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Facebook tweaks your newsfeed by how long you read each post
In an unsurprising revelation, it turns out your Facebook news feed is watching you almost as much as you watch it. The Menlo Park-based company announced today that it is "improving" its news feature by taking into account not just whether someone liked or commented on an article but also by how much time they spent reading it. "Just because someone didn't like, comment or share a story in their News Feed doesn't mean it wasn't meaningful to them," Facebook explains."There are times when, for example, people want to see information about a serious current event, but don't necessarily want to like or comment on it."
Researchers can profile Facebook users to a 'T' with just their likes
Remember the time you liked a beer pong video on Facebook and thought nothing more of it? That may have said more about you than your friends and family ever knew, according to researchers at Cambridge and Stanford. They created a computer program that sifted through the Facebook likes of over 85,000 users to see if a person's preferences could rat out their true persona. The team used certain associations that seem fairly obvious; for instance, liking tattoos means you're more likely to drink alcohol. Others were more bizarre: apparently, people who like curly fries tend to be intelligent. Who knew?
Likes downloads Instagram pictures you have liked
Likes fixes a glaring problem with Instagram and it's free. The app is designed for iPhone 5 and up and for iOS 7 and up. In Instagram, you cannot save pictures you've liked. I save pictures because they inspire me, amuse me, because I want to later attempt to emulate them to improve my own photography, or because they are pictures of or by my friends and family and I want to remember them. But at any time, anyone can remove their pictures from Instagram and I will lose access to those photographs. Instagram only keeps track of your most recent likes so you cannot go back in time to see pictures you liked in an earlier time. Likes does one thing and one thing only: It downloads to your camera roll any pictures you want from the list of pictures you have liked. When you first run Likes, it asks you to authenticate yourself with Instagram. Once that is done, it presents a list of your favorited photos. A single tap downloads the picture to the "Likes" album in your camera roll (which it creates if it is not already there). A long tap and hold loads that picture in Instragram. And that's it! It's probably the simplest app I have ever used. Pictures that you can download are presented in a grid. Pictures that are in the process of downloading have a red circle that fills in radially (as with iTunes and the App Store). Pictures that are already downloaded have a check mark. The only problem I found with Likes is that it doesn't remember between sessions what has already been downloaded. The grid is clear as if nothing had been downloaded though all of the pictures I'd already downloaded were still in the "Likes" album in my camera roll. I also would like a feature where it periodically checks in the background for new pictures I have liked and sends a notification event to remind me to download the new liked pictures. Of course, this is easily automated using If This Than That. But for people who are not willing or interested in learning to use a service like IFTTT.com, Likes is an excellent solution.
Facebook to join Twitter in providing TV networks with user data
Now that Facebook has granted broadcasters access to your public wall posts, it wants to give them even more of your data -- but anonymously this time. Zuckerberg and Co. told the Wall Street Journal it'll supply the likes of ABC, NBC, FOX and others with detailed analytics on how much buzz a show is generating in terms of likes, comments and shares. It'll mine that info from private postings as well public ones, though it said that the data will be aggregated without revealing anyone's identity. Of course, Twitter and Nielsen have been supplying networks with such info for a while now, but Facebook claims its results are more meaningful, since viewers must ostensibly use their real identities. One CBS exec added that Facebook's wider demographic also seemed to jibe better with actual audience numbers, meaning that programming could become less affected by tech-savvy types and more by your mom.
Facebook's new Recommendations Bar pops up, just wants to be liked
Facebook's Recommendations Box sits passively on many websites, allowing us to engage or ignore as we see fit. But too much of the latter option has led to something slightly different: the new Recommendations Bar -- a pop-up variant which, when integrated by your favorite page, plugs site-specific links based on your friends' thumbs and shares. The Bar is similar to the in-house recommendation pop-ups we're all familiar with, but adds a like button for posting the current page to your timeline. It shouts much louder than the Box, so it's no surprise that in early tests the new plug-in produced a three-fold increase in click-throughs. In this case, privacy wasn't an afterthought -- Bar integration, like the Box, is at the site's discretion and sharing pages is very much on your terms. Just try not to accidently hit that like button during your daily scan of Bieber's homepage.
Instagram adds Photo Page to web: new colors, user comments, not much else
Instagram's been moving along briskly with its Android and iOS apps, but the hipster-tinter-photo-sharing-Facebook acquisition's web presence has been lagging behind in comparison. But there's good news now if you're desk-bound thanks to the new "Photo Page," which lets you log in, change your profile and add comments or likes to images. The other tweak is a fresh look for the site, matching the app with a blue, dare we say, Facebook-esque theme and larger images, no doubt to show off those mega-megapixel smartphone cameras. It's likely a first step in unifying its web offering and apps, and with a name like Photo Page, no one can accuse it of wasting that Facebook booty on marketing whizzes.
Guild Wars 2 nets 500K Facebook likes, releases Destiny's Edge art to celebrate
ArenaNet continues to roll out the rewards for being well-liked this week. Guild Wars 2 crossed the half-million Facebook like barrier, and as a result, the studio released a new epic piece of art for its fans. The picture is of Destiny's Edge, the adventuring group that features so prominently in Guild Wars 2, facing a rather fearsome foe: The Shatterer. According to the Facebook page, this is actually an in-game screenshot that's been "embellished" by ArenaNet artist Daniel Dociu. As with the other pictures that it has released, ArenaNet has made this image available as a high-resolution version as well. This art release comes at an auspicious time, as Guild Wars 2 is diving into a seven-hour beta stress test starting today at 2:00 p.m. EDT.
Guild Wars 2 releases underwater concept art
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, or in this case, 460,000 likes on Facebook. Reacting to the growing popularity of Guild Wars 2 in its social media, ArenaNet has released a brand-new piece of gorgeous concept art for you to gawk at. The piece shows Norn Eir Stegalkin finding something hidden deep underwater. Eir is one of the five key heroes of Destiny's Edge, the retired adventuring group that plays a huge part in the game. As Guild Wars 2 will have a significant underwater portion, this art is a good reminder that not all of the game's exploration and landmarks will take place out in the open air. The concept art is by ArenaNet's Jamie Ro and can be viewed in high resolution on Flickr.
Star Supremacy readying new update, Facebook contest
The dev team behind Star Supremacy is gearing up for its first update of 2012. The Colony Starship patch features new optimizations to the alliance system, under-the-hood performance tweaks, and new items in the cash shop (as well as a few price changes). The patch isn't quite live yet, but you can look for it this time tomorrow. In the meantime, Barbily Games has also issued a reminder about its latest Facebook promotion. When the game reaches the 500- and 1,000-like milestones, all players will receive in-game gifts. When the 30,000-like barrier is broken, three randomly selected players will win Ear Force X11 headsets.
