Facebook drops Paper app

The last of Facebook’s Creative Labs experiments is biting the dust. Facebook is shutting down its app that you probably don’t know about called Paper. It brought a clean and ad-free look into your News Feed while putting in some stories from your favorite news outlets. You’d see photos and stories cycle through without the added distraction of automatically playing videos and ads. Plus, news stories were arranged by topic, letting you browse through stories that really interest you. It’s even in this platform that Facebook’s fast-loading Instant Articles was developed. The app even let you send and respond to Facebook messages without leaving Paper. Of course, we know how Facebook wants you to use the Messenger app. But now the app has been pulled from app stores and users won’t be able to log in after July 29^th.

Source: MacWorld

Facebook introduces photo slideshows

Making it easier for you to share multiple photos from a single event, Facebook is introducing a new Slideshows feature into the app. So, if you’ve shot more than five photos or videos in the span of a day, Facebook will collate these into a slideshow and put it on top of your News Feed. You’re then free to customize the slideshow to your liking. It has 10 different themes at the moment with a number of background music and overlays. The themes include Inspired, Nostalgic, Playful, Night Out, Birthday, Epic, Thankful, Tropical, Bollywood, and Amped.

At the same time, you can select the “Try It” button if a friend’s slideshow appears on your feed. If you’ve seen one of those Friendship videos on your feed, it works similar to that. The feature launches globally but it’s only available for iOS users at the moment.

Source: The Next Web

Facebook reactions now show up in 360-degree videos in VR

If you watch 360-degree videos while you use the Samsung Gear VR, you’ll now be able to share your emoji reactions there. At the same time you’ll be able to see the reactions of other users float by as you watch. Back in March, Facebook-owned Oculus let Gear VR users sign into their Facebook accounts on the headset for a more personalized feed of stories. Oculus also plans to bring the emoji reactions to 360-degree photos in the coming weeks. While we won’t get the full Facebook experience on VR anytime soon, this is another step in bringing social features to VR.

Source: The Verge

Death captured on Facebook Live shows dark side of livestreaming

The thing with capturing events as they happen means we can’t filter out the bad and horrible stuff happening around us. One such incident is the shooting of Chicago man Antonio Perkins, which was caught on camera because he was using Facebook Live while the incident happened. It’s unfortunate that his case isn’t a unique one as other violent incidents have been caught on live video before. And unlike live TV, there isn’t a way to cut away from a scene when things get gory.

Facebook didn’t take down Perkins’s video but put a “graphic video” warning on it. The social network removes clips that sensationalize violence but leaves this footage and a few others to help boost awareness about violence and its consequences. We doubt incidents like this will prevent Facebook from continuing one with livestream but it is a tragic reminder that it won’t be without terrible incidents like this.

Source: Engadget