Facebook's Faceless Face Recognition, Tumblr TV, and Twitter Loses an Exec (Again)
This week in social media, Facebook released its (disappointing) update on diversity, while setting Messenger free and introducing face-recognition technology so impressive (and creepy), it doesn't need to see your face. Meanwhile, Twitter lost another executive and Tumblr unleashed possibly the most time-wasting thing on the Internet -- and that's saying something.
It's time for Social Media Sunday!
No Meaningful Improvement in Diversity
Facebook released updated statistics on diversity in its workforce, disappointing anyone hoping for a major change in a year's time.
While playing up the "positive but modest" change and the various projects its working on to train and recruit more underrepresented minorities -- including Blacks, Latinos, and women -- into the business, Facebook dropped its statistics with all the enthusiasm of the following statement.
"Below is our current demographic data:"
Latinos remain at low-single digit levels in Facebook's workforce, as do other minorities, and men remain over two-thirds of the global workforce.
Face-Recognition No Longer Needs Faces
Facebook unveiled new facial recognition technology from its AI division that doesn't even need a face to figure out who's in a photo.
If that sounds creepy (it is), here's some consolation: The non-facial recognition algorithms at the heart of Facebook's AI projects are still in testing phases.
Leading up to the breakthrough, Facebook scanned more than 40,000 photos (public) from Flickr that didn't have faces showing, yet looking at body type, clothes, and hair, the algorithm was capable of 83 percent accuracy guessing who was in the photo. The news came from Yann LeCun, Facebook's head of AI talking to New Scientist, describing how the algorithm could eventually make it into Facebook features.
"Facebook" Messenger
Having hit a milestone of 600 million active users and introducing third-party apps for Messenger recently, Facebook has completely unleashed the chat app: You no longer need a Facebook account to use it.
New users in the U.S., Canada, Venezuela, and Peru (for now) can sign up for Messenger just with a full name and phone number, according to The Next Web. You can still log-in with Facebook the old fashioned way, and as a bonus, it'll import your contacts.
Instant Articles Expanding
Wow, it's been a busy week for Facebook! This week, according to TheVerge, more publishers are signing on to partner with the big blue social network to publish news straight on the platform -- in exchange for a piece of the ad profits -- as part of Facebook's "Instant Articles" program.
And to keep even more content within Zuckerberg's kingdom, Facebook has added a small new feature called "add a link," which allows people to post and share links to their friends without ever leaving the Facebook app, according to Re/Code. If it seems insignificant, it is -- but it all adds up to more people spending more time on Facebook, without ever even leaving the platform to find a link to share.
Another Exec Leaves
If things were looking up for Twitter last week, unveiling a promising new feature coming soon called Project Lightning in the week after CEO Dick Costolo stepped down, this week is more of the usual for the struggling social media platform.
According to USA Today, late this week, Twitter's VP of Corporate Development and Strategy Rishi Garg said he was hitting the road. "After an amazing ride as Twitter's VP Corporate Development and Strategy, I'm saying farewell today," tweeted the exec late on Friday. "I'm off to pursue some exciting new projects; more soon! #staytuned."
Garg only lasted about a year at the struggling company, and joins a string of other top-level departures at the company recently.
Tumblr
Get Ready to Waste Your Time!
This week, Tumblr announced "Tumblr TV," a new service that lets you watch an automatic stream of animated GIFs in what Wired equated with "electronic ADD."
Tumblr's unique offering, besides plenty of GIFs already on the platform, is that it will use previous searches to tailor your endless GIF perusal. The GIFs will scale to your browser window, and automatically line up new ones faster than your brain can register whatever nonsense you just watched.
Currently, Tumblr is only launching it on desktop, but the company is reportedly working on a mobile version, so you can lose hours and hours to GIF-watching anytime, any place.