Facebook Collects Data Activity and chart your Personality and Habits

Have you ever wondered how Facebook collects all the data it has to feed you with the content it presumes you’ll like and keep you coming back for more? Well, now there’s an app that can answer these questions.

Available for free, Data Selfie is an open-source Chrome extension that helps you discover how machine learning algorithms track and process your Facebook activity, and gain insights about your personality and habits.

To accomplish this, the nifty extension monitors your Facebook interactions for patterns and then crunches the collected data into insightful reports.

Data Selfie essentially tracks your activity – what you look at, how long you look at it, what you like, what you click and what you type – and then applies natural language processing and machine learning algorithms from IBM Watson and the University of Cambridge to turn this data into insight.

The extension comes with a handy dashboard that shows your aggregated Facebook activity in a timeline, conveniently broken down with color coding to highlight different aspects about your data usage.

In addition to this, the Data Selfie dashboard also includes insight into what posts you’ve spent most time on – both for friends and liked pages. In a creepily fascinating way, the extension also uses predictive analytics to guess stuff like your political affiliations as well as shopping and nutrition preferences.

To prevent ill-intended individuals from obtaining the information it collects about you, Data Selfie keeps your data locally – only on your own machine – and never stores anything on external servers.

As part of its initiative to promote internet transparency, creator Data X has made the code for Data Selfie available on GitHub for curious developers to peruse. Head to this repository for more details.

Source;TheNextweb

How to permanently delete your Facebook account

Had enough of Facebook? Here's how to permanently remove your profile from the social network

Facebook can be a great tool for staying in touch with friends and family but, for some people, the constant bombardment of updates, messages, likes, pokes and advertisements can all become a bit overwhelming, not to mention highly addictive.

In a study by researchers at the University of Winchester, ten self-confessed Facebook “addicts” were asked to stop using their accounts for four weeks. Many quickly became isolated from friends and family and reported feeling "cut off from the world".

Ongoing questions over user Facebook's privacy practices – including a class action lawsuit in Austria involving 25,000 users that claim Facebook illegally tracked users’ browsing habits via software installed on other web pages, and participated in “Prism”, the American spy programme – are also making some people reconsider their membership of the social network.

If you've had enough and want to get rid of your account, you have two options. You can either deactivate you account, which means your profile disappears from the social network but all the information in your account is saved on Facebook's servers in case you decide yo go back, or you can permanently delete your account, which means all your data is removed and you will not be able to regain access.

Depending on whether or not you think you might want to return, here's what you need to do:

How to deactivate your account

Deactivating your account temporarily means you have the option to return to Facebook whenever you want.

Click the downward arrow at the top right of any Facebook page

Select "Settings"

Click "Security" in the left column

Choose "Deactivate your account", then follow the steps to confirm

If you deactivate your account your profile won’t be visible to other people on Facebook and people won’t be able to search for you, but some information, such as messages you sent to friends, may still be visible to others.

If decide you'd like to go back to Facebook, you can reactivate your account at any time by logging in with your email and password. Your profile will be restored in its entirety.

At a glance | Facebook's rise

2004

Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook in his Harvard dorm room

2006

Facebook allows anyone over 13 to join, introduces the news feed

2007

Sells a 1.6% stake to Microsoft for $240m

2008

Reaches 100 million users

2009

Introduces "like" button

2010

Facebook becomes profitable

2012

Acquires Instagram for $1bn in cash and stock

2012

Reaches one billion users

2014

Buys messaging app WhatsApp for $19bn

2015

Extends internet.org effort to provide internet access to rest of world

2016

Facebook becomes the most popular social networking site in the world

How to permanently delete your account

If you don't think you'll use Facebook again, you can request to have your account permanently deleted. However, after an account has been deleted it won't be possible to reactivate your account or retrieve anything you've shared on your profile.

Before you do this, you may want to download a copy of your information from Facebook:

Click the downward arrow at the top right of any Facebook page

Select "Settings"

Click on the link at the bottom of the main menu that says “Download a copy of your Facebook data”.

Then you need to go to https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account, click on "Delete my account", then follow the steps to confirm.

It may take up to 90 days for Facebook to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates or other data stored in backup systems. While Facebook is deleting this information, it is inaccessible to other people using the social network.

Some of the things you do on Facebook aren’t stored in your account. For example, a friend may still have messages from you in their inbox. That information will remain even after you delete your account, so you will need to contact the recipients of you want it removed.

Source:Telegraph.co.ok

How the internet is altering the news landscape

About a decade ago, this question would have been easy to answer— the TV or a newspaper. But in the subsequent years, the answer seems to have blurred.

Overwhelmingly, social media is winning the race to deliver your next news break, news feature or news analysis. Be it the refugee crisis in Europe, US presidential election debates, spats between different political parties in India, the public reaction to the scenario in Indian cricket, games, movies or events, whether crises or celebrations, we find our news now being frequently broken on social media platforms, rather than on traditional media. It wouldn’t  be incorrect to say news has become social.

Continue Reading...

WhatsApp users to receive adverts

WhatsApp says it will begin sharing more data with Facebook and will start letting some companies send messages to users.

It is the first time the company has changed its privacy policy since the firm was bought by Facebook in 2014.

WhatsApp will now share users' phone numbers with the social network, which it will use to provide "more relevant" friend suggestions and advertisements.

One analyst said some people might feel "betrayed" by the move.

Data sharing

WhatsApp said sharing users' phone numbers with Facebook would help tackle spam and abuse, as well as offer people "better friend suggestions and more relevant ads".

Using the data, Facebook will be able to match people who have exchanged phone numbers, but have not added one another as "friends" on the social network.

WhatsApp will also share information about when people last used the service, but said it would not share the contents of messages, which are encrypted.

"Your encrypted messages stay private and no-one else can read them. Not WhatsApp, not Facebook, nor anyone else," the company said in a blogpost.

The company said users would be able to opt out of sharing information with Facebook by following the steps outlined on its website.

Continue Reading ...

Two Years Achievements of Ministry of Railways (May 2014 to May 2016)

I.PASSENGER AMENITIES AND DIGITAL INDIA INITIAVES

·Indian Railways launched three social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube with the handle @railminindia.  Ministry of Railways employed first of its kind, a real time 24x7 public grievance system through Twitter and provided medical, security and other emergency assistance to travelling passengers

Source: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx

Facebook Launched a new app “Work Chat” aimed Professionals – Montgomery News

Earlier this year, Facebook at Work was announced. For those unfamiliar, Facebook at Work is basically Facebook aimed at professionals. This allows employees at a company to communicate with each other privately, so in a way you could think of it as a private social network just for your company.

Facebook at Work, the version of Facebook designed for chatting with colleagues on a private social network, now has its own chat client as well

Somewhat like Facebook at Work’s version of Messenger, the new “Work Chat” app, as it’s called, allows coworkers to message each other individually, participate in group chats, share photos and videos, make voice calls, and even use stickers.

The application quietly debuted on the Google Play store on Thursday. Facebook tells us the iOS version is in the works, and will arrive soon. However, the company would not provide an exact launch date.

The new chat app arrives just ahead of the planned public debut of a freemium version of the business networking platform, which Facebook said this fall was expected to arrive before year-end. That date may actually be closer to “in the next year,” Facebook says today.

The Facebook at Work program has been in private testing since its unveiling this January, and now has hundreds of companies on board. In fact, Facebook tells us that it has 300 businesses using its platform as of today, ranging from smaller startups to large, established companies like banks, real estate firms, beverage companies, travel companies, and more.

These customers include several big names like Heineken USA, Hootsuite, Linio in Latin America, and, in one of its largest deals, the Royal Bank of Scotland, which plans to have 30,000 workers on Facebook at Work by March 2016, and then its entire workforce of 100,000 by the end of next year.

Facebook working on ‘dislike’ button

After years of speculation and member requests, Facebook is finally working on a ‘dislike’ button that would not ‘downvote’ posts but instead let users express other emotions, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said.

Zuckerberg said the feature will be coming soon during a town hall meeting at the company’s California headquarters.

However, he said it wouldn’t be a way for users to ‘downvote’ posts and instead would let users express other emotions besides the inferred positivity of the ‘like’ button.

“People have asked about the ‘dislike’ button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it,” Zuckerberg said, according to a media report.

Zuckerberg added that the company has held off on a ‘dislike’ button to avoid becoming a Reddit-style system that encouraged upvoting and downvoting, according to reports.

Facebook Identifies video postings

Soon it would not be easy to “steal” videos from Facebook, as the social networking giant is introducing a video-matching tool designed to quickly identify videos that are duplicates of those already uploaded directly by their creators.

Facebook has been facing flak from top web-video creators who say it fails to prevent their videos from being posted without permission.

Facebook is working with a group of video creators on the initiative - including Fullscreen, Jukin Media, and Zefr, Wall Street Journal reported Facebook as saying in a blog post.

“This technology is tailored to our platform, and will allow these creators to identify matches of their videos on Facebook across pages, profiles, groups, and geographies,” said Facebook in its post. “Our matching tool will evaluate millions of video uploads quickly and accurately, and when matches surface, publishers will be able to report them to us for removal,” it added.

Until now, Facebook has relied on technology partner Audible Magic to help it identify unauthorised video content through audio fingerprinting, but that effort has not been effective in quelling the recent chorus of complaints.

Facebook is locked in a battle with YouTube for web-video supremacy. The latter uses Google’s Content ID software, which finds videos posted without permission and flags them automatically. The Facebook tool, in contrast, puts the burden of finding violations on the creators.

Railways eye Social Media platform to connect with Passengers

The Railways has acquired a handsome following of 4.51 lakh on Twitter and more than 3.8 lakh on its Facebook page.  DRMs, GMs connects with passengers on Twitter, Facebook

Looking to reach out to passengers via social media, the railways has acquired a handsome following of 4.51 lakh on twitter and more than 3.8 lakh on its Facebook page.

Concerted efforts are being made to engage with passengers and customers on social media in a big way, said a senior ministry official involved with the monitoring of the railways’ social networking pages. Now, all Divisional Railway Managers (DRM) and General Managers (GM) in all the zones have created their own official handles in order to reach out to passengers with real-time solutions as per the directions of Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.

DRMs and GMs are key officials in railways who are responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the railways concerning passenger and freight operations. The two social media pages of the railways are followed widely as they provide a combination of information relevant to passengers, new policies and ideas, innovations, new developments in infrastructure and rolling stock as well as vignettes of the past.

“The focus is on maintaining the best-possible connect with the public to collect passenger feedback and address grievances in a transparent manner,” the official said, adding that “the strongest feature of the twitter handle, RailMinIndia, is its responsiveness to the grievances and suggestions offered by its followers”.

The twitter handles of all the GMs and DRMs have been provided on the ministry’s twitter handle as also on its Facebook page and on the Indian Railways website, www.indianrailways.gov.in.

Facebook messenger no longer needs a Facebook account

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc has enabled users without an account to sign up for its Messenger app with a phone number, the social media company said, in another move to broaden the app's reach and make it a standalone platform.Mobi

Railway police officer filmed collecting tips on railway platform

Vijayawada: A tech-savvy railway passenger recently captured a Railway cop collecting “tips” from petty vendors selling fruits and other eatables on the platform. The video, first posted on the “Latest Video Club” page, which has over 68,250 followers, is trending on social networking site Facebook.

The 2.26-minute video was posted on Sunday night and by Monday evening, it had been viewed by over 32,000 FB users and has been shared 1,500 times on various user accounts of the social media platform.

The video features an on duty constable collecting money from pushcart vendors as the Kerala Express (train number 12625) came to the platform at 10.20 am on April 23. The clip was shot on platform number 7 .

Though there is no visual proof that the video was taken at the Vijayawada Railway station, the announcements confirm that it was the Kerala Express heading for New Delhi.

The video has received several comments seeking strict action against the cop.

The video is trending and is being shared widely on the social network. "Everything is going on in public. What will be the answer of the police? (sic)" asks a page titled Vijayawada Society for Fast Justice, which also shared the video. The video received hundreds of comments from netizens seeking strict action against the cop seen in the clip.

Source :Times of AP

Telecom operators around the globe are disturbed with the emergence of OTT players, and more so with their increasing popularity. Worse, the telcos are threatened that the OTTs are eating a great chunk of their existing revenue pie. But the worst was about to come, and it came and how! Customers now want to dump their telcos for OTTs.

A recent survey by Amdocs said that around 31% users in India are ready to switch to Over The Top operators(OTT) and dump their existing telcos, if the OTTs start offering mobile connectivity. The Indian trend is much worse than their global counterparts. On a global scale, around 20% users want to switch to OTTs from their telecom service providers.

This tells volumes about the user behaviour and rings a warning bell around the traditional telcos.

This was revealed in the report called, the Amdocs Customer Experience Spotlight 2015, an independent research study conducted by IE Market Research (IEMR) on behalf of Amdocs. It highlights the importance of providing a superior customer experience in order to retain as well as attract new customers, such as including a carrier-grade Wi-Fi strategy to combat the threat of emerging players in the mobile market and offering multi-play bundles to win market share.

The report that explores the market forces driving The New World of Customer Experience also suggests that 94% of customers would recommend their service providers to friends and family if they experience great customer care, and 62% would recommend if quality internet coverage is there and 86% would go for competitive pricing.

Over the past one year or so, telcos around the globe are shouting, screaming, complaining and crying over the emergence as well as the ever-increasing prominence of the Over-the-Top (OTT) service providers like Skype, Lync, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Viber etc. The recent case of Airtel asking its VoIP users to pay extra for the internet telephony, perhaps, is the first documented cry by an Indian operator over the issue.

Source : TeleAnaiysis