Tag: Facebook

HTC First announced, phone with Facebook Home

The HTC First will continue on the partnership that HTC and Facebook have shared in the past, enabling users to experience a little more Facebook on their android screen, as the device comes preloaded with Facebook Home. Launching on April 12th on an exclusive carrier deal with At&t in the US the HTC First is expected tot be available globally shortly after.

AT&T had been collaborating with Facebook on its Home experience, and invited HTC to assemble the phone, said Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility said at a Facebook’s press conference on Thursday.

On Thursday Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Home, a family of apps that would sit as a integrated layer on the Android operating system.

Zuckerberg said Home was not an operating system or a “forked” version of Android akin to Amazon’s Kindle, but a separate software layer that could act as a home screen for smartphones.

The mid-range HTC First will be available in black, white, red and pale blue, and sports a 4.3-inch display that matches with earlier reports. Facebook Home obviously serves to obscure the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean build that’s actually running the show, while one of Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon 400 chipsets (and not the MSM8960 that was previously reported) provides the horsepower from inside that smooth, curved chassis. The HTC First has a 720p display and LTE

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[toggle title=”Press Release”]Facebook’s Newest Mobile Experience Available Exclusively on the Nation’s Fastest 4G LTE Network

DALLAS, BELLEVUE and MENLO PARK, April 4, 2013 – AT&T*, HTC and Facebook have teamed up to develop and launch the HTC First™, the first and only smartphone built to feature Facebook Home, which puts your friends at the heart of your phone. Facebook Home is the first mobile experience designed to give you your friends’ latest updates right on your home screen and messages that reach you no matter what you’re doing.

HTC First will be available for pre-order today for $99.99 with a two-year commitment and available exclusively in AT&T stores and online starting April 12. To pre-order, visit www.att.com/facebookhome.

The HTC First runs on AT&T 4G LTE, the nation’s fastest 4G LTE network.** In addition, independent mobile research firm RootMetrics® has published a special report on 4G LTE in the U.S. which notes that AT&T wireless customers in our 4G LTE markets that were tested by RootMetrics have access to the fastest mobile speeds on their smartphones. AT&T also has the nation’s largest 4G network, covering 288 million people.

“The HTC First will offer the best Facebook Home experience on mobile, right out of the box. That’s why we’re committed to this phone and making it exclusive in our stores,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility. “Because AT&T offers the fastest 4G LTE** in the nation, it’s the best network for Facebook Home. And the best device for Facebook Home is the HTC First.”

“HTC has a track record of providing beautiful hardware design, and of being first-to-market with smartphone innovations,” said Peter Chou, CEO, HTC Corporation. “The HTC First continues that track record, providing AT&T customers with a unique home experience that puts a user’s friends and family at the center of their mobile experience.”

“Home is a completely new experience for your phone,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s Founder and CEO. “With Home available right out of the box, you’re getting the best quality experience for connecting with your friends.”

Facebook Home brings your News Feed to the surface, immediately giving you the content you care about right on your home screen when you turn on your phone without having to open an app or access a mobile website. Just sign into your Facebook account and begin using Home – no need for download or configuration. Facebook Home connects you directly with your friends, whether it’s their real-time updates and newest photo uploads being streamed on your cover feed or the ability to chat with friends without jumping in and out of apps.

Facebook Home is built around your friends and puts them at the center of your phone:

· Cover feed: A constant, fresh stream of photos and updates from your newsfeed, cover feed is always present when you wake up your phone. It lets you stay up-to-date on your friends’ latest activities in real-time, all the time. You can swipe through to see more photos and updates, double tap to “like” a post and comment right from cover feed. To learn more about cover feed, check out this video.· Notifications: Notifications from apps and friends appear right on your home screen. It’s easier to see when you have a missed call, calendar reminder or new message. Open a notification with a double tap or clear them away to see your Cover Feed. To learn more about notifications, check out this video.

· Chat Heads: The mobile messenger lets you jump in and out of conversations while you do other things, like watch a video and browse the web. Reply right from chat heads, or move them around if you’re not ready to respond. Plus you can send and receive texts and Facebook messages from the same spot. To learn more about chat heads, check out this video.

· App Launcher: See your favorite apps and post right to Facebook from the same spot. You choose what’s on your app launcher-press and hold an app then drag it anywhere.

· Instagram: HTC First is the only phone that comes with Instagram pre-loaded.

HTC First will be available in four colors: black, white, red and pale blue. The hardware is thin, modern and seamless, with soft edges to draw your attention to the updates from friends and family on the 4.3-inch glass display. Inside, the smartphone runs Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) with the new Facebook Home experience and incorporates a Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 400 processor with dual-core CPU and 3G/4G world and multimode LTE so you can enjoy the richest content on AT&T’s blazing fast 4G LTE network.

For more information, or to pre-order HTC First, please visit www.att.com/facebookhome.[/toggle]

April 4, 2013
Watch The Facebook “New Home On Android” Event Live

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will take the stage in Menlo Park, Calif., this morning (evening for us Indians) to show off his company’s “new home on Android,” and you can watch a live stream of the event in the widget below.

In just a few hours from now, the social networking giant Facebook will unveil it’s “new home on Android”, but thanks to all the leaks we’ve got till now, we already have an idea of what it might be like.

Yesterday, we saw a rendered imaged, which showed us a glimpse of the HTC-manufactured Facebook phone, the HTC First and today, a new set of leaked images from 9to5Google shows how the Facebook Home might be like.

The video should auto-play shortly.

Join us here for the live streaming of the event.

April 4, 2013
‘HTC First’ Render Leaked, Points To Facebook Home

Days before a scheduled Facebook event, a render of a new Facebook-centric phone has appeared. The HTC first, previously known by other names, seems to have been repurposed for the device.

Trustworthy Twitter account @evleaks posted a render of the ‘HTC First’, a plain-looking smartphone with a few signs of Facebook integration. While there are no obvious marks to indicate the social network’s branding, the phone’s colour scheme and rounded home button point to possible integration with Facebook Home, the name of the launcher expected to be bundled with the HTC-made device.

The device shares few design traits with HTC’s recent handsets with its rounded corners and left-side volume rocker, but this render is unlikely to resemble the finished product. Then again, ‘HTC First’ sounds like a fishy name to begin with, so we’ll take the leak with a grain or two of salt.

The HTC first is known by another name from previous rumors, HTC Myst, and it’s reportedly going to be a 4.3-inch device that will feature a 720p display, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 4G LTE, 5-megapixel camera, 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera, Bluetooth 4.0, Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and Sense UI 4.5 on top which will include the new Facebook Home.

What do you think? Could the HTC First be the Facebook phone everyone has been waiting for?

[EVLeaks]

April 3, 2013
Facebook’s Timeline Trademark Lawsuit To Go To Jury Trial

A U.S. District Court Judge has ruled that a lawsuit between Facebook and Timelines.com will in fact go to trial, after denying Facebook’s notion that the trademark-infringement lawsuit should be killed due to overly-generic trademarks, Bloomberg reports.

Timelines, a website to collaboratively record and share history, filed a complaint against Facebook in September, 2011, and sought a restraining order to bar Facebook from offering its Timeline service, but this was denied, according to records of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

The company was set up in January, 2007 and launched its Timelines.com website in 2009. It owns U.S. federal trademark registration numbers for “Timelines,” “Timelines.com” and for its “Timelines” design mark, according to court papers. It also operates a website called LifeSnapz.com and other services.

Facebook filed for a summary judgment on each of the claims of the plaintiff and on its own counterclaims, including cancellation of Timelines’ registered marks, which was refused by the judge on Monday.

Facebook “has failed to demonstrate, as a matter of law, that the marks are generic,” U.S. District Judge John W. Darrah in Chicago wrote in a ruling today. “At this stage in the proceedings, it is not unreasonable to conclude that as to this group of users, ‘timeline(s)’ has acquired a specific meaning associated with plaintiff.”

The judge said Timelines had millions of dollars invested in its business and more than a thousand active users.

The case is now set to proceed to trial before a jury on April 22.

[Bloomberg]

April 2, 2013
Facebook Modded Android OS To Be Called “Facebook Home”

Facebook is set to unveil something Android-related on Thursday. Some think it is a Facebook phone, others a forked version of Android with the social network’s paw prints all over it.

According to a few new specks of leaked data, it looks to be a bit of both. Facebook will unveil an HTC-built “Myst” device, recently leaked as a 4.3-inch smartphone roughly the same size as the the iPhone 5. The entire experience, which includes a new version of the official Facebook app, as well as custom Messenger and Contacts apps specially designed to integrate with Android, will also be available.

Evleaks, the often-correct source behind many previous leaks, posted a blurb from a device that doesn’t yet have the updated app: “The version of Facebook for Android currently on this device needs to be upgraded to support Facebook Home.”

Facebook Home. Seems fairly plausible. Facebook also put out a version of Messenger a few months ago that integrated with the SMS data for a few supported devices. While it never really broadcast that feature to the world, it gives us pause now; could it have been due to the eventual integration with a Facebook-centric device?

There is obviously no way to authenticate these reports, but they do seem to make sense. Earlier reports have also added that HTC isn’t going to be the only manufacturer to launch Android phone with “Facebook Home.” Apparently, the social giant is in talks with other companies too.

[EVLeaks, 9to5 Google, MobileSyrup]

April 1, 2013
Facebook Gets go ahead for new Campus at California.

After many a tech giants like Google and Apple, Facebook is now all set to upgrade the campus at the original headquarters in California. The new design envisioned by Frank Gehry will become a reality now that it has a go ahead from the Menlo Park authorities. The new campus will be 434,000 square feet in total and be built across 22 acres or premium real estate in the area already owned by Facebook.

The council is also happy to play sport and a member stated : “I feel very lucky that we’ll have a Frank Gehry building here.”. Looks like Facebook new construction facelift does not need a like button after all.

April 1, 2013
Not Android Phone, But Android Homescreen Is On Facebook’s Agenda

There is no Facebook phone. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s upcoming Android announcement is actually more of a home screen experience and not an actual device. That rumored HTC Myst? It’s just the first device to come from a partner, which, in this case is HTC.

The social network has been developing new software for mobile devices powered by Google’s Android operating system that displays content from users’ Facebook accounts on a smartphone’s home screen–the first screen visible when they turn on the device, people familiar with the situation said.

From the sounds of it, you’ll be thrown right into Facebook the moment the phone powers on. Reportedly, Facebook is working with other handset makers with hopes to bring the experience to additional devices.

Facebook will initially demonstrate the capability on smartphones from HTC, these people said, but has been working to reach similar arrangements with other device makers.

Facebook, which has said it has more than 650 million mobile users, is planning to make the app broadly available for all Android devices, these people said. Manufacturers must make some tweaks to the Android software to allow the Facebook app to take over the device’s home screen, they added.

Such changes by the manufacturer don’t violate the agreements those companies made with Google to preserve the consistency of the Android user experience, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

On Thursday, Facebook sent out invitations to a media event next week requesting recipients “come see our new home on Android.” Facebook and Google spokesmen declined to comment.

HTC declined to comment on its business relationship with Facebook. However, HTC noted that it previously launched the ChaCha phone, which had a button designated to posting photos directly to Facebook. That wasn’t really successful. HTC’s proprietary Sense interface for Android also included quite a bit of Facebook functionality in the past.

All will be revealed on April 4 now.

[WSJ]

March 30, 2013
Facebook Pushing Android App Update Outside Play Store

There are reports that Facebook is pushing updates to its Android App outside of the Google Play Store, meaning users would still install the app initially through Play, but updates after that would come straight from Facebook. This functionality would only be for Android users, because this sort of thing would be impossible on iOS.

As Liliputing first reported, users are receiving a persistent notification letting them know that an update is ready, and on clicking the notification are taken directly to the Facebook app to download the new version, known as 141046.

This Facebook update is reportedly talking about adding some new and seemingly expected features such as being able to change your profile picture as well as being able to download files without notification.

The updates would only be downloaded over WiFi, and won’t use your data plan.

According to Facebook product manager Ragavan Srinivasan, “We’re working quickly to improve Facebook for Android and want to make sure everyone is using the best version of our app. You’ll experience these updates when you are on Wi-Fi, and they won’t rely on your data plan.”

One reason for this update to be pushed outside of the Play Store could be that Facebook is just trying it out, and it isn’t the final version yet.

It is interesting to note that Google’s terms of service does not give permission for apps “that cause users to unknowingly download or install applications from sources outside of Google Play.” Will the legal eagles there deem Facebook as crossing the line this time around?

March 16, 2013
Microsoft Reveals It Was Hit By Cyber Attacks

Microsoft officials revealed on Friday that the Redmond, Washington-based company had been targeted by the same hackers who had previously set their sights on Apple and Facebook.

Last week Apple announced it had been hit by malicious software, known as malware, which took advantage of a vulnerability in a Java program used as a plug in for web browsing programs.

A few days earlier Facebook admitted it had been targeted in a similar way through a loophole in Java software created by a mobile developer called Oracle.

Facebook said that the malware infected employee laptops even though they were running up to date antivirus software, and described the attack as “sophisticated”

[quote]Describing the attack on Microsoft, Mr Thomlinson said: “As reported by Facebook and Apple, Microsoft can confirm that we also recently experienced a similar security intrusion. During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organisations. We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing.”[/quote]

Like Facebook, Microsoft says it is still investigating how malicious software was planted on what it said were a small number of its computers.

February 23, 2013
Facebook For Android Update Brings Better Cover Photos Management

The official Facebook for Android application has been upgraded in the Google Play Store to make life easier on those who tend to change their profile cover photo quite often. Users can now make the change right from their timeline instead of having to dig through settings and go through the grueling, nerve-wrecking task of pressing button upon button upon button.

No one ever accused Facebook of being swift or thorough with its app updates, but they’re at least usually very welcome when they arrive. Back in 2011, the social network introduced ‘Timeline’, the now-mandatory profile layout that gives you one giant photo at the top, with a secondary profile picture in the bottom-left corner. Up until recently, you couldn’t change your cover photo on mobile. Now, in version 2.2, you can.

Again, not a huge feature but certainly appreciated. We’d love Facebook to redesign the app or, barring that, improve the performance of the one we have. But the company clearly has different priorities. That said, today’s upgrade is waiting for you in the Google Play Store so get over there to check it out.

Temple Run 2 for Android has also been updated, the developers have added the ability to restore the coin doubler if you happened to have re-installed the app on your device and purchased the power up.

[Phandroid]

February 15, 2013
Facebook Turns 9 Today!

The few Ivy Leaguers privileged enough to join “Thefacebook” nine years ago would hardly recognize the site today. It celebrates its birthday today!

Zuckerberg started with an invite only Ivy League college website, from where he took Facebook to a different level. These nine years for Facebook brought many changes to the social media platform bringing in features like social networking games, business pages and of course relationship status.

In nine years, the company has overshadowed the mobile platforms for not just social networking but also messaging. Change being its fixed feature, Facebook came up with an application called Poke which self-destroys message once it’s read. Facebook has proved its worth when it reached to a remarkable milestone of one billion users which many biggies like My space, Twitter and Orkut had only dreamt about.

According to a report by GlobalWebIndex, in Q4 alone last year, Facebook saw 693 million users globally, with a growth rate of 33 per cent.

In 2012 Facebook floated its IPO and the company went public with a peak market capitalisation of over $104 billion. The hype was short-lived and the stock of the company soon took a battering.

In January, this year Facebook announced the launch of Graph Search that allows users to search the site for photos, places, likes, people on the site.

February 4, 2013
Facebook Has Knocked Out 37% Of Spam Accounts Since June 2012

While spam accounts are obviously still an issue on Facebook, they have been able to make a considerable dent in the amount of fake accounts that are registered. Since June 2012, Facebook has been able to remove 37% of spammers, bringing the total amount of spam accounts down to about 9.5 million compared to 15.1 million in mid-2012.

There are millions of spam users still on Facebook, according to the Facebook Q4 2012 earnings report, about 1.3% of their monthly users are spammers.

The spam fighting states were discovered on page 23 of the company’s Q4 2012 earnings release. Facebook refers to the spam accounts as “undesirable accounts” and says they “represent user profiles that we determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming.”

Spam accounts have a tendency to create fake data on the social network by flooding accounts with spam photos, links and other information. Because Facebook relies on user behavior to tweak its advertising and sales platforms removing those accounts is critical to the company’s future successes.

Facebook urges all of its users to report spam accounts when they are spotted. You can report those accounts by following the photo listed at the top of this post. Simply click on the pop down menu next to the message icon and choose “Report/Block…”

What do you think? Is spam hurting your user experience on Facebook?

January 31, 2013
Facebook To Buy Whatsapp?

TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is looking to acquire WhatsApp, according to sources close to the matter.

Whatsapp, the multiplatform mobile messaging app has been one of the runaway success stories for ad-free, paid services.

Founded in 2009, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company provides a smartphone app for Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian, and Windows Phone that delivers text messages as well as images and audio and video messages. The ad-free Whatsapp reportedly has about 100 million daily users, with a presence in 250 countries on a variety of platforms.

Whastapp announced in October 2011 that it was serving up 1 billion messages per day: “Just how much is 1 billion messages? That is 41,666,667 messages an hour, 694,444 messages a minute, and 11,574 messages a second,” the company wrote in a blog post at the time. The company added that it was a “small step closer towards our goal: providing a great mobile messaging system for a global market, regardless of your handset.”

Developing…

[Tech Crunch]

December 3, 2012
Facebook Rolls Out ‘Photo Sync’; Automatically Upload 2GB of Photos

After expanding the test to iOS users last week, Facebook has officially launched Photo Sync for both Android and iOS devices. Photo Sync allows users to enable automatic uploading of any photos they take with their mobile device straight to Facebook. No manual uploading, no hassle. Just seamless photo uploading.

Unlike Google+, the app will not proceed with the uploads unless you explicitly open the app, and you can choose whether to do so on 3G/LTE or only over WiFi.

[quote]“Today we’re excited to roll out photo sync, which makes it easier to share photos. With this feature, photos from your phone sync automatically to a private album on the web. When you want to share these photos, just pick and post your favorites,” says Facebook. “We began testing photo sync in August and will continue to make it available to more people.”[/quote]

The feature, titled Photo Sync, uploads photos to a private folder, but can easily be made shared to your timeline with a couple taps.

Photo Sync appears to have been included in the mobile apps already; Facebook merely flipped a switch in the backend to turn it on. While there are many services vying for the same space — Google+ and Dropbox are notable examples — Facebook clearly has the market share lead to make this feature stick.

The feature is rolling out in the coming days, so if you don’t see it in your Facebook app settings, try again in a little bit.

December 1, 2012
Go Android! Facebook Wants Employees To Choose Android Over iOS

Facebook reportedly is encouraging its employees to switch from Apple‘s iPhones to devices running Google‘s Android operating system.

In the past, Facebook gave employees iPhones; however, according to Tech Crunch, the push is on to get them to begin using Droid-based phones; FB also is encouraging workers to begin looking for issues with Facebook apps for the Android OS.

The Android Facebook app has floundered as a hybrid HTML5/native app for months, periodically adding features to the camera or chat portions but rendering the main timeline in a web view.

This issue is not unique to Facebook. Despite its huge market presence, most app developers choose to cater to iOS version before Android. While we’re at a point where we can count on an Android version to be released, it often comes weeks or months after the iPhone or iPad.

Facebook, by asking its engineers to “dogfood” its Android app by switching to the platform, may be the first of many companies seeking to change the perspective of Android as an also-ran OS for developers. Some dev houses see Android as a necessary evil, and prefer to develop for iOS. This runs counter to the sheer numbers of devices sold, but it also speaks to the financial incentive of building an app for Apple’s platform.

Over the coming months, as Android 4.0+ devices broach the majority of overall share, we can hope to see more Holo-based Android apps with excellent performance and great feature sets. Now if only Google could ensure developers make enough money to continue building great paid Android apps, we’d be set.

November 29, 2012