The Nation Newspaper

Tag: facebook

  • Facebook’s Nigerian tech hub coming

    Facebook’s Nigerian tech hub coming

    Facebook said it will open a “community hub space” in Nigeria next year to encourage software developers and technology entrepreneurs and become the latest technology giant to pursue a training programme in Africa.

    Its said said the centre would host an “incubator programme” to help develop technology start-ups, while it will also train 50,000 Nigerians in digital skills.

    Africa’s rapid population growth, falling data costs and heavy adoption of mobile phones rather than PCs is attracting technology firms looking to attract more users.

    Facebook did not provide details of the period over which its planned training would take place in Nigeria, which is Africa’s most populous country with 180 million inhabitants.

    Its Regional Head, Platform Partnership, Emeka Afigbo said: “We understand the important role Facebook plays here in Nigeria with developers and start-ups and are invested in helping these communities.”

    In a statement in Lagos, acebook said the training – aimed at software developers, entrepreneurs and students – would be offered in cities including the capital, Abuja, Port Harcourt in the Uouth, Calabar in the Southeast and Kaduna in the North.

    Last year Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg visited technology companies in Lagos and his charitable foundation provided $24 million to Andela, which trains developers.

    Google’s chief executive in a July visit to Lagos said the company aimed to train 10 million people across the continent in online skills over the next five years. He also said it hoped to train 100,000 software developers in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

    Although Africa may not offer as much opportunity to add consumers as China or India, because large wealth gaps mean that many people in places like Nigeria have little disposable income, Facebook said more than 22 million people already use its social media website every month in Nigeria.

  • Facebook to train 50,000 Nigerian SMEs in 2018

    Facebook to train 50,000 Nigerian SMEs in 2018

    Facebook has said it will train and support over 50,000 students, small businesses ( SMEs ) and creative entrepreneurs across Nigeria in 2018.

    Facebook’s Public Policy Director, Africa, Ms Ebele Okobi, during a news briefing on Wednesday in Lagos, said that the training would be through a series of digital skills, as well as long-term impact programmes.

    Okobi said that the trainings and support was Facebook’s initiative in its ambition to drive innovation, skills development and economic impact in Nigeria.

    She said that the trainings and support was Facebook’s new nationwide initiative to further cement its commitment and investment in Nigeria, and across the continent.

    According to her, Facebook would be incorporating a series of high profile partnerships, training programmes and a physical space that will serve as a center for learning and skills development.

    “This set of initiatives is aimed at helping to develop and nurture communities, including small businesses, the tech and start-up ecosystem, youths and creatives.

    “In Nigeria, more than 22 million people use Facebook every month and 87 per cent of SMEs say that when they hire, digital skills are more important than where an applicant went to school.

    “This demonstrates that the power of digital skills to aid economic growth and development has never been more important

    “At Facebook, our mission is clear: To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

    “Our investments and commitments announced in Lagos today further reflect our intent to partner with Nigeria’s policy makers and its vibrant tech and entrepreneurial eco-system to create economic opportunity and independence in Nigeria and across Africa,” she said.

    Okobi said that Facebook was committed to working with Nigerian small businesses, tech entrepreneurs and the next generation of leaders to better understand and utilise the power of digital tools for economic growth.

    She said that Facebook would be launching a series of learning-based programmes facilitated by local training partners, to accomplish its mission.

    Okobi said that the learning-based programmes had been designed to provide skills that would lead to employment and support the growth of small businesses.

    She said that the learning-based programmes include: Aspiring Entrepreneurs, Jobs for Youth, Boost your Business, Creative Entrepreneurship Training, and Online Safety + Digital Literacy Training in Schools and Universities.

    According to her, Facebook undertook a detailed ‘Economic Impact Study’ to further understand how communities like small businesses and consumers in Nigeria use the platform, and the effectiveness of social media as a growth tool.

    “Nearly 1 in 2 small businesses on Facebook say they built their business on the platform.

    “Sixty-two per cent stated they have been able to use Facebook to help find employees for their business.

    “Over half (58 per cent) of small businesses on the platform say they have been able to hire more employees due to growth since joining Facebook,” she said.

    Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

    People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what is going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

    Facebook has 1.37 billion daily active users on average worldwide and 7.2 million daily visitors from Nigeria.

    NAN

  • Facebook investigates temporary outage of WhatsApp messenger

    Facebook investigates temporary outage of WhatsApp messenger

    Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp messenger suffered a temporary outage in India and many other countries, according to reports from multiple users on Facebook and Twitter on Friday.

    Users in countries ranging from Brazil and Russia to Vietnam and Myanmar reported on social media that it was down in their countries.

    The extent of the outage and the reasons for it were not immediately known.

    ‘Whatsappdown’ was the top trending item on Twitter in India, which is WhatsApp’s biggest market with about 200 million of its billion-plus users.

    It was also a top trending item on Twitter in Pakistan, Britain, Germany and many other countries.

    Users reported WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging service, had begun to gradually function again about 30 minutes after initial complaints of an outage appeared on social media.

    Users in Malaysia and Singapore also complained of WhatsApp being down in those countries.

    A spokeswoman for Facebook in Singapore said the company was still investigating the matter.

    Independent websites monitoring outages of popular social media services via online conversations and Twitter messages report regular outages for WhatsApp, often one every few weeks, but these are typically brief and confined to certain geographies.

    WhatsApp has faced similar widespread outages this year, including for several hours in May.

    WhatsApp is used by more than 1.2 billion people around the world and is a key tool for communications and commerce in many countries.

    The service was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for 19 billion dollars.

    NAN

  • Forbes names Merkel as world’s most powerful woman for 7th time

    Forbes names Merkel as world’s most powerful woman for 7th time

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named the world’s most powerful woman for the seventh time in a row by Forbes magazine, the publication announced on Thursday.

    “Merkel this year won a hard-fought election that saw the far-right Alternative for Germany party creep into the Bundestag.

    “She’ll have to continue to hold tight to the EU rudder as she faces oncoming storms from Brexit and the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe,” Forbes said in a statement.

    British Prime Minister, Theresa May, took second place in the ranking, while Hillary Clinton, who was ranked the world’s second-most powerful woman in 2016, fell to 63rd place after her election defeat to U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who has been serving as a White House advisor in his administration, ranked 19th on the list, while the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, came in 43rd.

    Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Mary Barra, the head of General Motors, took third, fourth and fifth place, respectively.

    NAN

  • Facebook to make its political ads more transparent

    Facebook to make its political ads more transparent

    U.S. social media giant Facebook will roll out new measures to increase transparency of political advertisements on its platform.

    Under the new rules, political advertisers will be required to verify their identities and locations and their posts will include a disclosure which reads “Paid for by.”

    When clicking on the disclosure, users will be able to find out more about the advertisers, Rob Goldman, Facebook’s vice president in charge of ad products, wrote a blog on Friday.

    Facebook said, all advertisements, no matter whether they are political or not, will be associated with a page as part of the ad creation process.

    The social media giant said users can click “View Ads” and see all of the paid ones, no matter whether they are the intended target audience for the ads.

    “Transparency helps everyone, especially for political watchdog groups and reporters, keep advertisers accountable for who they say they are and what they say to different groups,” Goldman wrote.

    The company will start the test in Canada in November and roll it out in the U.S. by next summer, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November, he said, adding that the measures will take effect in all other countries around the same time.

    The move came days before Facebook, along with its rivals Google and Twitter, was scheduled to testify in a Congress hearing on Wednesday over how their platforms were allegedly used by Russia or other foreign groups in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.

    NAN

  • Facebook launches U.S. food order, delivery service

    Facebook launches U.S. food order, delivery service

    Facebook Inc on Friday launched a service through which its U.S. users can order food for take-away or delivery directly through its app or website.

    Facebook said it partnered with restaurants including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc, Jack in the Box Inc, Five Guys and Papa John’s International Inc.

    The company said in a blog post that it signed on food ordering services such as EatStreet, Delivery.com, DoorDash and Olo.

    Users will have to go to the “order food” section on Facebook’s “explore” menu, which will show them a list of participating restaurants in the vicinity through which they can place their order.

    A year back, the company said its U.S. users would be able to order food through restaurants’ Facebook page.

    Facebook’s shares were up nearly one per cent in early trading on Friday after shares of food order and delivery service GrubHub Inc dropped nearly three per cent.

    GrubHub’s shares had also dropped last month after Amazon Restaurants teamed up with Olo, whose network of restaurants include Applebee’s and Chipotle.

  • Jumia, Facebook unveil Jumia Bot

    Technology firm, Jumia has introduced a new solution, Jumia Bot, which it said will redefine shoppers experience in the country.

    It said with the solution, shoppers can order food, find fashion or electronic items and book hotels and flights by simply having an online conversation with the Bot.

    On the significance of this new service, CEO Jumia Nigeria, Juliet Anammah, said: “Jumia Bot has a very simple yet important objective: to help our customers get to personalised deals on jumia.com.ng. We are pleased to unveil this new dimension of e-shopping for the Nigerian customer, and excited about helping to pioneer the next wave of local content and tech tools within our ecosystem.”

    This innovation, powered and hosted by Facebook Messenger, officially launched today in Nigeria and will offer Nigeria’s 18 Million Facebook users the ability to get their own personal Jumia shopping assistant directly on Facebook Messenger. The Jumia Bot works by asking customers what they’re looking for, and then using their answers to uncover the best offers. For example, to get access to the best hotel and airfare deals on Facebook Messenger, a user can simply provide his or her preferred date and destination to the Bot in order to see the top recommendations.

    Once a user’s criterion is selected, Jumia Bot will remember and use the research for his or her next order. The bot, developed by Jumia with support from Facebook,  uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural learning process to hone in and learn users’ preferences over time in order to make recommendations that are personalised, timeline and useful to the shopper. The shopper’s post-order experience is also integrated into Jumia Bot. As a result, shoppers can track their orders and contact the Customer Service team for follow-up questions.

  • The 21st Century Girl Child

    The 21st Century Girl Child

    Gone are those days when strenuous house chores and upbringing of ones offspring were seen as the ingredient of a virtuous woman.

    Those were the days when suffering was seen as a necessity, when technology was seen as an excuse to be lazy, when ladies had to depend on their man for the least of needs.

    In fact, those were the days when men pride themselves on how well they can control their women, and have her take care of the family and other domestic affairs without giving credence to the woman.

    Instead she is scolded and shouted at for making silly mistakes.

    Now we are in an era of ‘wise ladies’; ladies that see technology as an integral part of civilization.

    Ladies that now occupy organizational/political positions formerly believed to belong to men.

    Ladies who want to make significant and formidable impact in our world.

    Ladies who pride themselves in hustling for their own needs rather than become housewives.

    Ladies who readily embrace the totem of being the ‘neck’, but have refused to see the neck-position as a place of weakness but of strength.

    Ladies who out of sheer determination and hardwork have surmounted the sundry inhibitions and limitations of societal norms and traditions.

    The world has changed and the girl-child has begun to see it in a different perspective; we call them the ‘21st century girl-child’.

    The 21th century girl-child is technology-oriented. She is not just content with staying at home and playing the ‘good sister’ to her siblings and an obedient daughter waiting to get married. But she joggles domestic expectations with her ambitions.

    A 21st century girl child is surrounded by various social media platforms and she wants to be famous in all of them. Is that too much to ask?

    She wants to be a YouTube star, she wants to be a Facebook celebrity, she wants her opinion to be heard and respected based on its own merit and not just on gender colourations.

    A 21st century girl-child wants to slay…she wants to glow, she wants to trend, she is a studio pic freak, she is in love with ‘likes’ and ‘positive comments’.

    A 21st century girl-child is stubborn especially in her unwavering belief for gender equity.

    The 21st century girl-child is eager and excited. She wants to explore, she wants to love, she gets her heart broken and learn from the mistakes of relationships.

    A 21st century girl-child will never shrink herself to salvage the ego of another person neither would she become small for someone who refuses to grow.

    The 21st century girl-child will never adjust her behaviour to be likeable, because she knows that most times she loses her trueself in a bid to please someone else.

    Of a truth, being assertive can be very hard for women (girl-child) because an assertive woman is often mistaken to be unruly and proud.

    But still a 21st century girl-child understands that not being liked, as hard as it may be, might be a sign of something you are doing right.

    A 21st century girl-child is tough. Is a boss. Is rational. Is confident. Her actions and words are not limited by the dogmas of culture.

    Above all, a 21st century girl-child wants to be seen and heard too.

  • WhatsApp co-founder to leave company

    WhatsApp co-founder to leave company

     Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, now owned by Facebook Inc (FB.O), will leave the messaging service company to start a new foundation, he said in a Facebook posto, Media reports on Wednesday.

    Acton spent eight years with WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014 for $19 billion in cash and stock.

    A Stanford alumnus, Acton co-founded WhatsApp with Ukrainian nimmigrant Jan Koum in 2009.

    The duo worked at Yahoo before starting WhatsApp.

  • Why Lai Mohammed urgently needs social media accounts

    Why Lai Mohammed urgently needs social media accounts

    While denying the false report of President Muhammadu Buhari purported plan to travel to the United States on Sunday, Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Muhammed disclosed that he does not have social media accounts.

    “Numerous parody accounts have been opened in my name on the two platforms, when indeed I have no Twitter or Facebook accounts,” he stated while urging Nigerians to disregard what was credited to him.

    The minister also recalled how the same parody Twitter account, @MohammedLai used to disseminate the fake news about the President’s purported trip was employed to circulate a fake report that he sharply criticised Senator Dino Melaye for attending the Notting Hill Carnival in the UK.

    He said these two instances highlight the dangers posed to the polity by the purveyors of fake news and disinformation, and vowed that the Federal Government would soon fish out those behind the shenanigans.

    I sympatise with the minister that the false sensitive information was credited to him by some faceless individuals who create parody accounts in the name of others, especially top government officials to misinform the public.

    I totally agree with the minister that “Fake news, disinformation and hate speech are the antics of the naysayers, those who are pathologically opposed to this administration.” Everyone on the internet, including Nigerians as he counseled need to be more discerning and should double check any information emanating from the social media.

    However, notwithstanding the wrong use to which social media accounts are being deployed, the minister cannot continue to justify not having Twitter or Facebook handles.

    The accounts are too important in the present information age for information dissemination for any government official like the country’s information minister not to have.

    If President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and many other top officials of the federal government have social media accounts, why should the spokesman of the government not have verified handles?

    Parody accounts will always be created by mischief makers, but when the real ones exists and are used regularly, it will be easy to distinguish between fake and real information.

    Alhaji Mohammed should take a cue from many members of this administration who are effectively using the social media to disseminate information to prevent the naysayers from taking advantage of his absence on the too-important to ignore platforms.

    He doesn’t need to operate them himself like most top dignitaries do. He can get tech savvy assistants to keep Nigerians informed through the platforms and match the naysayers tweets for tweets.