Facebook might soon try out ‘red envelope’ payments feature and ‘breaking news’ tag for stories

Facebook is always trying out new products and features that may or may not be used by the general public later on. This time, the company seems to be gearing up to test a “red envelope” feature to make it easier for users to send cash gifts to others on the social network and a “breaking news” tag that publishers can attach to breaking events they want to draw attention to. The Next Web’s Matt Navara spotted these features that the company doesn’t seem to be officially testing just yet.

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Facebook outs GIF-supported polls for main app

You might have noticed Instagram recently added a poll feature to its app. Its parent company Facebook is refreshing that idea (they’ve had this before) for its web and mobile apps. Now, you can ask friends and family your important life questions (or the silliest ones) with the help of GIFs, too. The poll feature will allow you two options and let you use GIFs as responses to said question. You can access this feature by selecting the “What’s on your mind” text box and pick Poll from there.

You don’t have a limit for how long the questions should be but the responses need to be limited to 25 characters. But you can use GIFs for this, which you can access when you hit the camera or GIF icon in the option line for responses. You can select how long you want to have the poll up. Your options are: one day, one week, custom, or never. For your followers who answer your poll, they won’t be anonymous, these responses will be recorded for the poster to see.

Source: The Verge

Apple tax might force Facebook to make a new subscription tool exclusive on Android

Facebook is looking to help out publishers monetize their content on its platform. The social network plans to introduce a new subscription tool for its mobile app that will either put up paywalls on certain articles on Facebook’s news feed or redirect readers to the publishers’s sites to buy subscriptions. The issue with bringing this feature to Apple is what can be called Apple tax, where Apple requires app developers to pay as much as 30 percent off an app’s revenue to the company. And, of course, Apple wants in with this new tool, since they reason it is being coursed through the Facebook app. However, Facebook wants to give all the revenue to the publishers.

The two tech giants have been at an impasse for months already. But the tool is already ready to be released on Android in the coming weeks. According to Facebook, they are already working with publishers like Hearst, Washington Post, and Tronc. Whether Apple and Facebook can work it out is something we can’t say right now.

Source: Recode

Facebook tests WhatsApp button in main app on Android

Facebook is constantly testing out new things in its main app. This time around, it’s looking to bring attention to its subsidiary WhatsApp. The social network is placing a dedicated WhatsApp button on the main Facebook app, which can be accessed from the menu tab. The button is basically a shortcut to the WhatsApp, so you don’t have to leave the app to launch the messaging service. It’s not showing up to all users and the one who found the shortcut claims it showed up for him when he switched Facebook’s language setting to Danish. It’s not surprising as Facebook has done some limited testing in that country before. Whether this gets a wider release is something we can’t confirm. From our end, Instagram also has this quick launch shortcut on Facebook.

Source: The Next Web