Tech Chaitu

Facebook killed Rooms and others stand-alone apps in December last year that had failed to gain any traction. A report back in September said that Facebook is planning to integrate Rooms into Messenger. Now the company has started rolling out Messenger Rooms, a bulletin board-style, real-time messaging feature for users in Australia and Canada. Rooms, based on a particular topic can be private or public, but it will be currently capped at 250 participants. Users will be able to publicly share links on topics, and the administrators will have tools to revoke access if some users choose to be disruptive or abusive. Facebook recently released Flash, a Snapchat clone designed for developing countries. It also started testing Snapchat Stories style feature for Messenger. Rooms is already available for Messenger users on Android in Australia and is being tested in Canada as well. Facebook is expected to roll out Room in Messenger for more users in coming weeks.

Facebook wants you to lean back and watch its News Feed videos on your television with a new feature that lets you stream clips via Apple TV, AirPlay devices, Google Chromecast, and Google Cast devices. The move could help Facebook generate more video ad revenue, and increase usage time by giving people the richest possible viewing experience while at home.The feature is now available on iOS and will come to Android soon. To use it, just find a video in the feed on your phone or desktop, tap the TV button in the top right, and then select the device you want to stream through. You can keep scrolling through the feed and using Facebook while the video continues to stream. That allows Facebook to become both the first and second screen, a strategy Periscope is pursuing differently by allowing professional content broadcasts to be piped into Periscope and Twitter via its new Producer feature.Facebook started testing streaming to televisions from Android back in May and iOS in Augu

Facebook is rebranding its Internet.org service as Free Basics. The service which aims to offer free Internet connection is now live in 19 different countries and India is also among one of them. While Facebook didn’t explain why it is rebranding the service, but the new brand still fails to answer the net neutrality questions. Internet.org or Free Basics is a free platform which allows poor users to access web contents free of cost. The company has partnered with carriers to offer this free Internet facility. It basically work as a proxy between users and the Internet. Along with this rebranding, Facebook has also announced that it will now use HTTPS in URLs to encrypt the data. And for those who are thinking about privacy, Internet.org has already revealed in its data retention police, that it will never collect any data, including the domain name information or the device information. Facebook has also partnered with 30 new developers to offer better services in

Facebook, world’s largest social networking site is not only for connecting people, but also for connecting advertisers to you. While the site already knows many things about its users – starting from their age, where they work, their interests, their gender and secrets, it wants to know more. Facebook now wants to collect your browsing habits, so that it can use that data to show you perfect and useful ads. The company will soon start collecting these data. Facebook says that it will use its “like,” “share” and other social widgets which are embedded in millions of websites and apps, to collect the data. “We hope that the ads people see will continue to become more useful and relevant and that this new control will make it easier for people to have the ads experience they want,” said Stephen Deadman, Facebook’s global deputy chief privacy officer, in a  blog post . This isn’t the first time when Facebook will do this. Since the introduction of embeddable “like” button in

Facebook is finally adding the much-awaited video calling feature in its Facebook Messenger app. This latest version is now available for download on both Google Play Store for Android users and Apple Store for iOS users. But this service is currently only available for Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the UK, the US and Uruguay.  To get started, just make sure that you have downloaded and installed the latest update on your phone. If you are running the latest version then you should see a video icon at the top of the conversation you of the person you want to call. So, now with voice calling support, video calling support, a GIF store, Hello Dialer and Payments, Facebook Messenger is currently the best app for Android and iOS.

Facebook is now allowing its users to choose what will happen to their accounts after they die. Now, Facebook users in the US will be able to choose to have their accounts deleted after death or grant permission to another person on Facebook to manage your account on their behalf. Facebook calls this person an account’s “legacy contact,” and users can choose that person through the website’s or app’s security page.  If a user chose to set up a legacy contact, then that person will be able to change your profile photo, accept friend requests, and pin announcements on your account’s timeline after a notice of your death has been received by Facebook. A legacy contact will not be able to post to the account that they’re controlling, nor will they be able to view that person’s private messages. Facebook will also provide an option to let legacy contacts download a file containing an account’s photos, posts, and other information. Earlier, Facebook provided a process to freeze acc

For all those who love Google’s new Material Design, here is a good news. It seems like Facebook’s main app for Android is soon getting some major design improvements. According to the recently shared screenshots and beta tester, Facebook is currently testing Material Design based elements on its app. While there isn’t many notable changes to mention here, but we do see the floating action button. When tapped, this floating action button will allow you to update your status, upload a phone, take a photo or share the location where you are. It is good to see that Facebook has now started implementing Google’s new design language.

As expected, RCom and Facebook today announced Internet.org in India that will provide free access to 33 websites for free. The service has been launched in seven circles and will work for both existing and new RCom subscribers and will work on feature phones as well as Android smartphones.  Internet.org will initially be available in seven circles of Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. “We have gone live with seven circles and are committed to going pan-India in 90 days,” said Gurdeep Singh, CEO, consumer business, RCom. The free access to websites include news, maternal health, travel, local jobs, sports, communication, and local government information. Internet.org has already been announced in five countries but the list of websites is the most exhaustive in India. RCom says it will add more content to the initiative. Singh pointed out that 70 percent of mobile India is currently not online and this is an initiative to bring cu

Facebook has silently released a new version of its official Android App for low-cost Android devices. With the launch of Facebook Lite Android App, the company is focusing on emerging markets, where Internet connection is not so good. Facebook redesigned its main Android App last year, just to make sure it can provide better performance and data efficiency in the emerging markets. The interesting thing about this new app is its size. The main Facebook for Android app is of around 27MB in size, while this new Lite version app is just 252KB, which is a huge difference. This new app is currently available in emerging markets like Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. But it will be soon reaching more markets in the world. This Facebook Lite Android App will be best for those who are having low cost Android device. As these affordable devices comes with limited storage. So, this new version of Facebook will not eat up storage of th

Facebook’s Creative Labs team is introducing a new standalone app for mobile users. Dubbed as Stickered for Messenger, this app allows Facebook users to easily add any stickers they like over a photo and then send it to their friends. It is really an interesting app and will definitely help users to make any conversation more interesting. Along with that Facebook is also releasing a new update for its messenger app. It is a holiday-inspire update for the messenger which includes a picture framed themed to New Year’s Even, festive sticker packs and snow globe chat heads. The company says that all these themes will last just “the holidays.” So, if you want then you can give it a try one time Do you want more TechChaitu  Updates ? Enter your email address:

It seems like soon Facebook users will soon get the Material Design makeover on the official Facebook Android App. Facebook Beta app has been recently updated with some new design improvements. While these changes are not so big, but they clearly hints towards the big Material Design makeover. As reported by Android Police, Facebook hasn’t made any announcement regarding this new User Interface or design improvements. But this colourful iconography and more flatter look is making Facebook for Android more attractive. We still can’t say when Facebook is planning to give the overall Material Design makeover to its app. But after looking at this new update, it appears like we might see it very soon. To remind you, Material Design is the new design guidelines issued by Google earlier this year. If you have used Google’s latest Android Lollipop Operating System, then you might be well familiar with the Material Design UI. As Android Lollipop has been made totally on the Material Des

It seems like soon you will be able to hit the Dislike button for any post or photo which you don’t like to see on Facebook. During his recent public Q&A session, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg replied to a question asked buy a U.C. Davis law student regarding the dislike button, Mark said that the company is currently “thinking” to add a dislike button or something like that. As like button isn’t always helpful for expressing negative feelings. “The like button is valuable because it’s a quick way to share a positive sentiment,” Mark added. “Some people have asked for a dislike button so they can say something isn’t good, and we’re not going to do that. I don’t think that’s good for the community.” Well, the dislike button is a very old thing which most of the Facebook users asked for. So, it is good to see the the company is thinking about it, but it is still not confirmed if they will bring it or not and if yes! then when? Mark answered many questions in his Q&A se

Facebook is launching its new forum based app called Rooms. This iPhone app allows users to easily create tiny message boards where they can share text, photos or even videos. Users can create an individual ‘Room’ for any topic they like, they can even customize it with fonts, emoji, colours, member permissions and more. There is also different option for setting moderators, age restrictions, rules for posting and boot bad members. The interesting thing is that in “Rooms” you can also change the “Like” button with another verb. The app was developed by Josh Miller, the co-founder of web discussions site Brand which was acquired by Facebook a year ago. The app looks very similar to Instagram and like Reddit. But there is no front page ranking system as similar to Reddit. Rooms was inspired by “the ethos of these early web communities.” The early days when any user on the web was able to talk with strangers about a common interest. It is the mixture of Forums, message boards