Facebook Launches App Center; Makes it Easier to Discover Social Apps For iOS And Android

Facebook has announced the launch of App Center, an app recommendation portal that takes advantage of Facebook's social graph in delivering suggestions to users.
The App Center features native iOS and Android apps, as well as web apps, including the ones that run inside Facebook's website.
Facebook's doing quite a bit to ensure that the apps that are showcased to users are of high quality, as described on its developer blog:

Success through the App Center is tied to the quality of an app. We use a variety of signals, such as user ratings and engagement, to determine if an app is listed in the App Center.
[...]
Well-designed apps that people enjoy will be prominently displayed. Apps that receive poor user ratings or don’t meet the quality guidelines won't be listed.

The App Center already lists more than 600 apps at launch, which span across various categories like games, music, news, sports and photos. Any app using Facebook's login framework can be listed on the App Center, provided it follows guidelines set up by Facebook.
App Center is available on Facebook's native iOS and Android apps, as well as Facebook's desktop and mobile websites at this URL. Just like the App Store, every app in the App Center has a details page which features screenshots along with a description of the app.
Upon clicking a mobile app you would be redirected to the App Store or Google Play if you're on mobile,  and if you're on a PC you have the option of sending a link to the app on your mobile. You could of course start using the app right away if it's web based.

This isn't the full blown mobile HTML5 platform that Facebook was rumored to debut, but a front end to apps on the App Store and Google Play. Of course, there are web apps and apps that run within Facebook's canvas, but it isn't the mobile HTML5 platform that could compete with Apple or Google.
This is obviously good news for developers, who are constantly looking for new ways to increase visibility of their apps, and it'll be interesting to see how well this works out for them. (If you're a developer, you could even try our forums to get some eyeballs for your app.)
Head over to this link on your PC or iOS device to have a look at Facebook's App Center.

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Facebook Camera Now Available For iPhone Photo Addicts [Updates]

After a turbulent week dealing with angry shareholders, the world’s largest social network has added an app called Facebook Camera to its mobile arsenal. Targeting iPhone users (but also iPod Touch and iPad compatible devices), Facebook Camera provides a photo-centric Facebook experience which includes batch uploads, image editing and a feed of recently uploaded photos from friends.
Users now can crop their photos down to size and apply one of 15 Instagram-style photo filters to their images before uploading, tagging friends and sharing. Facebook Camera also increases the maximum photo resolution to 2048×2048 pixels, which is a significant leap over the standard Facebook mobile app.

Using a simple interface, the app provides quick access to the Camera Roll at all times, and overlays a pop-up feed of latest photo posts from friends. Much like Facebook Messenger, the new app is designed to do one thing simply and effectively. The initial customer reactions on the App Store are generally positive.
Download: Facebook Camera @ App Store (iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad)
Have you tried Facebook Camera? What do you think of it? Add you thoughts and images below.
Source: Facebook

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Angry Birds Friends Launches On Facebook [Updates]

Rovio has taken its hugely popular pig-popping game to the next social level by launching Angry Birds Friends on Facebook. Players can now compete against their Facebook friends in weekly tournaments, earning new trophies and power-ups as they play.
The game launches with four new levels already available, with more due to be added on a weekly basis. Competitions run from Monday to Sunday and players with the highest scores can earn gold, silver and bronze trophies which are saved to their accounts forever.
Players can also earn even more power-ups for every level they attempt in tournament mode, in addition to daily rewards for just playing the game. If you’re a dedicated pig-popper then you’ll undoubtedly love the chance to prove it to your friends, especially now that you can send challenges straight to your worthy adversaries.
Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise continues to expand on an almost monthly basis, with the recently announced Angry Birds: Heikki racing game launching next month. We’ll make sure we keep you posted!
Play: Angry Birds Friends @ Facebook
Have you played Angry Birds Friends? What do you think? Do you play Facebook games? Add your thoughts in the comments!
Source: Rovio

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How to “Friend” Someone on Facebook & Hide It From Your Status Updates

I’m sure that this has happened to you before. Someone you have ties to, whether it’s a co-worker, your boss, or even worse, a parent, has finally discovered social networking and wants to be your newest Facebook friend.

For me personally, that’s no big deal. I’m fairly open about my online activities. Everything I write, Digg, or otherwise share goes through my Friend Feed to my Twitter then ultimately onto my Facebook (my, that sounds naughty). Besides that, just about everyone I’d consider a co-worker is already on Facebook, and would have little issue about my other Internet activities.

Putting all that aside however, imagine for a moment that I worked at Domino’s Pizza and that I don’t want my boss to know that I just became a fan of Papa John’s (writing this one’s gonna make me hungry). Here’s what I would do to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to my closer friends:

On your Facebook home page, you should see the ‘Settings’ menu close to the search field on your upper-right. Open that menu and go to ‘Privacy Settings’.

On the next page, you’ll have four choices: Profile, Search, News Feed, and Applications. What you’ll want to edit here are your Profile privacy settings.

By default, everything on your profile is limited to your Friends and your Networks (your first Network is likely your city of residence, but you may have joined more). From the screenshot above, you can see that I’ve limited everything on my profile to my Friends and their Friends. Anyone else who visits my profile will only see that I have a profile, but will not see what’s on it.

In my example, you’re going to want to edit the setting on your Status Updates, since you don’t want your boss to know that you’ve “fanned” the competition. Click that dropdown menu and then select ‘Customize’.

You may want to tweak your overall privacy setting here, but what we’re aiming for is the “Except These People” list at the bottom of this dialog. Type out the name of any of your Friends to restrict that person from viewing anything in your Status Updates.

source : View the original article here

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Delete, Cancel and Terminate Facebook Account and Profile

acebook is a popular social networking website comparable to MySpace. You may receive many invite requests from friends, coursemates, colleagues or family members to join Facebook to connect with them. So you join and sign up a Facebook account but think that may be a phone call is a much better way to bring relationship with friends closer or Facebook account has seriously invaded your privacy and security, you can easily terminate, delete or cancel Facebook account, together with the Facebook profile.

1. Sign in to Facebook account.
2. Click on Account link on the top right corner.
   
3. On the “Settings” tab (click on Settings if you’re not already there), click on deactivate at the end of “Deactivate Account” line.
   
4. “Confirm Facebook Account Deactivation” page will load. Select one of the reasons why you want to delete your Facebook account, such as I don’t feel safe on the site, I spend too much time using Facebook, I have another Facebook account, This is temporary. I’ll be back, I need to fix something in my account, I don’t understand how to use the site, I receive too many emails from Facebook, I don’t find Facebook useful or Facebook is resulting in social drama for me. If you have some special reason on why you want to terminate your Facebook account not listed in the list, click on Other and type in your own explanation in the text box provided.
   
5. If you no longer want to receive any invite, notification of friend requests, tag in photos, or ask you to join groups from Facebook, click and tick the check box of Opt out of receiving emails from Facebook. option to opt out and NOT receive these email invitations and notifications from your friends.
6. Click on Deactivate button.
7. Once the Facebook account is deactivated, the following message will appear:
   Your Facebook account has been deactivated.
   To reactivate your account, simply log in as you normally would, and we’ll send you a reactivation email.
   Come back soon,
   The Facebook Team
8. Now your Facebook account is deactivated, but still can be reactivated. So do not attempt to login with to your Facebook account anymore, as doing so will reactivate your account if you click on the reactivation confirmation link sent to your registered email. According to Facebook Privacy Policy, removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook. So probably wait for a few months or years before attempting to login to verify that all your information is cleaned.

Although can be reactivated and restore your profile in its entirety (friends, photos, interests, etc), deactivation works to completely remove your profile and all associated content on your account from Facebook. In addition, users will not be able to search for you or view any of your information.

source  : View the original article here

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Facebook proposes more changes to privacy policy

Facebook said on Friday that it intends to make further changes to its privacy policy in order to respond to an audit by the Irish government, but privacy advocates saw the move as an inadequate attempt to quell privacy concerns prior to Facebook's planned initial public offering.

The proposed changes, which the company put out for public comment on Friday, don't appear to reflect any major shifts in policy. For the most part, the document makes more explicit how Facebook is already using user data. The company has also updated the policy to reflect newer features, such as cover photos.

The proposed changes are not final. A document highlighting the proposed changes is available on the website in PDF form, along with an explanation of the changes. The company is asking for user feedback and will host a web question-and-answer session about the changes May 14 at 9 a.m. Pacific time.

Sarah Downey, a privacy analyst and attorney at privacy software vendor Abine, said the more explicit language was required by a consent decree issued last year as part of a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and by the audit by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

Downey said once Facebook goes public, it will face pressure to generate more revenue and will probably accomplish that goal by using personal information to sell targeted advertising. The initial public offering (IPO) is expected to take place on May 18.

"Their financial success really requires them to collect more usable personal information and make that information available and accessible to advertisers. We expect that more private information about users is going to be disclosed," she said.

Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, also said the upcoming IPO will lay the groundwork for greater threats to user privacy.

"Facebook can't possibly protect the privacy of its users and grow as publicly traded company. It's going to be increasingly difficult for them to grow their business significantly without collecting and monetizing more of its data," he said.

Downey said one apparent change could be significant for consumers: Even if a Facebook user does not share his or her phone number or email address publicly, default settings will make it possible for others to search for the user on Facebook using that information.

The information Facebook obtains and provides to third-party advertisers, a sensitive topic among privacy advocates, was also the subject of substantial revision. For example, where the existing policy says that Facebook can use "the information it receives about you ... to measure or understand the effectiveness of ads you and others see," the new policy makes clear that that includes "deliver[ing] relevant ads to you." Delivering such user-specific advertising often involves sharing user data with third-party advertisers.

Immediately following that section, the proposed changes add, "We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and services to you and others, including those described above."

"They're talking about expanded use of your data with lots of little changes that are important. And Facebook is the master of these little changes adding up to big things," Downey said.

But the changes announced Friday also include some that allow users to better protect their privacy. An "activity log" feature will show users all of their activity on the network in one place, rather than across several timelines. Facebook also rolled out a centralized hub, where users can find all relevant documents.

source : View the original article here

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How to “unfriend” a Facebook friend without really unfriending them

Got a Facebook friend who’s bringing you down with all his depressing updates, or a frenemy who you don’t want peeking at your Facebook photo albums? Well, you could always hit the “unfriend” button, but doing so might seem a bit extreme—and hey, what if they find out?

Luckily, there are a couple of ways to keep marginal Facebook pals at arm’s length without cutting them off altogether, starting with…

Silence the downers

So, you have a pal who just won’t stop with the links to depressing news stories, the “I hate my job” updates, and the off-color, not-so-funny jokes. You want to it to stop, yet you’re not ready to chop your buddy from your list of Facebook friends. Now what?


Select "Unsubscribe" to remove a friend's updates, photos, and other activity from your news feed.
Meet the Subscribe button, which you’ll find sitting at the top of every friend’s Facebook wall, or whenever you hover your mouse over a friend’s name. You can even access a friend’s subscription options from the Facebook smartphone app.

The Subscribe button lets you manage which updates, photos, activity alerts, and more appear in your Facebook news feed—and more importantly, which ones don’t.
The Subscribe button lets you manage which updates, photos, activity alerts, and more appear in your Facebook news feed—and more importantly, which ones don’t.
In the case of this hypothetical (or not-so-hypothetical) bummer of a Facebook friend, just click their “Subscribed” button for a menu of status updates to which you’re subscribed; in most cases, you’ll see that everything from “Life Events” to “Music and Videos” is checked. You’ll also see a second “How many updates?” section with three options: “All Updates,” “Most Updates,” and “Only Important.”

If you want to hear less from a specific friend, just start tweaking the options, starting with the general “How many updates?” section (select “Only Important” if you only want to hear about, say, a new friend’s job or engagement) and finishing up by unchecking specific types of updates. You can even go all the way and select “Unsubscribe” to silence a friend entirely, all without actually unfriending them.

Block a frenemy

Ready for another scenario? Say you added your boss as a Facebook friend your first week on the job … and now you’re regretting it. You’re thinking twice about every photo upload and every update you post, but “unfriending” your boss isn’t really an option. What to do?


You can banish a friend to Facebook purgatory by putting them on your Restricted list.
Try this: put him on your “Restricted” list—a “friend list” for friends and frenemies who you’re this close to unfriending.

Once you banish someone to your Restricted list, they’ll no longer see any of your updates, photos, or other Facebook activity—or at least, nothing that you haven’t flagged as “Public” in your privacy settings. What’s more, their updates won’t appear in your news feed, either (although you might see their name pop up in the ticker once in a blue moon). Best of all, the “friends” on your Restricted list won’t know that you’ve restricted them.

And one last thing…

Remember, you can always resubscribe to a friend or remove them from your Restricted list if you have a change of heart.


   source : View the original article here

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How to stop Facebook from ID’ing your face in photos

Facebook boasts a sophisticated “facial-recognition” feature that’s capable of putting names to faces in any newly-uploaded photos. Amazing? Yes—but also a tad creepy.

The so-called “Tag Suggestions” feature (which was launched back in June 2011) won’t automatically tag you in a friend’s photo, but it may suggest your name as a tag to your snap-happy Facebook pals.

Don’t like that idea? Tweaking a key privacy setting will keep Facebook from ever suggesting your name as a tag in someone else’s snapshot.

Don’t like that idea? Tweaking a key privacy setting will keep Facebook from ever suggesting your name as a tag in someone else’s snapshot.

Here’s how:

Click the little downward arrow in the top-right corner of any Facebook page, then select Privacy Settings from the drop-down menu.

Find the “Timeline and Tagging” section in the middle of the page, then click the nearby “Edit Settings” link.

In the pop-up window that appears, click the “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?” setting.

You should now see a “Tag Suggestions” window with thumbnails of about a dozen of your friends. By default, the “Tag Suggestions” feature is set to “Friends”; just click the setting to toggle it to “No One,” then click the “OK” button.

Bonus tip

While switching off “Tag Suggestions” will keep Facebook from suggesting your name as a photo tag, it won’t prevent other Facebook users from tagging you in a picture by hand.

That said, you can at least get a chance to look at tagged photos of you before they pop up in your timeline.

 source : View the original article here

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