Facebook wants to build a village for employees and its local community

Facebook is ready to expand again. And this time it’s going to be a “mixed-use village” right behind its headquarters in Menlo Park. The social media company is calling it Willow Campus and it’ll be a small village with 1,500 apartments, retail and office space, grocery, and pharmacy. "Part of our vision is to create a neighborhood center that provides long-needed community services. We plan to build 125,000 square feet of new retail space, including a grocery store, pharmacy and additional community-facing retail," Facebook said in its announcement.

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Facebook will change its News Feed algorithm to discourage oversharers of clickbait stories

The latest change to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm won’t affect most users but it’s an important step in trying to stop the spread of fake news and clickbait stories. The social network is going to limit the reach of people known to continuously post links to sensationalist sites and other spam content. According to Facebook this’ll affect a “tiny group” of people (around 0.1%) who share over 50 posts a day. This will also just affect the links they share and not their photos or other posts.

"Our research shows that there is a tiny group of people on Facebook book who routinely share vast amounts of public posts per day, effectively spamming people's feeds," said Adam Mosseri, Facebook's vice president for the News Feed, in a blog post. Other efforts to reduce spam on its service include giving lower prominence to links that have pages full of deceptive ads and the deemphasizing of stories with clickbait-like headlines.

Source: Fortune

Facebook brings ‘Find WiFi’ feature to all users

Facebook started testing its “Find WiFi” feature on its app last year in a few countries. The feature allows you to find businesses nearby that have free, public Wi-Fi. Now, the social network is expanding the feature to all users around the world and rolling it out to both iOS and Android users. When you have this feature on, you’ll get to see not just which establishments have Wi-Fi but also their business hours, network names, and what kind of place it is. But a business will need to opt in to the service on their Facebook Page for you to see them.

Source: Engadget

Facebook’s Aquila drone successfully completes second test flight

The first test flight of Facebook’s Aquila drone went a bit awry after a 20-foot section off the massive 113-foot wingspan broke off during landing. A gust of wind knocked the drone off its flight path and the autopilot attempt to correct its course had Aquila flying faster than intended. Facebook’s engineers seem to have learned from that mistake and was able to fly the Aquila for an hour and 46 minutes. More sensors were added to the drone to gather additional data. Its auto-pilot software was modified. Spoilers were to the wings to increase drag and reduce lift during landing approach. And a horizontal propeller stopping mechanism was installed to support the successful landing.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg conceptualized Aquila back in 2014 with the idea of using this large solar-powered, high-altitude drone to connect areas in the world where it’s hard to get reliable internet access. The eventual plan is to have the drone fly up for 90 days at a time and provide internet access to an area 60 miles wide.

Source: The Verge + Tech Crunch