Technology news

Today Facebook launched a new way for publishers to easily track the performance of crossposted video, that is, a single video posted to more than one Facebook page. Pages owned by the same Business Manager (Facebook’s tool to manage multiple pages) can now track view counts and total performance statistics across different Facebook pages as well as view a heatmap for 360 video to show which parts of the video audiences are focusing in on. Here’s how to set it up: Allow your pa

While Microsoft and Facebook try to talk us all into using bots to chat with businesses, there’s one universal truth: they kinda suck. Dovetailing on Build’s bot boon for developers, Facebook introduced its own bot platform for Messenger today. Like Microsoft’s effort, Facebook allows bots to be built specifically for one platform: Messenger. It’s tagline for Messenger bots is that developers can target users where they already are, which is often true. At its F8 confere

Call it a game or not, Nintendo’s newest app looks like it’s not going anywhere soon. After launching on March 31, Miitomo has hit 4 million users – with 1 million of those opening the app daily, reports Engadget. The data, which derives from a SurveyMonkey study, also says users are spending around two to three sessions a day on the app with an average of seven to eight minutes combined. The report goes on to estimate that Miitomo may be making as much as $40,000 da

Facebook’s F8 Conference used to be that time of year when users brace for the inevitable site redesign – instead, Facebook has focused its attention on its now-fastest growing product: Messenger. The opening keynote blew past some of Facebook’s new tools, such as Quotes sharing and Save button, and spent the majority of the time on Messenger Platform and Bot Engine. With Messenger and WhatsApp now processing three times the number of SMS sent globally, it&

Following up on its promise in February, Facebook has opened up its Instant Articles platform to any publishers looking to take advantage of the format. Instant Articles were introduced in May 2015 as lighter versions of articles that load almost immediately. As they open right from Facebook’s mobile apps, you aren’t constantly switching between between apps to catch up on current events. Meanwhile, the company released some stats on the feature, indicating that Instant Articles are

At F8, Facebook today announced a new set of tools for its profile photo video feature. Named the Profile Expression Kit, the tools – which include the recently-acquired MSQRD and Vine – integrate features from popular selfie cam apps and help you add them as part of your profile video. Profile videos first arrived on iOS and recently rolled out to Android. Facebook only has six beta partners at launch, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see more added to the mix &

It’s no secret that Facebook has gone all-in on virtual reality. But if you had, for just a moment, lost sight of that fact its new ‘Surround 360’ camera should put things back into perspective for you. Today at F8, Facebook announced its Surround 360 camera, a 17-lens 3D VR rig that looks like ‘Gravitron‘ but shoots top-notch 360 degree video. All told, its 17 4-megapixel lenses can shoot in resolution up to 8k. Surround 360 requires almost zero of the p

Facebook is opening up its M platform, calling it wit.ai, and letting developers build powerful AI for use as a bot. Much as Microsoft announced at Build, the M bot platform will allow developers to pre-fab conversations or catchphrases which will return a response. If a user typed “I’m really hungry” to an app for a pizza restaurant, the bot may then ask “your usual, then?” as a static response. From there, it’s possible to either have a richer conversa

Facebook is waging an all-out war on Periscope. The company announced a new live video hub at its F8 conference today, which will live inside of Facebook. The new live video feature will be displayed prominently on your Facebook news feed page. Live video streaming will be as it’s always been, with celebrities and brands going live in your newsfeed. On stage at F8, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says live video reach is often better than it is on traditional TV for celebrities. In a s

Virtual Reality is awesome, but having to wear a huge headset isn’t very fun. Facebook knows that, so while unveiling its roadmap for the next 10 years, Mark Zuckerberg said future VR headsets would basically be the size of a normal pair of glasses. Interestingly, Zuckerberg also described augmented reality as part of its product roadmap. The company has only focused on virtual reality via its Oculus products so far, so it’ll be interesting to see when it will begin taking a mo

Mark Zuckerberg opened Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference with a few well-timed jabs at presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Speaking in front of a diverse crowd in San Francisco, Zuckerberg said: “it takes courage to choose hope over fear” before criticizing Trump’s controversial decision to build a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants — an asinine idea Fusion journalist Jorge Ramos poked significant holes in — by saying real change comes from

Launched at F8 last year, Analytics for Apps helps developers get a feel for who their audience is. Now it’ll start leveraging information from Facebook profiles so developers get more granular metadata on their users, and push notifications to them. People Insights Facebook says over 450,000 apps already use its Analytics for Apps. With the new features (dubbed People Insights, which will be seated under a new People section in analytics), developers will have more reason than ever to gi

If your digital existence is wrapped up in Facebook, the new ‘Save’ Button may be of interest to you. The feature allows you to save things you find on the Web — like that new pair of shoes you’re eyeing or an interesting article — and save them for viewing later. In Facebook. The Save Button leverages what’s already good about Save to Facebook, but brings it to the entire Web. It’s like taking a little piece of Facebook with you everywhere yo

Sharing a few lines of text from an article can be tedious, especially on Facebook. A new quote feature named Quote Sharing will make it much easier by allwoing you to select text and share it straight away. As you might imagine from the naming scheme, Quote Sharing helps you quickly and easily share a few lines of text from an article or eBook directly into a Facebook post. Instead of copying and pasting, Quote Sharing works with apps or Webpages directly. Highlighting a few lines of text brin

At its F8 conference today, Facebook discussed its current roadmap for the next 10 years. It’s divided into three main sections: improving Facebook proper over the next three years, strengthening Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and other products over the next five years, and developing virtual reality, AI and worldwide connectivity over the next 10 years. Though the event is still unfolding, Facebook – like Microsoft – emphasized the importance of bots in the coming

While you may enjoy signing into a new app or service using your Facebook profile, many people either don’t have — or want — to sign up for Facebook. For them, Facebook is introducing Account Kit, which lets users sign in with just a phone number or email. Already the world’s number one sign-in product, Facebook is launching Account Kit to help developers with the sometimes tedious on-boarding process. Early launch partner Saavn, a streaming music service in India, repor

Facebook has officially launched its chatbot API for Messenger, which it’s naming Messenger Platform. Additionally, the Live Chat feature rumored to be hitting the Web is also launching today via an API. The chatbots are aimed at businesses; Facebook’s bottom line is that it would rather companies use Messenger for automated customer service. If it has its way, the days of dialing 800-numbers just to get a menu of options will be over. And chatbots can be richer than those menu

When Oculus started shipping the first of its Rift headsets in March, it was a big deal for the VR industry that its first consumer headset (besides smartphone-powered ones) was finally ready for the public. Oculus creator Palmer Luckey even hand-delivered the first device. However, Luckey might need to deliver a few more before the company loses out since it’s emerged that people who pre-ordered the device as soon as it was available to do so are now facing month-long delays. Oculus

The current generation of iPads cost somewhere between $269 for a Wi-Fi Air 2 and $1,229 Wi-Fi + Cellular iPad Pro but the Metropolitan Police spent around $8.5 million (£6 million) on equipping 641 officers with the devices, according to V3. Of course, they weren’t the world’s worst bargain – a whole lot of that cost was on back-end integration and custom software for the trial, which ran between July, 2014 and March, 2015. According to V3, the total costs inc