Facebook Brings Its Live Streaming To The Masses

View Video ›

Facebook: video.php

Facebook is taking live video to the masses.

Today, the company is beginning to roll out a feature that allows regular users to broadcast live video directly on Facebook. Previously, this feature was available only to public figures and celebrities via Facebook's Mentions app. (See what it looks like above.)

Julie Zhuo, director of product design at Facebook, told BuzzFeed News that the initial rollout was met with a positive response among Facebookers. "I think we've gotten a lot of great feedback," she said. "What we heard was just people really wanted to use it as well [as celebrities]."

Though the current live-streaming market already has a handful of established apps — see: Periscope, Meerkat — Facebook's product could find a niche with those who are interested in broadcasting more personal moments, such as college graduations, but not looking to share them with the world. Facebook's privacy settings can be applied when sharing a live video, so if you want only a limited group to see your broadcast, you can restrict who it will reach.

"People are excited to use it for events," Zhuo said, offering examples of a hike, a dinner party, and Christmas morning. "These are meaningful moments in people's lives that they want to bring loved ones closer in who can't physically be there."

When a live stream is completed, it will remain on Facebook as a normal video that can be watched after the broadcast. The feature will begin rolling out today, starting with a small percentage of iOS users in the U.S.

Here's one more example of live streaming on Facebook, in case you're looking for inspiration:

View Video ›

Facebook: video.php

from BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/1SA0TJr
via IFTTT

Here's How To Find Out What Facebook Thinks You Like

You’ll probably be pretty surprised.

Ever wonder WHY you get certain weird Facebook ads?

Facebook has been keeping tabs on you (shocker!), and it has a list of things you're interested in so that advertisers can target people with those specific interests. It also allows you to see that list (aka "preferences") and even edit it.

But it's a little tricky to find, so here's an easy walk-through. I guarantee you'll find something in your list that totally weird and inexplicable.

First, go into "Settings" (at the top right corner) then into "Ads".

Then "Edit" the part that says "Ads based on my preferences".

Go into your Ad Preferences.

---

View Entire List ›

from BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/1N5NWTZ
via IFTTT

Pinterest Is Experimenting With A Unique New Browser

For a week this summer, Pinterest's design and engineering teams huddled to conceptualize, design, and build an experimental new web browser intended to increase the volume and relevance of content posted to its platform.

The browser, currently live in Japan, supports normal browsing but contains a special feature: When a Pinterest user wants to pin images from a site they’re visiting in the browser, they can hit a button that strips out everything but the images from the web page they’re on, adds share buttons, and creates a quick route to pin these images to the platform.

The browser, called the “Save Tab,” lives within Pinterest’s main app and has been active for a few months. Outside of its special abilities, the tab is a functional browser built on WebKit, the layout engine used in Apple's Safari.

“It’s really [about] using Pinterest as a jumping-off point to discover new content that may or may not be on Pinterest yet,” Pinterest product head Jack Chou told BuzzFeed News. "That’s the unique thing.”

Pinterest, according to its own figures, recently reached 100 million monthly active users -- up from 70 million in 2014. The Save Tab is part of the company’s effort to expand internationally with products such as localized search, which presents region-specific results when users search Pinterest around the world.

The Save Tab could boost Pinterest’s international expansion efforts by increasing the amount of local content posted to the platform. Local content is critical for Pinterest, as a board of recipes in London could be entirely different from another board in Tokyo. Even within the U.S., a board of clothing in New York might be indistinguishable from one in Seattle.

"Not every Silicon Valley company is thinking about growth in terms of local markets,” Chou said. "We definitely are because of how large a role content plays in Pinterest."

"In addition to building the user base, we also want those users to help shape the content that other users in Japan see on Pinterest,” he added.

The Save Tab also suggests trending local sites to browse and pin from. These sites, Chou said, don’t pay any money to Pinterest to be featured. But it is easy to see a promoted placement developing there, thanks to the significant effect the pinning and repinning of images can have on publisher traffic.

Promoted opportunities could especially be interesting if retail stores get involved, where the browser could populate buyable pins when someone finds a page on a retailer site they want to pin from. Currently, buyable pins are only available in the U.S., so the test hasn’t encountered that scenario yet.

Sites suggested within the Save Tab are chosen primarily based on where Japanese pinners save original content from. Pinterest is also picking out some Japanese sites whose content is new to the platform.

Keith Bormuth, a lead designer at Pinterest who spearheaded design for the project, said that the company saw people screenshotting and saving Instagram photos with the intention of sharing them on Pinterest, and developed the Save Tab to create a more natural way for them to do it. “These [websites]," he said, "have really rich content where we can help pinners find things that they may love and bring into the system."

from BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/1jADknB
via IFTTT

Google Accused Of Violating Student Privacy In FTC Complaint

Getty Images

A leading activist group has accused Google of violating students' privacy in its suite of education apps and on its Chromebook laptops, which are now the most popular devices in American classrooms.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a complaint yesterday with the Federal Trade Commission saying that Google is violating a student privacy pledge it signed in January, in which it promised not to collect, store, or use students' data except for educational purposes.

The privacy pledge that is being wielded against Google has been signed by more than two hundred companies, including Microsoft, Apple, and Blackboard. The FTC's ruling on how Google handles students' information could set the stage for similar complaints against other major industry players.

The EFF's complaint alleges that when students are signed into Google's education accounts, data from their non-educational activities is used by Google for business purposes. While data from "Apps for Education" like search and Google Drive is kept only for educational purposes, information gleaned from usage of apps like Google Maps and Youtube is analyzed to help serve up targeted advertising.

Jeremy Gillula, a staff technologist with the EFF, called that data collection an "invasion of privacy" and a clear violation of the privacy pledge.

“When a student navigates to something that is not [part of] Google's apps for education — like Youtube, Blogger, Maps — now they’re logged in and Google tracks that activity and does serve them ads," Gillula told BuzzFeed News, noting that teachers can use Youtube and Google Maps for educational purposes.

“It’s entirely possible that teachers can say ‘Okay kids, open up your Chromebooks and we are going to watch a science video on Youtube.' Youtube is not a Google app for education, but it can still be used for an educational purpose.”

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said that, "While we appreciate EFF's focus on student privacy, we are confident that these tools comply with both the law and our promises, including the Student Privacy Pledge."

The data privacy pledge was created in October of 2014 after a parent-led furor over student privacy essentially drove one nonprofit, called InBloom, out of business. Google initially didn't sign on, but eventually added its name in January.

The pledge's own authors expressed skepticism over the validity of the EFF's complaint. "We do not believe it has merit," said Jules Polonetsky, the executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum. "We don’t believe the complaint raises any issues about data use that are restricted by the Student Privacy Pledge."

The EFF complaint also targets Chromebooks, which have become so wildly popular in classrooms that Google said earlier this year they will soon outnumber all other devices combined, including iPads. The EFF says the laptops' Sync feature — which comes automatically enabled on all devices — allows the collection of students' browsing data for non-educational purposes, albeit anonymously.

Polonetsky said that schools relied on the Sync feature to allow students to share computers and access their accounts from home and school. "Any data collected is not used for behavioral advertising and all other data uses are aggregated and anonymous," Polonetsky said.

from BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/1O4yxTB
via IFTTT

Some Of The Most Powerful Women In Tech Tackle FDA Regulations

At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference in San Francisco, two female tech executives discuss battling the FDA — and winning.

23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki on stage with Fortune's Pattie Sellers at the Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit in San Francisco.

Via Flickr: fortunempw

High-powered women from across a number of industries gathered at the RItz Carlton in San Francisco on Tuesday evening to kick off Fortune's Next Gen Most Powerful Women conference. The conference, which focuses on tech, includes executives from companies like TaskRabbit, Google, Facebook, Stripe, Instagram, GoDaddy, and more, plus a number of startup founders. The CEO of SoulCycle received a round of spontaneous applause just for being present, and jokes about spin class were met with raucous laughter.

The evening's programming featured one-on-one interviews with health tech CEOs, including 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki and Sprout Pharmaceutical's Cindy Whitehead. Both companies have struggled with with FDA approval in the past, and each was asked to discuss how they dealt with regulatory obstacles.

After two years of waiting, 23andMe finally won approval from the FDA just five weeks ago. CEO Anne Wojcicki said, during that time, she never lost focus on the company's core mission — bringing genetic information and healthcare directly to consumers.

"I think honestly one of the smartest things we do is, we don't read our press," she said. "We keep getting this feedback, our investors, people who were part of the raise — the vision has not changed for 23andMe. It has been so obvious that what we said we were going to do is exactly what we're executing on. When we had the FDA warning letter and other issues, they're just bumps. It's just a problem to solve. What we've learned is, we can solve those problems. Nothing was insurmountable, it was just a question of figuring out the situation. We just buckled down. As soon as we got our warning letter, I spent ten days in my pajamas on the phone with lawyers getting feedback."

Wojcicki went on to say that while direct to consumer sales of 23andMe test kits will always be the core of the company's business, data from over a million users will increasingly power the companies drug research and development arm. Within five to ten years, she said, it's possible that the company's major source of revenue could shift toward drug discovery.

Sprout Pharmaceuticals CEO Cindy Whitehead.

Via Flickr: fortunempw

Sprout is a very different kind of company. First of all, the drug it's known for — Addyi, a female sexual desire enhancer — isn't something the company discovered itself. CEO Cindy Whitehead was working for a company that sold "one of the male sexual health drugs," and was frustrated when she saw executives passing up on the chance to fund a similar solution for women. "They weren't walking away on the basis of science. The science and emerging understanding is spectacular," she said.

The problem, Whitehead said, is that people see male sexual dysfunction as biological, while female sexual dysfunction is psychological. And, indeed, Addyi is a "chronic drug" that treats Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, which is classified as a mental disorder. "Addyi is an everyday drug that works on key chemicals in the brain — that's very different than a blood flow issue," Whitehead said. Addyi, which has gained a lot of attention as "the female Viagra," was rejected twice by the FDA before finally winning approval in August. When asked if she was surprised by the controversy the drug has stirred, Whitehead was dismissive. "No," she said, laughing. "It's women and sex."

---

View Entire List ›

from BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/1O4yzuW
via IFTTT

Tech CEOs Could Use Group Therapy, Says Tech CEO

At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference, Jess Lee, CEO of Polyvore, spoke about the pressure tech CEOs are under to put on a happy face, no matter what.

Polyvore CEO Jess Lee onstage at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit in San Francisco.

Via Flickr: fortunempw

Jess Lee's parents were shocked when she announced she was leaving a cushy job at Google to work on a startup. Today, she's CEO of that company, Polyvore, and the three men who founded the company have dubbed her an "honorary cofounder."

Three years ago, Lee wrote a blog post titled "Why Startup Founders Are Always Unhappy." On stage at Fortune's Most Powerful Women NextGen conference, she was asked to reflect on mental health in leadership roles in today's frothy tech industry.

"What you end up putting out in the press is funding, growth milestones. There's this pressure to be out there constantly saying, I'm crushing it! And that's almost never true. There's always something going wrong. Even if you are growing, there's something falling apart inside the company — it's normal. The most important trait is tenacity, to keep on going. but you don't want to make your employees feel concern or start looking for another job so you have to toe the line. I wish there were more people talking about it. [...] I wish CEOs had group therapy sessions. If you only read the press you have very few data points on what it's actually like to run a company. Over time you have a broader sense of where you are."

from BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/1RnpZN9
via IFTTT

Just Months After Launching, Tidal Is Already On Its Third CEO

C-suite turnover a feature for Tidal.

Evan Agostini / AP

Tidal launched with much celebrity-driven fanfare this March. Yet in the months since, the subscription service has had its share of troubles. Among them, it's already on its third CEO. According to BIllboard, the latest to take the job is Jeff Toig, a former Soundcloud executive.

Tidal launched after Jay Z bought Aspiro, a Swedish streaming service, and promised an artist-friendly alternative to Spotify and other subscription services by eliminating a free streaming tier (similar to Apple Music, which launched three months later) and offering a premium service, where listeners could pay for songs to stream at a higher sound quality. It launched with a host of celebrity supporters — at its debut Jay Z was joined on stage by artists like Kanye West, Daft Punk, and Jared Leto, among many others.

That celebrity power has commanded access to exclusive content, most notably a Nicki Minaj and Beyonce music video and Prince's discography, but it hasn't translated to much of a competitive edge in the crowded market for streaming services. While Apple Music became the fastest-growing service ever, collecting 6.5 million paying subscribers in a matter of months, Tidal has struggled. Although Jay Z boasted it had reached 1 million subscribers two months ago, the announcement — made in a tweet — was light on details and accounts for growth of only 500,000 new customers, as Aspiro had more than 500,000 subscribers as the time of purchase.

If it wants to avoid becoming the next Rdio, Tidal clearly needs strong, consistent leadership. Perhaps Toig will be the CEO who sticks around to provide that.

from BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/1lwmw2l
via IFTTT