Facebook

Facebook Messenger reaches the milestone of 800 million monthly users

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 7, 2016

Facebook Messenger has reached a new milestone as the service now claims 800 million monthly users, according to an announcement from Facebook itself on Thursday. “I’m happy to report that we’ve made a good step in that direction, and toward the end of 2015, we crossed the milestone of 800 million people using Messenger each month,” according to David Marcus, Facebook's Vice President of Messaging Products.

The new milestone, according to latest Nielsen data, makes Messenger the fastest growing app of 2015.

You can now pre-order Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset for $599, ships in March

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

Facebook on Wednesday confirmed that Oculus, a virtual-reality company it bought in March of 2014 for $2 billion, will be launching its hotly anticipated Rift virtual-reality headset at the end of March 2016.

Priced at $599, the device is now available for pre-order and will initially ship to 20 countries starting March 28, including Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, Oculus said.

The Rift comes bundled with two games—Lucky's Tale and EVE: Valkyrie—with more than a hundred games coming later this year, including Rockband VR by Harmonix, Edge of Nowhere by Insomniac, The Climb by Crytek and Minecraft by Microsoft-owned Mojang.

How to make a profile video in Facebook’s iOS app

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

Facebook recently began allowing users to set a short video as their profile picture on the service. Users can now take or upload a video of up to seven seconds to use as their profile video. These profile videos appear at the top of your profile, just like static profile pictures, but you can currently add a profile video only from the iPhone.

If you feel your Facebook profile is too static, here's how to spice it up with a profile video in Facebook's iOS app.

Facebook is rolling out Live Photos support

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 21, 2015

When Apple introduced Live Photos at its September 2015 iPhone 6s event it also announced an SDK allowing third-parties to implement support for them, while specifically saying that Live Photos would be coming to Facebook before year-end.

Following Tumblr's iOS app which was first to implement support for Live Photos, Facebook today started rolling out the ability to upload and view Live Photos from within their iOS app, TechCrunch reports.

Flash’s demise continues as Facebook adopts HTML5 video player

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 21, 2015

Following Google's decision to stop using Adobe's outdated Flash technology for video delivery on YouTube in favor of an HTML5-based video player, Facebook last week announced a similar move of its own.

“We recently switched to HTML5 from a Flash-based video player for all Facebook web video surfaces, including videos in News Feed, on Pages and in the Facebook embedded video player,” reads a post by Daniel Baulig on the company's Code blog.

Facebook Messenger gains Photo Magic feature, per-chat customization and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 17, 2015

Less than twenty-four hours after rolling out Uber integration within Messenger, Facebook today announced a brand new update that enables per-chat customization and other enhancements for the popular messaging platform.

And as promised, the application now provides the Photo Magic feature to users in more countries following its recent soft-launch on Android in Australia.

Billed as an easier way to privately share photos with friends, Photo Magic taps into Facebook's advanced face recognition algorithm to automatically recognize people in your photos, offering to share them via Messenger.

You can now request a ride with Uber through Facebook Messenger

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 16, 2015

Uber, the popular ride-sharing service, is now available through Facebook Messenger. Yup, you read that right—you can now call an Uber and request a ride within Facebook's mobile Messenger application.

As announced on Wednesday, the new Transportation feature permits users of the Facebook Messenger app in the United States to request a ride from Uber, without ever needing to download the Uber app or leave a conversation.

Facebook Messenger gains 3D Touch shortcuts, message requests and snowflake animations

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 16, 2015

Facebook has released an update to its Messenger software in the App Store, bumping the app to version 52.0 and bringing out 3D Touch shortcuts on the Home screen for owners of the iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus.

Just press Messenger's icon lightly with 3D Touch and up pops a menu with the New Message option, along with handy shortcuts for starting a chat with your top three most-frequently messaged contacts.

Facebook killing photo sync in mobile apps, you’ll have to use Moments instead

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 14, 2015

According to TechCrunch on Monday, Facebook is in the process of removing photo syncing capability in its mobile applications and is asking users to download a dedicated Moments app to retain that functionality.

Photo sync, an opt-in feature in the mobile Facebook app, uploaded photos from the user's Camera roll to a private photo album on Facebook, where they could later be edited, shared or deleted.

Moments, a private-photo sharing app, debuted this summer for iOS and Android and then rolled out to everyone nearly four months ago.

Facebook pulls Slingshot, Riff and Rooms apps from App Store

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 5, 2018

Happy app removal day! After Dropbox announced plans to wind down its ill-fated Mailbox and Carousel apps, Facebook just pulled a Dropbox by confirming it, too, is shutting down a few apps of its own that have failed to gain much traction with users: Slingshot, Riff and Rooms.

In addition, the company will be closing down the Creative Labs shop, an initiative formed in January 2014 with the noble goal of giving its teams creative freedom to conceive and build apps outside the core Facebook experience.

Facebook brings photo collages to iPhone app, starts testing Periscope-like video broadcasts

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

Facebook today announced that its main iPhone client in the App Store has been updated with two new features: Live Video and Collages.

Collages, automatically created from the photos and videos taken together, are presented as a moving carousel within the app and on the web.

More important than that, implementing live video broadcasting on Facebook has been prioritized in the wake of the Periscope phenomenon. Starting today, a small percentage of people in the United States can begin testing the live video feature on their iPhones.

Apple TV apps can now implement Facebook Login and sharing features

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 29, 2015

If you own Apple's fourth-generation Apple TV, you have probably noticed that apps and games for the set-top box currently lack common social features such as Facebook Login and sharing.

But that's about to change soon as Facebook earlier this week announced immediate availability of the first beta of its Facebook SDK for tvOS, which gives developers the means to build immersive social experiences on tvOS.