Items tagged with (NASDAQ:FB)
Armed with Facebook’s deep pockets and strong backstop, Oculus VR is much better able to poach talent from big companies than when it was just an exciting startup (John Carmack notwithstanding). The big get for this week is Adrian Wong, who left his post as a lead electrical engineer at Google[x], where he...
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The "Poke Wars" have ended folks, as Facebook has decided that nobody really cares about the Poke app, which was only available on iOS anyway -- it was never released on Android. It's the end of a 10 year run from when Poking was first made available. It would launch to mobile in 2012 and offer users a self-destruct timer similar to Snapchat's...
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A fantasy that's fairly common among the human population is to be able to fly, soaring high above the cityscape and over rural farmlands like all those lucky winged creatures get to do on a whim. In pursuit of this desire, mankind has created many things -- airplanes, hot air balloons, wingsuits, and more. Add to...
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John Carmack’s former employer, Zenimax, went after the industry veteran last week claiming that important code that he used in helping to build the Oculus Rift VR headset is actually IP owned by Zenimax. The company also stated that it provided VR technology to Oculus VR’s Palmer Luckey and others over...
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Watch out all you instant messaging applications, Snapchat just learned how to send texts in traditional form. What started off as a disappearing photo and video sharing service is now becoming a full-fledged communication platform that combines fun and functionality. Suddenly it starts to make sense why Snapchat...
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The Heartbleed Bug illustrated just how vulnerable our global communications structure really is, and now a glut of important tech companies in collaboration with the Linux Foundation are launching a new initiative called the Core Infrastructure Initiative to better support the open source projects and technologies...
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Facebook wants to be the No. 1 source for breaking news stories, and with over 1 billion members playing on the world's largest social playground, it's certainly feasible. What's lacking are resources journalists (or would-be journalists), but that's changing with the roll out of FB Newswire, which Mark Zuckerberg and the gang say will make...
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A new website sponsored by Ubisoft as part of its advertising campaign for the upcoming hacking-themed game Watch Dogs isn't just a plug for the title -- it's a chilling example of exactly how easy it is for companies to mine your data. While I'm normally averse to giving any application or service access to my...
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Facebook isn't afraid to make a splash, hence the decision back in February of this year to scoop up WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock options. It remains Facebook's largest transaction to date, though it could prove a brilliant move in the long run, especially as WhatsApp keeps attracting more users. As of...
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We live at a quizzical time in technology. The tech boom has revolutionized the world, and the innovations that are pouring out of brilliant minds are incredible in both their frequency and content. But there is also a backlash against a lot of technology, perhaps highlighted best by the curious rage that Google Glass...
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WhatsApp just refuses to work with pedestrian numbers. Take for example its sale price to Facebook, which is snatching up the instant messaging service for $19 billion. That's a pretty big number, though not as high as the new record the service set in daily messages sent and received, which totaled 64 billion...
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This isn’t about cool virtual reality games anymore. When the news first broke of Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR, the knee-jerk reaction from many fans of the Oculus Rift was to feel betrayed that this grassroots tech company, funded in part by its individual supporters, was going to be...
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We’d bet that when Mark Zuckerberg drunkenly dashed off the original Facebook precursor in his dorm room, he never imagined that within a decade he’d be actively trying to connect two-thirds of the world to the Internet and working with NASA to do so, but that is indeed what has transpired. Zuckerberg...
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Facebook isn't afraid to make big acquisitions. Lest anyone need reminding of that, the social networking service dropped a bombshell on Oculus VR fans by announcing yesterday it had acquired the technology for $2 billion. That's just one example of Facebook's willingness to drop big cash on startups. In April 2012...
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Setting aside for a moment how jarring it is to see Ashton Kutcher’s name associated with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the trio are among investors in a startup called Vicarious FPC that has lofty goals for artificial intelligence technology. Specifically, Vicarious wants to essentially replicate the human...
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If your company has any sort of web presence, you’re on Facebook, and the company is rolling out changes to its official Pages that are designed to simultaneously make it easier for consumers to find the info they’re looking for and make Page management easier for businesses. The new look features all your Page’s posts just...
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Facebook’s blockbuster $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp has raised a lot of questions--such as “Why?”--but among those unanswered queries is a concern that Facebook will collect user data for advertising purposes, which some privacy groups argue cuts against expectations that WhatsApp users...
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If you thought Mark Zuckerberg and company were out of their minds to approve a $19 billion (with a "B") acquisition of WhatsApp, an instant messaging service, you're not alone. Sitting on the other side of the social networking aisle is Google, which knows a thing or two about spending crazy amounts of money on...
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Yahoo! To Drop Facebook and Google Login Options From Flickr, Fantasy Sports, Other Popular Services
For the most part, we're taught from a young age to try and work well with others. Sharing, caring, and not hogging all of the spotlight is generally in one's best interest. So much for that. Yahoo has announced that it will cease letting users login to various services (including its popular Fantasy Football and...
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One has to wonder if Facebook is feeling any buyer’s remorse, as the messaging service the company just dropped $19 billion to acquire experienced an outage on Saturday, according to reports. WhatsApp didn’t provide much in the way of details beyond a pair of tweets that acknowledged the outage and then...
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If you live in San Francisco, Washington D.C., New York, L.A., Atlanta, Miami, or Boston, you’ve been looking for love in the top six wrong places. Or put another way, you’re least likely to find that special someone in those cities, according to Facebook. The Wall Street Journal asked Facebook to run some...
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Wondering why it's still a good idea to run security software on your system even if you practice safe computing habits? One reason is because even legitimate websites get hacked, and depending on the extent of the attack, visiting what you thought was a benign domain could open up a can of worms. It doesn't matter how large the site is either...
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