Facebook to add its name to WhatsApp,
Instagram In a first step towards merging all its platforms into one unified experience for users, Facebook is adding its name to Instagram and WhatsApp.
Instagram will soon become “Instagram from Facebook” and WhatsApp will turn into “WhatsApp from Facebook”, The Information reported late Friday.
The new titles will appear in the title for both apps in Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store.
“We want to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook,” a spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Employees for the apps were recently notified about the changes, “which come as antitrust regulators are examining Facebook’s acquisitions of both apps”, said the report.
The US federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now probing what prompted Facebook to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the FTC is looking to find out whether Facebook was trying to snuff out potential competitors before they could truly challenge the social media giant.
Facebook recently reached $5 billion agreement with the FTC over users’ privacy violation in the Cambridge Analytica scandal that affected 87 million users.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already announced plans for convergence between Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
“There’s a lot more that we need to figure out before we finalize the plans. This is going to be a long-term project that I think will probably be to whatever extent we end up doing it in – a 2020 thing or beyond,” the Facebook CEO had said earlier this year.
He said more than the commercial benefits of the chat integration between the apps, he was concerned about data encryption.
“The first reason that I’m excited about this is moving more to end-to-end encryption by default in more of our products. People really like this in WhatsApp. I think it’s the direction that we should be going in with more things in the future,” he noted.
“There are also a number of cases that we see where people tell us that they want to be able to message across the different services.”
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has warned Facebook over its planned integration of chat services, asking the social media giant to provide it with an “urgent briefing” on the proposals.
“The Irish DPC will be very closely scrutinizing Facebook’s plans as they develop, particularly insofar as they involve the sharing and merging of personal data between different Facebook companies,” DPC had said in a statement.
According to Zuckerberg, the idea is to let people utilise the apps to enhance the experience. (IANS)
Samsung teases new Exynos chipset coming on August 7
The official Twitter handle of Samsung’s chipset Exynos has released a teaser, hinting at the new processor which is launching on August 7 at the tech giant’s unpacked event slated for next week in Brooklyn.
The 11-second teaser does not reveal any concrete information about the chipset but it is being speculated that it’s the Exynos 9825 chipset. The company throws words like “evolved”, “next-level” and “intelligent processor” in the video.
The Note 10 has already been caught in a benchmark results database sporting an Exynos 9825 last month. It looks like the Note 10 and Note 10 Pro would be powered by the Exynos 9825 chipset which is expected to overcome the drawbacks of the 9820 chipset.
Samsung is expected to launch two models of Note 10, the regular Galaxy Note 10 and the Galaxy Note 10 Plus. The Galaxy Note 10 Plus is likely to come with the much-awaited 45W fast charging, however, the handset might ship with just a 25W charger in the box.
The company is planning to support 45W charging in the Galaxy Note 10 Plus, according to leaker Ice Universe. Even though the Galaxy Note 10 Plus would be shipped with a 25W charger, users can buy the 45W charger for faster battery charging by paying an additional cost.
The Galaxy Note 10, according to Ice Universe, would only support 25W charging. (IANS)
New Snapchat campaign takes jibe at rival Instagram
In its latest campaign called #RealFriends, photo-messaging app Snapchat has taken an evident jibe at its rival app Instagram, asserting that close friends choose Snapchat for sharing personal photo-messages.
As part of the #RealFriends campaign, the app posted friendship quotes from celebrities like Muhammad Ali, Joan Jett and Marlena Dietrich alongside the hashtags #realfriends and #friendshipquotes on a yellow background and Snapchat logo, web portal TubeFilter reported on Friday.
“Today, we’re launching a celebration of the real friends who use Snapchat. Featuring more than 70 snapchatters from 12 different countries, ‘Real friends’ shares the stories behind real friendships around the world,” the company wrote in a blog-post.
Featuring 70 snapchatters from 12 different countries, the campaign is planned to expand beyond Instagram onto billboards, television commercials and print ads that would run internationally over the next couple of months, the report said.
Currently, Snapchat has around 203 million daily active users globally. (IANS)