Facebook has another quarter in the books, and the company's business continues to boom. Its revenues rose roughly 40 percent year over year, to $4.04 billion. But its net income declined compared to last year, declining from $791 million to $719 million. Its operating margins also tumbled as Facebook's spending soared. This measure of profitability slumped from 48 percent this time a year ago to 31 percent this quarter. On today's earnings call, chief financial officer David Wehner said that the company had added a near record number of new employees this quarter, most in research and development, which helps explain the change in margins. R&D spending is focused on fun things like drones and lasers that beam down internet access and of course, virtual reality.
When asked what he thought the primary applications of Oculus VR headset might be, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "The reason we’re excited in this space is the continued progression of people getting richer and richer ways to share what’s on their mind. Ten years ago it was text. Now it’s mostly visual and photos, then primarily video and we’re seeing huge growth there, but that is not the end of the line. Immersive 3D content is the obvious next thing after video." He says that more interactive social applications will arrive once we have robust technology in place to experience this new kind of video.
Not surprisingly, given its massive size, Facebook's user growth is starting to slow. Its daily active user base was up to 968 million, a 17 percent increase over last year, when the user base grew at 19 percent. Growth in mobile daily active users fell by 10 percent year over year. Its monthly active user base now stands at a whopping 1.49 billion people. Zuckerberg said on the earnings call that the average user was spending more time with the service on a daily basis.
Video advertising was one of the big drivers of Facebook's revenue growth. Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said that "Our video demand is very deep. And we can do targeting in a way that is really unique. We can target millennials who like spicy food, which is really specific." Snake people love their salsa.
Zuckerberg also noted that there were no plans to immediately start cramming ads into Messenger or WhatsApp. "The playbook we’re going to run with Messenger and WhatsApp will be similar to what we did with Facebook and Newsfeed," he said, noting that they ignored suggestions for years to simply cram in banner ads. "We’d ask for some patience on this to do it correctly." Let's hope they take a similar tack with Oculus. The possibilities for targeting Wendy's new Southwest chicken sandwich through a virtual reality headset boggle the mind.
According to sources, this drone will provide the internet services through the Facebook’s project Internet.org up to 5 billion people.
The details specify that the name of this drone is Aquila. It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737 (passenger plane). Despite holding the heavy wingspan, it’s weight is about the third of the Toyota Prius car’s weight (the weight of this car is 1325 kg).
Facebook’s engineering lab has disclosed that this drone is made with carbon fiber. When this material undergoes the heat, it becomes stronger than the steel without changes in its weight. As soon as it launches in the air, it can acquire the altitude of 60,000 to 90,000 feet. Hence, it is far away from the aeroplanes flying height.
Another stunning feature of Facebook Drone is no fuel requirement as it is equipped with the solar panels for charging. It has the ability to provide the internet signals to the people of the earth in a 50 km of radius.
The small dishes and towers will receive the signals sent via drone and will convert them to Wi-Fi or LTE network. Facebook has also said that data and information can be transferred from drone to drone and if it happens, there is less or no need of earthly internet infrastructure.
In reply to a question about the internet services providence to the users through Facebook Drone , a Facebook official told that they are not going to hold the internet services through this drone. Their goal is to just set up an aerial internet infrastructure. The carriers on the earth will provide their services through it.
The drone project has been developed by Facebook’s Connectivity Lab, which contains former researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, among others. The lab is part of Facebook’s Internet.org initiative to bring the Internet to places where there is a lack of connectivity.
Google has also started a project of “Helium Balloon” to provide the internet services to the developing countries. But the drone created by Facebook can fly more time than the Google’s balloon. Moreover, this drone can be controlled from the earth. The telecom companies are saying that the internet services which will provide through the drone will give new life to the telecommunication industry.
If you are a kind of person who likes customization in every portion of your life, Twitter may have made increased its enemy count by 1. As users found out upon logging on their Twitter profiles, the public social-networking group has turned off users’ backgrounds by default, much to the chagrin of its millions of users.
Instead, you’ll login to find a lesser-funkier, not-quite-as-interesting white. The changes are not visible when viewing a tweet or visiting anyone’s profile, however.
A Twitter spokesperson responded to the changes in a statement to Engadget, which is copied below: We’re removing background images from the home and notifications timelines on web for all users. Now, background images are only available where logged-in users will see them publicly (Tweet pages, list pages and collection pages). The change means Twitter is able to present a look which is more consistent across the board but the reaction has been massive to say the least, and in a bad way. “So Twitter has decided to change all the profiles to a white background,” @DW_Sin_ prophesied, “the same thing Myspace did right before they went down in flames!” Another user wrote: “Aaaand there goes the white Twitter background. What a pointless, dumb, user-annoying change. Or bug. #Twitterwhite” There are further reservations from users that the social network may be in the hunt for more advertisement slots, which can definitely alter the site’s feel. Already there’s a fix in the form of a Google Chrome plug-in on Github by a coder named Mika, which reverses the change and restores the background image. If you find it difficult to live without your background, that might be the only, if only slightly unethical solution.
If you've recently found yourself asking ''why is Flash Player not working?'' you've got Steve Jobs to thank. Back in 2010, Jobs famously penned his open letter ''Thoughts on Flash'' where he opened fire on various Flash problems. Since then, Jobs' issues with Flash have gathered support, more recently by Facebook and now Mozilla Firefox (the browser recently blocked Flash content). So is Flash dead?
To give you the back story: part of the reason everyone hates Flash is that it is an incredibly outdated technology. Flash content was superseded by HTML5 years ago, but many lazy webmasters never bothered to update their sites, meaning Flash has managed to continue limping on towards its ultimate demise. But this death can't come soon enough for some. Even YouTube stopped supporting Flash content in January.
On the weekend, Facebook's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, called for an ''end-of-life date'' for Flash whereby broken Flash content would need to be removed. Mozilla took this one step further and has today blocked Flash Player content from its Firefox browser.
Amidst the backlash, Mozilla's head of support, Mark Schmidt, backpedaled a little, claiming that Adobe would only remain blocked ''until Adobe releases a version which isn't being actively exploited by publicly known vulnerabilities.''
Jobs took issue with a number of Flash Player problems, from security weaknesses, battery life and the fact that Flash was designed for computers, not touchscreens. Some things never change: Flash recently hit the news because a whole swathe of Flash security bugs were stolen from a spyware lab called Hacking Team and were being actively exploited. Adobe claims it takes Flash security ''seriously'' but little seems to be done until there's a major scandal.
Adobe can likely keep Flash on life support for years to come, but its increasingly poor security track record, lack of support or development and high profile naysayers of the likes of Apple, Facebook and Mozilla should mean that one of two things happens.
Adobe can likely keep Flash on life support for years to come, but its increasingly poor security track record, lack of support or development and high profile naysayers of the likes of Apple, Facebook and Mozilla should mean that one of two things happens.
First, that Adobe gets its act together and actively addresses the problem, or two, that very little actually changes and users of Flash continue to pay the price because Adobe isn't willing to officially pull the plug. One thing is increasingly clear though: it's time to let go of Flash. It's time.
Home is a place where you feel the most comfortable. You’re free to sit and lie down however you want. Why shouldn’t you? It’s your comfort zone right? Well, some people tend to get a little too comfortable even when they are outside. The following pictures will tell you what it’s like to get comfortable..
1. Because he was way to tired to sit up and use the laptop..
It is usually Intel that is in the news with its latest and industry leading processor innovations, but today it is IBM (or rather IBM led consortium) that has set a new standard by announcing the world’s most advanced processor chips. The new chips are the world’s first 7nm node chips.
In comparison, the most cutting-edge commercial CPUs of today are built using 14nm process which has been employed by just Intel and Samsung so far. In fact, the current generation is still in the transition process of going all-in with 14nm manufacturing process. There are plans for 10nm chips sometime in 2016 though.
IBM has unveiled the world’s first 7nm chips
The main point here is that shrinking the manufacturing process is technically nearing its limit with the current silicon processes. It was expected that going below 10nm might become very difficult to accomplish considering the material limitations of silicon transistors. “7nm node has remained out of reach due to a number of fundamental technology barriers,” states IBM. And the consortium has been successful in demonstrating working chips at that level.
IBM’s group of collaborators include Samsung and the SUNY Polytechnic Institute. The consortium’s joint research has been successful in replacing pure silicon with a silicon-germanium (SiGe) alloy for channels transistors which improves the electron mobility at smallest of levels. Pure Silicon and the current manufacturing process prevents transistors to become smaller, making them leak current as the size reaches the 7nm mark. The group has also employed Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technique to etch the nano-scopic patterns onto the chips.
This isn’t the first time that IBM has surpassed the 10nm bar with its research. Back in 2012, the company demonstrated 9nm transistors built using carbon nanotubes. The new 7nm SiGe transistors are more viable for commercial production, though it may take a few years before they reach the markets. IBM expects the new chips to offer “close to 50 percent area scaling improvements over today’s most advanced 10nm technology.”
Processors built using 7nm will twice as powerful and power dense when compared with next-gen 10nm chips
In other words, processors built using 7nm will twice as powerful and power dense when compared with even the next-gen 10nm chips, completely following the Moore’s law which seemed impossible considering the current limitations. Moore’s law states that transistors will be doubled within the same die size every two years.
IBM’s announcement is major achievement in its five year, $3 billion, research program which aims to “push the limits of chip technology”. This comes at the heart of the old giant’s efforts in advancing manufacturing techniques to augment its cloud computing and Big data services. This is part of the shift that the company is going through with the sale of IBM’s chip-making unit to GlobalFoundries from Abu Dhabi.
GlobalFoundries is one of the collaborators in the consortium and will manufacture the new 7nm chips and serve as IBM’s exclusive processor manufacture plant for the next 10 years. Even though exiting the business of manufacturing chips, IBM continues to work on designing and improving the processing power for generations to come.
Most software products need an interface. That interface can come in different forms, but usually boils down to either an installed program, or a browser-based web application. For the desktop (mobile is another issue entirely), web apps seemed to have the upper hand, but successful newcomers — like Slack — and old timers — like Skype — indicate that the issue is still unresolved.
As the founders of Front, an app helping companies manage grouped email addresses (think support@company.com, sales@company.com, etc.), we maintain both desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application. People often ask us the reasoning behind this decision, so here is our answer.
Why would you even consider not building a web app?
The Web has a lot going for it:
You code once, it works everywhere
There is nothing to install, nothing to update (very handy if your users need an authorization to install software on their computers)
The talent pool for web stacks is bigger
It makes your product look modern
If it works for Gmail/Salesforce/Zendesk, then it should work for you, right?
Those arguments are far from minor, and heavily weigh in for web apps. But for some products, taking a less popular path might be worth it.
Standalone, desktop applications have benefits that are almost impossible to replicate within a browser:
1. Once they find their place in the Windows Start menu or the Mac OS Dock, they are always visible. In the mobile world, an app that isn’t on the home screen is easily forgotten and eventually never opened anymore.If you want your app to become a daily habit in the life of your users, then you cannot take the risk of them not opening it because they don’t see it. A web app that isn’t pinned to the browser is easily closed and forever forgotten. A desktop app has the power to be always visible, and even always open. Don’t miss out on this!
2. Desktop apps are “alt-tab accessible”. Alt-tab is probably the most used keyboard shortcut in the entire desktop universe. For every time someone with your app open hits alt-tab, you get a free impression of your logo and brand name on their screen! How is that for cheap marketing? In all likelihood, your logo will sit between a very popular browser and a cool music streaming service, so the brand association is not bad either. The goal is always the same: your app must become part of the daily routine of your user. Even if they open it by accident, as they’re trying to skip a track in their playlist, it’s still one more chance for you to convince them that you have what they need. Take that chance.
3. also, desktop apps can support download and preview much better than web apps can. Another small but critical thing is the ability to copy things to the clipboard.
4. Another great capability of desktop apps is their easy access to the notification system. Few things get more attention than the bouncing motion of a notified app on the Mac OSX dock.
You can stop checking: it’s just a gif ;)
The bright red circle in the top right corner is so much more effective than ten thousand e-mail notifications combined. It subtly suggests that something interesting happened in your app, and they’re one alt-tab away from finding out what. E-mail notifications get in the way of important communications and once they pass the maximal irritation threshold, are muted forever or marked as spam. Way to leave a good impression, right?
Sometimes those gains don’t offset the pains of developing a standalone app, but it some cases they’re totally worth the effort.
At Front for example, people using the desktop app spend on average 34% more time on the app that those using the web version.
So how do you know if your software can take advantage of those seemingly minor features?
Based on our own experience developing Front, as well as a survey of many software companies, we came up with the following formula. Every software product is different, however when the usage of your software is eitherurgent to your users or preponderant in their activity, then the development of a standalone app is justified.
Here is a my analysis, with a diagram:
By urgent usage, I mean that your users need to react fast to things happening, either inside your app — for instance, an incoming chat message — or outside your app, like when you need to quickly mute a Spotify track to hear the people talking to you. In both cases, you get a significant benefit from having an easily accessible app, that notifies you when an action is required.
By frequent activity, I mean that your users are going to spend a sizable amount of time in your app every day. Anything that helps them do their regular work falls within this category. For programmers, it’s going to be IDEs. For designers, it’s going to be Photoshop & Sketch. Transversal tools like e-mail clients or Evernote also come to mind: you probably don’t use them for the most part of your work, but you still need to open them several times a day and spend some time typing in it. You want them to be always open and not have to sift through twelve tabs to get to them.
If your product cannot really be used in an urgent or preponderant way, don’t burden yourself with a desktop app. The advantages of web apps cannot be overstated, and many great software companies are better off offering web interfaces. APIs like Stripe’s, analytics like Kissmetrics’, infrastructure like Heroku’s, all provide enormous value, but don’t justify the development of desktop applications.
You should know by now whether your software should come as a standalone application or not. It’s time for me to reveal the best argument of the debate: if you choose to build a desktop app, it will come with close to zero additional cost! Recent technologies allow you to build an app as you would for a browser, but wrap it in a desktop app and deliver the same experience everywhere. And there is no dreaded back button, no “open in new tab”, and so on! Granted, it will function LIKE a web app — but it will NOT be a web app, and that makes all the difference. What’s not to like? And if you want to know know how we did it at Front, we’ve shared our experience here.
PS: maybe you’re a bit surprised not to see Google Apps mentioned: after all, some of them (Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, etc.) induce either an urgent or preponderant usage. However, Google’s long-term interests strictly forbid the development of desktop applications. Indeed, the one and only thing that could threaten Google’s power would be a decline in browser usage: as long as you browse the web, you keep coming back to google.com to navigate efficiently. This is why Google wants you to spend time in a browser. This is why they offer Gmail for free, Chrome for free, Chromebooks at a loss, or why they fund their own competition! So even if users would benefit from desktop Google Apps, don’t expect Google to start distributing them ;
Facebook’s digital music ambitions have been making headlines this month, with reports of early talks with labels linked to its trial of ad-supported native videos.
But Music Ally can reveal that while Facebook will expand that trial to music videos soon, the social network is planning to follow that with the launch of an audio music-streaming service to compete with Spotify, Apple Music and others.
Sources speaking to Music Ally off the record have revealed just how bold Facebook’s plans are, with its plans to monetise music videos an important stepping stone towards the on-demand audio service.
That’s because the first phase will see Facebook paying royalties to music rightsholders for plays of their music videos on its service, while also launching a system akin to YouTube’s Content ID to help those rightsholders identify and then either take down or ‘claim’ user-uploaded videos featuring their music – getting associated ad revenues in the latter case.
Sources told Music Ally that talks for the music-video side of things are at an advanced stage, with a rollout expected to happen in the next few months. We understand that the Content ID-style system is being licensed in from a third party rather than built in-house, with labels keen to be sure that the system is reliable and efficient before finalising licensing deals.
Facebook will match YouTube’s per-stream rates to rightsholders at launch, although rightsholders hope there is scope for those rates to improve once the service is up and running – especially if Facebook’s targeting capabilities enable it to charge advertisers more, as well as if the social network stumps up to secure exclusives on specific videos.
“It’s a mass land grab. Facebook going into the video space was always going to be an enormous, ambitious land grab and no doubt something they’ve been planning for some time as the potential income from ad revenue will be incredible,” one source told us.
“On Facebook’s move into monetised video, all of us could see it coming for months,” said another source. “We have all been really utilising it in internal testing. It is way, way ahead of YouTube.”
It’s Facebook’s plans to build on this with a Spotify-style audio streaming service that are making waves within the music industry, even though the launch date and specifics of the business model and payout formula have yet to be nailed down.
Sources have told Music Ally that an audio service is very much on Facebook’s roadmap, but that both the social network and rightsholders realise that it has to get the monetised-video service right first. Again, the performance of the content ID and protection system will be a crucial factor.
Will Facebook build or buy its streaming music service? With the company having paid $19bn for messaging app WhatsApp, $2bn for virtual reality startup Oculus VR and $1bn for photo-sharing app Instagram, it has proven willing to splash out at multiple levels for companies to expand its offering.
Spotify’s current valuation is less than half the WhatsApp price, while a smaller, socially-savvy rival like Rdio could surely be picked up for a fraction of that price.
Despite this, Music Ally’s sources expect Facebook to build rather than buy, although they do not see that strategy as set in stone. Music Ally has approached Facebook, all three major labels, indie licensing agency Merlin and collecting society PRS for Music for comment. None were prepared to respond either on or off the record.
Our full feature on Facebook’s new music ambitions will be published in the Music Ally Report later today.
Have an annoying Facebook friend whose constant status updates are constantly inundating your news feed? Well things surely became a bit easier for you with Facebook’s new and enhanced News Feed Preferences menu.
You get a list of options upon clicking it. You’ll be able to prioritize people whose stuff is most-important to you, unfollow profiles which are constantly filling your feed or re-follow them and discover new pages based on your previous page likes.
The first option allows you to remain updated with the people who matter most to you. Once you’ve selected their names, they’ll always be the first ones to show up on your news feed with a little star alongside their profiles, displaying all the content which was posted while you were away.
The second option allows you to unfollow friends whose updates you don’t want. Now, this option was available before too, but this place will allow you to unfollow people in hordes, rather than painstakingly following a tiring process. You can also follow those people whom you’ve unfollowed in the past again.
Last in the chain is “Discover New Pages” which gives you suggestions of new pages, based on your existing likes. To access the new News Feed Preferences menu, click on More option in the bottom right of your phone, and select Settings.
The feature is available on iOS starting from today and will hit Android and the Web in the coming few weeks. With it, you’ll be able to achieve a more personalized experience on Facebook, rather than just the random, haphazard stuff.
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