Contrary to the Ad-funded social media platforms propagated by tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, comes the birth of a new Social network – WT:Social. Founded by the Co-founder of Wikipedia – Jimmy Wales, this new social platform is a crowd-funded community that is maintained via the contributions of its Users.

Although the platform is free to join, yet the WT:Social ecosystem runs on a subscription basis. Such that newly registered Users are shortlisted on a ‘waiting list’. And can only be included in the platform when they make contributions through donations or help build up the community by inviting a friend. 

Therefore, in order to become a member of the social network, it requires a monthly fee of $12.99 or $100 per year in the U.S. While the said donation plan goes for €12 per month or €90 per year and £10 per month or £80 per year in Europe and UK respectively. 

Currently, WT:Social enjoys over 160,000 Users according to a tweet by Wales. However, its Proprietor envisages that the platform has the capacity to attain 500 million Users, as is the company’s target. As stated by Wales;

“Obviously the ambition is not 50,000 or 500,000 but 50m and 500m. If we grow from 400 users today (you’re in on the ground floor!) to 400 million, we will have revolutionized the Internet and shown a better and more healthy way to share information and collaborate with each other.”

Given that WT:Social started out as Wikitribune – A site dedicated to publishing only factual news, the platform’s number one goal is to combat fake news and bad actors. Also, WT:Social aims to grants Users full control and provide them with an informative social media engagement rather than a click-bait experience.

But what remains to be known is the kind of content to be distributed on the platform that could maintain its utility in the long term. Considering the fact that the site would have its Subscribers register with a fee, precludes the involvement of Users from developing countries (which is one of the secret ingredients behind the larger communities present on Facebook and Twitter).

Hence, WT:Social would have to do a lot in terms of the content it distributes. So to attract more Users and compete with the likes of Facebook that presently enjoys an audience of over 1.5 billion users worldwide.

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Only recently, Cloudflare announced that it would be integrating Google’s experimental Internet Protocol – The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 3 (HTTP/3). Being that this is the first major upgrade to the HTTP protocol since it was established in 1989. Though originally a Google-funded project, however this nascent security standard, through the Internet Security Task Force (IETF) already enjoys widespread adoption by industry key players including Cloudflare and Mozilla Firefox.

On Thursday, Cloudflare published that websites subscribed to their platform would soon be able to toggle the option of HTTP/3 on their dashboards. Consequently, the same feature would allow all Cloudflare-hosted websites using an HTTP/3 enabled client to be automatically upgraded. A functionality that is already widely used by Google’s native browser app – Chrome Canary. 

Following this development, Mozilla Foundation had hinted that it would also enlist this new security protocol into its Firefox ‘Nightly’ browser app later this fall. Particularly, these features are only open to Users on ‘Chrome Canary’ and ‘Firefox Nightly’ who are more tech-savvy as an average User might find these options difficult to navigate to.

According to Ryan Hamilton – A Software Engineer at Google, this partnership could bring about an improved and better browsing experience to the Internet space. Subsequently, He added that;

“HTTP/3 should make the web better for everyone. The Chrome and Cloudflare teams have worked together closely to bring HTTP/3 and QUIC from nascent standards to widely adopted technologies for improving the web. Strong partnership between industry leaders is what makes Internet standards innovations possible, and we look forward to our continued work together.”

The HTTP3 Standard

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 3 (HTTP/3) also widely referred to as HTTP-over-QUIC during its inception is a data transmission technology that utilizes the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Unlike the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), this Standard naturally ships in with reduced latency, high reliability as well as much more faster speed. 

The [QUIC Protocol] – Quick UDP  Internet Connections, is a hybrid innovation that builds upon the super fast packet delivery that fraughts with the UDP standard together with the intermittent packet verification procedure familiar with the TCP protocol alongside an improved TLS/SSL security.

Conversely, this new internet security standard for the web is designed extensively on a layer 4 transport protocol to ensure a secure, reliable and fast connections to web endpoints by means of APIs and Websites that support this standard.

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Social media tech giant – Facebook has recently aired its plans to remove the like button and subsequently the likes count, in order to reduce what is considered ‘superficial comparison’ between members of the social network.

Even though the advantage of social networking fraughts with a number of opportunities as a universally connected unit, with it, also comes a few detriments such as an unhealthy ‘emotional connection’.

Hence Facebook’s decision against the ‘like count’ arises as a result of a continuous uprise in the mental and psychological effects social media has on the general public on a global scale. Following a research conducted by the Florida-based Behavioral Health Center, it was perceived that those who were more engaged with social media platforms are about 2.7 times more likely to be depressed.

Furthermore, a top tier tech blogging site – TechCrunch, who confronted close associates of the California-based social media company directly, relays a similar opinion towards this as it stipulated thus; 

“The problem is that people have so many fewer of those big moments, and the large Like counts they attract can make other users self-conscious of their own lives and content. That’s all problematic for Facebook’s ad views.”

Apparently its sister company – Instagram, is already in the testing phase of implementing the removal of the ‘like button’ altogether with the ‘like counts’. With plans to launch this new feature in seven countries including Canada and Brazil.

Instagram would enforce this new idea by displaying the names of some mutual friends who like a certain post rather than show the total number of likes.

Although Facebook is known to be a pioneer of today’s social networking ecosystem, experts however identify this move as a bold one that could either ‘encourage users to share posts as it eradicated the element of comparison’ nor ‘reduce the greater majority of users who have now come dwell in the recent social media ‘hype’ or ‘like’ as the case may be.

Let’s all assume the former would take because the latter bears a cost that could have the social networking behemoth struggling throughout the next decade. 

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Are you still following the old marketing strategies for your business? Nowadays, most of the businesses are using their Facebook fan page to advertise and promote their products and services to a wide range of customers.

Even the small businesses that do not own a website make use of Facebook page to present their business online and visible to the larger number of people. With a reliable facebook page of your business people can get to know the latest updates that may not be available to your website and also get a chance to learn more about your business. So in this article let us discuss 7 best tips to boost your Facebook reach:

Go for engaging content

Content is the key to any successful business and so it is in the case of facebook page marketing. Make sure you always post original and correct information about your products and business. One should post the content that makes sense and ability to relate with the customer needs in order to get more likes on their facebook page. Moreover, if you are looking for more new likes on your page here is the Famoid’s facebook page like packages.

Utilize ‘facebook live’ feature

Facebook live is a very effective characteristic of Facebook with which businesses can show real things like events, celebrations, behind the scenes, like content to their users. Users do believe in actual things and thus they show more interest in such things. Another benefit if facebook lives are that you can personally interact with the customers and answer their questions in the video itself. So follow the best practices while making any video and going live to show what you are actually doing.

Post when your users are most active

It is very essential to post on your facebook page at the right time and in the right quantities. Too much posting is not good in terms of professional business and similarly posting too less is also not suggestive. So one should always post regularly like one post a day and it should be meaningful enough to reach a larger audience. When your users will be more active they tend to share your products on their timeline, then it will be visible to their friends and other people. In this way, the promotion of your business will get higher visits and it will ultimately boost up the traffic of your website.

Organize contests and promotions

To run a successful business you should always keep your potential customers on top priority. In order to achieve that, you can organize contests regarding your products and services and also offer rewards for the same. Researchers have proved that people tend to show more interest in these contests and likely to participate in them.

Know your Facebook insights

Once you are done with creating a facebook fan page and started posting on it ideally. The next step you should do is to keep a regular watch to your Facebook page insights. It will show you some necessary data like how many likes you got on your page, the reach of your posts and page, the number of people engaged with the post etc. With that, you can better evaluate the negatives and positives

Building the Facebook community

If you are looking for getting more likes on your facebook page then you can participate in the Facebook community. Create group discussions for your business, frequently asked questions, running contests are some of the best ways to keep your people engaged. You should try to offer your users with something unique and creative which no one else has initiated yet. For this, you have to devote maximum time to your audience, carry on with your discussions and forums.

Use better visuals

Images are one of the most beneficial ways to communicate with your customers and to create their interest in your products. By using better images you will be able to expand your reach since people like high-quality images and videos. Make sure your images convey the same you do with your written content. The smaller you will post the larger impact it will leave on your users. But make sure your images are complete and the best information is represented.

So these are some of the best ways to boost up your Facebook page that will benefit your business in one way or the other.

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The web is recently seen as very unsafe as there are a lot of stories of phishing attacks, email scams, and malware. Eventually, Google has thought of its users and has made an effort to save users from such issues as according to a report from ZDNet, it has included a feature to their popular web browser, Chrome which is aimed to caution users about replicated misspelled URLs that can imitate real websites. A member of Google’s usable security team, Emily Stark also showed the feature during a recent presentation focused on web security.

The reports reveal the feature is at present in beta testing with Google Chrome Canary 70, yet can be enabled with the chrome://flags/#enable-lookalike-url-navigation-suggestions flag. Chrome will display a caution message when the feature is selected, the message is under the Ombnibar, and if the user types in a URL of a website that has false determines or seem to steal login credentials, the feature will bring out new suggestions.

An instant by ZDNet is that websites like paypall.com or coịnbạse.com are examples of fake websites, but, as per the test results, standard versions of Google Chrome will auto redirects to the official websites.

Google Chrome has a similar flag on standard non-beta. However, it does not seem to operate like in the Canary ring.  This makes it clear that the feature might not be ready yet and looking at how things are going might officially be released in the future.

Google has many security-themed features as this is not the first that the company has introduced to their Chrome browser. Google recently tried to battle sites that takeover users back button and tab history to generate views on ads. The company recently brought a quiz aimed to inform the user on how to avoid attacks.

It is quite exciting to see Google Chrome with attempts to provide auto supports. Nevertheless, I think web users must be careful and should try checking URLs they visit on the web. An indicator of a secure connection, site certificates, and other web settings is a green lock next to the URL; users are always advised to check that.

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Apple Inc’s Friday release of the beta version of its latest OS update, iOS 12.2 for developers is loaded with indicators of the bagful of changes it would bring. One potential feature relates to Apple’s new magazines subscription service. Secondly, AirPods 2 will link-up to native voice assistant Siri.

App developers for the closed operating system are all over the internet predicting the load of features that Apple would eventually offer in its latest updated version. The paid-version of News on Apple appears to be the trend-winner thus far!

Subscription-based News

Digitized news content and its consumption has been evolving in the past couple of years, with smartphone apps becoming the default media for consumption.

Developers now tout iOS 12.2 as the decisive update which will push content-producing and publishing conglomerates such as Apple’s Apple News to offer all-in-one media subscription as it needs to be available and monetize all of the consumption patterns – from Apple Music, Apple TV shows to Apple Magazines and soon Apple News.

Bundled subscription appears to be the change needed to push news consumption into digitized version, even as offline newspaper and magazines are quickly biting the dust for being expensive over the low-cost e-versions.

Apple News subscription has been discussed repeatedly in hushed-tones ever since the big daddy of paid-services Apple acquired Texture. It is likely that it will be the flag-bearer for Apple to get its users to pay for the news they can read on their iOS devices. It would of course include content from variety of publishers.

For years now digital economy strides have touched nearly every commodity which can be digitized.

With many of traditional big corporate newspapers and media groups – WSJ, Forbes, Bloomberg offering e-version for insignificant costs the transition to platform-restricted publication was not to far. Facebook began to experiment with its paid-news feed services, where it published news by journalists for a fee. But this experiment was not as effective.

Soon, Facebook began its own news assembling, editing and over time monitoring news buzz for their fakeness, before it pushed forward to its billions of consumers across the world. However, the switch to news consumption from their smart devices is largely restricted to millennial while the senior generation prefers their news pages.

However, the age of newsprint is dying a slow death and it is a matter of a few years before consolidated services such as Apple News will come to rule news rooms.

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In a much awaited move, YouTube, the popular user-content-generated video platform shall not recommend “borderline content” or conspiracy theories such as the moon landing was faked or the earth being flat, going forward.

On Friday Google-backed video content platform made the significant announcement in its content policy change based on long standing criticism by users about “clickbaity videos with misleading titles and descriptions (“You won’t believe what happens next!”),” the blog post noted.

Ongoing Improvement of recommendations        

According to the official blog, Youtube’s latest recommendation is based on ‘viewer satisfaction’ over that of “views, including measuring likes, dislikes, surveys, and time well spent, all while recommending clickbait videos less often.”

However, these recommendations were also found to be irksome by users. Following many complaints of people receiving similar recommendations based on one view, the current changes have been rolled out.

“We now pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics—on any given day, more than 200 million videos are recommended on the homepage alone. In fact, in the last year alone, we’ve made hundreds of changes to improve the quality of recommendations for users on YouTube.”

Watch-out for Violators of community Guidelines

Further, the media publisher will sharpen its look out “at how we can reduce the spread of content that comes close to—but doesn’t quite cross the line of—violating our Community Guidelines.”

In fact, it would cease to recommend non-factual, ‘borderline content’ such as phone miracles for cancer or similar uploads.

Conceding that only 1 percent of the Youtube population would actually view ‘borderline content’ it vowed that it will not run any blanket ban on such posts.

Pulling-out its Community Guidelines as the ultimate judge on quality of content it would publish, Youtube has reiterated that ‘borderline content’ would be available for those who would like to watch such information. However, henceforth it would not recommend such videos based on its “recommendation” algorithm. Secondly, subscribers of such channels would continue to receive such recommendations as part of search results.

Youtube thus squarely leaves the responsibility to view content to the user community. It’s only restraint that it would officially not bring out ‘borderline content’ to those who do not appear to be interested in such content, until further use-pattern by the user.

A full-fledged program is already in place at YouTube United States by getting public guidelines-trained evaluators to train via machine learning systems to evaluate and generate recommendations.

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