Whatsapp : New Features for Groups

Groups have been an important part of the WhatsApp experience, whether it's family members connecting across the globe or childhood friends staying in touch over the years. There are also people coming together in groups on WhatsApp like new parents looking for support, students organizing study sessions, and even city leaders coordinating relief efforts after natural disasters. Today, we're sharing improvements that we've made to groups.

What's New

• Group description: A short blurb found under group info that allows you to set the purpose, guidelines, or topics for the group. When a new person joins a group, the description will show up at the top of the chat.
• Admin controls: In group settings, there's now a control that allows admins to restrict who can change the group's subject, icon, and description.
• Group catch up: When you've been away from a group chat, quickly catch up on messages that mention or reply to you by tapping on a new @ button that appears at the bottom right corner of the chat.
• Participant search: Find anyone in a group by searching for participants on the group info page.
• Admins can now remove admin permissions of other group participants, and group creators can no longer be removed from the group they started.

We've also introduced protection so users can't be repeatedly added to groups they've left. These features are available for Android and iPhone users today. We hope you enjoy these new updates!

Facebook Risk of Another Data Scandal

The company has suspended 200 apps which were suspected of collecting data for malicious purposes. But according to a Facebook app developer, these measures are ineffective at preventing another Cambridge Analytica-like data harvesting scandal, thanks to Facebook’s inadequate measures when it comes to verifying a developer’s identity and data collection policies of their apps.

In an interaction with the Business Insider, the developer revealed that aside from the ‘This is your digital life’ app which was at the center of the Cambridge Analytica , there have been thousands of other apps which have accessed data of users as well as their friends. But now that Facebook is auditing all apps which have access to user data, it is not known whether the company will also investigate the other apps which had the same privilege in the past.

The developer pointed that Facebook allowed apps to collect data of user’s friends between 2007 and 2014, but it is not known whether the company investigated what kind of data, and how much of it, was collected in that span. Moreover, the bigger question is that whether that data is still stored on some third-party server?

“It’s possible developers set up shadow profiles on Facebook to be the administrators of their apps. More recently, Facebook is stricter about requiring identity documents, but that’s not always been the case. If it’s just a fictional person, who will Facebook pursue?”, the developer said.

He added that if an app’s ownership has been transferred to another company/person, who will Facebook investigate? A prime example is Slide, a company which developed social apps for Facebook. Slide shut down operations a year after it was acquired by Facebook. But now, if Facebook decides to investigate what user data was collected by Slide’s apps back then, Facebook will be in serious trouble. On one hand, it can investigate Slide’s founder who sold his company to Google, or Google itself, which shut down all the apps created by Slide.

Another weak point is Facebook not doing a proper review of the developer policies. The anonymous developer agreed with Aleksandr Kogan’s revelations, who claimed that ‘you can change the name, you can change the description, you can change the terms of service, and you just save changes. There is no obvious review process’. 

It must be noted that Kogan was questioned by the court in 2018, which means until the end of 2017, Facebook was not even aware of, or chose to ignore, the lax security measures when it comes to analyzing the privacy policies submitted by developers. And even after Facebook started asking developers for a URL of their privacy policies, the company only checked whether the URL was valid or not, and did not review the actual terms.

In such cases, the developer is not the only party to blame for putting unacceptable or borderline illegal terms in their privacy policies, as Facebook should bear equal responsibility for not reviewing them properly. And even though Facebook has now become more vigilant, its past mistakes still pose a risk of another Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook Has Suspended 200 Apps With Massive Data Usage So Far

Facebook has been busy trying to mitigate the impact of the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal. Several executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, have echoed that data-stealing apps will be chucked out of the system. Now that a month has passed since Zuckerberg’s grilling in front of the American Congress, Facebook has shared an update on the audit process.

The company’s VP of Product Partnerships, Ime Archibong, announced that so far Facebook has suspended (though not permanently banned) nearly 200 apps found to have some suspicious activity associated with misuse of data belonging to a large subset of users. He also pointed that a team consisting of both internal and external auditors has been deployed to investigate all the apps that had a large number of users – just like Aleksandr Kogan‘s “This Is Your Digital Life”.

Third party image reference

Archibong assured that the investigation process is in full swing and informed about the two (obvious) phases of probes. He said that in the first phase, Facebook will identify all the suspicious apps. Then, in the second phase, Facebook will carry out comprehensive interrogations, to get a hang of what kinds of data and their amounts that app owners have access to. To take the step further, the company will also organize “on-site inspections“.

Although the executive announced that Facebook is investing a lot of time and efforts in the audit process, he did not clearly mention a timeline for the activity. He said that weeding out all apps is a challenging task “and it will take time“.

But, considering Facebook’s track record with promises, it is difficult to trust the company fully – the same goes for audits. Time and again, the company’s leadership has promised to put the users’ privacy as their top priority, but it was recently revealed that Facebook was let off the hook by Price water house Coopers (PwC) in an audit of its privacy terms.

Despite concrete proof about Cambridge Analytica misusing users’ data, PwC gave a clean chit to the social media network and this makes us question about its sincerity towards the issue of privacy.

Top 11 Most Popular Social Network sites : Right Now

Popular Social Media Sites in 2018

1. Facebook

This is the biggest social media network on the Internet, both in terms of total number of users and name recognition. Founded on February 4, 2004, Facebook has within 12 years managed to accumulate more than 1.59 billion monthly active users and this automatically makes it one of the best mediums for connecting people from all over the world with your business. It is estimated that more than 1 million small and medium-sized businesses use the platform to advertise their business.

2. Quora

Capitalizing upon human curiosity is an ingenious idea that would lead to the creation and launch of Quora in June, 2009. The website, co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo now claims that it received more than 80 million monthly unique visitors, with half of them coming from the U.S. So far, the question-and-answer website has managed to raise $141 in venture capital funds and while it doesn’t look ready to go public yet, it’s definitely a company to watch.

3. WhatsApp

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging client for smartphones, PCs and tablets. The app relies on the Internet to send images, texts, documents, audio and video messages to other users that have the app installed on their devices. Launched in January 2010, WhatsApp Inc. was acquired by Facebook on February 19, 2004, for about $19.3 billion. Today, more than 1 billion people use the service to communicate with their friends, loved ones and even customers.

4. Instagram

Like Pinterest, Instagram is a visual social media platform. The site, launched on October 6, 2010, has more than 400 million active users and is owned by Facebook. Many of its users use it to post information about travel, fashion, food, art and similar subjects. The platform is also distinguished by its unique filters together with video and photo editing features. Almost 95 percent of Instagram users also use Facebook.

5. Twitter

You might be thinking that limiting your posts to 140 characters is no way to advertise your business, but you will be shocked to know that this social media platform has more than 320 million active monthly users who make use of the 140 character limit to pass on information. Businesses can use Twitter to interact with prospective clients, answer questions, release latest news and at the same time use the targeted ads with specific audiences. Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006, and has its headquarters in San Francisco, California.

6. LinkedIn

Founded on December 14, 2002, and launched 0n May 5, 2003, LinkedIn is hands-down the most popular social media site for professional networking. The website is available in 24 languages and has over 400 million registered users. LinkedIn is great for people looking to connect with people in similar industries, networking with local professionals and displaying business related information and statistics.

7. Google+

While it’s no Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, Google+ has its place among the popular social media sites. Its SEO value alone makes it a must-use tool for any small business. Launched on December 15, 2011, Google+ has joined the big leagues registering 418 active million users as of December 2015.

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8. YouTube

YouTube — the largest and most popular video-based social media website — was founded on February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees. It was later bought by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube has over 1 billion website visitors per month and is the second most popular search engine behind Google.

9. Pinterest

Launched in March 2010, Pinterest is a relatively newcomer in the social media arena. This platform consists of digital bulletin boards where businesses can pin their content.  Pinterest announced September 2015 that it had acquired 100 million users. Small businesses whose target audience is mostly made up of women should definitely invest in Pinterest as more than half of its visitors are women.

10. Tumblr

Tumblr is one of the most difficult to use social networking platforms, but it’s also one of the most interesting sites. The platform allows several different post formats, including quote posts, chat posts, video and photo posts as well as audio posts, so you are never limited in the type of content that you can share. Like Twitter, reblogging, which is more like retweeting, is quick and easy. The social networking website was founded by David Karp in February 2007 and currently hosts more than 200 million blogs.

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11. Reddit

This is a social news and entertainment networking website where registered users can submit content such as direct links and text posts. Users are also able to organize and determine their position on the site’s pages by voting submissions up or down. Submissions with the most positive votes appear in the top category or main page. Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman on June 23, 2005. A decade later, the site boasts more than 36 million registered accounts and 231 million monthly visitors.

Top 4 Best Search Engines In The World

Which are the 10 best and most popular search engines in the World? Besides Google and Bing there are other search engines that may not be so well known but still serve millions of search queries per day.

Nevertheless, there are search engines that are worth considering and the top 10 are presented below after the break.

1. Google

No need for further introductions. The search engine giant holds the first place in search with a stunning difference of 66% from second in place Bing.

According to the latest netmarketshare report (January 2018) 74.52% of searches were powered by Google and only 7.98% by Bing.

Google is also dominating the mobile/tablet search engine market share with 93%!

Want to learn how to take advantage of Google’s search engine share? Read: How long does it take to rank in Google

2. Bing

Bing is Microsoft’s attempt to challenge Google in the area of search, but despite their efforts they still did not manage to convince users that their search engine can produce better results than Google.

3. Yahoo

Since October 2011 Yahoo search is powered by Bing. Yahoo is still the most popular email provider and according to reports holds the fourth place in search.

4. Yandex.ru

According to Alexa, Yandex.ru is among the 30 most popular websites on the Internet with a ranking position of 4 in Russian.

Yandex present themselves as a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning. According to Wikipedia, Yandex operates the largest search engine in Russia with about 65% market share in that country.

As a final word, if you search “What is the best search engine?” in any of the search engines listed above, you will get an answer that Google is the best and most popular search engine and Bing is in the second place (on a Global level).

These are the 10 best and most popular search engines on the Internet today.

The list is by no means complete and for sure many more will be created in the future but as far as the first places are concerned, Google and Bing will hold the lead positions for years to come.

8 Best Ad Networks for Publishers : Fast Approval 2018

1. Blog monetization is the key objective for every blogger.
2. Having said that, you have quite a few methods by which you can monetize your blog.
3. However, you have first to figure out the methods for blog monetization.
4. One of the best methods is to become a publisher.
5. That’s the reason which prompted me to come up with this post where I list out Best Ad Networks for Publishers.

Here, we have selected some of the best Ad Networks for Bloggers which are secure, trustworthy, and give you the best opportunity to monetize your blog or website. They serve millions of Ad impressions daily, have a large network of advertisers and publishers, and provide decent money to publishers.

These networks are not of specific ad types we have listed top ad networks of various advertising options. We have listed traditional Contextual or CPC networks, CPM networks, POP-UP/POP-Under Networks as well as affiliate networks which will help you to monetize your website or blog with various ways.

1. Google Adsense

Google Adsense is recognized as the world’s largest and best online advertising network. Most importantly, it’s free and provides you the opportunity to earn money by placing ads on your website.
However, to get approved by Google Adsense is not easy. You have to follow Adsense quality guideline to get approved.

It is particularly known for serving CPC Ads and CPM Ads. It shows mobile ads, video ads, search result ads, display ads, and banner ads. The ads are relevant to your content. You can choose the type of ads that best fit your website. It has the largest network of online advertisers. It makes sure that only the highest paying ads go live on your website, so you get the most for your ads.

2. Media.net

Media.net is one of the most popular Ad Network for Publishers. It provides a great opportunity to publishers to maximize revenue from their online content. It has one of the largest pools of advertisers in the world. Media.net serves contextual ads. It also supports desktop interstitial, in-content native, and mobile docked ads. It ensures a 100% fill rate across all verticals and ad formats. Some of its publishers include Reuters, Esquire, Elle, Forbes, Cosmopolitan, etc.

3. Infolinks

Infolinks is one of the best Ad Networks that enables publishers to monetize their website to the optimum level. It mainly provides In-Text CPM Ads. So, if you have a text based site or a blog, then Infolinks might prove to be a great option for generating revenue by advertising on your website.

They don’t cover spaces so you can use other banner ads from other Ad Network for earning revenue for site content. Infolinks Ads are targeted for any relevant keyword from your content. They have no minimum traffic requirement for publishers. Infolinks works with the biggest advertisers in the world such as Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, etc.

4. Adsterra Network

Adsterra is another immensely popular premium ad network which serves as much as 50 billion geo-targeted ad impression a month. It provides Ad Models such as CPC, CPM, and CPA. It provides innovative advertising solutions for web and mobile advertisers and publishers worldwide.

Adsterra supports publishers from all verticals and assures monetization of their ad inventory. It provides various ad formats for the web and mobile platform including display banners, interstitial, popunders, direct links, sliders, and Pushup. It guarantees highest possible ad quality and security. Publishers get on-time payments.

5. Propeller Ads

Propeller Ads is one of the fastest growing CPM Ads Network. It provides multiple Ad Formats. Propeller Ads makes it easy for you to select best-performing ad campaign. It serves various Ad Models such as CPM, CPC, CPA, and CPL. It ensures high ad quality by performing manual checks on advertisers. It provides publishers on-time payouts, detailed real-time reporting, and a personal account manager. It endeavors to provide the highest revenue per visitor. It has a multitude of display advertising solutions.

6. PopAds

PopAds is mainly a pop-under ad network. It is a fast, efficient and secure advertising network. Publishers can monetize their website traffic through high-quality pop-under ads. It offers competent rates to publishers which depend on website traffic and website content. It also offers perfect support as well.

7. AdCash

AdCash is a leading advertising network providing high-quality ads from leading brands at effective pricing models which are designed to increase revenue from your website. It supports Ad Models such as CPC, CPM, and CPA. It has a big ad inventory. Display formats include slide-in, background, interstitial, site under, footer, and more. There is no minimum traffic requirement for publishers.

8. RevenueHits

RevenueHits is a PPC and CPM Ad Network for Publishers. It uses contextual and geo-targeted ad serving technology to serve ads on websites, mobile sites, add-ons, toolbar, widgets, and more. It serves over 1 billion ad impressions each day and provides 100% fill rate across all geographic locations. Besides display ads, RevenueHits also enables publishers to monetize their site using pop-ups, text ads, apps, widgets, and other custom formats.