Facebook announced on January 11 that it would change its News Feed algorithm to prioritize posts from friends and family over public content. Say goodbye to never-ending sponsored posts from Tasty, CNN, and other brands that have embraced the platform. Time to say hello to more personal posts featuring commenting and sharing from your friends. Sounds like the original version of Facebook, no?

Facebook’s News Feed change pushes hard to create a better user experience for its users by focusing on meaningful interactions between people. This is critical for its business as the tech giant seeks to move back to its core mission of not just connecting people, but connecting people meaningfully. In a year that was rife with Russian interference, public trust issues, and content policing concerns (…and throw in a Senate hearing), Facebook is now focused on reassuring the public by rebuilding its brand and delivering an amazing user experience.

But this leaves media professionals that have increasingly leveraged Facebook for content distribution and monetization in a pickle. Publishers in particular are seriously worried. But should they be?

Publishing in the age of social media  

Facebook’s user base is formidable. With ~2B worldwide monthly active users, Facebook is a critical tool for publishers who seek to grow their audience. Through the social media giant, publishers found an easy platform with incomparable traffic by which to distribute content. Facebook made it easy by cultivating publisher relationships in an effort to make Facebook a destination for more than just wall posts and photos of your friends babies.

However, for Facebook, this strategy has turned the platform into a destination where users passively scroll. Time spent on the platform has lost its luster as a key metric for Facebook, says Mark Zuckerberg. Even as Daily Active Users increase quarter over quarter with an average growth rate of 4.5% over the past two years. “I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down. But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable.” Active use of the platform, where user behavior is deeply social and emotional in nature, is far more valuable to Facebook, whose survival depends on an active, engaged user base. This new value equation has created a more relevant time-based metric for Facebook, with Zuckerberg reporting in Facebook’s 2017 Q3 earnings call that “time spent is not a goal by itself here; what we really want to go for is time well spent”.

This quote sounds all too familiar to a strategic discussion at YouTube in 2012 to focus on watch time instead of views. YouTube had been focused on growing viewership and the video platform’s publisher monetization was specifically tied to views. More views equals more ads. More ads equals more money. However, YouTube realized that bad views were not good for the platform in the long term and were creating a new form of publisher whose sole goal was to create view, no drive meaningful time on the platform. Time spent engaged with better quality content would be more valuable. In the short term, some publishers would lose money and others would be put out of business. The thumbnails and titles that encouraged clicks and views would go away. Overtime, the good content that kept people engaged meaningfully would win.

The Short-Term Impact on Publishers

For publishers, passive scrolling through sponsored content was a blessing. Facebook enabled more eyeballs to discover their content in a world where competition for user attention is fierce. Publishers began to rely on social media channels like Facebook for increased traffic, which worked when public content was easily discoverable and prioritized on the News Feed. Now however, publishers cannot proceed with the same content distribution and monetization strategy, expecting the same outcomes.

We’ve seen before how Facebook can greatly impact a the business outcome for a publisher and how necessary it is to adapt one’s growth strategy accordingly.

Consider Zynga, the mobile gaming company behind the FarmVille craze (I know you have fallen prey to those crops). Zynga launched its games as Facebook apps and based on the company’s popularity on the social network (by the end of 2009, more than 20% of Facebook users were playing FarmVille). The company then went public in 2011. However, the dependence on Facebook ultimately hurt its business. When Facebook adopted policies that hurt Zynga’s method of reaching players and making money (removing third party ability to push notifications and make requests and taking 30% of revenue), Zynga had a choice: part ways with Facebook and focus hard on a standalone owned-and-operated destination or reconfigure a Facebook partnership. Zynga leadership chose the latter before shifting to a stronger O&O and mobile strategy and the results were disastrous:

Zynga Stock Price, 2012-2018 (NASDAQ: ZNGA)

Invest in Strong O&O Properties And Drive Monetization

To win in a shifting social media environment, publishers will seek to mitigate their dependence on Facebook to generate audience traffic, since that traffic will now decrease. While some publishers that have taken advantage of clickbait images and titles may fail to succeed in this transition, those publishers that are truly creating good content with a good user experience will pull through.

This initial dip in traffic will no doubt taper over time, since users will still seek a solution to discover and consume publisher content, even if Facebook is not it. Audiences always desire (more) content from their favorite outlets and from brands that they trust. Winning publishers can provide this solution by focusing their content distribution and monetization outside of the Facebook News Feed.

Publishers will buckle down on their owned-and-operated properties and ensure that they are creating the best user experience on the destinations they can actually control. Consider HuffPost’s Highline property. Dedicated to featuring provocative cover story content. Highline also has impeccable site design. By investing in this O&O property’s content and its UX, HuffPost positions Highline as a user-friendly content discovery destination, and a daily habit for its users.

Highline’s landing page is design friendly

When it comes to content monetization, publishers must innovate their advertising strategies as well. By moving beyond ‘boring banner ads’ and tapping into the shifting audience preferences for higher quality and more engaging content, publishers will increasingly look to offer advertising solutions that better actively engage users. It’s no surprise that the ‘active engagement’ trend influencing Facebook’s News Feed decision equally applies to advertising content.

Publishers have already recognized their need to differentiate themselves from simply being a place for eyeballs. USA Today’s Get Studios is an example of how publishers have invested in branded content creation (a big part of Buzzfeed’s strategy over the past couple of years). With the landscape questioning viewability and impcat of programmatic platforms, more publishers are offering massive takeovers / high profile premium ad placements. Additionally, publishers are beginning to reposition themselves as technology companies (the Washington Post offers software services now!).

We have seen publishers like The New York Times invest heavily in new emerging technologies like Virtual Reality . And I have seen how publishers ability to offer unique content, formats and distribution that have proven high engagement for brands has opened up new revenue streams. Those publishers that lean in to more emerging forms of content and storytelling will not only win audiences, but more ad dollars that will be shifting away from Facebook with these recent changes.

[Disclosure: I co-founded OmniVirt, a 360° VR advertising platform that services publishers, brands and agencies as they navigate the flux in media and advertising]

Source:HEREbb

Will ALL NEW NOKIA 6 will last as it says?
Proven not through the video test?
Watch and be informed...
Closed Captions are enabled...

Apple on Tuesday announced an iPad update, a red iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and a new video-editing app for iOS.

The iPad upgrade has a 9.7-inch, 2048 x 1536-pixel Retina display with 264 pixels per inch, and Apple's A9 64-bit processor.

The unit will come in silver, gold and space gray with a starting price of US$329 for 32 gigabytes of storage and WiFi-only support. It will cost $459 for a 32-GB unit with WiFi and cellular support.

As with prior models, the battery life for the new iPad is 10 hours. It has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and 1.2-MP front-facing FaceTime unit.

The new iPad is available for order on Mach 24 from Apple's website and will be in Apple Stores next week.

With the latest upgrade, Apple's iPad lineup looks like this: iPad Pro 12.9 inch ($799); iPad Pro 9.7 inch ($599); iPad 9.7 inch ($329) and iPad mini 4 ($399).

Not Quite an Air Replacement

Although the latest iPad replaces the iPad Air 2 in Apple's tablet lineup, it doesn't quite supplant it.

"It falls somewhere between a new device and the old device," said Carolina Milanesi, a principal analyst at Creative Strategies.

"They upgraded the most important thing on the device -- the processor," she told TechNewsWorld. "Not only will the performance be better, but other components, like the camera, will be snappier."

Pricing is also an outstanding feature of the new iPad, Milanesi said, noting that "$329 for a 9.7-inch device is very aggressive."

Prying Old iPads from Users' Paws

Attractive pricing may tempt some iPad owners to upgrade their old hardware.

"The replacement cycle for iPads is getting really long," said Mikako Kitagawa, a principal research analyst with Gartner. "If you have a 3- or 4-year-old iPad, you may want this upgrade."

The pricing also could attract some new users into the Apple universe.

"They're going to stretch the iPad's market into the mid-range tablet market," Kitagawa told TechNewsWorld.

Competitive pressure also may play a role in Apple's new entry-level tablet pricing.

"It's an interesting strategic move for Apple," said Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet and notebook research at IHS Markit.

"They've held that $499 introductory price on the 9.7 for seven years now," she told TechNewsWorld. "That price is way above the competition, so this is a realigning of the product to bring it to a more competitive price point.

The lower price point for the iPad could gin up some additional iPad sales, "but not as much as many believe," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

"The biggest challenge to large tablets are Windows two-in-one laptops and touch Chromebooks," he told TechNewsWorld.

A Red iPhone

Apple introduced red versions of its iPhone 7 and 7 Plus to celebrate the company's 10-year partnership with (RED), an organization that funds programs to help prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to unborn babies.


Apple customers can contribute to the Global Fund to fight AIDS with iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition.

A portion of the sales of the RED iPhone will go to the organization, to which Apple has contributed more than $130 million during the partnership.

Slated for availability in Apple Stores on Friday, the RED iPhone pricing will start at $749 for a 128-GB model.

Video Editing With Clips

Apple also announced Clips, a new video-editing app. The software is designed to combine photos, video and music without timelines or complicated tools.


Real-time filters, emoji and other effects available in Clips can add fun to any photo or video.

Its LiveTitles feature lets you use your voice to create animated titles and captions. As you speak, titles appear on the screen perfectly synced to your speech. You can edit titles with a tap.

Comic book filters are included, as well as support for speech bubbles and shapes. You can use the software to create full-screen posters with animated backgrounds too.

Dozens of music soundtracks are available for the content you create with the app. What's more, the app automatically trims them to fit your production.

Available in April, Clips runs on iOS 10.3 and is compatible with the iPhone 5s or later, all iPad Air and Pro models, the iPad mini 2 and above, and the iPod touch 6th-generation model. 

Quoted from here.

TOTALLY PANIC.

Just kidding; please don’t do that. Google regularly issues warnings to people whose accounts are or have been targeted by state-sponsored attackers, and every time it does, users get really nervous that their emails are going to wind up on WikiLeaks. Don’t freak out if you get one of these notices — it doesn’t necessarily mean that your account has been compromised, it just means you should think about taking a few extra steps to secure your account.

I got a “government-backed attack” warning. What does it mean?

You’re in good company — lots of journalists and academics have received warnings like these. According to Google, it means that a sophisticated attacker has tried to gain access to your account using phishing, malware or some other tactic.

Just because you get a warning doesn’t mean you’ve been hacked, though.

“We send these out of an abundance of caution — the notice does not necessarily mean that the account has been compromised or that there is a widespread attack. Rather, the notice reflects our assessment that a government-backed attacker has likely attempted to access the user’s account or computer through phishing or malware, for example,” Shane Huntley, a member of Google’s Threat Analysis Group, wrote.

Unfortunately, you’re unlikely to hear more information, such as when the attack happened or whether or not it was successful. Google doesn’t always send the warnings out right away and doesn’t give specifics about the attack or the responsible parties because it doesn’t want to tip hackers off about how they were detected. If Google says too much, the attackers will change their tactics — and then Google might not be able to warn you about the next attack.

“In order to secure some of the details of our detection, we often send a batch of warnings to groups of at-risk users at the same time, and not necessarily in real-time,” Huntley added.

So what do I do now?

Google recommends several steps to secure your account. The company offers a quick Security Checkup, which lets you review the devices and apps that have access to your account and double-checks your account recovery method.

Google makes some additional recommendations to high-risk users that will help prevent account compromise:

>> keep your software up-to-date (don’t let those updates        languish forever because you don’t feel like pausing a          show on Netflix long enough to let them install)

>>enable 2-step verification on your account (you can do        this through regular old text message, but Google  recommends its own Authenticator app or a Security Key      as the best methods)

>>install Password Alert in Chrome (or another browser          extension that alerts you when you enter your password      on a suspicious login page)

Also, pay attention to the email address of the sender and make sure it’s someone you know and trust (rather than someone with a similar email address who’s trying to masquerade as your friend). Don’t click on links and PDFs if you don’t trust the sender. Encrypting email is kind of difficult, but consider doing it anyway, especially if you’re sending sensitive documents or information.

Even if you haven’t gotten a “government-backed attack” warning yet — and you probably won’t as Google only sends them to less than 0.1 percent of users — you can take all these steps to secure your account today. A little extra security never hurts.

Reference :- Right HERE!

The cloud has become a well of acronyms, each promising to fuel digital transformation and bring flexibility to once-closed systems. While most cloud adopters have become intimately familiar with acronyms such as SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platforms as a Service), and so on, a new acronym is emerging that might just change how enterprises achieve their cloud goals.

That acronym, NaaP, lends itself to the concept of a Network-as-a-Platform model, a concept that drives the ability to transform existing infrastructure investments into a cloud-like model. In other words, NaaP strives to bring legacy systems into the world of the cloud services, all without having to re-engineer enterprise infrastructure. Part of that transformation comes from the idea of going beyond NFV (Network Function Virtualization) solutions, and enhance hardware abstraction of network functionality by providing tools that ease integrating critical elements, such as provisioning, policy enforcement, configuration, troubleshooting, and licensing.

In a quest to fuel the growth of NaaP and more importantly, bring an advanced service delivery and management platform to fruition, networking vendor Riverbed has launched the Riverbed Service Delivery Platform (SDP), a software solution which wraps the functionality of NFV into the ideology of DeVOps, where on-demand access to services and platforms have become the key components for speeding services delivery, addressing issues of scale, and improving operational security.

Riverbed SDP is purported to bring carrier-grade service management tools that ease bringing DevOps ideologies to the world of networking. Or as Irina Farooq, Vice President Management and Strategy, Riverbed says “Essentially, our SDP transforms existing NFV investments into a cloud-like NaaP model where each service becomes a building block to create another service that brings even more value to the customers.”

While the concept may seem somewhat complex, Farooq explained “SDP should be thought of as an abstraction layer that facilitates the provisioning of VNFs required for the delivery of a service using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) / Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles.”

For the enterprise and service provider crowd, that means riverbed is looking to bring the agility of the cloud to existing infrastructure, by adding a new abstraction layer, which automates and simplifies thorny tasks, such as provisioning, scaling, and overall services management.

That said, the real takeaway here is that SDP will make digital transformation much easier, all with the added expense of new hardware, appliances, and network re-engineering.

Of course, fueling digital transformation is the only goal of those promoting NaaP solutions. NaaP also promises to bring better security and more flexibility to cloud services environments, something that has become more important as businesses strive to build hybrid infrastructures, without adding oppressive complexity to their services offerings. NaaP helps to unify the management of services and tear down the silos that have existed between DevOps, Networking, Cloud Services, and Information Security. In the end, the added layer of abstraction, combined with monitoring and management tools will bring more capabilities to existing systems, while removing the age old encumbrances of static provisioning and lack of scale.

Reference:- Right HERE!