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Lifestage – New, Old, Borrowed, Facebook

Can Lifestage make Facebook trending for teenagers again?

Facebook announced Lifestage, a new and separate app which will cater exclusively to users under the age of 21 and under.

Facebook continues to remain a popular service in the world of today. However, the younger demographics have been leaving the social media giant. According to market studies, individuals under the age 21 are enjoying other social media services such as Snapchat more.

Lifestage, the new app from Facebook, takes heavy inspiration from Facebook’s 2004 model, as well as Snapchat and other popular social media apps.

Although it is currently available for iOS exclusively, Facebook is confident that Lifestage will quickly hit its popularity boom. The app is based around the idea that teenagers are interested in creating a public visual profile and use it to connect and share with others.

Social Features and Privacy Standing on Lifestage

Facebook designed its newest app to work in tight connection with already active school communities and networks.

With Lifestage, a typical user will be able to post and share personal video updates. Messaging can be managed through a “Reach Me” interface. Social media integration is built into the app.

In theory, the app will be one of the new great ways to keep in touch with classmates and schoolmates and to enable creative or social individuals to gain extra popularity in their school collectives.

However, several parties have repeatedly expressed their concern in regards to the app’s public-only settings. The target audience for Lifestage are teenagers with ages between 13 and 17. Currently, anyone on the internet could lie, state that they are under the age of 21 and that they are enrolled at a certain school.

In return, Facebook stated that privacy in its newest app will be guaranteed by easy and accessible options to report and block users. Past experience shows, however, that reporting and blocking users are both abusable and can lead to social media bullying.

Furthermore, reporting and blocking have only proved useful in dealing with the more verbose user base, making both options ineffective solutions when dealing with an issue which is easily fixable by adding a privacy filter.

Lifestage’s app icon is an upside down smiley.

Signing up for Lifestage does not require a Facebook account or any connectivity to Facebook. However, in order to ‘activate’ a school on Lifestage, at least 20 users need to be signed up with that school.

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Facebook Testing its Apps on Thousands of Phones in Cutting-Edge Data Center

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Facebook recently disclosed that it is relentlessly testing its Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp apps in a remote location in the Oregon Desert. Its Prineville, Oregon-based data center needs so much computing power that several ISPs have to provide Internet service to keep it going.

The data center is a model for Facebook’s other similar centers across the U.S. and Europe. Facebook needs a high-powered facility because of the countless requests for images, news feeds, and status updates coming from the social network billion plus users.

The Prineville plant, which was opened in 2011, also has lots of servers to support the company’s research in Artificial Intelligence and thousands of Android- and iOS-powered handsets that allows its technicians test apps on a 24 h basis.

The data center also impresses with size: it has four buildings, each unit being able to host two Walmarts inside. But you’ll need to drive for about three hours from Portland to reach it. Interestingly enough, in Facebook facility’s vicinity Apple has built its own hig-tech data center dubbed ConnectWay.

Google has a data center in The Dalles, Oregon since the place has cheap electric power coming from hydroelectric plants. So,this may be the reason Facebook and other tech giants picked the U.S.’s ninth largest state to run operations.

Temperature is regulated through monster fans and water coolants instead of resource-draining air conditioning systems. Inside the center, the temperature doesn’t go beyond 82F. Facebook says that the facility is so energy efficient that it has reached 1.07 on the power efficiency scale. In other words, the facility’s non-computing devices use just seven percent of the center’s energy use.

The building also host super-powerful computing devices such as servers that are upgraded on a constant basis. One hundred twenty of the 165 technicians that work at the facility keep a constant watch on the servers and replace broken parts.

Facebook also boasts that its stored data is not redundant, i.e. there aren’t any duplicates of the information. Instead the data and the center that hosts it are resilient i.e. ready to be at the fingertip of Facebook users.

However, the company has backup of the data but in other centers such the ones in Iowa or Sweden. This makes each facility all the more energy-efficient.

Yet, the most important piece of news is that the company wants your phone to be as energy efficient as it can be too. So, it tests its popular apps on newer and older handsets to ensure that the software doesn’t drain too much life from your phone’s battery.

Technicians are especially interested in app updates that may affect battery performance. As a result, if they spot an anomaly they try to fix it.

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Trouble Sleeping? Turn Away From Social Media

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Trouble sleeping? Turn away from social media because researchers founds they are prone to fragmented sleep patterns among frequent users. There’s no doubt that social media has taken over the internet. Be it for pictures, posts, videos, or overall existing in the digital world, most people have an account here or there.

However, besides online bullying or fierce political debates that know no end, there are other issues that can be attributed to prolonged use. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh conducted a study on 1,788 adults in the United States, aged between 19 and 32 years old. The purpose was to hone in on the effect of social media on sleep.

Previous studies have shown that smartphones and other gadgets may have an impact, but this is the first of its kind that directly concentrates on several platforms. The participants were asked about their frequency of use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine, and LinkedIn. These are all major social media brands that have proven themselves popular among young adults.

According to their findings, each person spent, on average, around 61 minutes per day on social media and visited various accounts around thirty times per week. Over 50% of the participants reported problems sleeping that ranged from medium to high disturbances. And, apparently, those who often frequented social media had the biggest problems. This ranged from insomnia, trouble falling asleep, or not getting enough rest through the night.

Those who frequently checked social media throughout the week were three times more likely to report sleep disturbances. On the other hand, those who also spent the most total time on various platforms were twice as likely to have trouble sleeping. Whether frequency of use or total time, it seemed that avid social media users did report the most problems.

According to lead author of the study, Dr. Jessica Levenson, from the university’s Department of Psychiatry, this is the first time a study has shown the impact of social media on sleep. And it’s no wonder. Technically, this is the first generation to grow up with such an extensive diversity of social media platforms. They’re are in full bloom and too many options to count. However, it’s also very impacting.

This may indicate that young adults reporting sleep disturbances should also be inquired by doctors on their social media use. Then, perhaps a method to stop the “obsessive checking” should be one of the methods used. However, the matter requires more investigation. While there is a definite association, it’s difficult to say which influences which.

Does social media cause sleep disturbances? Do people with trouble sleeping frequent social media more often? Or it is a combination of both? It’s tough to tell, but the researchers will persist with their investigations.

Image source: static.images.publisher.attn.com

Twitter Employees Are Leaving the Ship

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Last weekend something happened at Twitter that lead to the departure of 5 executives.

It seems that major Twitter employees are leaving the ship to work for the competition, or simply other, more challenging, projects. The last one to do so is Kevin Weil, former product head at Twitter, now Instagram’s product head. This change transpired after this weekend’s shift in Twitter’s leading staff.

Twitter once was a technological advancement and the number one social media platform. But things have taken a change for the worse in the last quarters and its stock prices have plummeted and the fans moved on to Facebook, ScapChat and Instagram that seem to be, at present times, better suited to the public’s demands.

This weekend a number of important names left Twitter to go work at other companies or projects, some didn’t announce a new collaboration at all, but they did resign their position at Twitter. Things are not yet clear on this Sunday’s sudden turn of events for the social media giant, Twitter, and there are no official statements on the cause of all these resignations and changes in the company.

It seems that the head of Vine, Jason Toff, has, ironically enough, tweeted that he is leaving Twitter to join the giant Google on its work on virtual reality products and projects. He is one of the few who announced a new career path.

Katie Stanton Jacobs, now former head of all media relations at Titter and Alex Roetter, now former senior VP of engineering have also announced their departure, but did now communicate if they have a position secured by another company, or if they have any other project in the making.

Now Kevin Weil joins the other leaders at Twitter and resigns his position as product head at Twitter to accept the position as product head at Instagram, a branch of Facebook, and the main reason for Twitter’s collapse on the social media market.

At Instagram, Kevin Weil will be under the command of Kevin Systrom, Instagram CEO.

It is not yet clear why twitter employees are leaving the ship, but hopefully, it is not because it is about to sink. Maybe what happened Sunday was a difference of opinions that made the board members reconsider the people in charge of Twitter. But this theory does not match the present CEO at Twitter, Jack Dorsey, official statement, in which he assured the public that the executives that are leaving the company were in no way fired from their positions.

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Instagram Update: Photo-editing app adds five new filters, revamps design

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Famous photo-editing app Instagram has rolled out a new update, bringing as many as five new photo filters to the exciting application.

In its official blogpost, the company said, “Inspired by the photography, art, fashion and design of the global Instagram community, we’re releasing five new filters that we believe are our best yet. You’ll see the filters at the front of your filter tray: Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Aden and Perpetua. They soften and subtly shift colors to achieve the look and feel you want for your each photo.”

Instagram has not only unveiled five new filters but has also worked on updating the display of each filter in the app.

If the user apply a filter on any of his/her photo, “each filter icon on the bottom will display a blurred preview of the image with the applied effects.”

Apart from the filters, Instagram has also launched a new Manage button that will allow the user to just tap in order to arrange filters according to their wish.

While Instagram’s iOS version 6.4.0 will be available from today in Apple’s App Store, the Instagram for Android version 6.12.0 will be available on Google Play from today.

The year 2014 has been a great year for Instagram, market analysts say. In 2014, it has announced the significant rise in its user base, which is more than 300 million users who are sharing over 70 million photos and videos each day on the app.

The photo sharing app has crossed 200 million users in March, while 300 million mark by the end of this year. This means the app witnessed a growth in its user base by a whopping 50 percent in the past few months.

With this significant growth in user base, Instagram has overtaken micro-blogging site Twitter, which enjoys 284 million active users.

Instagram defeat Twitter with over 300 million monthly users

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Photo and video sharing service Instagram now enjoys a massive user base which is bigger than micro-blogging site Twitter.

According to the reports, it has now gained over 300 million monthly active users across the world. This is a significant 50 percent increase in the last nine months.

Debra Aho Williamson, a principal analyst at eMarketer, said, “With 300 million monthly users, Instagram’s audience is becoming very attractive to marketers, especially brand advertisers and its rapid growth will only make it more appealing.”

Experts find the big growth in user base as an encouraging news for the photo-sharing platform as it will result in attracting more advertisers.

Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has recently introduced video advertisements and sells sponsored photo posts.

The photo-sharing platform has been making rigorous efforts to remove fake accounts and spam and will soon begin verification of accounts belonging to celebrities, athletes and brands.

In a blog post, Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom, wrote, “As Instagram gets bigger, we’re focused on helping you discover photos and videos from people who you care about, whether it’s a friend or your favorite musician.”

According to Systrom, the users share over 70 million photos and videos per day.

Both Instagram and Facebook have been witnessing a stronger user figures lately.

66 percent of its monthly visitors, Facebook holds the top spot in the United States that comes to its service every day. It has 1.3 billion users worldwide. Instagram is at the second position with 43 percent followed by Twitter at 40 percent.

The figures were found in a survey which was released this week by stock research firm UBS.

Social Features and Privacy Standing on Lifestage

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