What originally began as a social media portal to connect people living in the same vicinity has now become a medium of sharing news on an instant basis. Facebook Inc. was established by Mark Zuckerberg as a social experiment to see how his college mates react to this site. But as the popularity of this site increased, so did its reach. Now Facebook has such immense popularity among almost all the corners of the world that it is one of the ideal platforms to spread a message to the public. We are living in such an age that an individual doesn’t always get time to catch the daily news, but he definitely scrolls through his Facebook news feed. Due to this, various news portals began using Facebook as a platform to put forward the information. This practice led to the establishment of the Facebook Journalism Project.

The world’s largest social network is now a platform for informative discussions, healthy debates, and information. This seems like a good thing as masses of people are getting aware about current events which have made Facebook a better medium for news that newspapers, TV channels, or radios. But as Facebook provides absolute freedom of speech to its users, it is not always necessary that whatever is published here is authentic. A news organization assures to provide cent per cent true information but that isn’t the case here. One can simply post whatever he likes and if questioned about its authenticity, he can call it his personal opinion. In order to make sure that the news published is true, the Facebook Journalism Project was set up.

Initiative behind the Facebook Journalism Project

Due to the numerous sources found on Facebook, it has become very difficult for the publishers to decide which news is true and which isn’t. It has become the social responsibility of Facebook to make sure that it is not the root of fake news. Especially during the Presidential elections that took place in the U.S. this year, the news published on Facebook was fake. Since then, Facebook has become wary about the news it publishes. It also decided to take steps to make sure that isn’t repeated in the future. This concern for the spread of authentic news led to the Facebook Journalism Project.

The Facebook Journalism Project will have news digests for detailed news. There will be certain tweaks in the news feed to avoid click bait which is also a form of spam. After this, the company will focus on connecting people to the news outlets and community groups in their vicinity. This will help people stay aware of what is going on around them at all times. If the location in a news article is the same of that with the publisher, then Facebook will present him with a badge identifying him as a local. This badge is available for the users today onwards. And lastly, software will motivate users to share local news-related articles. It will also connect the users to the nearby interested groups. It looks like Zuckerberg wants to change the face of journalism.

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Popular social media company, Facebook Inc. recently raised minimum wages of Menlo’s cafeteria staff and janitors. The company has announced on Wednesday to raise a minimum pay scale of $15 per hours for low-income workers. Workers will receive additional 15 days of paid sick time and vacation leave, and US $4,000 for parental leave.

Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg posted on Wednesday that the company raised an additional pay scale for workers, along with a new child benefit plan for parental leave. Sheryl believes that company’s initiative to raise pay scale will not only bolster their business, but also will add a benefit factor for their community. She briefed that women get two third of the employment pay scale, compared to the national income, and expects that their pay scale program will enable workers to increase their productivity.

Sheryl further commented that Facebook had already planned to increase pay scale for contractors working at its Menlo Park headquarter as of May 1, and the company is willing to expand its wage policies within a year to its substantial vendors. The Menlo Park cafeteria staff has around 25 employees, all, citizens of United States.

Earlier, Facebook had planned to announce the wage raising that was to be scheduled on May 1, but due to sudden death of Sheryl’s husband, Dave Goldberg CEO of SurveyMonkey, company postponed its plans to May 13. Facebook has not revealed the number of contractors and vendors, which are going to benefit from its play scale program.

Debra Ness, President of National Partnership for Women and Families asserted in a statement that in Facebook’s case, Corporate America has begun to step forward and will adopt these policies, and added that the company should not force these exercise, where workers have to opt between their job and family. The situation expressed by Ness is similar to one of the case of Silicon Valley, where it is under a pressure to eliminate income gap that had given California a higher cost of living.

Google initiated with similar pay scale program and raised wages to US $15 per hour for its workers including parking attendants, bus drivers, cafeteria staff, and security guards.

Also, a debate raged in congress and state legislature in determining whether companies should improve workers’ pay scale, or help mitigate with a growing income gap has been a current controversy.

Though, many companies such as Walmart, Costco, and Starbuck have taken steps to raise workers’ salary, and have boosted their employees’ productive with such pay scale programs. The momentum behind improving wage scale has drawn the fight to get $15 hours wage movement. Rallies of fast-food, retail, and other low-wage workers, were held in US cities, and in college campuses, to get higher support for wage raise programs.

Thus, with the ongoing dispute, FB with its new initiative of raising the pay scale drew praises from the White house, Unions and families across America.

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Facebook Inc. is partnering with nine news partners to launch Instant Articles that will directly post their articles on social media sites. Now, Facebook users will be able to read their favorite news post on social media sites and can also view news feeds from their mobile handsets.

Reportedly, FB’s news launchers include The New York Times, NBC, Buzzfeed, and National Geographic and a few others who are partnering with Facebook. These news launchers will provide their content directly on the Instant Articles, which will load stories 10x faster than standardized mobile web article, and will include the content of news publisher, as revealed by Facebook in a blog post.

Some news outlets revealed that the article project that is initiated by Facebook is merely for testing or experimenting purpose. If FB’s experiment gets failed then, it will get harder for Facebook users to access their most liked blogs and content.

Traditionally, news launchers have been using the old-style to post their articles/news on their website, where they expected users to visit their website and view ads posted on those pages.

It’s not the first time Facebook has come up with the new project, it had earlier approached to well sound news launchers, but its project halted back then. For most of the news launchers, FB’s project is like a win-win bonus, which allows publishers to fish where the fish are.

Well, it is a fact that most of the users are lurking around Facebook, spending many hours for surfing. So, it’s an advantage for news launchers to grab more audience for their content by using FB’s Instant Article. Albeit, there are many other news launchers whom FB has approached once and failed to sign a deal since they’re afraid that with Facebook being the most powerful social media tool engine, it will simply grab their audience and make more profits with its newly launched article project.

FB’s chief product officer, Chris Cox said that Instant Articles will let the publisher deliver fast, interactive articles while sustaining control of their written content and business model. It will allow news publishers to sell and embed their advertisement in their content, and allow keeping all revenues with them, or can also allocate to Facebook for receiving revenues.

The Internet Social Networking Company commented that it will permit Facebook’s news partners to track their content using comScore or other analytics tools.

Facebook said it is also partnering with other news launchers such as NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, and Spiegel and Bid. The Instant article will be soon made available on each and every mobile device for users so that they can enjoy reading important news feeds.

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According to a report and pictures posted on a Chinese government website, head of China’s Internet regulator met with the CEO of Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., and Amazon.com Inc., during a recent visit to the U.S.

Lu Wei, minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China, visited some of the top technology firms in Silicon Valley, pictures of which were posted by China.com.cn, which falls under the State council. The report did not divulge details on the purpose behind the visit or the dates. The post, however, included photos of Lu along with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who appears to be showing him a wrist-worn device.

Lu was welcomed in Mandarin by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who also happened to have a copy of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s book “The Governance of China” on his desk at that moment. The flagship social network had been blocked by China’s censor’s way back in 2009. Facebook is currently trying to develop its business of selling ads to companies through a Hong Kong office and is reported to have rented space in Beijing.

China continues to be one big hurdle in Zuckerberg’s long-standing vision of connecting the entire population of the world. It is widely known that the youngest billionaire desires to enter that market that has more than 600 million Internet users. Lo Shih-hung, a professor at the National Chung Cheng University’s Depart of Communication in Taiwan expressed his delight in the visit. “The Chinese market is too attractive not to be in,” he said, adding that for Facebook to enter the Chinese market, it may oblige them to make certain compromises such as setting up a local operations office to even sharing user data.

Zuckerberg was recently named to an advisory board at Beijing’s Tsinghua University in October, revealed to Lu that often lend’s Xi’s book to colleagues to make them more aware of the characteristics of Chinese socialism.

Earlier this year in September, state-run media cited Lu saying Facebook “cannot” gain entry in China any time soon. While Facebook is officially blocked in China, it can still be accessed using proxy sites or virtual private networks that by-pass government filters.

Lu has repeatedly defended China’s Internet censorship as a vital step crucial for maintaining domestic stability. “If you are hurting China’s interests, China’s security or you are hurting the interests of Chinese consumers, we won’t allow this to exist,” Lu said at the World Economic Forum in Tianjin in September without naming Facebook.

Pictures of the visit also showed a stuffed bunny mascot for Beijing-based Xiaomi Corp., world’s third-largest smartphone company on Zuckerberg’s desk at Facebook. Lu was accompanied by Zhu Guang vice president of Baidu Inc., to the meeting as per the report on the website, which also posted pictures with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

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Facebook-owned Oculus VR introduced its third major revision of the popular Oculus Rift virtual-reality head mounted display, called Crescent Bay.

The latest prototype was unveiled in front of 1,000 developers from around the world at Oculus Connect developer conference over the weekend in Hollywood, Los-Angeles, California.

The new version of the VR headset includes improved screen resolution as well as 360-degree motion tracking. The new headset also adds integrated audio through built-in headphones but is optional.

However, Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe pointed that the Crescent Bay headset is meant to be an internal prototype and is not a developer kit nor it is the consumer version of the Oculus Rift. It is meant to showcase the new features to developers before the Development Kit is released.

“None of this is perfect yet, but it’s much, much better,” said Oculus VR chief executive officer Brendan Iribe at the Oculus Connect conference in Hollywood. “It’s in a state that we are prepared to show you today.”

Technical aspects of new device are yet to be revealed, however Iribe noted that the jump between the Oculus Rift Developer Kit 2 and Crescent Bay is as significant as the leap from Developer Kit 1 to Developer Kit 2.

Other than the 360-degree tracking and the built-in headphones, the latest prototype is lighter and features comfort designs that will lower weariness during lengthy gaming sessions. Similar to the Crystal Cove kit, Oculus is using the same array of LED lights which helps track movements more accurately.

According to rumors, the Crescent Bay could feature the same 1440p display found in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 4 which certainly seems possible given the fact that the two companies are now integrating in the virtual reality arena.

Besides that, Oculus also plans to include both mobile and PC gaming from now on. “Today on PC you get high fidelity and a sense of presence, which is the magic of VR,” Iribe said. “With mobile the magic is accessibility, affordability, and portability.”

The world’s largest social network Facebook acquired two-year-old Oculus for $2 billion in July. The new device marks a big step for Oculus to emerge as a new social and communications platform. However, the company certainly has to face competition. While Sony announced that its PlayStation division had developed a virtual reality device called Project Morpheus, other companies including Google are creating their own products.

Even when a complete consumer version of the device is released, it will still need content such as games, movies, video, and so on. Oculus too is working towards developing virtual reality technology to be used beyond simple video gaming into a wider functional range. In order for the Oculus Rift to be a success, developers will need to create content for the device.

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The Five Internet Industry Leaders, Apple Inc., Google Inc., Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. are accused of UK Tax dodging. The money owed to the exchequer is known by the officials as the tax Gap has grown to an epiphora of 35 billion HM Revenue and Customs has admitted. It is made up of restraint design, illegal tax dodging and faulty underpayments. Tax dodging is when someone pays less tax than the government thinks they ought to have done by using some alternative in the law. Yet this isn’t an alternative, therefore it’s not tax dodging and most certainly isn’t tax avoidance. For the companies are doing accurately and completely what the EU wants them to do that is to treat the EU as a single market. The shock size of the tax gap means the government lost out on £3billion MORE in owed taxes in 2011/12 than it did in 2009/10 – before the Coalition took office promising to crack down on tax avoidance. Starbucks was also slammed last year after it emerged it had paid no UK corporation tax in the previous three years. The value of the tax gap has increased from £32billion in 2009-10 to £35 billion in 2011-12. Figures from the companies’ American filings suggest that the five internet companies made revenue of £12.2billion in Britain in 2010 from British consumers and advertisers. On the basis of their global profit margins for the year, that would mean profits for the five from sales to British customers would have amounted to almost £2.5billion. Corporation tax at 28 per cent would have seen them pay £685million.Instead, subsidiaries established by the five in Britain paid just over £19million in 2010, or 0.8 per cent. The essential assumption is thoroughly erroneous about the Accused Tax Dodging on the five internet giants. The EU Law is to be understood over UK law. Another part of the story is the Great European Project whirl about the creation of Single Market. Their main focus is on the single market which will help in economy. Any Company started in EU can sell its products to the 27 EU countries the way they serve the one EU country. Laws and regulations issued in recent decades which states the EU should be Single Large market. In enough the same way as a US company does not have to have a new company in each State that it sells in. Now the entire Five internet industry leaders have every sell through their Irish companies. Now as a matter of fact by choosing those places they are reducing their tax bills than if they had chosen some other EU state. But the choice of one EU state to make all the sales from isn’t a bug in the system; it’s what the system that was set up to strengthen. It is an easier procedure to make business straight across Europe with only one legal establishment, one bureaucracy, one taxman to have to worry about.

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A Palestinian security expert who goes by the name of Khalil Shreateh has exposed a Facebook security flaw by posting an alert on site creator Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page to prove the legitimacy of his bug report, after the social network giant’s security team ignored his previous reports on the vulnerability.

According to Khalil Shreateh, the FB bug allowed any user to share and publish links on any other Facebook user’s wall.

In Khalil’s preliminary report of the bug, he demonstrated that he was able to post on anyone’s wall by submitting a link to a post he’d made on the wall of Sarah Goodin, a college friend of Zuckerberg, and the first woman on Facebook.

Unfortunately, the member of the Facebook Security team who clicked the link wasn’t friends with Goodin, whose wall was set to be visible to friends only. As a result, they couldn’t see Khalil’s post. However Facebook Security can certainly over-ride privacy settings to see anything posted on the site, which they didn’t seem to do.

“I don’t see anything when I click the link except an error”, responded Facebook Inc’s Security team.

Khalil again submitted the bug with the same link again, explaining that anyone investigating the link would need to either be Goodin’s friend or would need to “use [their] own authority” to view the private post.

“I am sorry this is not a bug”, replied the same member of the Security team, seemingly not able to comprehend what was going on.

Khalil responded by posting a note into Zuckerberg’s timeline. “Sorry for breaking your privacy [to post] to your wall,” it read, “i [had] no other choice to make after all the reports I sent to Facebook team”.

Within a short span, Shreateh’s  Facebook account was deactivated and he was contacted by a Facebook security engineer requesting all the details of the exploit.

“Unfortunately your report to our Whitehat system did not have enough technical information for us to take action on it,” the engineer wrote in an email. “We cannot respond to reports which do not contain enough detail to allow us to reproduce an issue.”

The least reward for a successful report is $500 and Facebook states that “there is no maximum reward: each bug is awarded a bounty based on its severity and creativity”. The company claims to have paid out more than $1 million so far. However, since Shreateh violated Facebook’s terms of service by hacking the pages of other users, he is not eligible to receive a reward under the site’s White Hat program designed to find and fix bugs.

In a Hacker News thread, Matt Jones, one of Facebook’s engineers from security team confirmed that the bug has now been fixed, admitting that the company should have asked more details after Shreateh’s initial report. He wrote “We should have pushed back asking for more details here.”

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It is now the turn of the three internet technology giants – Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Facebook Inc. to go on the offensive against the relentless criticism that they have been facing for being willing partners in providing personal information to the National Security Agency.

All of the three companies have issued open letters to the United States Department of Justice, seeking to establish that they have only ’obliged’ to the role of revealing data they possess within the limits of law and have not provided unlimited access to their databases.

Credibility in question

All the three companies – Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. , Facebook Inc. as well as Twitter have drawn a lot of flak from their users and have hit the nadir on public confidence. Most users are skeptical of the fact, that service providers such as these companies cannot be trusted any more as they will be in-support of government policies on security and anti-terrorism and will not be able to protect personal privacy of their users.

According news from one of the original parties that investigated National Security Agency’s PRISM program, the arrangement was very similar to the popular cloud-based service provider ‘DropBox’ system. The National Security Agency would copy from the servers of technology companies those of the legally requested files. Most of the technology companies involved viz, Microsoft Corp. ,Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are now seeking refuge on this technicality and are claiming that they are not ‘directly or indirectly’ involved providing personal data bytes.

Google Inc. issues open legal letter

One of the earliest letters addressed to the United States Justice Department, showcasing their role in the PRISM program by National Security Agency was presented by Google Inc.’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond thus: “Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue.”

This letter by the search engine giants’ legal head was immediately followed by an email by Microsoft Corp. Their statement underlined that, “Permitting greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests.”

The final letter of open appeal to the United states Justice Department came from Facebook Inc.’s general counsel Ted Ullyot: “We urge the United States government to help make that possible by allowing companies to include information about the size and scope of national security requests we receive, and look forward to publishing a report that includes that information.”

Along with these open appeals, Google Inc.’s spokeperson has also disclosed that, Google Inc. has always used a secure File Transfer Protocol and has not allowed the government agency to personally pull any files from their servers. The company has also admitted that they have also provided some of the files personally to the department.

All the involved technology companies are seeking permission from the government to place on public domain the requests placed by the agency. This is probably the only public action the companies can attempt to vindicate themselves from the strict protocol and rules under which they have to operate when National Security Agency is involved.

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Technology news bytes are doing the rounds speak of the huge disappointment of Facebook fans in the US on the failure of the first social-network-on-a-phone model HTC First, also called Facebook Phone. Noting on the poor customer response, Everything Everywhere Limited, UK’s carrier looking to launch the Facebook Phone in the country, too has cancelled the pre-orders of the Facebook Phone.

Not surprisingly, HTC First had launched amidst much fanfare with the model being carried by AT&T and other leading carriers. Furthermore, it was priced at $99 in the US market with AT&T for a two-year contract. However, in May, the prices were slashed to 99 Cents to attract buyers. Yet with disappointing reviews, AT&T is considering dropping the servicing on this model.

Interestingly, it is claimed that the CEO at Facebook Inc., Mark Zuckerberg, holds this project close to his heart and is currently making attempts to revive the offer. It is expected that there will further technology tweaks to the current model to offer a better user experience. It may come as no surprise that the Facebook App is wrapped in the original Android Operating System of the HTC First.

Secondly, the number of Facebook Phone users is very less and it is expected that with better technology, a newer version will be launched very soon. According to industry analysts, the social media network company is banking on its users who intensely use their mobile phones to engage on the network.

According to resources at Facebook Inc., the company is considering the feedback of users while using the Facebook Phone also called Home. The company, analysts claim, has found that though consumers like the idea of Facebook as their phone, they have not found the delivery of the various features of Facebook as an easy user experience.

And it is on these experiences that the company is expected to work and improve the current delivery formats. The company has announced that in the next few months, they will gather user feedback from a range of platforms and sources. The aim is to improve the services substantially and address several customization processes. Facebook Inc. has also said that during the process of development it will cease support to new devices and will considering do so, once the application is ready for use.

Therefore Facebook Phone will no longer be accessible to EE or to Orange and other service providers who are looking at deploying the HTC First in European nations.

At the time of its launch in April 2012, it was announced that the Facebook Phone would provide support to high-end devices as well as the launch of phone developed by Facebook in partnership with HTC.

The current failure has definitely set-back the fortunes of both HTC as a carrier as well as Facebook Inc. in an increasingly competitive social network segment.

Analysts believe that the strong user-data collecting policies of Facebook Inc. will definitely come to its rescue in building customized features for the mobile phone. The days are not far when the Facebook Phone, with or without HTC, is launched again for fans across Europe!

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