Facebook to start showing ads in Groups

Facebook, the biggest website in the world by amount of time spent, has started showing targeted advertising on ‘Groups’,  the social network’s equivalent of forums. The ads will be based on the interests of the user,  Facebook  said in a communication to group administrators. The move marks the coming of age of ‘Groups’, which Facebook […]

Quora imposes restrictions on anonymous users; to pre-screen anon content; stops likes, comments

Quora, the question and answer app that is very popular in certain pockets of population in India and abroad, said has made three crucial changes to its anonymity policy: installing a mandatory screening process, preventing anonymous users from liking and commenting, and removing direct linkage between anonymous content and their authors on the back-end systems. […]

Facebook biggest beneficiary of Reliance Jio free data

It’s common knowledge that Reliance Jio’s free data service has massively increased Internet usage in India, but a new report throws light on what categories have been benefited and which have not. The biggest beneficiary of the free data offer from Reliance Jio is — yes, you guessed it right — social media, which technically […]

Why Google’s takeover of Twitter is inevitable

When I started using social media about 8-9 years ago, Facebook and Twitter were largely equal in their cool factor. In fact, while it was not obvious what Facebook was (a more intrusive form of Orkut, anyone?), the possibilities of Twitter seemed as limitless as the places where your ‘contacts’ lived. Over the next nine years, Facebook […]

Facebook to explore putting ads on Free Basics in the future

Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, said it will explore the option of putting advertising in its ‘free Internet’ platform – Free Basics. Participating in a discussion on Reddit, Facebook’s Vice President in charge of Internet.org, Chris Daniels said it’s a possibility the company will look at in the future. Facebook had come under […]

Facebook VP to take questions on Reddit AMA today 6 pm on Free Basics and Net Neutrality

Facebook’s Vice President in charge of Internet.org, Chris Daniels will answer ‘any questions’ on the discussion website Reddit at 6 pm today. The move comes in the wake of an uproar in social media in India over what many perceive as Facebook’s attempt to take over the Internet, especially in lower-income countries like India. Daniels […]

COLUMN: The True Price of Facebook’s ‘Free Internet’ program

Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, is prompting its users to send a submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to save its ‘Free Basics’ program, urging them to fight the “small, vocal group” of net neutrality activists. “A small, vocal group of critics are lobbying to have Free Basics banned on the basis […]

RCom offers free access to select sites, raises net neutrality issues

Reliance Communications has started offering free access to its customers to a select group of around 33 websites free of charge to its subscribers. It was not clear whether the ‘free Internet’ platform from Reliance Communications is open to all websites free of charge, or only for those websites who are willing to pay the […]

Kerala Facebook group gets support from Physicist Lawrence Krauss

Members of the Malayalam rationalist group Freethinkers were pleasantly surprised today as world renowned physicist and campaigner for spreading scientific education, Lawrence M Krauss, lent his voice to those opposing the shut down of their group. The Freethinkers Facebook group has been shut down several times by Facebook, reportedly because religious people were offended by […]

Facebook wants to become a platform for public content

Facebook wants to emerge as a platform for public content, and not just private or person-to-person content, but is not really offering a video platform for content providers like Youtube, Facebook’s vice president for media partnerships said. “We want to be a platform for sharing of public content,” Justin Osofsky said at India’s FICCI Frames […]

Facebook now has an exclusive newsfeed for Pages

Facebook has unveiled a new newsfeed feature dedicated exclusively to Facebook pages. The new feature, that can be accessed at www.facebook.com/pages/feed, shows ‘stories’ only from Facebook Pages that the user has subscribed to. The idea seems to be to allow users to track news more effectively, while keeping out personal updates from Facebook friends out […]