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Facebook launches Groups app to streamline online gatherings on mobile

Facebook’s Creative Labs loves creating new apps. From Slingshot, to Paper, to Rooms, the team seems to be pumping out new apps every time we turn around. The latest to come from the potentially over-caffeinated team is for fans of Facebook’s Groups feature.

Starting today, Facebook Groups gets its very own app. The Groups app is available for iOS and Android and streamlines the UI of the Facebook feature on mobile.

Facebook says that 700 million people interact with a Facebook group every month. With that in mind, the Creative Labs team wanted to build something to make the mobile experience easier and faster to interact with.

The new app makes it’s simple to quickly create, join and navigate between groups with a few taps. In addition to joining groups created by friends and family, there’s a new Discover tab that surfaces groups you may like based on the groups and pages you’ve already joined and where you live.

For example if you are a member of a bicycle groupand you like the Tour de France, you might see a nearby group for weekend bike rides under the Discover tab.

If you’re a fan of Groups but not a fan of having to use a separate app to use a Facebook function a la Messenger, there’s no need to worry. The Groups feature will continue to be part of the main Facebook app.

➤ Introducing the Facebook Groups App [Facebook]

[source]

Messaging app Viber launches Public Chats for listening in on celebrity conversations

Mobile messaging and VoIP app Viber today announced a new Public Chats beta feature that will allow public figures and companies to share group discussions with fans.

At a launch event, Viber CEO Talmon Marco described Public Chats as a social experiment. The feature, which goes live for users at midnight GMT on Wednesday, is intended to satisfy our morbid curiosity about what other people are chatting about. Users won’t be able to contribute to public chats, but Viber does plan to enable user comments in the future.

Viber will feature popular chats in a new section in version 5.1 of its iOS and Android apps. Each discussion will also include a custom URL.

The most popular chats will be featured on the home screen of the Public Chats section of Viber. Users can easily search to discover who is chatting, or they can access a chat directly through its customized URL.

Launch partners include blogger Perez Hilton, YouTuber Tyler Oakley, musician Pixie Lott, DJ Paul van Dyk, fashion company Next Model Management and football channel COPA90. Over 300 individual public chats are available on the service; interested parties can apply to start a public chat atpublicchats@viber.com.

Viber, which was acquired by Rakuten earlier this year, boasts 460 million registered users and 210 million monthly active users around the world.

➤ Viber [iOS | Android]

[source]

Google will give you $5 if you get a friend to use Google Wallet

 

If you can’t beat them, give them money.

Today Google announced a referral program for Google Wallet to help kick start adoption of the service. Current users that send cash via Google Wallet to friends that don’t yet have a balance will be rewarded with $5.

You can send as little as a penny to enable the referral bonus and you can get up to 20 referrals for a grand total of $100.

Unfortunately, there are rules. Both parties have to be in the US and it’ll need to be your friend’s first time having a Google Wallet balance. The promotion will end on 11/30/2014 or when Google hits 20,000 referrals.

So you might want to hurry.

➤ Get $5 when a friend claims money from you [Google]

[source]

One tweet is crashing the official Twitter app for iOS [Update: Good to know that Twitter has fixed the bug]

Twitter users today discovered a bug in Twitter for iOS that causes the app to crash when a specific URL is tweeted on the network.

If the URL in question appears in your timeline, it’ll cause the Twitter for iOS app to crash every time it’s opened. Users don’t even need to click on the link to be affected.

First discovered by @CPVideoMaker, the bug appears to be related to a URL is encoded using “punycode” on the network. The problem was resolved within a few hours of it being noticed.

An example of a tweet that could cause the crash to occur is below; this is the tweet that Twitter for iOS to crash repetitively on my iPhone.

Punycode is a method in which Unicode characters — such as emoji — can be encoded for display in ASCII’s limited character set. The URL in question that’s circulating is a number of emoji’s translated using Punycode, according to@CPVideoMaker.

Unsurprisingly, when someone finds a bug that breaks something, everyone starts sharing it to mess with their followers.

Thousands of users on the social network poured onto the network via alternative apps to express their frustration that the official Twitter app for iOS seemingly wouldn’t open after encountering the Punycode tweet.

The bug doesn’t appear to affect third party apps or Twitter’s apps on other platforms. The company appears to be working around the bug by disabling individual links that use the method.

Update: Twitter’s iOS engineering lead just shared that the bug should be resolved now and that you should be able to launch the app again.

(Source)

Facebook developing a professional website 'Facebook at Work': FT

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc is secretly working on a new website called "Facebook at Work" that would allow users to keep their personal profile separate from their work profile, the Financial Times reported.

The new website, that will look very much like Facebook, will compete with professional social network LinkedIn Corp, GoogleInc, and Microsoft Corp, the newspaper said. (on.ft.com/1vgu64P)

Facebook's new site will allow users to chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources.

Facebook was not available for comment outside regular U.S. business hours.

Facebook employees have long used the site in their daily work and the social networking site is now testing it with companies, the newspaper said.

(Source)

WTF? You can preorder Black Friday gadget deals

Cough. Choke. Collapse. That's me nearly needing the Heimlich maneuver during breakfast while looking over Samsung Black Friday deals. You can preorder them. Seriously. What the frak is that?

The routine started all so innocently. Samsung sent a promo email, and I curiously clicked the picture of a Chromebook and "Reserve Computing Deals". The webpage screenshot says all you need to know. You can, today -- as in right this very minute -- preorder either Samsung Chromebook 2 for assured savings ($20 or $50) between November 27 and December 1 for one and until the 27th for the other. I understand that Black Friday is late-month this year, but, c`mon, beat me with a sack of cash, sales preorders?

I'm afraid to ask: Who else? Surely Samsung isn't alone promoting such consumer madness. Now you can avoid the Walmart stampede and the risk that normally sweet Aunt May, who weighs 270 pounds on non-pasta and potato chips days, clubs you senseless to get $1 Ginsu steak knives (her next weapon of choice) and $199 40-inch TV (steer clear of her cart). You can click now, lock in your discount, and sit back fat and sassy guzzling beer and pretzels Thursday evening, while the crazies storm store doors, which most major retailers, including Walmart, open at 6 p.m.

I thought the Thanksgiving openings were insane, and scary, enough. Now we've got Black Friday discount preorders. Oh my, Samsung, November 27 is Thursday, not even the Big Day. Please, someone shake me awake from this nightmare of consumer sales gluttony.

But wait! You can get that deal sooner. Samsung advertises big, big-screen TV sales starting November 23 that you can lock in now. The 55-inch 4K television will be discounted $1,300 to $1,299.99, which isn't as good a deal as appears. Amazon sells the same set for $1,497.99. The big savings, and even bigger spend, is the 65-inch model that Samsung will discount by $2,000 to $1,999.99 and Amazon sells $2,497.99. Lock it in now, bright boys, and avoid the mall crazies.

Or you can be sensible and do neither.

Gadget geeks, think! Take back your brains. I know that we've all been conditioned for Pavlovian response by preorder parades. The likes of Apple and Google have us conditioned to salivate, hyperventilate, and obsessively flagellate the computer keyboard trying to get that gadget preorder before stock sells out. Should that really extend to Black Friday deals?

(Source)