A year and a half after Facebook announced its acquisition of GIPHY, UK’s competition regulator has ruled that the social media giant’s parent, Meta’s acquisition of Giphy should be unwound.    In a press release, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said that they decided after the investigation found an acquisition could harm competition and that its concerns “can only be addressed by Facebook selling Giphy in its entirety to an approved buyer.”   The acquisition, according to CMA, could deny or limit other platforms’ access to Giphy GIFs and drive more traffic to Facebook and Instagram. This will potentially require other platforms to provide more data to access the GIFs.    Finally, Giphy’s advertising services, which were shuttered due to the merger, could have competed with Meta’s.   “The tie-up between Facebook and Giphy has already removed a potential challenger in the display advertising market,” said Stuart McIntosh, the chair of the independent inquiry group, referring to Meta.    Adding, “Without action, it will also allow Facebook to increase its significant market power in social media even further, through controlling competitors’ access to Giphy GIFs. By requiring Facebook to sell Giphy, we are protecting millions of social media users and promoting competition and innovation in digital advertising,”    Meta this is the first time the CMA has attempted to …

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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is not planning to roll out End-to-End encryption on Messenger and Instagram by default until 2023, first reported by The Guardian.  Last year, the company merged Instagram chats with Messenger as it plans to unify messaging ecosystem across platforms. While messages sent through Messenger and Instagram can be E2EE, that option isn’t turned on by default. WhatsApp already offers and supports E2EE by default. In a post in The Telegraph, Meta’s head of safety, Antigone Davis, attributes the delay to concerns about user safety. Since E2EE allows only the sender and receiver to view conversations, Meta is concerned that this will interfere with its ability to help stop criminal activity.  Davis notes that once available by default, the company will “use a combination of non-encrypted data across our apps, account information and reports from users” to help keep them safe while “assisting public safety efforts.”  Earlier this year, in a blog post, the company said that E2EE by default would be available on Messenger and Instagram “sometime in 2022 at the earliest.” However, now, Davis says that the company is delaying on their plans as they want to “get this right,” the feature’s debut until 2023.  According to the UK’s Online Safety bill, going into effect by 2023, online platforms are required to keep children from harm and address abusive content.   Priti Patel, the UK’s Home Secretary, has criticized E2EE use in the past as this might …

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Facebook has unveiled the Portal+ and Portal Go to expand the company’s portfolio of video calling devices. The company has launched devices in 14-inch and 10-inch display sizes respectively.  Interestingly, the social media giant has launched its video calling tools just a few days ahead of Amazon’s event, scheduled on September 28. The e-commerce giant is expected to unveil a lineup of Echo smart devices at the event.  In its blog, announcing its Portal devices, Facebook said “Today, we’re welcoming two new additions to the Portal family of video calling devices: the 10-inch portable Portal Go, our next-gen Portal+ with a 14-inch HD tilting display.”   “Portal Go and Portal+ will begin shipping on October 19; pre-orders are open now at portal.facebook.com. We’re also introducing new features for small businesses with Portal for Business.  The company has launched Portal Go in the US for $199 and the Portal+ at $349. The pre-orders are now open at portal.facebook.com and shipping will start from October 19.    Both the Portal devices come with long-lasting batteries. Portal Go features a smart camera video calling and 12MP camera with an ultra-wide field of view for immersive video calls to the latest portable version. They can be used as a portable speaker with surround sound audio to make portability easier.   Along with a 14-inch display, Portal Go+ also features a 12-megapixel camera with an ultra-wide view.   Facebook said, “Its stereo speakers deliver high-fidelity sound for …

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Introduction From blockbuster beginnings to tumultuous present, Facebook has become a staple of many college dorms and board rooms worldwide. Facebook is a behemoth amongst other social media platforms with a user base of over 2.45 billion from different parts of the world.   Once a platform to connect with friends and socialize, Facebook has evolved to favor different personal and commercial purposes. Among its many abilities, its ability to share and consume content had made it a great hit.   In fact, after the video streaming platform, YouTube, Facebook is the biggest platform for content creation and consumption. You can find everything from memes to music to videos can be found here.    Alas! the platform still does not allow its users to download these videos.   Fortunately, there are many Facebook video downloaders out there offering what Facebook fails to do so.   In this article, we will be looking at tools to help you save Facebook videos. We will give you brief information about the features that they offer and if you should go for the service or not.   Best Facebook Video Downloader:   Here is the detailed list of some of the best Facebook Video Downloader:  1) SnapDownloader   Price: Free trial + $19.99 …

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Introduction We all remember that summer when we went to the arcade and never returned. Maybe because we were too grown-up or maybe because we were too busy making our Facebook accounts.   Believe it or not, but what started as an amusement machine has now turned into a multi-million-dollar industry.    Don’t believe me?   Well, statistically speaking video games (as an industry) generated $120 billion last year alone. This means that if the gaming industry was a country, it would probably rank within the top 100 GDPs.   And it’s just the beginning!   While video gaming was already booming, COVID-19 pushed people inside their homes and many of them have taken up gaming as a hobby, be it on a gaming console or mobile phone.    With the rising revenue of the gaming industry, major tech companies have started to put their horse in the race.    Eyeing this opportunity, Facebook has also launched its gaming app, Facebook Gaming.    Facebook’s new app is already giving fierce competitors to Twitch and YouTube Gaming, which holds the largest shares in the market.    To build Facebook Gaming, the social media giant has partnered with Microsoft to bring over its Mixer platform’s popular features.    Today, we are going to answers …

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On Wednesday, Facebook announced, they’ll soon begin testing advertisements in virtual reality on its Oculus platform.  For their first roll-out, Facebook will be testing ads inside Blaston which is a single gaming shooter title from Resolution Games. The interesting part is that they are not rolling this out with a first-party title, but we all know that integration with Oculus Studio titles is inevitable.   A company blog post reads, “For now, this is a test with a few apps — once we see how this test goes and incorporate feedback from developers and the community, we’ll provide more details on when ads may become more broadly available across the Oculus Platform and in the Oculus mobile app.”   To make these advertisements less invasive, users will be able to mute, hide, or see information on why they are being served that particular ad.  Also Read: Facebook Will Enable Users to Turn-off Algorithmic Ranking  Nevertheless, this social media giant realizes that there are going to be plenty of privacy questions in the future. So, they have addressed plenty of them head-on.    For instance, Facebook cleared the biggest admission that is they will not be using any data stored locally on the Oculus headset to target ads. They also said that they …

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Facebook has planned to introduce a handful of new features that will allow its users to have greater control over their News Feed. For instance, it will include an easier way to turn off the algorithmic ranking in their feed and display content as it was posted.   These changes build on the functionality of previous tweaks to the News Feed. Last October, the tech giant also introduced a “Favorites tool” allowing users to select nearly 30 friends. This tool helped prioritize their content or they can choose to display it in a separate feed.    Previously, the company has also offered its users an option to sort through their feeds by “most recent.” However, these options have been buried in obscure menus.   Also Read: Facebook Removing Posts Celebrating or Supporting the Atlanta Shootings Now, the giant is putting “Favorites” and “Recent” filters right at the top of the News Feed as separate tabs that users can switch between. This will make them much more prominent.   Today, this filter is launching globally on Facebook’s Android app and will be available soon on iOS.   But the filter bar isn’t a permanent addition as the feature will disappear if users don’t access the Favorites tool for seven days. …

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After the recent shooting in Atlanta, Facebook has stepped up and said that they will be removing any posts that celebrate the shootings or the suspected shooter.    In the Atlanta attack, eight people were killed, seven of the victims of the shooting were women, and six were of Asian descent.   The social media giant has labeled the shooting to be a “violating event.” Previously, this classification has only be used for the US Capitol riots this year in January. This new classification is now a part of the company’s expanded policies on Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.   Facebook said that they want to remove any content from their platforms that celebrate acts of violence.     Also Read: Report Says A Fifth Of Facebook Employees Are Working on VR and AR     Last August, the social media giant noted that it wanted to address movements “that, while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts.”    This means that they want to remove content that “have demonstrated significant risks to public safety but do not meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous organization and banned from having any presence on our platform.”   However, with Facebook moderation, we are still not exactly clear on what criteria the company is …

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Introduction For most marketers, Facebook has become the best advertising platform for effective audience targeting. Even though it is true that the features offered by Facebook can be a game-changer. But, take a moment and think!   Today, the cost of advertising on Facebook has increased exponentially but in turn, its impressions have only gone down.  What Does This Mean for a Brand?   This simply means that by relying too much on one sales channel you make your chances for success very dicey in the longer run. It is not long before you will get caught with your pants down.   You should stop using Facebook entirely but just take a moment to look around. You will see that there are lots of channels for paid advertising that might deliver better results.    Plus, you don’t want to miss out on the advantages of other apps right!   It has become very obvious today, that people don’t just use Facebook. Studies say that the average internet user has an average of 7.6 social media accounts!   As for businesses, a survey by Lawless Research and Factual says that marketers are spending an average of 43% of their ad budget on Google and Facebook.   Most businesses are using quite similar online …

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Today, Facebook is one of the largest companies with nearly 52,535 employees. According to a report in The Information as many as 10,000 employees if working in the division on augmented reality and virtual reality devices.    The number clearly shows that there are means that almost a fifth of the people working at Facebook worldwide are working on the Reality Labs division.   This suggests that the tech giant has been significantly accelerating its VR and AR efforts. In 2017, UploadVR noted that the Oculus VR division accounted for over a thousand employees when Facebook’s headcount was 18,770 overall. Hence, indicating a percentage around the north of five percent.   Since that time, the company has shifted its focus on VR away from Oculus Rift-style tethered headsets. They then released the Oculus Quest and Quest 2. Both of them were standalone wireless devices that don’t require a PC.    Also Read: Facebook Challenges FTC’s Antitrust Case “Today, most of what Facebook does is…we’re building on top of other people’s platforms,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told The Information in an interview this week.    “I think it really makes sense for us to invest deeply to help shape what I think is going to be the next major computing platform, this combination of augmented …

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