Facebook Messenger is testing out its own take on Snapchat’s Stories

Facebook-owned Instagram blatantly copied Snapchat’s Stories feature a few months back, the copying continues as Facebook is testing out a Snapchat Stories-like feature in its own Messenger app. Testing it out in Poland, Facebook names it “Messenger Day.” Just like the Stories on Instagram and Snapchat, it lets users add stickers and scribbles on photos and videos that’ll disappear 24 hours after they’re posted. There is no word yet if Facebook plans to release this to its international users.

Source: Engadget

Facebook to soon let users broadcast Live videos from desktops and laptops

Looks like Facebook is really bringing the fight to Google. Facebook has been rolling out the ability to broadcast live streams right from a laptop or desktop. Facebook user Delilah Taylor noticed the Live Video option appear on her status update composer while she was using Facebook on her desktop. Facebook has confirmed with SocialTimes that they’re starting to rollout this feature. According to SocialTimes’ source, both peripheral and built-in cameras will be supported.

Taylor described her experience in the video saying, “When I first clicked live video, it didn’t do anything. You’ve got to put in a comment, and then you hit next, and when you hit next, it will bring up a secondary screen, which kind of looks like a Google Hangout screen, and you can adjust your camera and microphone … Then you hit ‘Go Live.’”

Facebook experiments with showing highlights of your friends’ status updates

Facebook likes to play around with its News Feed and we don’t all get to see these experiments. One example has been spotted by Mashable. There is a new box roughly the size of an image post with the title “What friends are talking about” showing a few status updates and image previews from some of your friends. They saw the feature show up on an Android device. The section also shows how many comments have been made on that specific update.

While you may or may not be able to see this feature in the future, it seems like Facebook is trying to get you content you might care about more. As big as the social network has gotten, it’s been a bit trickier to get you connected to the people that matter to you.

Source: Mashable

Facebook’s Trending Topics feature hits another snag over fake news story

After reducing the role of editors when it comes to curating Trending Topics, Facebook finds itself in another controversy over the feature. An erroneous story about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly “backing Hillary” (referring to US Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton) gets promoted in the section. Fox News calls the incident “an egregious mistake.”

The story it seems was able to pass through the review team even though Facebook has said its team is working “to ensure that the topics that appear in Trending remain high-quality.” There were enough stories written over it that it got approved. But it was later found there were problems with accuracy about the supposed story. If there’s one lesson here, it reminds us to not believe everything you see online. And Facebook still has a lot of work to do when it comes to verifying stories before these get promoted.

 Source: CNET