Facebook's Billion and 'M' Autonomous AI, Instagram Loses the Square & Vine Adds Looping Music
This week in social media, Facebook had a full billion on the site at one time, while planning to add intelligence to Messenger. Meanwhile, Instagram dropped the square box, and Vine now adds perfectly looping music behind your videos.
It's time for Social Media Sunday!
One BILLION Users
This week, according to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page, "on Monday, one in seven people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family." Or to write nasty comments about politicians, market innumerable products for sale, or play Farmville.
No matter what they were doing, the fact that one billion people were all doing it on one website (and mobile platform) is pretty impressive. "I'm so proud of our community for the progress we've made," wrote Zuckerberg. "Thank you for being part of our community and for everything you've done to help us reach this milestone." Facebook's investors thank you too.
Breaking the Pirates
Though Facebook is glad you logged in on Monday to help reach the 1 billion mark, it's upset you've been pirating so much video on their site -- well, if not you, then the thousands of others who have taken advantage of the fact that Facebook didn't have much of a video content detection system, the way YouTube does.
But not for long. According to Re/Code's Peter Kafka, Facebook is rolling out technology that will let the true owners of video tell the company that someone is pirating their content on the billion-at-a-time social media site.
The addition comes at a time when Facebook's in-platform video has skyrocketed in use and sharing. But along with that, an estimated 70 percent of Facebook's most popular videos were found to be infringing copyrights. Will Facebook loose some of those great video sharing numbers after the system cracks down on pirates? Probably, but at least the right people will be getting the credit for those views.
"M" for Messenger Mastermind
Speaking of using intelligent algorithms in Facebook, a rumored AI is now official and imminent, after Facebook Messenger chief David Marcus let the cat out of the bag on his Facebook page (where else?) this week about testing the ominously-named "M":
"Today we're beginning to test a new service called M. M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf. It's powered by artificial intelligence that's trained and supervised by people."
But that's not all. M is actually "trained by people" so that it can work completely without people. In what may turn out to be the savior of the socially lazy -- or the beginning of the apocalypse -- M will accomplish your Facebook tasks without you needing to be there.
"Unlike other AI-based services in the market," continued Marcus, "M can actually complete tasks on your behalf. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more."
Not So Square Anymore
Facebook-owned photo sharing service Instagram announced this week it was removing a major limitation (though one you might not have thought about, since it's on the "periphery," so to speak, of every photo you share): the square format.
Everything people share on Instagram, from photos of Kim Kardashian's booty to 12-second cinematic videos ... of Kim Kardashian's booty, comes in a little square box. It's like the 140-character limit on Twitter, except far less annoying to writers. But photographers are probably feeling a little liberated now.
With the changes coming soon to iOS and Android, according to FastCo, all you need to do is tap a new icon to preserve the original orientation and aspect ratios of your photos. If you don't, Instagram will keep assuming you think it's hip to be a square.
Vine
Loop it to Music
Finally, this week Vine announced it would indeed be rolling out looping music that perfectly fits with your Vines, something that has been rumored to coming for a bit.
On Vine's blog, the "Snap to Beat" feature, which creates perfectly looping soundtracks, was announced in updates that began rolling out on Friday. You can find the feature by tapping a music note icon in the Details screen.
In addition, Vine has created a playlist called "Featured Tracks," where you can find songs that are readily available for the looping feature. Finally, if you hear something you like while browsing Vine, you can click on the music note and it'll give you the track information.
Time to start that 6-second-song garage band you've always talked about.