Facebook Faces Government Probe Over Study That Manipulated Users' Emotions Without Telling Them

Facebook faces a government investigation in Europe over its study of whether manipulating people's news feeds could change their emoti Reportedly recently,Facebook's experiment tweaked the algorithms of nearly 700,000 unwitting users, causing people to see an abnormally low number of either positive or negative posts. People who saw more negative posts wrote more negative posts, and vice versa, showing that their mood was being affected by the kinds of things they were reading on Facebook.

Now, governments in the U.K. and Ireland look set to investigate, according to the Financial Times:

The Information Commissioner's Office said it was probing the experiment and planned to ask Facebook questions after widespread outrage when it was revealed at the weekend. The regulator said it would also be in contact with the Irish data protection body, because Facebook has its European headquarters in Dublin.

A spokesperson for the ICO said it was too early to tell exactly what part of the law Facebook may have infringed. The regulator looks at how much personal data are used and whether users have given their consent.

Facebook won't be helped by the fact that the company didn't alter its terms of service to disclose to users that their posts would be used for research until four months after the experiment took place, according to Forbes:

Four months after this study happened, in May 2012, Facebook made changes to its data use policy, and that's when it introduced this line about how it might use your information: "For internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement." Facebook helpfully posted a "red-line" version of the new policy, contrasting it with the prior version from September 2011 - which did not mention anything about user information being used in "research."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg need not lie awake stressing over the outcome of any probe, however. The ICO only has the power to levy a fine of up to £500,000 ($857,000), the FT says - which is pocket change in terms of the $3 billion that the social network holds on its balance sheet.

Facebook Home developer team disbanded

Facebook has disbanded its Home (Android Launcher) team, but the app still lives. 

Facebook's plan to take over the smartphone has not panned out and the social networking site has disbanded its team that was initially responsible for developing Facebook Home. The Android skin released last year displayed Facebook photos on its lock screen and provided easy access to chat messages and status updates.

The Home app released last year wasn't a success that Facebook had hoped for. Although it did a good job of transforming an Android phone into one that felt purpose-built for Facebook, not many users took it up. The skin came preinstalled on the HTC first, but did not get a good response and disappeared shortly after its launch.

Facebook Home saw half a million downloads after its launch, but the growth stalled from there. Google Play lists that the skin has been installed between 1 million and 5 million times which is quiet low for Facebook. Facebook says that it still has a team working on Home, but chances of it moving forward are less. The app remains available in the Play Store, however it hasn't been updated since January.

Facebook has been working on new apps like Slingshot and Facebook Paper. Paper is a magazine-style news reader service and was launched in February. The service is very similar to Flipboard and Google Currents and pulls out relevant content including photos, videos and links from Facebook feed.

Facebook launched a Snapchat clone called Slingshot earlier this month. The app allows users to share videos and photos with their friends, but the only way recipients will be able to see the messages will be if they share something back on Slingshot. The app has been officially launched for Android and iOS platforms.

Google Shutting Down Orkut Social Network

Google Inc will shut down its early social-networking service, Orkut, which was launched ten years ago but has failed to put Google ahead in what has become one of the Web's most popular businesses.

Google said it will shut down Orkut, which is widely used in Brazil and India but hasn't caught on more broadly, on Sept. 30, to focus on its other social networking initiatives.

The company declined to say how many users Orkut has.

"Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell," Google said in a post on the Orkut blog post on Monday.

Orkut was launched early in 2004, the same year that Facebook Inc, now the world's No.1 social network with 1.28 billion users, was founded.

The service's shutdown comes as Google's social networking plans remain in question. In April, Vic Gundotra, the head of Google's social networking services, left the company.

Gundotra oversaw the 2011 launch of Google+, a social networking service similar to Facebook. Gundotra said in October that 300 million users visit the Google+ web page every month.

Google has increasingly sought to position Google+ less as a social networking "stream" that competes with Facebook, and more as a means of establishing a unified "user identity" system to improve Google's various Web properties. Last year, for example, Google began requiring users of its YouTube site to sign in with their Google+ identity before posting comments about videos.

The company said it would preserve an archive of all Orkut "communities" that will be available from Sept. 30.

"If you don't want your posts or name to be included in the community archive, you can remove Orkut permanently from your Google account," Google said.

Facebook updates iOS and Android apps with Nearby Friends invites and offline likes

Fcebook has two updates on the mobile world today. Facebook for iOS 11.0 got new additions to its Nearby Friends  feature while Android hit version 10.0 with offline posting. Both updates are available now in the Google Play Store and App Store.

For the iOS version Facebook only posted that today’s update included “improvements for reliability and speed.” But TechCrunch reportsthat after a bit of digging, it found two new updates for Nearby Friends. In the US version of the app, the social network has added search and invite friends buttons.

For Android, Facebook has added the following new features:

• Like posts, photos and Pages when you’re offline
• Remove tags you’ve created
• Remove tags of yourself that your friends have created
• Turn post notifications on and off
• Improvements to speed and reliability

Being able to remove tags that your friends have created is a wonderful way to make sure some of the more embarrassing things you did last night don’t end up in your Timeline.

➤ Facebook for iOS and Android

Microsoft purchase of Nokia's mobile business gets US approval

U.S. antitrust regulators have approved
Microsoft Corp's deal to buy Nokia
Corp's mobile phone business, the
Federal Trade Commission said on
Monday.
The approval, which was expected, was
dated November 29.

Devices & Services business in 5.44
billion euros deal
)
The next step will be for the companies
to win approval in Europe for the
proposed $7.3 billion transaction.
Two people familiar with the matter
told Reuters on November 22 that the
transaction was headed for
unconditional approval in Brussels.
The
EU competition watchdog has set a
December 4 deadline for its decision.
Nokia had in September agreed to sell
its devices and services business and
license its patents to Microsoft after
failing to recover from a late start in
the smartphone sector.

The purchase underscores Microsoft's
push into the competitive consumer
devices market, where it faces fierce
competition from market leader
Samsung Electronics and Apple .

Nokia shareholders in mid-November
gave a thumbs-up to the sale of what
was once Finland's biggest brand, at
one point worth 4 percent of the
national GDP.

© Thomson Reuters 2013

Facebook to make capital investments worth $1.6 billion in 2013

Social networking giant Facebook,
whose user base is expanding primarily
on the back of rising penetration in
emerging markets like India and Brazil,
will make capital investments worth USD
1.6 billion this year.
In the first half of this year, the
California-based firm incurred a
capital expenditure of USD 595 million
on setting up data centres and storage
infrastructure, among others.
Besides, Facebook shelled out USD 221
million on acquisitions and other assets
such as patents.
"We anticipate making capital
expenditures in 2013 of approximately
USD 1.6 billion," Facebook said in a
filing to the US Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC). Industry
watchers feel that the company will be
looking to capitalise on its user numbers
and its mobile advertising base.
Bolstered by rising number of users in
high growth markets like India and
Brazil, Facebook raked in 61 percent
USD 1.60 billion of its total revenues
from advertising in the second quarter
of this year.
Internet major Google, which is also
competing with Facebook, generated 92
percent of its revenues from its
advertisers in the six months ended
June 30.
Facebook's investment plans for
increasing infrastructure would get a
boost as it posted strong second
quarter results helped by a surge in
user base and rising mobile ad revenue
, which now represents 41 percent of
its total revenue from advertising,
they added.
Facebook posted a net income of USD
333 million for the April-June quarter
against a loss of USD 157 million in
year-ago period. Its revenue totalled
USD 1.81 billion in the second quarter,
an increase of 53 percent, compared
with USD 1.18 billion in the second
quarter of 2012.
"Cash used in investing activities
during the first six months of 2013
primarily resulted from USD 595 million
for capital expenditures related to the
purchase of servers,
networking equipment, storage
infrastructure and the construction of
data centres," Facebook said
It also spent USD 221 million on
acquisitions of businesses and other
assets like patents, according to the
filing.
On the back of surging user base in
the emerging markets of India and
Brazil, the social networking giant saw
its monthly active users jump 21
percent to 1.15 billion at the end of
June 2013.
"Users in India and Brazil represented
key sources of growth in the second
quarter of 2013 relative to the prior
year," Facebook has said.
The firm's global daily active users
(DAUs) rose by 27 percent to 699
million on average during June 2013
from 552 million during June 2012, again
helped by growth in India, Brazil and
other markets.