facebook – Tech Raman

FbStart World Tour Comes to Bangalore, bets big on Indian Startups

Lakshmi Rajan — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 12:17:32 +0000

Back in April 2014 at its F8 conference, Social Networking giant, Facebook launched FbStart, a program to provide free tools and services to startups to give a boost to the startup ecosystem. Since the launch, benefits worth $50 million to developers has been distributed in Asia Pacific and in that more than $20 million has gone to startups in India echoing the positive and thriving startup ecosystem in the country. The FbStart World Tour is part of the outreach event series spanning 20 cities across the globe to meet mobile developers and engage with them. The Asian leg of the event has stops at Hon Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Bangalore and Gurgaon. At an media event at Bangalore, Facebook Director Product Platform Partnerships, Ime Archibong shared insights of the FbStart program and how India figures high on the list. The FbStart focusses on two tracks: 1) Bootstrap, for early stage mobile startups with recently launched apps, and 2) Accelerate, for established mobile apps that have demonstrated a sustained level of growth in their target markets. The benefits include over $30,000 and $80,000 respectively. Another valuable aspect for the startups would be the mentorship from Industry veterans and the community to reach out for any guidance in their respective fields. More than 70 percent of Facebook developers are now located outside the US and in Asia alone there are more than 1000 members in the FbStart program. Significantly, Indian developers are more actively building apps with Facebook than any other country outside the U.S, with more than 75 percent of top-grossing apps in India having Facebook integration. Ime Archibong also shared some of the apps in India that has been part of the FbStart program and seeing some good traction in the app world. It includes Delhi-based Cardback, a payment recommendation platform that helps cardholders and wallet user identify the best offers and rewards for the various cards and help the user spend on their cards diligently and save for every transaction they make. Cardback has seen significant surge in app installation after using the Facebook ad credits, Facebook login. Apart from the other tools and service at their disposal as part of the FbStar program, the Facebook App analytics also helps app developers like Cardback to get a better insight on their customers and make engagements with the users better. Samosa, a Hyderabad based app is another significant developer to have benefited out of FbStart, it offers curated collection of clips from popular movies that people can share with their friends. With Parse powered backend, the Android first app maker has made easy transitions to other iterations. Samosa also uses Facebook login to sign and also share the clips directly with the contacts in the Messenger. To learn more on FbStart, visit FbStart. ]]>

Facebook Lite officially launched in India; caters to users on diet data

Lakshmi Rajan — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 10:36:13 +0000

For around six months, Facebook has been testing, Facebook lite, a stripped-down version of Facebook for Android that consumes less data, lighter in weight and can work with low-cost Android devices with meager resources. This month, the Social networking giant started the rolling out officially the app in various markets in Africa and South Asian countries and today it got the official release in India and Philippines. The idea of Facebook lite was nurtured and largely developed at the Facebook’s Innovation lab at the company’s Menlo Park Headquarters, under project manager Vijay Shankar. As on today, even with the official roll-out happening only this month, the app has already around 12million downloads in Play store. While the Facebook for Android app takes up around 30MB of storage, the Facebook lite is less than 1MB and also consumes less data. While it will feature all core functions of the standard app like news feed, messaging, photos, links and notifications, it does not show videos on the news feed. Messaging is integrated right into the Facebook lite unlike the Facebook for Android which requires, Facebook Messenger for messaging. Vijay Shankar at a roundtable discussion today said the new app has been build ‘ground up for markets like India’ where still majority of people use 2G data. He added ““In India, over 80% of the users are on 2G network. We have worked on improving the apps performance even on spotty connections and across devices from entry-level devices to high-end ones,” Both the Facebook lite and Facebook for Android can coexists on a single device and work in a scenario where a user who is lapped to WiFi network at home / office can use the later and switch on to the ‘liter’ version when on a move on slow connection. As of now Facebook lite is available only for Android devices.]]>

Facebook acquires WhatsApp for 19-billion dollors, yes you read it right!

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 06:01:41 +0000

HERE ]]>

Official Facebook for Google Glass app announced

Lakshmi Rajan — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:57:58 +0000

We may not yet see people walking around with Google Glass except for few lucky selected geeks but Google is prepping up for mass-scale launch of Google Glass soon. When it does gets mainstream, it’s very important to have enough apps to support it and enhance the wearable tech experience.

Google Glass apps also called “Glassware” are trickling and Facebook today announced official Facebook for Google Glass at the Google I/O event currently happening in New York.

Facebook for Google Glass ‘glassware’ allows people to share photos from Google Glass, with friends and others on Facebook.

Facebook Mobile Product Manager Erick Tseng wrote about the app for Glass in a public post: I’m really excited to announce today’s launch of Facebook for Google Glass. Built by Facebook, this app allows you to upload photos from Google Glass directly to your Facebook Timeline. You can also add an optional photo description, just by speaking it. We look forward to exploring Facebook experiences across new types of mobile devices. This is only a first step. You can find out more about our app here: facebook.com/help/googleglass, and about Google Glass here: google.com/glass. The core design aspect of the app seems to be focused on what Facebook is predominantly all about – Sharing and to share what you see. The app can be accessed in the MyGlass section of Google Glass. People can access the Facebook app on MyGlass and enable it by turning the app “On”. Take a photo as they normally would on Google Glass and swipe across to see Facebook audience cards. This allows them to share with friends and others on Facebook, in addition to Google+ contacts and circles. Photos shared with Facebook will appear on the News Feed with a tag line ‘via Google Glass’. This might all turn a bit sci-fi for most of us but it’s just a matter of time when it becomes a mainstream gadget lapped by millions and flood images on our timelines. ]]>