Marck Zuckerberg has stated that Facebook is not a traditional media company.

Facebook plays an important role in people’s lives since many users prefer getting their news from the platform, from a variety of publishers which appear in their news feeds. Despite the social network’s impact and the ability to regulate what content people see, Mark Zuckerberg has been reluctant to admit that Facebook is a media company, until now.

After Facebook and Zuckerberg faced backlash for its lack of action to prevent the spread of fake news, which may have helped elect Donald Trump, Zuckerberg downplayed the role of fake news in changing people mind or the course of the election. However, Facebook recently changed their tune regarding fake news, accepting their role in the problem and taking steps to address it.

Zuckerberg took a further step in accepting the reality of the role and impact of Facebook in today’s society during a live video stream on Wednesday. Together with Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, he discussed 2016 in summary and what it meant for Facebook as well as what we can expect in 2017. More importantly, he stated that Facebook is not a traditional media company, as the social is more than a distributor of news, it plays an important role in the public discourse.

This statement implies that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has finally come to terms about the impact Facebook has in society, which mostly acts as a media company, but until now wasn’t ready to assume the responsibility that comes with it. However, unlike traditional media companies, Facebook does not create the content themselves, and this is what sets it apart from other forms of media.

Facebook’s news feed is mainly responsible for the increasing aspect of a media company that Facebook has unwillingly adopted, since it acts like an editor, determining what content people see, from who and when. Furthermore, even the company’s leaders who determine the community standards, as well as content policies, act as editors, determining whether people should see or not various controversial content like nude historical photographs or reports of police shootings.

As such, Facebook is able to incorporate common elements from both a tech company which only publishes content on their platform, and a media company, by deciding who and what see the respective content.

Image source: Pixabay

Facebook is exploring the idea of developing original video content.

Since the social the network made its debut, Facebook only served as a location where people and companies can showcase their various original content. Now, although the company insisted that it’s not a media company, it is looking to add a variety of original video content on its platform.

Recode reports that Ricky Van Veen, which was the co-founder of College Humor and who joined the company earlier this year, is the man leading Facebook’s efforts of gathering an array of original video content. The company is in talks with various TV studios as well as other video producers regarding the licensing of shows.

Facebook is interested in acquiring or developing a wide variety of scripted or unscripted shows, as well as sports. This recent effort builds on the company’s previous media deals with companies like Vox Media, which will produce live content exclusively for the social network. According to Van Veen, Facebook is interested in creating an ecosystem of third-party content.

Although most of the current deals involve purchasing its own content via licensing and from the outset, Facebook is also considering to develop original video content in the manner of companies like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. Unfortunately, nothing specific has been revealed in this regard.

Facebook currently benefits from the large number of videos its users create and watch for and on the platform. As such, it is unclear why they want to adopt a riskier practice of acquiring or developing original video content. Most think it has to do with Facebook imagining the future for its platform, and media in general. It previously emphasized that video will be the main form of communications and content delivery.

As such, the company recently added a video tab to the platform earlier this year. However, it is still far from sites like YouTube. By creating and acquiring their own library of original video content, Facebook could gradually become a destination for watching a wide variety of videos. This could help the company create a clear path to monetization for its users and partners. This feature, in turn, will lead to more content and increasingly bigger audiences.

These are ambitious plans for Facebook which keeps maintaining that it is a tech and not a media company.

Image source: Pixabay

BMW wants to redesign their I3 electric car for 2017.

Not all companies that dominated the conventional car industry were able to translate their previous success to the electric car market. One case is BMW, which hasn’t seen much demand for its I3 electric car. However, the company hopes that a redesign coupled with some new features will provide the vehicle the boost it needs to attract more customers.

Despite the company’s reputation, BMW has only sold around 25,000 units of their I3 hatchbacks in 2015.  For this reason, BMW’s plans for the 2017 version of their i3 electric car includes both a front and rear end redesign, probably to make the car look a bit more modern. Unfortunately, no images have been released or leaked as of yet, so it remains unclear how the car will actually end up looking once BMW is finished.

The report issued by the German publication Welt am Sonntag, which has revealed the company’s plan, also shows that among the changes planned by BMW for the I3 electric car, a new battery technology stands out as a better reason to consider buying the car.  The current version of BWM I3 has a range of 114 miles on a full charge which can be increased up to 180 miles through a “range extender.”

Unfortunately, the report doesn’t precisely specify what the future range will be, but it does mention that it should be an increase of less than 50 percent. As such, I3 2017 standard range will still very likely be under 200-miles. Although the higher range can lead to a wider appeal, the I3 electric car is still well below what other EV’s can offer such as Tesla’s Model S with its 300-miles range. However, the fully-featured Model S also costs almost three times as much as the $47,450 i3. It is unknown if the price of the redesigned i3 will remain the same or if it will be slightly increased.

BMW hopes that their future autonomous cars will have better luck than their electric cars. The company has started a collaboration with Intel and Mobileye in order to create an open platform for self-driving vehicles by 2021.

What do you think of BMW’s plans for their I3 electric car?

Image source: Wikimedia

Doppler Labs delayed their Here One earbuds.

Anyone with long commutes during their day knows the pleasure of using a pair of headphones to listen to your favorite music while you traverse the often loud and noisy city. However, listening to music loud enough on your headphones can block any outside sounds. This type of sensory deprivation is dangerous as sounds often provided warnings of dangers.

Doppler Labs, an audio startup company, is addressing this situation by developing a pair of wireless earbuds called Here One that, besides streaming music, can augment the sounds of the environment you are in. Although the earbuds were previously announced in June and were scheduled to ship in November, Doppler Labs have decided to push their launch date until February 2017.

Some of the situations the earbuds are uniquely designed to address is listening to music while walking down the street but still being able to hear the sounds of an incoming car. Another example is when you’re at a sporting event, the Here One earbuds provide you with reduced crowd noise while focusing the field action and also streaming stats about the match and the players.

Thanks to the innovative functionality of the earbuds, Doppler Labs has established partnerships with various companies and institutions for unique content and features like getting a custom audio commentary when going to the Philharmonic, or your own travel guide when visiting the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. Other partnerships involve the New York Mets, JetBlue, Coachella, Cleveland Cavaliers, and others to come.

According to Noah Kraft, the CEO of Doppler Labs, although they wished the earbuds could have been delivered as scheduled, especially so considering that Apple sold millions of jack-less iPhone 7s, the company still has to perform a validation build on a mass market scale.

Doppler labs will probably miss out on a lot of product sales if they don’t launch before the holidays. However, they could risk losing even more if the product was not up to the promised standards. Additionally, this extra time also gives the company time to add new features to the earbuds by forming even more partnerships with different organizations to that users can enjoy a unique experience.

Are you planning on buying the wireless earbuds from Doppler Labs?

Image credit: Doppler Labs

Kaspersky complaint leads to Microsoft anticompetitive investigation.

The founder of the antivirus developer company Kaspersky Lab, Eugene Kaspersky has complained about Microsoft’s Windows 10 anticompetitive bundling of the Defender antivirus with their OS. This led Kaspersky to file a complaint with competition authorities in both Russia and the EU.

Most industry experts speculated that the regulators won’t act soon enough to make a difference in Microsoft’s policy or that their action won’t compel any considerable changes. However, it seems that the Russian antitrust authority known as the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has opened an investigation last Thursday into Microsoft’s policy.

More specifically, the institution is trying to determine if Microsoft’s actions in bundling Windows 10 with Defender and making the installation of third-party antivirus software harder, was a violation of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition.” More specifically, the Part 1 Article 10 of the law which forbids companies which have a dominant position in the market to engage in activities that prevent, restrict or eliminates competition as well as infringing on the interests of other actors, be it companies or consumers.

Kaspersky apparently issued the complaint with the anticompetition authority after he spent several months in talks with Microsoft, attempting to address the issue directly with the company. Unfortunately, all his effort proved exhausting and fruitless.

Kaspersky made his frustration public in a blog post, in which he also stated the main issues he has with Windows 10 and how it treats third-party security software developers. First, when a user upgrades to Windows 10, other antivirus software is recommended to be uninstalled as part of the process. The program won’t be spared even if you select it to be kept.

Second, Kaspersky criticizes the fact that Microsoft allows third-party developers only a period of six days to adapt their software to new Windows 10 versions compared to the two months they had on previous operating systems. This isn’t anywhere close to sufficient time for Kaspersky to provide their quality service and they risk losing customers to Defender.

Finally, Kaspersky also claims that Windows 10 conceals when a license expired or its signatures are out-of-date in order to automatically switch back to Defender. Additionally, the Kaspersky complaint also mentions the below average quality of Defender as a security system.

What do you make of the Kaspersky complaint?

Image source: Wikimedia