Posts Tagged: "Facebook"

In an attempt to use the forces of social media for good, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) announced in the middle of June that it would be rolling out suicide prevention tools to users all over the world. The tools have been developed in partnership with the suicide prevention groups Forefront, Save.org and Lifeline. The tools allow Facebook users who see a disturbing post from another user to quickly flag that post for review by a global community operations team. When the user who posted the flagged content signs back into Facebook, he or she is presented with a menu of choices which include the option to talk to a friend, contact a hotline, receive suggestions for self-support or simply to skip directly to their Facebook feed.

There has been a rising tide of voices seeking to ensure that the Internet remains open to alternative viewpoints with easy access to all for years to come. In recent years, these groups have sought political avenues for ensuring that their ideals become the law of the land. For instance, many thousands of American citizens have supported net neutrality rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), rules which have recently been upheld by a federal appellate court this June. Now, a consortium of civil rights and open technology groups are trying to make open Internet concepts an issue on the political trail leading up to the election of the next U.S. President.

ISPs have increasingly come under the focus of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the agency’s chairman, Tom Wheeler. The FCC is fresh from a major victory on its net neutrality rules which were recently upheld by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. That victory has now placed some momentum on data privacy rules proposed this March by the FCC, rules which would further protect ISP consumers by ensuring that their ISP sees as little of their data as possible. Some industry analysts believe that the FCC will continue to take action, the proposed broadband privacy rules being one part of that action. Other rules proposed by the FCC would open up set-top boxes to third-party cable providers as well as prevent zero-rating of data services, which allows consumers to access dedicated apps without being charged for data.

The reason why net neutrality came up in the American political discourse in late 2014 has much to do with paid prioritization. Paid prioritization is an agreement in which a broadband service provider negotiates an arrangement with a content provider that results in the content provider being given priority access at congested Internet nodes. The Obama administration came out strongly on the topic of paid prioritization, calling for it to be explicitly banned by the FCC. The White House also called for rules preventing ISPs from blocking content or intentionally throttling any kind of data transmission. By the end of September 2014, the FCC had received 3.7 million public comments on the subject of net neutrality.

With the advent of enhancements in audio-video technology, Virtual-Reality (VR) has taken the world by storm. While VR has been enjoying most of the limelight, another similar technology – Augmented Reality (AR) is catching up fast. The patent landscape of VR is dominated by Sony followed by IBM, Samsung and Microsoft when it comes to total number of patented inventions. Microsoft is the leader in AR when it comes to the number of inventions filed as patents. It has 602 issued patents and published applications distributed among 151 inventions. Microsoft is followed by Samsung, Sony, LG and Qualcomm.

Recently, some major American tech companies operating across the globe have publicly announced their agreement to a code of conduct developed by the European Commission and designed to “combat the illegal spread of hate speech online in Europe.” The code of conduct, to which these tech companies have promised the European Commission their online services will adhere, stipulates that the companies have to establish a couple of processes that target the elimination of hate speech.

The Court agreed with Facebook in that these claim terms had no accepted meaning in the art, which meant that they cannot be construed broader than the specification disclosuses. The Court noted that the prosecution history also provided support for the district court’s construction. Further, because the other evidence was persuasive, there was no need to determine whether certain statements made by the patentees during prosecution rose to clear and unmistakable disclaimer, which is what Facebook argued in the alternative.

Of the virtual reality options currently on the market, the Oculus Rift is arguably built upon one of the most technologically robust VR platforms. Capturing the movements of a person wearing the Oculus Rift headset is a sensor which tracks infrared LED constellations projected onto a user. Each Oculus Rift unit comes with the IR LED sensor, a mounting stand, and a cable to connect the sensor to a personal computer for processing resources. Users can also use an Oculus Rift remote or a compatible remote controller, such as an Xbox game controller, to input commands and interact with the virtual world.

News that Facebook engaged in suppressing content from conservative groups was first reported by Gizmodo in early May. The online publication reported comments from former Facebook workers who said they were instructed to prevent stories on conservative figures and major conservative events like CPAC from appearing in the website’s Trending News section. Since that news hit, individual Facebook users and organizations alike have come out saying that they had posts banned for no better reason than the fact that they expressed a conservative point of view.

In the world of messaging services, the cross-platform mobile messaging app WhatsApp enjoys the enviable position of being the world’s most popular messaging service, eclipsing one billion monthly active users as of this February. Owned by Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), WhatsApp’s user base even outpaces that of Facebook’s flagship messaging service Messenger. Over on Capitol Hill, WhatsApp’s encrypted messaging services has been drawing strong language from those perceiving the technology as a possible security threat.

Facebook’s mobile advertising numbers were so good that its entire advertising revenue stream surged ahead 57 percent when compared with 2015’s first quarter, up from $3.31 billion to $5.2 billion. Advertising is the major chunk of Facebook’s revenues and the company’s $5.38 billion first quarter revenues were 50 percent greater than its revenues during 2015’s first quarter. It’s also interesting to note that Facebook has increased quarterly research and development expenditures to $1.34 billion in 2016’s first quarter, up from $1.06 billion during last year’s first quarter. Since the beginning of this year, Facebook has received 13 patent grants from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office related to advertising; the company has also had another 32 patent applications related to ads published so far this year. A look at the text cluster, made available through Innography’s patent portfolio analysis tools, shows readers that Facebook is designing ad services incorporating social graphs, targeting criteria and media content.

America is a leading exporter of not only weapons but also social media services and at least one major provider is finding itself caught in the crosshairs, so to speak. Menlo Park, CA-based Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has been singled out in the past for its role in serving as a platform where individuals can conduct illicit sales of firearms. In January 2016, the company announced that private gun sales would be banned on both the flagship social network as well as Instagram, although the ban did not apply to licensed gun dealers conducting sales off of Facebook. It doesn’t appear that those private gun sale bans have had much in the way of any actual effect, unfortunately.

A keynote speech delivered on the first day of F8 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg along with other company executives laid out a 10 year road map for the company. ”We stand for connecting every person for a global community, for bringing people together, for giving all people a voice, for the free flow of ideas and culture across nations,” Zuckerberg said. He supported this with soundbites he has repeated in the past, including the four billion people around the world without any Internet access. Striking some chords of global economic goodwill, he then stated that for every 10 people who gain access to the Internet, one person is lifted out of poverty.

Millions of people, from talk show hosts to world leaders, have engaged in a dialog about and with emoji and what it means to communication. Emoji are becoming an increasingly pervasive communication instrument, increasingly used in advertising, to discuss social issues and advocacy, and to even a bridge communication tool between generations. There are even emoji related patents owned by Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others. Many commentators have speculated on the future of the emoji with an overwhelming consensus: this trend is here to stay.

The administration of the 44th President of the United States will be remembered for many reasons, but one theme which has been playing out since the earliest days of Barack Obama’s presidency is a predilection towards using popular and developing technologies. In his first few months in office, President Obama created the position of U.S. Chief Technology Officer, an official adviser to the President on tech policy and a role currently served by Megan Smith, a former executive at Google. Obama’s techie status is cemented by media reports of his long-time adherence to BlackBerry phones as well as his warm attitude and close relationship with major Silicon Valley players.