Which icon do you have? Facebook’s Globe Is No Longer Americentric

You know that little globe icon on the Facebook website that displays your pending notifications? Of course you do. It’s the first thing any self-respecting narcissist clicks on when they open Facebook. (That's pretty much all of us, by the way.)

Well, did you know that the globe looks different depending on where you are in the world? The default icon portrays the Americas:

But as Tech in Asia recently pointed out, Facebook has quietly introduced a new icon for its desktop users in Europe, Africa, and Asia, which shows the globe from the other side. (Update: Facebook tells me the new globe was rolled out widely just on Wednesday, though it had been tested on some users prior to that.)* Log in from any of those continents, and you’ll see this icon instead:

It’s a small change, but it highlights something a lot of Americans might not realize: They’re vastly outnumbered on Facebook. The company reports that just 18.3 percent of its 829 million daily active users hail from the United States or Canada. A far larger percentage come from Asia, even with the site still mostly blocked in China.  

As of April 2013, the United States still clung to a thin lead for the most Facebook users of any single country, but India was closing fast. Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico rounded out the top five.

More importantly for Facebook’s business and mission, Africa and Asia represent the company’s brightest prospects for future growth and are the focus of its Internet.org push to bring more of the world online at low costs.

On Thursday Facebook launched an Internet.org app that will allow users in developing countries to take advantage of some basic services like Google Search, AccuWeather, Wikipedia, and (of course) Facebook and Facebook Messenger without incurring any data charges. The app will be rolled out first to Airtel subscribers in Zambia, where it will also include free access to local jobs, health, library, and women’s rights apps.

This is why, when someone tells you that Facebook is dead because his 15-year-old sister thinks it’s uncool, you should take that anecdote for what it is—one data point from a country that represents an ever-smaller minority of the service’s massive global user base. Yes, American teens can be a bellwether for worldwide trends, but Facebook’s flock has grown too diverse for any one subset of sheep to lead. Like it or not, Facebook has crossed the line from fad to established multinational corporation, and it isn't going the way of MySpace anytime soon.

Get ready for the new social network – Emojili

If you find Facebook overwhelming and Twitter just too much, a new social network aims to make communication even simpler.

Emojili, set to launch later this year, will only allow its users to send emoji to each other.
Even usernames on the system will be emoji – and over 10,000 people have already signed up.

‘We’ve just passed 10,000 usernames reserved, the firm said on its Twitter feed.

‘Fortunately there are more than 250,000 possible two-emoji combos, so most are still available!’

The site was set up by Londoners Matt Gray and Tom Scott, who say they were inspired by Yo, which allows users to simply send the word Yo.

‘The two of us had the idea at about the same time — we weren’t sold on it until we realized that usernames should be emoji too,’ said Gray.

‘At that point, we burst out laughing and realized we had to build it.’

However, the pair have so far refused to say exactly how the app will work.Earlier this year it was revealed Apple is working to expand the diversity of the hugely popular emoji characters for the iPhone.

Following complaints that the current character set was not diverse enough, the firm said it was working with the standards body that controls them.

Because Emoji have to be displayed on different devices, they are tightly controlled by the Unicode Consortium.

At present the list of characters contains dozens of faces of people that appear to be white.
However, only two of the symbols seem to be Asian and none are black.

Since 2010 a basic list has been developed and maintained by the Unicode Consortium – a Silicon Valley-based non-profit organisation made up of major computer firms, software producers, user groups and others.

It does this to ensure that different devices and mobile carriers can share a basic set.

The latest disclosure came after Apple boss Tim Cook was emailed asking if the firm was going to address the issue.

The diversity of emoji was also questioned in a petition posted to DoSomething.org calling on Apple to increase the ethnic diversity found within its emoji keyboard.

‘Of the more than 800 Emojis, the only two resembling people of color are a guy who looks vaguely Asian and another in a turban,’ it says.

‘There’s a white boy, girl, man, woman, elderly man, elderly woman, blonde boy, blonde girl and, we’re pretty sure, Princess Peach.’

Facebook Totally Screwed With a Bunch of People in the Name of Science

If you feel down on Facebook, it could have a lot to do with what your friends are posting

Did your Facebook News Feed seem a little too happy, or perhaps a little too depressing, for one week in January 2012? That may have been because researchers were experimenting with your News Feed to figure out more about how humans’ emotions work when we’re physically apart.

By tweaking the Facebook News Feed algorithm and studying nearly 700,000 Facebook users’ posts, Facebook’s data scientists and researchers found that emotional states can be transmitted between people without face-to-face interaction, according to a study published earlier this month.

For the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers analyzed over 3 million posts containing over 122 million words and used an algorithm to characterize the language as positive or negative. Facebook’s data team then adjusted the amount of positive or negative Facebook language users were exposed to on their News Feeds to see how they would react.

Researchers Adam Kramer, of Facebook; Jamie Guillory, of the University of California, San Francisco; and Jeffrey Hancock, of Cornell University, found that when users were exposed to fewer positive posts, they would themselves produce fewer positive posts and more negative posts. The reverse was true when they were exposed to fewer negative posts. In other words, verbal and textual cues have a big impact on our emotions, even if we don’t hear a person’s tone of voice or see their body language.

“These results suggest that the emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods,” said the team in the study.

The data was analyzed by computers, so it’s not like a scientist was poring over your Facebook posts. And if you feel weirded out about Facebook looking at your posts without your consent — well, you’ve already given your consent. You just haven’t read Facebook’s privacy policy, which gives the company permission to carry out studies like these.

In any case, the next time you feel your mood changing while you’re on Facebook, it might have something to do with what your friends are posting.

Facebook reveals its legal campaign against mass surveillance

FACEBOOK HAS REVEALED its efforts to keep the Manhattan District Attorney's hands off its customers' information.

The social network, which has been accused of not being a friend of privacy in the past, has presented a more open face since last year and its first government surveillance transparency report.

In the spirit of this, Facebook deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby has published an account of the fight the firm has had in New York to oppose demands to release data relating to 381 social networkers.

"Our goal is to protect people's information on Facebook, so when a government requests data, it's a big deal to us. We have strict policies in place for law enforcement requests and have published these procedures publicly for anyone to review," he said.

"Since last summer, we've been fighting hard against a set of sweeping search warrants issued by a court in New York that demanded we turn over nearly all data from the accounts of 381 people who use our service, including photos, private messages and other information. This unprecedented request is by far the largest we've ever received - by a magnitude of more than [10] - and we have argued that it was unconstitutional from the start."

Sonderby said that of the people whose data was requested and surrendered, 62 were charged for disability fraud. His concern is that information belonging to the other 300 or so individuals was demanded for no reason.

Facebook took its opposing position to court, but was told, "As an online service provider we didn't even have the legal standing to contest the warrants."

This kind of bulk, shotgun blast of requests is not what Facebook wants to deal with, and it would prefer to be more open with its users.

"The government also obtained gag orders that prohibited us from discussing this case and notifying any of the affected people until now," he added.

"We've gone to court and repeatedly asserted that these overly broad warrants - which contain no date restrictions and allow the government to keep the seized data indefinitely - violate the privacy rights of the people on Facebook and ignore Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures."

The firm's most recent move was filing an appellate brief to invalidate sweeping warrants and reunite it with the data that was "seized and retained". That led the government to unseal warrants and court filings, Sonderby's revelations, and informing the affected punters.

That is one victory for Facebook, and it promised its many million users that their data is important to it.

"We feel strongly that there is more work to do, and we will continue our legal fight to retrieve data that has been seized and retained by the government," he added.

"We will continue to fight on your behalf, and we recognize the importance of this responsibility. We look forward to keeping you updated about our progress."

Facebook goes down globally; users unable to log in

Facebook appeared to have gone down for a wide number of users across the globe on Thursday.

Facebook user complaints were seen on Twitter for about 30 minutes.

Users could not log in to the social networking site. On logging in to Facebook.com earlier, a message appeared that read:

“Sorry, something went wrong. We are working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.”

There is a “Go Back” button underneath this message that redirects users to the log in page, but when we tried to log in again it showed the same message.

The problem was not limited to the web app, even the Facebook app for Android was unable to load news feed.

According to SLCERT Sri Lanka, the error might have occurred due to a large amount of traffic to the server .

Google Tops LinkedIn's List of Most Desirable Companies to Work For

For the second straight year, Google claimed the top spot on LinkedIn's annual list of most InDemand Employers, a ranking of the companies LinkedIn members "most want to work for."

Google edged out last year's runner-up, Apple, once again, leading a list unveiled Tuesday that features the 50 most desirable companies from the United States and Canada.

The top five companies on this year's list are all from the tech sector.

Last year, LinkedIn only published the top 20 most desirable companies from the U.S., but expanded the list in 2014 after companies and users responded positively, a spokesperson tellsMashable. The rankings are detemrined by analyzing "billions of interactions between companies and members on LinkedIn," including elements like company profile views and followers.

The list includes some of the world's biggest companies like Accenture (218,000 employees), Deloitte (175,000), and Microsoft (116,000). It also includes much smaller companies, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has just over 1,000 employees.

Facebook Moves to Single-Column Timelines for Pages

Facebook has announced a plan to revamp the look of Timelines on its Pages, moving to a one-column design more similar to the Timelines on individual profiles. (Quick reminder: Pages are generally public and can be for a person, business, movie, etc., while personal profiles are just for individual use.)

This is a little change, but it illustrates that Facebook is making a concerted push to give itself a streamlined, stripped down look. It also further blurs the line between a personal account and a Pages account, which makes sense. Facebook would prefer that its users treat their individual accounts more like Pages anyways, publicly posting and sharing content, so this will help reinforce the idea that Pages aren't so different than regular accounts (which is a lie, Pages are inferior).

In addition to giving Pages an easier-to-navigate makeover, Facebook also gave administrators more control over the look of their layout. The new design allows users to move sections around to create a custom look. Remember, this is the same Facebook that swore off giving users too much control over the look of their individual profiles to avoid people from cluttering their profiles with garish color schemes; it appears Facebook is more willing to cater to customization now.

Facebook is doing two things right here, by simplifying the design and giving users more control. The main Facebook service often feels overstuffed, so it's important that the site's scaffolding doesn't add another distraction. At the same time, even as the company looks for ways to make its design more elegant, allowing users a few options to put their own spin on the look keeps people engaged.

Now if only Facebook would consider offering an option to browse without a News Feed… right now you have to use an obscure script called "Quiet Facebook" to remove the cluttered stream from your profile-creeping experience.

Instagram Expands Ads to International Users

The photo-sharing service owned by Facebook announced on Tuesday that it will begin showing in-feed ads to international users "in the coming months," according to a company spokesperson. Instagram will start with three countries — Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia — but more countries could be added in the future.

It's unclear how many of Instagram's 200 million-plus users are outside the United States — the company doesn't break down its user demographics publicly. Instagram also did not identify any of its upcoming international advertisers, but a spokesperson did say that the ads will be tailored and targeted to the individual regions.

"We’ll work closely with a handful of advertisers in each country who are already great members of the Instagram community," a spokesperson told Mashable. "That could mean it’s a global brand with a strong presence in one of the countries, or a regional/local brand specific to that country."

The international ad push is not Instagram's first foray into native ads. Instagram first rolled out in-feed ads to U.S. users in November, starting with a small sampling of advertisers like Michael Kors, Burberry, Lexus. The response at the time was mixed — the images generated lots of Likes, but also lots of angry comments from users who didn't appreciate Instagram's monetization attempt.

Facebook approached advertising slowly at Instagram in hopes of keeping users happy, and the results seem to be working. Instagram added close to 50 million new users in the first six months after adding ads.

The service also announced an ad partnership with the ad agency Omnicom in March that could be worth as much as $100 million over the next year.

-Mashable-

Facebook announces two major changes

Facebook has announced two major changes to its advertising policy that will let it track users across the web and give them access to the advertising profiles created by the social network of their likes and interests.

The site creates profiles in order to sell targeted adverts tailored to the individual but has never before let users view or edit the information in those files.

Users’ web browsing activities outside of Facebook will also be added to this profile through the Facebook ‘Like’ button. Even if individuals do not click this on third-party sites it still registers their presence if they are logged into Facebook in the same browsing session.

Similar buttons from Twitter and Google have identical abilities, but this is the first time Facebook has chosen to utilise this wealth of data. If users don’t want to be tracked in this way then they can opt out via the Digital Advertising Alliance or for mobile browsing adjust their settings on their handset.

Brian Boland, Facebook’s’ vice president of ad product, told the New York Times that people “want more targeted advertising” and that the aim of the new policies was to make it clearer to individuals why they were seeing certain ads.

Adverts on the site will have drop down menus in the top right-hand corner that gives users more control over these adverts. Individuals can find out why they are being shown an advert based on the likes and interests that Facebook has logged – or they can choose not to see any more similar adverts in the future.

The new policies will likely meet with a mixed reaction from privacy advocates and the site’s users. Although Facebook is giving people more control over what sort of adverts they see they’re also becoming more aggressive regarding the types of data they collect. The changes will appear for US users in a few weeks and in other countries over the following months.

Mark Zuckerberg, other Facebook directors are sued over pay plan

Mark Zuckerberg and other members of Facebook Inc's board have been sued by a shareholder who claimed a policy letting them annually award directors more than $150 million of stock each if they choose is unreasonably generous.

In a complaint filed on Friday night in Delaware Chancery Court, Ernesto Espinoza said the board was "essentially free to grant itself whatever amount of compensation it chooses" under the social media company's 2012 equity incentive plan, which also covers employees, officers and consultants.

He said the plan annually caps total awards at 25 million shares and individual awards at 2.5 million, and in theory lets the board annually award directors $156 million in stock each, based on Friday's closing price of $62.50. The lawsuit does not contend that such large sums will be awarded.

Espinoza also said last year's average $461,000 payout to non-employee directors was too high, being 43 percent larger than typical payouts at "peer" companies such as Amazon.com Inc and Walt Disney Co that on average generated twice as much revenue and three times more profit.

Facebook spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina said in an email: "The lawsuit is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously."

A spokeswoman for Robbins Arroyo, a law firm representing the plaintiff, had no immediate comment.

The lawsuit alleges breach of fiduciary duty, waste of corporate assets and unjust enrichment.

It seeks to force directors to repay Facebook for alleged damages sustained by the Menlo Park, California-based company, and to impose "meaningful limits" subject to shareholder approval about how much stock the board can award itself.

Among the other defendants is Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, a director whose compensation was $16.15 million in 2013, according to a regulatory filing. She is worth $999 million, Forbes magazine said on Monday.

Zuckerberg made $653,165 last year, a regulatory filing shows, and Forbes said his net worth is $27.7 billion.

Espinoza was also a plaintiff in a 2010 shareholder case in Delaware against Hewlett-Packard Co concerning its handling of the resignation of Chief Executive Mark Hurd over his relationship with a former contractor.

The case is Espinoza v. Zuckerberg et al, Delaware Chancery Court, No. 9745.

(Additional reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware)

(Source : Reuters)

Facebook changes privacy settings for teens

Facebook is relaxing its rules for teenagers. Recently Facebook said that teenagerss can share their posts publicly for the first time, but the default privacy setting for new users will limit their sharing to friends only. The also will be able to share photos, updates and comments with the general public on Facebook. That means strangers, and companies collecting data for advertisers and marketing companies, will be able to see select posts. Teenagers will also be able to turn on the Follow feature for their profiles, which would allow anyone they're not friends with to see their public posts in the main news feed.

Until now, Facebook said, teens aged 13 to 17 joining the service defaulted to being able to share information -- status updates, photos, videos, and the like -- with anybody in their extended network including friends and "friends of friends." But in a bid, perhaps, to assuage concerned parents, the giant social network is ratcheting the default for new users back to just "friends."

Note: To be sure, Facebook will allow those teens to change their privacy settings to anything they want. 

Other social networks such as Twitter, Tumblr and Last.fm don't prevent teens from posting publicly. However, if someone under 18 wanted to bypass the setting on Facebook before today, they could easily lie about their age when signing up for an account. Children under 13 are not officially allowed to sign up for a Facebook account, though they can skirt the rules in the same way. When someone underage does sign up for an account, Facebook assumes they have the permission of at least one guardian but does not verify it in any way.

Privacy, or the lack of privacy, has long been a touchy subject for Facebook. Users often bash the social network for its ever-changing and often complicated privacy settings. And despite the impression that teens are carefree with their online identities, a recent report showed that they are definitely concerned about their privacy on Facebook.