Google and Facebook are improving their efforts to put an end to fake news, especially in light of looming elections in Europe. First Draft News, which is financially supported by Google, has engaged Le Monde and Agence France-Presse, among 15 French news outlets in a new program, CrossCheck, to verify online content in the lead-up to France’s April presidential election. Google reports that a similar program is “under discussion” for Germany, which will hold federal parliamentary elections in September. Continue reading Google, Facebook Take Steps to Combat Fake News in Europe

In its IPO filing, Snap Inc. revealed that an average of 158 million people use the Snapchat app — sending more than 2.5 billion messages and images — every day. The company’s annual revenue grew from $58.7 million in 2015 to $404.5 million last year. Nearly all its revenue comes from advertising, especially on mobile. Expected to seek a market valuation of $20 billion, Snap may receive $4 billion, which, according to Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence would make the company one of the biggest tech offerings ever in the U.S. Continue reading Snap Inc. Files for IPO, Describes Itself as a Camera Company

Facebook’s Lumos computer vision platform, which was originally created to help visually impaired members of the social network’s community, is now being used for a more sophisticated image search. It allows users to find images on Facebook via key words that describe content, rather than a search that is limited to tags and captions. “Facebook trained an ever-fashionable deep neural network on tens of millions of photos,” explains TechCrunch. “The model essentially matches search descriptors to features pulled from photos” and “ranks its output using information from both the images and the original search.” Facebook may apply the tech to videos in the future and potentially raise the bar on its targeted ad offerings. Continue reading Artificial Intelligence Now Powers Photo Searches on Facebook

In its Q4 earnings report, Facebook revealed that sales rose 51 percent to $8.81 billion, above the $8.51 billion average analyst prediction. The bump in revenue is largely attributed to advertising on mobile phones. Also, within the space of a year, monthly active Facebook users increased 17 percent to 1.86 billion people, with 1.23 billion checking daily and 1.74 billion accessing the social network via their smartphones. Facebook has now cemented its No. 2 position in the mobile advertising market behind Google. The company is also making a major move into video content. Continue reading Facebook Eyes Success with Mobile Ads and Focus on Video

Slack Technologies, launched in 2014, just introduced a new version of its workplace-centric messaging app, with the goal of gaining large corporate contracts. The new Slack Enterprise Grid is built to handle the group messaging needs of very large companies, with thousands or more employees, and includes security tools and regulatory compliance required for such companies’ IT departments to sign off. The original group messaging app is already in play at a few big companies, including Electronic Arts and Samsung Electronics. Continue reading Slack’s Workplace Messaging App Targets Large Companies

A new report from Nielsen notes that Americans 18-34 years of age are less reliant upon social media than some older consumers. “Adults 35 to 49 were found to spend an average of 6 hours 58 minutes a week on social media, compared with 6 hours 19 minutes a week for their younger counterparts,” reports The New York Times. “More predictably, adults 50 and over spent significantly less time on social media, with an average of 4 hours 9 minutes a week on the networks.” Not surprisingly, the report stressed how important smartphones have become to people of all ages. The most popular mobile platforms, in order: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat. Continue reading Gen X Now More Obsessed with Social Media Than Millennials

As part of its “video first” strategy, Facebook is at work on a video app for Apple TV and other TV set-top boxes, say knowledgeable sources, who add that the social media platform is also in discussions to license long-form “TV-quality” content. The move will allow Facebook to compete for TV advertising revenue and distribute content to TV sets. The company is already the No. 2 destination for digital ads after Google, but has said it is running out of room for more ads in its News Feed, the company’s main source of revenue. Continue reading Facebook Working on Video App, Licensing TV-Quality Content

Facebook lost its intellectual property lawsuit with video game publisher ZeniMax Media yesterday and was ordered to pay $500 million in damages. ZeniMax had contended that a former employee helped develop the Oculus Rift VR headset with knowledge that he gained while working for the game publisher, and that the company had developed a prototype prior to Facebook acquiring Oculus VR for $2 billion. While Oculus was not found guilty of stealing trade secrets, the jury determined the company was guilty of copyright infringement and violating a confidentiality agreement. An appeal is expected. Continue reading Facebook Loses Oculus IP Lawsuit in $500 Million Jury Verdict

Facebook has rolled out an information portal designed to help marketers compare ad performance across digital, television and print campaigns. “The company’s new marketing mix modeling (MMM) tool will let measurement partners gather information directly from Facebook, Instagram and Facebook’s Audience Network on behalf of their clients for cross-channel measurement and planning,” reports Variety. More than 150 advertisers are already using the MMM information, and the company has been working to feed its data “to partners including Nielsen, Neustar MarketShare, Analytic Partners and Marketing Evolution.” Continue reading Facebook Tool Compares Ad Results Across Digital, TV, Print

In the not-so-distant future of advertising, Hollywood, armed with big data, will be able to create precision-targeted ads that will compete with today’s dominant advertisers, social networks. Today, many advertisers are finding that relying on the most popular platforms might not actually give them the reach they want for their ads. Facebook has admitted more than once that it has mistakenly inflated all kinds of ad metrics, from how much time users spend watching video clips to time spent reading articles. Continue reading Hyper-Targeted Ads of the Future to Rely on TV, Social Media

A viral campaign over the weekend to #DeleteUber took place in response to Uber’s actions or perceived actions surrounding President Trump’s immigration ban. Although Uber vowed to compensate drivers stranded overseas and set up a $3 million legal fund for those drivers, users weren’t appeased and the Internet was abuzz with thousands of photos of people deleting the Uber app from their phones. As a result, on January 29 Lyft had more downloads than Uber on iOS for the first time ever, according to App Annie. Continue reading Social Campaign to Delete the Uber App Works in Lyft’s Favor

Facebook has decided it wants longer videos, and will reward videographers who create them. That’s quite a turnabout for the company that counts three seconds as a “view,” and the many publishers reporting that few viewers watch their videos to completion. Facebook still plans to count three seconds as a view, but is changing its News Feed algorithm to favor longer videos, especially those that keep viewers watching. With the new algorithm, the longer a video holds its audience, the more Facebook will promote it. The social network is also adding a feature similar to Snapchat Stories. Continue reading Facebook Pushes Longer Video, Offers Snapchat-Like Feature

Although both Google and Facebook have declared they will fight fake news, the two companies are still in the early stages of acting on that pledge. Google says that, as of the end of 2016, it had permanently banned almost 200 publishers from its AdSense advertising network. Facebook took aim at its Trending Topics feature, blamed by some for spreading fake news, introducing changes intended to showcase only reliable news articles. But these actions are miniscule in context of the immense problem at hand. Continue reading Google, Facebook in Earliest Stages of Combatting Fake News

The trade group Digital Content Next just released a report that details how some publishers of newspapers and other media outlets are pulling back on their use of Facebook’s Instant Articles program. The change comes as publishers re-examine their business models, especially vis-à-vis social media platforms. Publishers have hosted stories on Facebook, rather than their own websites, so they load more quickly on mobile phones. But these publishers also chafe against Facebook restrictions on the number and types of ads in Instant Articles. Continue reading Publishers Rethink Sharing Content on Social Media Platforms

Snapchat just updated its guidelines for publishers, who are now restricted from posting on Discover so-called questionable pictures devoid of news or editorial value, or providing links to or reports of fake news, stressing that all content must be accurate and fact-checked. In Feburary, Snapchat will offer publishers a tool to “age-gate” content, with the option for preventing minors from seeing some content altogether. These guidelines are being introduced as parent company Snap Inc. is preparing for an IPO. Continue reading Snapchat Preps for IPO with Metrics, Stricter Publishing Rules