Facebook Inc.'s Safety Check Malfunctioned After Terrorist Attack in Pakistan

The social media network publicly apologized for the malfunction of its safety feature.

The Safety Feature on the social media platform, Facebook Inc. has been there for a while now however, it is far from perfect yet. Yesterday, apparently the Safety Check feature malfunctioned; since there was a terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan, the social media network enabled its safety feature. However, instead of the people sitting in Lahore, the website sent push notifications to people all across the Pacific asking them if they were safe.

The blast happened at Gulshan-I-Iqbal in Lahore, Pakistan at a park on Sunday which left 65 dead and hundreds terribly injured. Most of these victims and casualties included women and children as the blast happened in a park, as per the reports. However, Facebook enabled its safety check feature which it usually does in case a disaster of such magnitude or a natural disaster occurs anywhere in the world. The sole purpose of the safety check is to ensure that people in the affected areas are safe and it has become another way of families to reach their loved ones and know if they are okay or not.

However, this time, the safety check feature on the social media website malfunctioned and sent push notifications to people where all across the globe. The social media organization has come forward and apologized publicly for this mishap and addressed it as a ‘glitch’ and ‘bug’ in their system. Even though a lot of people were affected because of this incident, the feature failed to serve its purpose and did exactly opposite of what it was actually intended to do.

The company has a user base strength of over 1.55 billion and it has not yet disclosed how much of these active users were affected by this glitch in their system. The news came out after a number of people expressed their frustration and annoyance at the confusing notifications they were receiving from Facebook. The people who reported this glitch in various cities include people from Washington D.C., London, New York etc.

These people who received these push notifications stated that they received notifications of a blast near their area and the location was not even specified which caused a panic as they believed that the blast took place in their own city. However, there were only a few people who faced this issue in those areas while others did not receive any such notification from the social media site. The social media company is still working on what went wrong with the feature however this is not the first time something like this has happened with the specific feature.

In October 2014, the social media network introduced this safety check feature which was meant to keep users informed regarding any natural disaster that took place in their city including earthquakes, cyclones etc. However, they pondered over human based attacks as well and decided that they would enable the feature for such incidents as well. In November last year, during the Paris Terrorist Attack, the organization enabled the safety feature so users were able to inform their loved ones that they were alright. Since then, the safety feature has been activated for numerous such events especially in the first three months of 2016.

Despite the fact that this false alarm annoyed and confused a lot of Facebook users, it might not be as bad as it seems as it managed to keep people of the world informed regarding such an attack in another country.

Twitter Inc. Is Redesigning its Timeline Outlook

The social media network is changing the way you view your timeline on Twitter.

On March 3, 2016, Twitter users will be able to witness a whole new look of the micro-blogging website’s timeline display as it had decided to redesign the entire format, which will include embedded profiles, collections and lists. During the Flight Developer Conference held in October, Twitter stated that it will be rolling out its embedded grids which would also display publisher’s profiles and posts well tired together on their timeline.

After this new display feature is launched, users will be able to integrate their profiles and posts together with the help of the new timeline – however, they will not be bound  to maintain their customized settings and no changes will be made to that unless the users himself does so.

With the help of the redesigned timeline display publisher’s posts and profiles will be shown in a more rich and responsive manner and will get a better response. Another thing that the user will not have to worry about is the ‘remove media’ option. As per the new default settings, the content will automatically be expanded on the posts and tweets of the publisher.

Twitter is making its efforts to attract more traffic towards its website, and this feature is an example of that. By promoting its content outside of the social media site it is exactly heading in that direction; as through this people who are not signed up on the website yet can still see posts made by publishers. It is making sure that its efforts do not go in vain as the update will be providing benefit to not only the publishers but also the developers.

On the other hand, Twitter stock has gone up by almost 25% after touching its all-time low a few weeks back but it is still 30% below its Initial Public Offering – IPO share price of $26. Analysts believe that if the social media giant ever wants to reach its IPO share price, it will have to work on getting as many users on its platform as possible – user growth is the only way Twitter can get back in the social media game again. However, a number of analysts do not have a bullish stance on the stock of the company – 27 analysts have given the stock a rating of ‘Hold’ while 13 have suggested a ‘buy’, as per the report by Thomson One Analytics.

Facebook Inc Has Finally Decided To Upgrade The Security of Instagram

Instagram is a Facebook's photo and video sharing app which has now become more secure

In today’s world it’s not hard to take out any person’s personal information – as all the information is usually available on the all the social media networks. These social media applications have become more vulnerable with time; making it easier for hackers to invade user’s privacy. The largest social media network Facebook Inc. has taken a stand and bold move against this problem and is aiming at making its platform more secure for its customers where they can easily and without any stress socialize and connect with their friends.

In order to combat major hackers on the internet, the photo sharing platform Instagram now has included two factor authentications to its video sharing platform, as reported by TechCrunch. Instagram was acquired by the social media website back in 2012 – ever since the acquisition was made by Facebook, the photo sharing application has only grown and prospered. According to a report by the website, the video sharing platform has cross the mark of 400 million users officially.

Furthermore, a number of people are attracted towards the platform now including high profile celebrities, artists and brand – because of this reason even the hackers are encouraged to hack in to their profiles. An advanced level of security was one of the major requirements of the photo sharing app since a while now; however it has finally decided to provide that level of security to its users.

According to the latest advancement made by the social media company, from now on the customers will be asked to verify their profiles through their phone numbers; they will be required to type in their cellphone number, on which they will receive an authentication code. Once the user types their username and password, they will be required to mention the verification code as well hence making it difficult for the hackers to login into user’s accounts. From now onwards, hacking user’s accounts would not be as easy as it used to be which they used to do by either guessing or phishing a customer’s account.

The tool of two factor authentications is now being used by a number of applications especially the parent company of Instagram; it has been using this security advancement since 2011. Additionally, Facebook and Instagram are not the only applications and websites that use the security tool; Gmail also offers the same service. The social media network has been highly criticized because of the low level security provided by Instagram as it was exposed to hackers.

According to a spokesperson of the social media site, this service will be made available to all the customers soon enough – at this point in time, it is not widely available to all the users of the photo sharing application. Some of the high profile celebrities have been a victim of such cases, including Kris Jenner as well as Taylor Swift. Furthermore, there is another offer that is being provided by the video sharing app, according to which a user can be easily able to switch between to accounts instead of logging in and out to switch between accounts.

Twitter, Inc. Hit A New All-Time Low Share Price On Friday

The social media website has hit a new all time low yet again after its initial all time low share price back in August 2015.

On January 8, 2016, Twitter Inc.’s stock dropped by as much as 2% hitting its new all-time low at $19.76. In the past five trading days, the stock has managed to drop by 15% due to poor user growth. Investors have been quite unhappy because of the sluggish user growth of the social media network. Ever since ex-CEO and co-founder of Twitter, Dick Costolo stepped down from his position in June; the company has been constantly going through a rough patch.

The investors at Wall Street have continuously questioned the strategic direction of the micro-blogging company while others have pointed their fingers at the slow user growth for the decline in the stock. Ever since its one year high of $53.49 back on April 7, 2015 Twitter stock has fallen by as much as 60%. In October, the social media website reported better than expected earnings for the third quarter for fiscal year 2015. For upcoming further quarter, investors and analysts are predicting revenue to be somewhere between the range of $695 to $700 million.

For the latest quarter, 320 million active users were reported by the organization which shows that the monthly active users have just increase by 4 million since its last report. The fourth quarter earnings for the current fiscal year are expected to come out on February 10, 2016. The stock, at this point in time, is in a crisis situation.

In other news, Jack Dorsey stated that he has been looking for different ways in which Twitter users can post tweets specifically something that lets the users make longer tweets. He added that the customers of the social networking website are already doing that by posting the screenshots of the text but he said he would like the tweets to be short, sweet and conventional. According to the announcement, the tweets will now be of 10,000 characters per person from an initial 140-character limit.

It could mark as the end of Twitter when other smaller rivals such as Snapchat and Vine are giving its users more attractive features and options through which they are able to attract a good audience. Back in November 2013, when the company went public it was trading at a share price of $26 per share on the NYSE. The first fall that it witnessed was back in August when it dropped below its initial public offering price and this was the second hit.

Stock of the micro-blogging website is down 22% since it went public but it is not the lowest performing stock; in comparison Square stock is as low as twitter’s as well. It has fallen about 13.8% this week.

Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset Starts Shipping In March

The social media network's Oculus Rift's major deals have surfaced the tech world, finally and will be in the hands of customers by March of 2016.

On Wednesday, the social media giant announced that it will be taking pre-orders for its much anticipated Oculus Virtual Reality headset. When the announcement came out of the launch of the product, the two most important aspects were not specified; these included price and availability, however the company has finally disclosed these details as well.

The shipping will start from March and the Rift is priced at $599. Any pre-order that currently takes place has been given a delivery date somewhere in April. The order includes the Rift Headset, an Xbox One Controller, Two games, Oculus Remote and a sensor. It is essential to highlight that just the Rift is for $599 whereas to make it working properly the use will require to purchase a high-end gaming PC which is able to work with Rift.

According to a number of analysts, the sales of the latest virtual reality could be as low as hundreds – thousands while some experts are expecting it to be above 1 million. On the other hand, a whole lot of people have decline to present estimates as they believe this is not a big deal for Facebook, Inc.

One of the analysts who refused to estimate the sales of the product, Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research stated that the launch was this product would just be a rounding error inside of Facebook at this point in time. Additionally, another analyst from Piper Jaffray, Gene Munster stated that it is a “non-event in 2016” and is also expecting the company to sell a few units of the product at a loss.

However, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the social media network, believe that the headgear will be more popular amongst hardcore gamers, during its initial quarter and then go from there. For the first quarter, at least, they have kept the bar quite low for the latest product. According to estimations by Nvidia Corporation, the purchase of over 13 million PCs worldwide next year would be sufficient enough to run the VR provided it has the graphics capabilities.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the virtual reality market will be worth as much as $16 billion. Even though the start seems to be quite low for the Oculus Rift but the future seems quite bright for the virtual reality device. Facebook is not the only company that is working on getting a share from the pie of the lucrative market; many others are directing their resources towards developing this technology as well including Alphabet, Inc., Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens.

Facebook, Inc. Stock Analysis Suggests The Company Might Witness a Decline of 10%.

The stock analysis of the social media network suggested that in the near future the stock of Facebook might be trading at a share price of $93; not a very good news for the investors of the company.

On December 11^th Facebook Stock declined by 2.5% as the oil prices hit a low time in the past one year’s time. Both the Dow Jones as well as the NASDAQ indices were low during the trade by 1.5%. It is expected that the stock of the social media giant is likely to decline further by 10% trading at a share price of $93. Since August 24^th, the social media website’s stock has been increasing due to which the day is termed as Black Monday.

The global market has declined drastically this year due to the Chinese economic meltdown and the devaluation of Yuan. Due to this decline in the global market, Facebook stock has witnessed a decline of 15% in three days’ time. But since the decline the stock of the social media network has fairly been doing well and has seen an incline of 20% till date after reporting a good third quarter report on November 4.

Towards the end of the first week of November, there was again a decrease in the share price of the company after witnessing its high record of $110.65. Due to the fall in the global economy, the share price is expected to fall to $99.75 in the short term. Investors are seriously concerned with this decline as they believe if the share price goes below the mark of $99; the stock will witness a downward pressure.

In other news according to Reuter, the social media site is all set to launch its Facebook at Work service which is a professional communication platform in 2016. This is the social media network’s professional communication and networking platform comprising of the facebook ‘likes’ feature along with a chatting service. The social media corporation has been testing this service since last year during which it has worked on making communication easier amongst employees and co-workers.

The social media site in the last seven days has lost 3.84% and in the past 30 days has seen a decline of $1.76%. In comparison to the S&P 500 index the shares of the social media company are performing negatively with a loss of 0.33 % and have underperformed the index by 1.24% in a month’s time. At the trading session on Friday the stock of the social media corporation was trading at $102.12 per share with a high of $104.34 and a low of $101.91. The current market cap of the social media giant is 288.79 billion.