Facebook starts looking for click-bait so you don’t have to

Today we’re announcing some improvements to News Feed to help people find the posts and links from publishers that are most interesting and relevant, and to continue to weed out stories that people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don’t want to see. We’re making two updates, the first to reduce click-baiting headlines, and the second to help people see links shared on Facebook in the best format.

Click-Baiting Headlines

“Click-baiting” is when a publisher posts a link with a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see. Posts like these tend to get a lot of clicks, which means that these posts get shown to more people, and get shown higher up in News Feed.

However, when we asked people in an initial survey what type of content they preferred to see in their News Feeds, 80% of the time people preferred headlines that helped them decide if they wanted to read the full article before they had to click through.

Over time, stories with “click-bait” headlines can drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.

So how do we determine what looks like click-bait?

One way is to look at how long people spend reading an article away from Facebook. If people click on an article and spend time reading it, it suggests they clicked through to something valuable. If they click through to a link and then come straight back to Facebook, it suggests that they didn’t find something that they wanted. With this update we will start taking into account whether people tend to spend time away from Facebook after clicking a link, or whether they tend to come straight back to News Feed when we rank stories with links in them.

Another factor we will use to try and show fewer of these types of stories is to look at the ratio of people clicking on the content compared to people discussing and sharing it with their friends. If a lot of people click on the link, but relatively few people click Like, or comment on the story when they return to Facebook, this also suggests that people didn’t click through to something that was valuable to them.

Sharing links in posts

Our second update relates to sharing links in posts. When people share a link on Facebook it often appears in News Feed with a large picture, a headline and some text that gives context on the link:

News Feed FYI Click-baiting 2

Sometimes publishers share links in status updates or in the text caption above photos:

We’ve found that people often prefer to click on links that are displayed in the link format (which appears when you paste a link while drafting a post), rather than links that are buried in photo captions. The link format shows some additional information associated with the link, such as the beginning of the article, which makes it easier for someone to decide if they want to click through. This format also makes it easier for someone to click through on mobile devices, which have a smaller screen.

With this update, we will prioritize showing links in the link-format, and show fewer links shared in captions or status updates.

The best way to share a link after these updates will be to use the link format. In our studies, these posts have received twice as many clicks compared to links embedded in photo captions. In general, we recommend that you use the story type that best fits the message that you want to tell – whether that’s a status, photo, link or video.

Will this affect my Page?

A small set of publishers who are frequently posting links with click-bait headlines that many people don’t spend time reading after they click through may see their distribution decrease in the next few months. We’re making these changes to ensure that click-bait content does not drown out the things that people really want to see on Facebook.




Source : Facebook  ,  slashgear

[Continue reading...]

Twitter to Remove Images of the Deceased Upon Families’ Request

Twitter said on Tuesday it will remove images of deceased individuals at the request of family members, a move that comes a week after Robin Williams’s daughter said she is quitting the platform after being sent disturbing photo-shopped images of her father’s death.

“In order to respect the wishes of loved ones, Twitter will remove imagery of deceased individuals in certain circumstances,” said a statement tweeted by Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler on Tuesday.

The statement instructed immediate family members and other authorized individuals who would like to “request the removal of images or video of deceased individuals, from when critical injury occurs to the moments before or after death” to email privacy@twitter.com.

The change gives grieving family members a way to scrub the social media outlet of images or videos of their loved ones–whether the content itself breaches Twitter’s rules or not. The new policy is a slight pivot for Twitter, a champion of freedom of speech since its founding and where sensitive content such as nudity and other graphic images have proliferated compared with other social media sites.

Twitter doesn’t allow obscene or pornographic images in user profiles, abusive behavior and threats of violence and the posting of private identifiable information. The company doesn’t actively monitor the half a billion tweets that flood its website and mobile apps for questionable content. Instead, it is up to the users to flag such content, which Twitter will then review.

While its relatively open policy has made Twitter a powerful communication medium, it has also led to plenty of corrosive content and behavior.

This insensitive side of Twitter—though not new—gained widespread attention when Zelda Williams, the daughter of the recently deceased Robin Williams, was harassed on Twitter last week. Williams was reportedly sent fake photo-shopped images of her father’s death and other insulting messages. Williams then said she would no longer use Twitter as well as Instagram and Tumblr. The two Twitter accounts who sent the images were suspended.

In a rare statement responding to the incident, Del Harvey, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, said last week: “We are in the process of evaluating how we can further improve our policies to better handle tragic situations like this one. This includes expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users.”

The new policy also comes hours after gruesome photos and videos depicting the beheading of an American photojournalist were circulated on the platform. The account that tweeted the images has since been suspended.

Twitter, however, included a caveat on the removal requests. It added that in its review “Twitter considers public interest factors such as the newsworthiness of the content and may not be able to honor every request.”




Source : blogs.wsj.com

[Continue reading...]

Google buys city guides app Jetpac, support to end on September 15

Google has acquired the team behind Jetpac, an iPhone app for crowdsourcing city guides from public Instagram photos.

The app will be pulled from the App Store in coming days, and support for the service will be discontinued on September 15.

 Google buys city guides app Jetpac, support to end on September 15Jetpac’s deep learning software used a nifty trick of scanning our photos to evaluate businesses and venues around town. As MIT Technology Review notes, the app could tell whether visitors were tourists, whether a bar is dog-friendly and how fancy a place was.

It even employed humans to find hipster spots by training the system to count the number of mustaches and plaid shirts.

Interestingly, Jetpac’s technology was inspired by Google researcher Geoffrey Hinton, so it makes perfect sense for Google to bring the startup into its fold. If this means that Google Now will gain the ability to automatically alert me when I’m entering a hipster-infested area, then I’m an instant fan.

Jetpac also built two iOS apps that tapped into its Deep Belief neural network to offer users object recognition.

“Imagine all photos tagged automatically, the ability to search the world by knowing what is in the world’s shared photos, and robots that can see like humans,” the App Store description for its Spotter app reads. If that’s not a Googly description, I don’t know what is.



Source : thenextweb.com

[Continue reading...]

Apple’s Tim Cook demands bigger stock risk (and costs himself $4m)

Apple CEO Tim Cook has pressured the company board on pay, though not the way you might imagine: the chief exec has demanded his salary be more closely linked to Apple's stock price, as a result tumbling by $4m since the company failed to meet its targets. The Apple board had intended to base less than half of Cook's annual stock grants on the CEO performance-based metric it decided to shift to earlier this year. However, according to a preliminary filing with the SEC, Cook himself pushed for a greater chunk of his renumeration to be at risk, arguing that it would "set a leadership example."

The initial motivation for the board and the early numbers it collectively had in mind was to limit the risk placed on Cook's overall salary. The change in scheme won't see Cook paid more if Apple out-performs its stock goals - effectively to perform better than the other stock in the S&P 500 index - and so the "downside risk" is the only thing that could hit him.

However, Cook disagreed that he should be better insulated from Apple's overall performance, and that decision has cost him considerably this past year. The CEO argued that the scheme was an opportunity to set an example around "compensation and governance" and so requested a larger percentage than the board had in mind.

As a result, the Apple Compensation Committee opted to make a full 50-percent of Cook's stock grants dependent on how Apple performs.

With Apple's stock falling 26-percent in the August 2012-2013 period, compared to an 18-percent rise from the S&P 500 as a whole, that means Cook's entire at-risk portion of his vested stock was lost. That, CNN calculates, was worth almost $4m.

Nonetheless, that was still just a tenth of Cook's overall rewards over the past year. His salary at Apple is "only" $1.4m, but with cash and stock grant bonuses his total compensation is over $40m.

It's not the first time Cook has sacrificed more money than Apple wanted to give him. Back in 2012, he turned down a $75m dividend.




source : slashgear

[Continue reading...]

Philips and Samsung raided in Europe anti-competition investigation

Samsung and Philips have confirmed' that they are under investigation by the European Commission' about potential anticompetitive behaviors, after EU inspectors raided a number of companies' earlier this week. The EC did not name the targeted companies; however, both firms revealed to the BBC that they' were co-operating with investigators around concerns that they have forced' higher prices by restricting availability of certain consumer' electronics and small appliances in Europe.

The Commission has concerns that the companies' concerned may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit' anticompetitive agreements or concerted practices' the EC said in a statement. “The Commission has grounds' to suspect that the companies subject to the inspections may have' put in place restrictions on online sales of consumer' electronic products and small domestic appliances.

Although the Commission' is keen to point out that being raided isn’t necessarily' a sign of presumed guilt, the potential penalties' should Samsung, Philips, or other firms involved be found' guilty are significant.

These restrictions, if proven, may lead to higher consumer' prices or the unavailability of products through' certain online sales channels the EC points out. As a result, it has the right to impose' fines of as much as 10-percent of global annual' turnover.

Were the maximum' penalty applied to Samsung something highly unlikely that could mean a fine' in the region of billions of dollars.

Exactly which products are proving' contentious is unknown, the practice of limiting availability of particular models to different' countries or even specific retailers is not especially unusual. What would incur EC wrath, however, would be if that exclusivity' was also used to artificially buoy' pricing to the point that it was deemed anticompetitive' for consumers.

It’s not the only 'anti-competition issues Samsung is facing in Europe at the moment. The company is under investigation for alleged antitrust' behaviors around patent licensing, after Apple complained that it was 'refusing to agree to fair terms for vital 3G standards. Back in October, Samsung offered a portfolio' of concessions to the EC in the hopes of escaping' a fine over the issue.


Source : definefreak

[Continue reading...]