Facebook Faces Criticism In India Once Again

Facebook Free Basics again becomes a victim of criticism

Hundreds of individuals made their way to the auditorium in New Delhi on Thursday where an enthusiastic debate took place that span for hours. The debate was centered on the topic if Facebook Inc. along with others were sabotaging the freedom of Internet. This will allow them to offer free services that result in limited access over the Web services.

The representatives of the cellular service operators in India have joined hands with net neutrality activists, conventional Internet users and startup owners where an open house discussion was conducted by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority in India. The session was devoted to the relevance of net neutrality.

Net neutrality is a principle according to which public good is ensured and all the data present on the Internet needs to treat with equality.

The concept is little known in the Indian market till last year but has now become an intense source of discussion. Now the scenario is this that the issue has become a source of debate amongst supporters of social media platform and advocates of net neutrality.

In the fiscal year of 2015, Facebook joined hands with Reliance Communications – the fourth largest telecom regulator. The company came up with a service known as Free Basics that offers Internet access free of cost to a selected number of sites.

The social media behemoth has been collaborating with cell phone operators in various emerging markets to come up with Free Basics as a sample so that consumers who are not acquainted with the platform know what it has to offer. As long as users are using the free service, no data fees is charge while surfing.

Facebook has made several big strides to come up with the service. This involves a major advertisement campaign along with a visit by Mr. Mark Zuckerberg to India. This caused a dent further since locals believed that the service was against net neutrality.

Critics who are against Free Basics and other similar services claim that they are trying to reduce Internet access by limiting it to a minute chunk of the internet ecosystem. FB claimed that its in support of net neutrality. The service they have designed complies with the norms of net neutrality and is in the benefit of consumers who are not acquainted to the platform.

The debate has heated up quite a lot now, the TRAI has asked the social media network to halt the service so that the regulators can devices what limitations need to be devised.

 

Facebook Unveils Sports Stadium

Facebook has now come up with Sports Stadium to attract sports lovers

Facebook Inc. has come up with a new platform for all the sports fanaticzas to share their interest. This new platform is known as the Sports Stadium, which is a virtual arena where you and all other sports lovers on the network can discuss teams, games, stats and a lot more. Moreover, it will also offer live action similar to the offerings by various sports channels with a dynamic community hat shares the same interest.

This platform which is devoted to sports has been launched to cater to the American football gamers. This is the right time since Super Bowl 50 is scheduled. Soon soccer and basketball will also be added to the platform. This service is presently only available to the iOS users of Facebook in the United States along with other platforms to be supported in the times to come.

To have access to the Sports Stadium, you need to search by the game on Facebook app. A dashboard will then appear that will contain news, commentary, live scores, individual plays with a lot more. It is designed in a manner to act as a second screen experience, so in case you are going through your team match, then you can simultaneously trash talk or discuss the outcomes and twists in a game.

According to the company’s official blog post, “Sports is a global interest that connects people around the world.” It further stated, “This product makes connecting over sports more fun and engaging, and we’ll continue listening to feedback to make it even better.”

To broadcast sports is not something extraordinary for social media platform but it now actually has a hub dedicated solely to sports. So before this platform was launched, all sports lover could do was put a status update. But now the communication can be done in real time and people with the same interest can discuss, express, share or simply enjoy the true essence of being a sports lover.

The question here arises why people would be interested to use this particular platform. the answer is relatively simple, there are several conventional sports broadcasters but it is just individual or group watching that can be done. However, this platform is extremely different since they are making all sports lover all over the globe to come on a consolidated platform and share their love equally will all people. Such platforms also promote healthy discussions which further adds to the knowledge of sports fans.

 

 

Cannabis Sciences Manages To Achieve Positive Consumer Feedback On Products

Cannabis Sciences received amazing feedback on its launch of capsule products in the California market, and its subsidiary, Equi-Pharm, now has an online e-commerce website available throughout the nation for animal care products.

Cannabis Science managed to receive positive feedback from the consumers on its recently launched capsule product. The pharmaceutical company has plans of utilizing consumer data to manufacture and develop products while motivating customers to join Patient Access Center. Its exclusively owned subsidiary, Equi-Pharm, also made reports of launching its own online website, which will now provide convenience to customers, by allowing them to purchase animal care products online.

Cannabis Science’s subsidiary, Equi-Pharm, will provide the opportunity to pet owners to purchase goods for their pets online now through the firm’s online website. Products such as Hemp infused for horse owners will be available for shipment and purchase from its facility situated in Shelbyville, TN. This allows the animal care products business to reach a wider audience throughout the Nation. This is the perfect time for the business to launch its own website, because e-commerce is becoming widely common and growing in terms of sales and preference throughout the world.

The US drug organization is changing its business strategy by taking the comment and thoughts of its customers into account to further develop innovative products for them. The strategy is good because the company will be well aware of its customers’ preference, desire and demand, which will further help it to know its customers well and predict future demand. It recently reported to achieve amazing feedback on its launch of capsule products that were sold in California market.

The CEO of Cannabis Science, Raymond Dabney, confirmed this on Thursday in statement, “Our initial California test market has consumers giving us some amazing feedback to be combined with our proprietary information. We understand the value in using as much real consumer evidence in our drug development program as possible.”

The positive response achieved from the consumers has motivated the business to develop innovative and helpful drugs in future. Customers through the CBRF website can join the Patient Access Center (PAC) after which, they can put in their experiences and opinions on the website, which will be then analyzed and used in the development program of the organization.

The test marketing so far proved to be successful for the company. Through the opinions of the customers, its drug development department will get help and even the clinical research will be more effective due to awareness about customers’ preferences and demand insights.

Cannabis stock closed at $0.0121, going red by 9.02% on January 19.

 

Facebook Inc. Brings Virtual Sports Stadium

The Californian giant offers the sport fans a place to cheer for the game

The social networking giant; Facebook never fails to surprise it’s over a billion users. Recently, to cater the need of 650 million sports fan users, Facebook has introduced a new sport platform by the name of Facebook Sports Stadium. The Californian based company believes that this initiative will give the real-like feel to the users and any person who is a fan of sports can easily connect with the fellow fan to discuss the game.

This concept of virtual sports arena is not new. Millions of sports fan turn to the rival social networking site; Twitter to “tweet” about their feelings about the game but due to the massive flow of tweets the messages sometime get lost. Some of the fans get consolation through Snapchat Stories covering the live actions of big games. However, the Facebook developers have provided an uninterrupted platform to its users –a step taken to outperform the rivals once again.

The Facebook application has four bars; Matchup, Friends, Experts, and Stats. The “matchup” feature provides minute-by-minute detail of the game similar to ESPN’s format. The “friends” feature helps the user to track their friends who are watching the game. “Experts” feature offers expert commentary on the game. “Stats” provides real-time data of the game. The social media network looks forward to bring all the sports lover into one place to cheer, support, or talk trash about the game and the teams.

If the Facebook app manages to get positive response from the users then it may attract the advertisers too –similar to real world’s. The social media platform is always the best to reach large audience and the advertisers will make sure to reach the millions of people through social media advertising prospering Facebook business more and more.

The foremost advantage of this sport arena is that the News Feed of the non-fans will not be crowded by unwanted update of a particular game. The arena will be the place for the sports lover whose comments will not bug the unconcerned audience. Undoubtedly, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows well how to play his cards.

The fastest-growing company has launched the application a month before America’s favorite football game “Super Bowl” which is scheduled on February 7. The game will definitely attract a lot of fans to this new app. Currently, the Facebook Stadium offers American football games but it is likely to add more games in the near feature, including Basketball and the world’s favorite; soccer.

Moreover, the new app is available on iOS only however the Facebook developers work on making it available on multiple operating systems.

The competitive strategies strengthen Facebook position in the stock market. Facebook stock stood at $94.16 at market which closed on Thursday.

Is Facebook Creating its Monopoly?

Starting off as a medium of social interaction for the fellow college mates, Facebook Inc. has managed to obliterate a lot of its competitors that came along its way!

Back in 2004, when cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched popular social media website Facebook Inc., it followed a format similar to long-forgotten Orkut. At that time, critics were not confident about its success. Since then, the company has gone on to become the 10th largest company currently listed on the S&P 500 Index, thanks to its efficient corporate strategies. Who would have thought that the company which was valued at just $2 billion four years ago, would escalate to such a great height in a matter of only four years. With its impressive user growth, the social media behemoth has successfully created a monopoly of sorts, as rivals stand nowhere close.

According to Facebook’s annual report 2014, the company reported billion in revenues, reflecting an impressive 58% year-over-year (YoY) increase.  Most of these revenues came from advertising, which makes sense if we consider that the company increased its average price per user by 173% from the year-ago period.

For starts, Facebook has a very large user base. The sign-up process is fairly simple too, as users can join easily if they have a registered email address. Given that this process does not require any subscription fee, more and more users keep joining by the day. As of September 30, 2015, it had 1.55 billion monthly active users (MAUs). Keeping in view the diverse range of users around the world, Facebook is tailoring its site in such a way that once a user logs onto the site, they don’t close the tab.

When the company’s top rival Twitter Inc. introduced verified celebrity accounts, Facebook followed suit and lured the same audience, as its 63,206-character post limits effortlessly outclassed the $12 billion company’s 140-character tweet limits. When Apple Inc. introduced its iMessage feature, Android users were undeniably left out. However, Facebook solved their woes by launching the Facebook “Messenger” app on iOS, Android, as well as Blackberry and Windows phones, simultaneously.

Besides text messaging, Messenger has several other interesting features including audio messaging, audio as well as video calls. The app’s high definition (HD) video calls offer greater quality than Microsoft’s Skype calls, giving the latter a run for money. The company also keeps updating the app regularly to ensure consistent improvement and to add cool new features.

Facebook also tried to take on Google’s YouTube with its revamped approach towards videos. It’s relatively shorter clips have lured in large audiences. As of August 2014, Facebook videos had a billion more views than YouTube, as per comscore. Nowadays, many renowned corporations use Facebook for advertising.

All in all, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that once a user logs in on Facebook, every form of entertainment is just a click away. This is the reason why the company’s revenues are increasing significantly year by year.

Even though the company has a range of competitors including Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn, they stand nowhere close to the company’s user growth, wide range of apps, consistent updates, unique features, and creative ideas. Without a doubt, Facebook still stands many years ahead of them.

Facebook Adamant To Continue Its Free Basics Efforts In India

Facebook free basics initiative has observed a nifty start reports Facebook executive

The Chief Product Officer of Facebook Inc. Mr. Chris Cox mentioned recently that if the company got another opportunity, they would restart the Free Basics initiative and take it forward in a completely different manner. The company is actually surprised with the way things have unfolded but will strive hard to achieve its goal. The news was reported by an Indian online platform, Indian Express. The company at this point of time is working quite hard to learn how to communicate effectively with the masses.

“We want Free Basics to work in India. Period. We are investing a lot of time and energy to ensure that for developers and users and everyone else we have something that works,” he stated. The issue at stake for the social media giant is to come up with an effective solution that ensures everyone all over the globe gets access to Internet related services. The issue is extremely important for Facebook and needs to be dealt at the earliest.

Irrespective of the situation, the company is extremely optimistic at this point of time. It hopes that in the long run, different ways will be derived that will ensure the penetration of free and fast Internet. However, in the short term, the masses are using wireless network carrier that are extremely heftily priced. The data granted by carriers is actually very expensive and so far the world has not been able to come up with ways that will lower the cost, make it more reliable and efficient. There is a dire need of reasonably priced data offerings all over the globe.

Mr. Cox has asserted that the tech giant is extremely devoted to do a reasonable job that brings about a substantial change. He explained to Indian Express, “Most of what we are hearing is not what we are saying. And we take full responsibility for that.”

Mr. Cox has now clarified that the tech behemoth wants to make sure that the platform is free for all the developers who wish to sign up. The issue that they wish to resolve is the availability of Internet, thus they will try their best to make that happen.

The Free Basics initiative has received immense criticism in India as activists claim that the offering is not incompliance with the rules of Net Neutrality. The company is trying best to overcome the criticism and offer free Internet to the masses but it now seems that all their efforts are in vain.

 

 

Slack Poaches Facebook Employees

Slack has poached employees from Palantir and Facebook

Slack, is a rapidly evolving cloud computing based collaboration tool for workplaces which has now recruited two executive who have immense experiences. These two senior executives will be responsible to head technical architecture and security at the company.

Mr. Geoff Belknap, has been given the designation of a chief security officer. Initially, Mr. Belknap was rendering his services to Palantir Technology as the chief information security officer. The position was held by him for a time span of five years. However, now at Slack, he will be responsible for regulatory issues, security policy along with compliance the company has reported.

Apart from this, Keith Adams has also been poached by the company to become the chief architecture. Mr. Adam’s duty will be to establish the infrastructure for Slack in the times to come. Initially Mr. Keith was rendering his services to Facebook Inc.

Back at the social media giant, Mr. Keith was the cofounder of the company’s effort’s to intensify the research when it comes to artificial intelligence. Before joining Facebook, he was associated with the engineering team of VMware.

The firm has also reported that Mr. April Underwood has now been promoted as the Vice President of product. This will make her responsible for the group along with the product offerings of Slack.

Slack, has come up with a smart idea to poach the employees of high end tech companies since it is now in its infancy stage. The cloud computing based company will take more time to mature thus it is a good idea to have people on board who understand the paradigms of the tech sector quite well and can thus add more depth to the offerings by the company. Poaching an executive from Facebook clearly highlights that they are devoted to growing in the times to come.

The tech sector has evolved considerably in terms of products and services and everyday a tech firm disrupts the fraternity with its offering. Thus all these firms do not really surface on the top and only a few hit the news due to the milestones they achieve in a short span of time. Slack has also become successful in achieving its goals it seems.

As per Re/Code, “Slack has about two million daily active users around the world, of which 570,000 are paid users. As of April, it had raised about $340 million from VC investors. Its most recent $160 million round valued the company at $2.8 billion.”

 

Facebook Bids Farewell To Photo Sync

Facebook will put an end to Photo Sync in two days

Back in FY12, Facebook Inc. came up with a nifty offering known as photo sync.This was the time when people had actually started to take photographs using their smartphones but were uploading them through their PCs. Photo sync turned out to be a great help since it allowed Facebook users to prepare and upload the pictures with ease.

FB had the right to upload any picture taken from the phone to an album that remained private on the social media. So users could then choose the pictures which they wanted to share and delete the ones which they didn’t want from this album as per their own liking.

On Sunday, news started to circulate that the company has decided to bid farewell to this feature since most users upload the pictures they want directly from their smartphoes. Back in December, TechCrunch reported that the company will soon put an end to this feature when Facebpook posted that it will soon banish.

“We are phasing out Facebook’s photo syncing feature,” reported a spokesperson from Facebook. “Photo syncing is an opt-in experience that syncs photos taken on your mobile phone to a private section on Facebook, viewable only to you, where you can view or post the photos if you choose. The feature was launched in 2012 when people took photos on their phones, but still posted primarily from computers.”

The albums that were synced will thus disappear from the social media platform completely so an additional two days are offered to all those who wish to recover the pictures.

“People that use photo syncing will have the option to move the photos they’ve previously synced to our new app Moments, where they will be able to view, download, or delete them,” the spokesperson stated. In case they do not want to download the Moments app by the company, then they can simply download the zip file of the photos which were initially synced to their PC. Moreover, they can also be deleted via your Facebook profile.

This tool by company was said to be a strong back up for those complaining about storage for the camera roll. However, Moment launched by Facebook does not have similar functionalities. The app basically sorts out the pictures into clusters and then shares them privately. This offers users to make a back up free of cost without affecting their smartphone storage. Moreover, there are other similar third party apps that can be sued to back up the pictures.

 

 

 

Facebook Desires To Put An End To Phone Numbers

Facebook now wants Messenger to take over phone numbers

It seems to be a very wild guess but most of us remember our own phone numbers but we do not really know about the numbers of others. So once the contact details of a person are fed into your smartphone, most of us don’t bother about them again. Since all you need to do for contacting people is to click on their names and that’s it. So it’s time for Facebook Inc. to seize the opportunity and put an end to phone numbers on the whole.

David Marcus, the Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook, has come up with a piece that is not a blog post but a cry to transform the way we do things- this revolution  is Facebook and particularly Facebook Messenger. He wrote by the end of the fiscal year of 2015 that almost more than 800 million individuals are now using Messenger.

“We made Messenger blazing fast, we introduced video calling, the ability to customize conversations with colors, nicknames and emojis and with Businesses on Messenger, we introduced a new way for businesses to engage their customers by providing them with a delightful, personal experience,” he claimed.

Initially, users could not add a personal touch to the conversations thus communication through words, vocal cord and mouth was only possible. However, emojis were a major transformation. Thus

So now this year, the agenda of the social media giant is to bring out the best for its messaging platform.

“We added helpful information at the top of new conversations so you always have the context of who you’re talking to if it’s not a Facebook friend, and with Message Requests, we built the foundational step of enabling you to find and talk to anyone,” Marcus insisted.

One of the major issues embraced by mankind is not to be able to parse your own friends on Facebook- who are expected to be very close to you and beyond that other human beings as well.

So now the company is adamant to change the way we communicate by putting an end to phone numbers and making Messenger your sole directory for all your family and friends. Imagine how easy life will be when you don’t really have to worry about learning the phone numbers.

With time, things are getting extremely digitalized thus this does not come as a huge surprise where numbers will soon be gone. Facebook has the power to change our everyday lives certainly.

 

Indian Activist Ridicule Facebook’s Effort Of Free Internet Access

The Free Basics Program has turned out to be a bone of contention in India

The proposal to offer free basic internet by Facebook Inc.’s CEO, Mer. Mark Zuckerberg became a victim of a conventional snag in India: People in the region cann accept getting anything free of cost.

Recently, a bunch of activist that deal with Internet security criticized the company for actually coming up with “disingenuous” claims which were opposing the Free Basics Internet program. This program gives access to the company to offer Internet services to remote areas where connectivity was not possible before. An open letter was generated according to which the activist claim that this program does not comply with the basics of net neutrality and thus results in partial Internet access.

According to the letter, which was devised by the digital advocacy firm Access Now stated, “If you think access to the Internet is a right like access to health care and clean drinking water.” Moreover, “then Facebook should support affordable access to the entire Internet for everyone, not access only to those services that Facebook or its partners deem acceptable.”

This clearly showcases the complexities associated to providing free Internet access which has somehow became a major human rights issue. The concern that has aroused in India is whether Free Basic is meeting with the standard set by net neutrality. The issue remains that the consumers must get equal access on the services present on the Internet.

The country fails to understand that the Free Basic program by the social media company is a blessing in disguise for all those poor rural masses that initially could not benefit from the service. The tech behemoth has collaborated with a local wireless network carrier namely Reliance to render this service. This service is already present in 36 other countries but in the past month, the company is only dealing with criticism for its efforts in the region. Most of the populace in India want access to this free service according to a poll that was conducted. 86% of the sample audience was in favor and believes that the service can exist with net neutrality.

“Those who aren’t connected want inexpensive, innovative new opportunities to come online,” reported a spokesperson from Facebook via an emailed statement on Thursday. “Regulators around the world who have looked at this issue have concluded that these types of programs can exist alongside strong Net neutrality rules.”

The efforts by Mr. Zuckerberg are commendable and are devoted to bringing about a positive change. However, Indian activist need to ponder on the issue again.