly engagements with the sites. As of July 2018, that’s dropped to 70 million,” the report added.
In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the US Senate, saying they were too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference.
“Our sophistication in handling these threats is growing and improving quickly. We now have about 15,000 people working on security and content review. We’ll have more than 20,000 by the end of this year,” he told the lawmakers.
The Facebook CEO apologised for what happened and took responsibility for everything. He also said that there is an online propaganda “arms race” with Russia and it was important to make sure no one interferes in any more elections, including in India.
“The most important thing I care about right now is making sure no one interferes in the various 2018 elections around the world,” he testified before a 44-Senator panel.
—IANS
