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Facebook’s New Dating Service Takes On Tinder

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Facebook’s chief has said that 2018 has been an “intense year” for his firm.

But Mark Zuckerberg also took the opportunity to unveil a dating service among other new products at his firm’s annual F8 developers conference in San Jose, California.

He told his audience that the match-making feature would take privacy issues in mind and would launch “soon”.

The company can ill afford another data scandal as it continues to be embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica affair.

“There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single,” said Mr Zuckerberg.

“And if we are committed to building meaningful relationships, then this is perhaps the most meaningful of all.”

Shares in the dating business Match Group fell after the announcement and closed more than 22% below their opening price.

The firm owns Tinder, a dating app that sources its profile information from Facebook.

Privacy row

Facebook has faced fierce criticism ever since it emerged that it had failed to check whether political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had deleted data harvested about millions of its users.

Mark said that this was a “major breach of trust” that must never happen again.

As part of efforts to restore confidence, he said the firm was building a new Clear History tool to provide members with more control over how their information is used.

The feature will:

  • let members see which third-party sites and apps Facebook collects data from
  • provide the ability to delete the information
  • prevent Facebook from being able to add such details to their profile in the future

 

Facebook has acknowledged that the tool will take several months to develop, and that it would still need to retain related information in “rare cases” for security reasons.

Online dating

Mark also addressed his company’s efforts to tackle fake news and detect operations designed to disrupt elections.

The headline feature is a new service to help singletons on the platform meet potential dates.

He said the opt-in feature would focus on “real long-term relationships, not just hook-ups”, and would exclude existing friends from potential matches.

“We have designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning,” he added.

 

Twitter Comments

BlackandPaper@BlackandPaper1

Given the privacy scandal swirling around #facebook, does anyone else think announcing the platform is getting into the dating game a bit strange? In denial? Creepy? Just a Question! #FacebookF8

 

Jack Appleby@JuiceboxCA

First look at Facebook Dating.
Notice the sample profile is 36 yrs old.
Notice that “this is gonna be for building real, long-term relationships” quote.
Zuck isn’t chasing Tinder or Bumble (yet) – he’s after the older demo on Match & OKCupid. Remember, 54% of FB users are 35+.

 

Nikhil Sonnad

✔@nkl

Facebook: We don’t use your data to do anything creepy or invasive.

Also Facebook: We are launching a dating site where you will be algorithmically matched with your statistically perfect partner using our model of your interests and psychological type.

WhatsApp & Instagram

Mr Zuckerberg also announced that video chat and new augmented reality filters were coming to its photo-sharing Instagram app.

In addition, he said that group video calling would soon launch on its WhatsApp messaging service.

Big businesses will also benefit from new WhatsApp tools to help them communicate with their customers, he declared.

The chief executive also paid tribute to WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan Koum, who announced he was quitting the company yesterday.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is we’ve built the largest, fully encrypted network in the world,” Mr Zuckerberg said.

According to an earlier report by the Washington Post, Mr Koum had decided to leave because he was unhappy that the forthcoming business tools would involve a weakening of WhatsApp’s encryption.

 

Virtual Reality

Mr Zuckerberg rounded off his list of unveils by revealing that his company’s Oculus virtual reality division had begun shipping its first standalone headset, meaning the device does not need to be plugged into a PC or smartphone to work.

He said the $199 kit – which costs £199 in the UK – was the “easiest way to get into VR” and had the “highest quality lenses and optics that we have ever built”.

The firm’s larger Oculus Rift headsets have proved less popular than many industry insiders had predicted, and appear to have been outsold by Sony’s less powerful PlayStation VR gear.

Experts are split about the new device’s prospects.

“The new device makes VR much more accessible to everyone,” commented Adrian Willings from the gadget review site Pocket-lint.

“It’s a brilliant middle ground, but it’s a mobile experience so not as good as a PC one.”

But the head of games at the IHS consultancy was less positive.

“I see the Oculus Go headset as quite awkwardly positioned versus existing technology in the market,” said Piers Harding-Rolls.

“The major thing it has going for it is its price point, but the fact it has a similar user-experience to a premium smartphone adapter headset limits its appeal.”

 

Overview

For Mark Zuckerberg there were two audiences for his speech – the 5,000 developers in the hall, many of them anxious about their businesses, and the two billion Facebook users who don’t know whether they should trust the social network.

For developers, who have seen much of their access to data frozen as the privacy crisis deepens, he announced the reopening of app reviews. That means an end to a logjam for new apps.

There was a mild cheer for this quite limited move and a huge one when he told attendees they would all walk away with a free Oculus Go VR headset – some people are easily pleased.

For the wider audience, Zuckerberg kept hammering away at what has become his new mantra – that Facebook needs to take a broader view of its responsibilities.

He admitted mistakes – the Cambridge Analytica breach of trust, failing to spot Russian interference in elections – and outlined the various steps being taken to combat fakery, to investigate dodgy apps and to give users more control.

Apart from a new feature allowing users to clear their history – with the warning that it might make the Facebook experience worse – there was little that was new.

But there was a clear defiant message – yes, Facebook was acting to make users safer, but it would continue to launch new services like dating that expanded its reach.

Mark Zuckerberg thinks Facebook’s huge global audience still believes in his vision – no real signs here that he has been chastened by recent events.

 

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  • BBC

 

 

 

How Facebook Is Taking on LinkedIn in the Recruitment Space

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Facebook could be seen as going for the jugular while LinkedIn sits in stasis following its the acquisition by Microsoft. Microsoft may find itself on the back foot when it finally gets the reigns of the largest job network, LinkedIn. I’m talking of course about the new initiative by Facebook that’ll allow business pages to start posting job adverts.

facebook vs linkedin

 

Facebook are certainly not afraid to take on competitors, like their battle with Snap Inc, via Instagram through the stories feature. Facebook have also been running an aggressive campaign globally to try and get their live features off the ground.

With the global staffing market being worth £429 billion, you can stake on Facebook capitalising on the massive potential of this new initiative.

facebook vs linkedin

So what are Facebook doing exactly?

Facebook has released the ability for company pages to post job openings and subsequently review the application they receive, all within Facebook. What makes this more interesting is that you can auto-fill your application with your company details, while communicate easily with the applicants through your company page messenger app, giving you a process that is automated, simple and quick.

In their recent press-release explaining the product, Facebook made it clear they understand the problem businesses have for filing job places with their quote “40% of UK small businesses report that filling jobs was more difficult than they expected.” Facebook then expressed their interest in solving that issue, so could this mean another recruitment killer or an opportunity for the savvy recruiter?

Facebook is a social media platform that is already seeing tremendous growth with a massive 1.87 billion active users. It could prove to be an extremely lucrative platform in which you can fill your job openings. But, the most burning questions is: “Wouldn’t company owners now skip Recruiters, and go place their jobs on Facebook?”

There’s two ways to think of this, the first is as a recruiter you’re offering expertise and superior knowledge in the acquisition of the right candidates, saving the employer time and money through the selection and hiring process. Look at it as a web-designer might. Sure anyone could build a website with one of the many pieces of software that makes is easy, but a smart company would hire an experienced professional in the field who’ll create a truly unique and well-designed product that will make the client money and save them time.

My second way of thinking about this is a true innovative individual always sees the opportunity in danger. Facebook has subsequently opened its gates to a massive database of potential candidates – making your job easier. When this platform comes to Europe learn it and master it, so you can add another string to your bow. Either post your client openings on your Facebook company page for these companies, or get control of their company page and set it up better than they ever could.

Additional Benefits

If you’re working with a high volume of candidates Facebook has said that you’ll be able to download the relevant information through CSV (Excel Spreadsheet) that you’ll then be able to upload into your CRM, and then work your magic on them.

Facebook is great at seeing the monetary gain in their initiatives, so expect some kind of power feature where you’ll be able to allocate some of your budget to get your job postings out to a very specific segmentation of potential candidates.

Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook sees a great majority of its user’s activity during their downtime, away from the prying eyes of their co-workers they’ll be certainly more likely to look at potential jobs that fit their bill. Couple this with the envy of seeing the highlights of your successful friends lives wanting you to peruse a more interesting / high salary job. You’ve got yourself a good number of potential candidates that are engaged and looking for a new job.

Facebooks Algorithm will make your job postings appear often for your biggest fans. To deal with the sheer influx of information that appears on the average persons newsfeed, Facebook developed an algorithm that gives precedence to content from pages and people you engage with. Be engaging with your Facebook activity and create a loyal following who’re liking your content and your posted jobs will be a regular site on their newsfeed.

The new jobs feature gives the company a page a separate tab – Which means savvy employers will be able to use this as a Landing Page, in which they can send out to potential candidates.

The fact you can communicate with you applicants through messenger will be extremely powerful. Facebook messenger has a huge amount of active users, who’ll enjoy the novelty and convenience of communicating directly with an agency. This makes it perfect to get quick concise answers to speed up the turnaround time, placing the right candidate quicker.

Wrap up

Recruitment on Facebook isn’t something that’s entirely new, and many Recruiters have used sponsored posts and large engaged followings to place candidates through this social media platform. Yet this new job feature means Facebook are capitalising in on this missing link, and will certainly throw their weight into making it a success.

We suggest you learn all you can for your Facebook strategies and prepare for this feature to come to Europe. Because if you don’t, you’ll be sure your competitors will.

Could this truly take LinkedIn off the #1 spot?

The staffing market is something that’s been in LinkedIn’s court for so long that they’ve perfected a system that has been successfully used by Recruiters all over the world. With things like their premium Recruiter platform, LinkedIn has capitalised on this market in a big way so don’t expect them to roll over anytime soon, or even lose their spot.

If you require any further support with your Recruitment plans, or want to know more on how we can advertise your Job over social media please send us a DM, PM, IM, email or just simply call 0330 2233 047

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Harriet Davis – The Recruitment Network.

 

5 Major Tech Giants collaborate in Future of AI

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The world’s biggest technology companies are joining forces to consider the future of artificial intelligence (AI).

Amazon, Google’s DeepMind, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft will work together on issues such as privacy, safety and the collaboration between people and AI.

Dubbed the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, it will include external experts.

One said he hoped the group would address “legitimate concerns”.

“We’ve seen a very fast development in AI over a very short period of time,” said Prof Yoshua Bengio, from the University of Montreal.

“The field brings exciting opportunities for companies and public organisations. And yet, it raises legitimate questions about the way these developments will be conducted.”

Bringing the key players together would be the “best way to ensure we all share the same values and overall objectives to serve the common good”, he added.

One notable absentee from the consortium is Apple. It has been in discussions with the group and may join the partnership “soon”, according to one member.

The group will have an equal share of corporate and non-corporate members and is in discussions with organisations such as the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

It stressed that it had no plans to “lobby government or other policy-making bodies”.

“AI has tremendous potential to improve many aspects of life, ranging from healthcare, education and manufacturing to home automation and transport and the founding members… hope to maximise this potential and ensure it benefits as many people as possible,” it said.

It will conduct research under an open licence in the following areas:

  • ethics, fairness and inclusivity
  • transparency
  • privacy and interoperability (how AI works with people)
  • trustworthiness, reliability and robustness

Microsoft’s managing director of research hailed the partnership as a “historic collaboration on AI and its influences on people and society”, while IBM’s ethics researcher Francesca Rossi said it would provide “a vital voice in the advancement of the defining technology of this century”.

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google’s artificial intelligence division, DeepMind, said he hoped the group would be able to “break down barriers for AI teams to share best practice and research ways to maximise societal benefits and tackle ethical concerns”.

And Amazon’s director of machine learning, Ralf Herbrich, said the time was ripe for such a collaboration.

“We’re in a golden age of machine learning and AI,” he said.

“As a scientific community, we are still a long way from being able to do things the way humans do things, but we’re solving unbelievably complex problems every day and making incredibly rapid progress.”

Artificial intelligence is beginning to find roles in the real world – from the basic AI used in smartphone voice assistants and web chatbots to AI agents that can take on data analysis to significant breakthroughs such as DeepMind’s victory over champion Go player Lee Sedol.

The win – in one of the world’s most complex board games – was hailed as a defining moment for AI, with experts saying it had come a decade earlier than anyone had predicted.

DeepMind now has 250 scientists at its King’s Cross headquarters, working on a variety of projects, including several tie-ins with the NHS to analyse medical records.

In a lecture at the Royal Academy of Engineering, founder Dr Demis Hassabis revealed the team was now working on creating an artificial hippocampus, an area of the brain regarded by neuroscientists as responsible for emotion, creativity, memory and other human attributes.

But as AI has developed, so have concerns about where the technology is heading.

One of the most vocal and high-profile naysayers is Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, who has tweeted the technology is “potentially more dangerous than nukes [nuclear weapons]” and expressed concerns humans were “just the biological boot loader for digital super-intelligence”.

In order to combat this fear, Google are developing their own AI kill switch which will always allow humans to maintain control over AI machines.

Last year, Mr Musk set up his own non-profit AI group, OpenAI.

It is not, at this stage, part of the Partnership on AI.

If you found this article interesting, check out more similar content by visiting our latest industry news page. You can access it by following this link!

 

– Jane Wakefield

Oculus Rift to Launch in UK

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Facebook has finally unveiled the UK launch date and price for its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset

Oculus Rift, the Facebook-owned virtual reality headset for gamers, is finally coming to the UK next month.

After launching in the US in March , Oculus has announced the Rift will go on sale in Europe and Canada on 20 September.

The headset will sell at a recommended retail price of £549 – significantly more than the $599 (£461) it costs in the US.

It is available to pre-order today from a range of retailers, including Amazon.co.uk , John Lewis ,Curry’s PC World , GAME Digital Plc , and the London department store Harrods.

“We’ve seen interest in virtual reality rise dramatically in the last few months, with sales of the Samsung Gear VR, powered by Oculus, headset up 310% in the last six weeks alone,”said Will Jones, Head of Buying for Electricals at John Lewis.

“The Oculus Rift device is a significant progression in virtual reality technology, set to reinvent how we work and play, and we are proud to offer our customers the chance to experience it first.”

The Oculus Rift, which began life as a Kickstarter project in 2012, has been through several pre-production models before being released to the public.

The finished virtual reality headset has an OLED display with a 2,160 x 1,200 resolution and a 110-degree field of view, designed to fully immerse the wearer in whatever they are watching.

It is intended for use with a PC, but the headset requires a lot of processing and graphics power, meaning that not all computers are compatible.

If you want to use it for gaming you’ll need a PC with at least an Nvidia GTX 970 GPU, an Intel i5-4590 processor and 8GB of RAM.

If you want to try Oculus Rift for yourself before buying, there will be demo experiences rolling out across the UK in the coming weeks.

Every Oculus Rift purchased headset ships with a copy of the virtual reality game Lucky’s Tale , along with hundreds of free 3D 360 videos and VR movies.

Users can buy more VR games and films from the Oculus Store, with several new titles being unveiled the Gamescom video game conference in Cologne, Germany, this week – including Dead & Buried , The Unspoken and Ripcoil.

– Sophie Curtis

Facebook’s Internet-Providing Drone Makes First Flight

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Facebook has announced that it has completed the first flight of its UK-developed solar-powered, high-altitude drone aircraft designed to provide internet connectivity to remote regions.

The ‘Aquila’ drone was developed over the past two years by the company’s UK-based aerospace unit and will boost the Internet.org project set up in partnership with other tech firms in 2013 to widen global internet connection.

facebook-testing-aquila-drone

Internet.org aims to benefit the estimated more than four billion people who are not yet online, and has already connected more than 1 billion people by working with mobile operators. But Aquila will help reach the 10% of the world’s population living in remote locations where technologies used everywhere else are not feasible.

Facebook plans to build a fleet of Aquila drones to fly in 3.6 mile-diameter circles at 6 0,000 to 90,000 ft to avoid other air traffic and at an estimated 80mph to provide internet coverage for an area 60 miles in diameter. The drones will stay in contact with each other and the ground using lasers and will remain airborne for months at a time.

Aquila’s laser communication technology was developed by Facebook’s Connectivity Lab’s communications team in the US and will be used to deliver data at tens of Gbps, roughly 10 times faster than the previous technology, according to Facebook.

The Aquila was developed in the UK with the help of expertise acquired through Facebook’s purchase of UK aerospace five-member start-up Ascenta, led by chief engineer Andrew Cox, in 2014 for £12.5m. The drone was tested in Yuma in the US state of Arizona.

The test flight was scheduled to last 30 minutes, but was extended to 96 minutes to gather as much data as possible. It marks the start of what is expected to be a year of test flights.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said while the test flight was a milestone, there was still a lot of work to do to solve “some difficult engineering challenges”.

Although the Aquila has a wingspan wider than a Boeing 737’s, it has a mass of less than 500kg thanks to its carbon-fibre frame. But, according to Zuckerberg, development teams are working to find ways of making the aircraft even lighter.

Almost half the drone’s mass comes from the aircraft’s batteries, a lot of weight to put on large, flexible wings, he said.

“We have computer models to predict how Aquila’s shape deforms under load. A few more flights will help us better understand the actual in-flight dynamics,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.

The Aquila has to collect enough energy from the sun during daylight to keep its propellers, communications payload, avionics, heaters and light systems running when it is dark.

“That means using about 5,000W of power at cruising altitude, or about as much as three hairdryers. We’re always looking for ways to trim this down and make our systems more efficient,” said Zuckerberg.

To take off, fly and land, Aquila’s wings and propellers have to be able to operate both in high, cold altitudes and lower, warmer altitudes where the air can be 10 times denser. “We’re working to figure out how much power that takes – and what impact it will have on solar panel performance, battery size, latitude range and seasonal performance,” said Zuckerberg.

Aquila is mostly self-sufficient, but according to Zuckerberg still relies on a ground crew of about a dozen engineers, pilots and technicians who direct, maintain and monitor the aircraft. They control it through software that lets them determine heading, altitude and airspeed or send Aquila on a GPS-based route.

“Take-off and landing are automatic, since no human pilot can land in a precise location as well as software can,” he said.

The first test flight did not end with a textbook landing, however. The fragile structure was damaged when it landed in a stony field short of the runway, according to the BBC.

Zuckerberg has acknowledged the firm will benefit in the long run if more people gain internet access, but claims the project is based on the conviction that internet service can bring economic and social benefits to developing nations.

In parallel to work by the Facebook-led Internet.org, Google is experimenting with high-altitude balloons as well as drones and satellites, while Microsoft has funded a project to transmit internet signals over unused TV frequencies.

– Warwick Ashford

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