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  • Facebook’s Watch goes up against YouTube for revenue in dollars

    Facebook’s Watch goes up against YouTube for revenue in dollars

    Facebook Inc launched its Watch video service to United States users on Thursday with plans to allow people to submit shows, as the No. 1 social media network vies with Alphabet Inc’s YouTube for advertising revenue.

    Advertisers are shifting more of their budgets from television to online as viewers have migrated to watching shows on smartphones and tablets.

    On Watch, which Facebook began testing earlier this month, users can see hundreds of shows from the likes of Vox, Buzzfeed, Discovery Communications Inc, A&E Networks, Walt Disney Co’s ABC, as well as live sports like Major League Baseball.

    Americans spend more than 73 minutes a day watching digital video, up more than seven per cent from last year, according to eMarketer data.

    TV watching has dropped 2 percent from last year to 244 minutes a day, a trend that is expected to continue.

    Facebook is initially paying some content creators for shows to drive interest.

    The company is paying 10,000-35,000 dollars for shorter form shows and up to 250,000 dollars for longer shows, sources told Media in May.

    The company declined to comment on how much it was spending on shows.

    Facebook does not intend to make buying content a core piece of its strategy, Dan Rose, vice president of partnerships at Facebook, told Media.

    “We are not focused on acquiring exclusive rights,” he said. “The idea is to seed this with good content.”

    Facebook plans to eventually open the platform to everyone to submit shows for approval and share 55 percent of ad revenue, Rose said.

  • AAA students claim inaugural Facebook challenge student award at the Loeries

    AAA students claim inaugural Facebook challenge student award at the Loeries

    The award, which aims to celebrate the achievements of future creatives as they redefine creativity in the mobile era, was created in partnership with Facebook and The Nelson Mandela Foundation.

    DURBAN, South Africa, August 23, 2017/ — The Facebook Challenge (www.Facebook.com), an official Loerie Award in the Student category, was won this year by three students from AAA School of Advertising in Cape Town. The award, which aims to celebrate the achievements of future creatives as they redefine creativity in the mobile era, was created in partnership with Facebook and The Nelson Mandela Foundation.

    With students from across Africa and The Middle East briefed to address gender inequality awareness through the development of a mobile video campaign, the inaugural Facebook Challenge Loerie was won by Peni Buckton, Claudia Bester (both 3rd year students studying BA in Creative Brand Communication) and Lunje Jwambe (2nd year student studying Copy Writing diploma).

    The winning trio created an engaging piece of work called ‘Everyday Armour’ which is an ‘anti-harassment couture’ brand that seeks to make thought-provoking social commentary on the gender-based violence women face daily. These students felt that as women, they could all relate to the small things that women have to do consciously and sub-consciously to prepare themselves for any instance; be it taking a different route home, wearing oversized clothing to deter unwelcome advances or even go as far as taking martial arts/self-defense classes, simply because they are born female. The campaign aims to shed light on this unfortunate reality and make a small difference in society.

    “The quality of work we saw coming from students was truly inspirational,” says Nunu Ntshingila, Regional Director Facebook, Africa. “There was a lot of conceptual innovation, as well as fascinating approaches to the use of technology. Many congratulations from us at Facebook to the winners for not only embracing the challenge, but creating a thought-provoking and moving mobile video campaign. We look forward to our ongoing work with advertising schools and universities as we continue to support and invest in young and diverse creative talent.”

    The three students received a bronze Loerie for their work, titled ‘Every Day Armour’. Commenting on their win, student Lunje Jwambe said: “It’s been a real honour to win a Loerie. We really enjoyed the opportunity to think about mobile in a different and challenging way and coupled with social consciousness, this truly made it a fascinating experience. It’s been very good grounding for each of us and one that I’m sure will stand us in good stead for our future careers.”

    Charles Maggs, Head of Creative Faculty AAA, Cape Town, added: “The project exposes students to the demands of the digital communication front line. They learn a huge amount as they work, and the thematic tie-in to social issues makes the process relevant to everyone on a personal level.”

    The winning campaigns will be launched on Facebook and Instagram soon.

  • Drop that phone and look up!

    Drop that phone and look up!

    One of the best things the 21st century did for us was the smartphone. As we were basking in the euphoria of being able to connect with people miles away with a wireless equipment, the smartphone came along with the social media by its side. With the smartphone, you have the world in your palms; you could do virtually everything and anything.

    You connect with millions of people simultaneously, check up vital information about anything and still have the ability to send Short Message Service (SMS) and make calls, all at the same time. The social media itself even seemed more magical and made impossibilities possible, businesses flourished, marriages were established, lost connections were restored, distance was no longer a barrier and we could literally “touch” the world.

    However, the “magical” smartphone and its “daughter” the social media has brought with it a whole lot of ills which seem really difficult to combat these days.

    Everywhere in Nigeria, youths are seen clinging passionately to their communication gadgets, some laughing, others having this business-like look on their faces, they all have one thing in common: They are networking, building strong and long lasting relationships that transcends any bias, be it religious, political, or ethnical. We all seem to be  busy looking down at our phones that we don’t look up to see the little beauties of life, we don’t admire beautiful flowers anymore, we hardly take note of lowly beggars reaching out to us on the streets, nor do we respond to “hellos” from  “familiar strangers”.

    We are becoming more concerned with Facebook “friends” than we are with the people we interact with face-to-face in our daily lives.

    When last did we make new friends just by saying hello and talking about random stuff till we felt a connection? Social media platforms have lent a voice to the voiceless but has destroyed the throats of those who had voices. We no longer talk to strangers in the bus while travelling or give people our undivided attention.

    Our family time, slumber parties, get-togethers and many more have been replaced by group chats, Skype, video conferencing, etc.

    Many live for Facebook and Instagram likes, everyone wants to be Facebook famous, very few people want to write a motivational book or start up a movement for inspiration and youth empowerment.

    This is a clarion call for the youths to stop the gadget madness. There’s more to life than that gadget!  The frivolous things of life would always come and go. Many social media platforms are dead and buried, but the important virtues of life will always stand strong. Friendship, loyalty, companionship, marriage would always be here and when you miss out on them, you’re missing out on the goodness of life.

  • Ministries of education, communication urged to upgrade ICT curriculum

    Ministries of education, communication urged to upgrade ICT curriculum

    Mr Tony Ojobo, the Director, Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has urged stakeholders in the ministries communication and education to pull resources together to upgrade schools’ curriculum on ICT education.

    Ojobo made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Abuja.

    He said that the stakeholders should work together to fashion out a way to upgrade schools’ curriculum from the primary school level to enhance ICT education.

    He said that there was an urgent need to review schools’ curriculum to improve the content of ICT education to make the country to be at par with global standard.

    “Advancement in technology’s today makes it expedient for the ministry of education to look into schools’ curriculum and improve the content of computer education to meet global trends.

    “There is a need for the ministry of education to be involved so that we can look at the curriculum and involve ICT experts and professionals to improve and add things that will put pupils and students on the path of innovation.

    “So there is a need for capacity building, we also need to train trainers, capacity building is very important and we believe that this capacity should be built from the primary school level.

    “And to secondary and the tertiary education, there should be a review of the content in the curriculum in such a way that it is progressive to the point that students will begin to apply technology tools.’’

    Ojobo said that many developed countries started from the cradle to teach their young people about technology and they are also encouraged to create things on their own, “Nigeria should do the same’’.

    “I’ve heard the minister of communication saying from time to time that oil is becoming scarce like a diamond, and ICT is the next oil.

    “We have statistics that are coming from the ICT industry and I give you an example; Facebook, for instance, is a technology brand that started 12 years ago.

    “Today Facebook is worth more than 350 billion dollars, a 12-year company, started by a 16-year-old boy.

    “Now our entire reserve in terms of how much we have as a nation, the last result showed that we have about 31 billion dollars.

    “We need to begin to shift our focus from the natural resources to our mental resources as the way forward and that will take us out of the woods and bring us to technological advancement,’’ he said.

  • Facebook, Google lose $123m to swindler

    Facebook, Google lose $123m to swindler

    The Court of Appeal in the former Soviet bloc nation of Lithuania has decided to extradite to the United States a Lithuanian scam artist identified as Evaldas Rimasauskas, for defrauding 123 million out of FaceBook and Google to the tune of $123 million through fake emails.

    “Assumption that the damage was done to the companies registered in the United States became the ground for the extradition of Rimasauskas,” the court said in a statement at the weekend.

    The decision to extradite the scammer was irrevocable, the court said.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York accused Rimasauskas of wire transfer fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering, news agency Elta reported.

    It is alleged that Rimasauskas took part in the scam using e-mail correspondence and posed as an Asian computer hardware manufacturer to persuade Google and FaceBook to accept fraudulent invoices and transfer funds to the company established under the same name in Latvia.

    The funds were transferred to the latter company’s accounts in banks in Cyprus and Latvia.

    The court underlined it has not been assessing the circumstances of the crime and the proof of guilt as it “should trust the information provided by the judicial authority of the country which applied for the extradition.”

    Rimasauskas is suspected to have conned 23 million dollars from Google and $100 million from FaceBook.

    He was detained in Lithuania on March 16. On April 18, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Lithuania received the U.S. Justice Department’s request to extradite the suspect.

    Rimasauskas has denied the charges.

    Meanwhile, the attorney of Rimasauskas claimed that the investigation of the suspected crime must take place in Lithuania as the allegedly criminal actions were carried out within the country, local media reported.

    Lithuania has a bilateral extradition agreement with the United States and this case “meets all the criteria”, the chairman of the court underlined.

     

  • More online shoppers follow brands on facebook

    More online shoppers follow brands on facebook

    An April 2017 survey by Campaigner, an email marketing platform, explored consumer interactions with brands. More than half of US digital buyers said they followed a brand on Facebook, which was significantly higher compared with any other social platform. It was even more common among millennials: Fully 65% of this cohort said they followed a brand on Facebook.

    But social networks are not necessarily the top choice for interacting with brands. As a whole, only a quarter (24%) of digital buyers in the survey said they preferred “to interact with their favorite brands” via social media. Instead, in-store and in-person communication was the most commonly cited channel (65%), followed by company websites (58%) and email (44%). Respondents could site multiple choices.

    Millennials were more likely to say they preferred to interact with brands via social. Almost half (47%) of this cohort cited social networks, compared with just 11% of baby boomers.

    A separate study by Sprout Social found a fairly strong—but not overwhelming—correlation between following a brand on a social platform and purchasing a product from that brand.

    Two-thirds of US Gen X internet users in the survey said they were likely to purchase a product from a brand they follow on social media. Millennials were the second most likely group to purchase from a brand they follow, at 60%, followed by boomers with 51%.

    The study also found that older followers (Gen Xers and boomers) tended to be looking for deals, whereas millennials preferred to be entertained.

  • Facebook group connects Nigerian doctors worldwide

    Facebook group connects Nigerian doctors worldwide

    Nigerian doctors can now connect with their peers worldwide for support through a Facebook group called Global Nigerian Physicians.
    Started as a closed group by Dr. Ona Utuama, a US-based physician, the group, which already has over 1,200 members, provides a platform for doctors of Nigerian descent to network, discuss how to handle tricky medical cases, expedite specialist referrals, disease outbreaks, and even find jobs or research opportunities.
    Dr. Utuama said she was inspired to start the group in March 2017 as a platform to network and provide support for Nigerian-born doctors in the practice of their profession at home and abroad.
    Through the group, both home and foreign-based doctors get opportunity to collaborate and share information in many aspects of clinical and research medicine.
    “I started the Global Nigerian Physicians group as a support network for Nigerian physicians worldwide to post challenging medical cases (without patient identifiers to maintain privacy) and help one another with expertise support. Some doctors might be stuck in a clinical case and have no specialist help within the vicinity when there are hundreds of thousands of Nigerian doctors of different specialties worldwide and awake at different times of the day,” she said.
    Since its inception, Utuama, a US licensed Family Physician-Hospitalist, and an alumna of the University of Benin and Emory University, said the group has helped connect Nigerian doctors with specialist referrals, job adverts, re-unions, as well as provide information about medical cases.
    She said: “A recent discussion thread was about the meningitis outbreak in Northern Nigeria. We tried to monitor its progress using information from the Nigerian Centers for Disease Control, courtesy of Dr. Olayinka Airat-Badmus and Dr. Osa Olayemi, however there was low participation among doctors in the affected areas. Dr Ahjoku Amadi-Obi of Hudibia app, also demonstrated the use of his telemedicine app in the education and tracking of the meningitis outbreak.
    “The LifeBank Smart Blood system in Nigeria was shared to the Facebook group by Dr. Loretta Ogboro-Okor, a doctor in the UK. This blood system expedites the availability of blood products, a service some Nigerian and foreign based doctors were unaware of.
    “The group also enabled a connection between an American physician working in a missionary group in Northern Nigeria with a local emergency medical evacuation service. Dr. Ufuoma Okotete-Awomosu, the CEO of Diamond Helix Medical Assitance, was contacted to help expedite the evacuation out of Northern Nigeria, of one of the American missionary who was acutely ill.”
    Dr Utuama belongs to a similar group of American Physicians, which has over 65,000 members. Through that network she said she has fast tracked inter-hospital transfer of her sick patients, secured last minute medical appointments, and learnt about challenges of other colleagues at different phases of their careers.
    She expects to achieve the same value with the Nigerian group, which is made up of 41 per cent female and 59 per cent male doctors.
    “As physicians, irrespective of where we practice, we need one another and can address some of our challenges through this forum.
    To join the group, Dr Utuama said aspiring members can request or be invited by existing members as certified medical doctors.
    In the future, Dr Utuama hopes the group will provide a platform to foster and improve healthcare in Nigeria and across the globe for Nigerians through focused social networking.
    “The potential of this group is endless, from clinical and research collaborations to information sharing, job opportunities and networking for clinical care advancement,” she said.
  • Facebook group connects Nigerian doctors worldwide

    Facebook group connects Nigerian doctors worldwide

    Nigerian doctors can now connect with their peers across the world for support through a Facebook group called “Global Nigerian Physicians”.

    The group, which started as a closed group by Dr. Ona Utuama, a U.S.-based physician, has over 1,200 members.

    It provides a platform for doctors of Nigerian descent to the network, discuss how to handle tricky medical cases, expedite specialist referrals, disease outbreaks and even find jobs or research opportunities.

    Dr. Utuama said she was inspired to start the group in March as a platform to network and provide support for Nigerian-born doctors to practise their profession at home and abroad.

    Through the group, home and foreign-based doctors get the opportunity to collaborate and share information on many aspects of clinical and research medicine.

    “I started the Global Nigerian Physicians group as a support network for Nigerian physicians worldwide to post challenging medical cases (without patient identifiers to maintain privacy) and help one another with expertise support. Some doctors might be stuck in a clinical case and have no specialist help within the vicinity when there are hundreds of thousands of Nigerian doctors of different specialties worldwide and awake at different times of the day,” she said.

    Since its inception, Utuama, a U.S. licensed Family Physician-Hospitalist and an alumna of the University of Benin and Emory University, said the group has helped connect Nigerian doctors with specialist referrals, job adverts, re-unions, as well as provide information about medical cases.

    She said: “A recent discussion thread was about the meningitis outbreak in Northern Nigeria. We tried to monitor its progress using information from the Nigerian Centers for Disease Control, courtesy of Dr. Olayinka Airat-Badmus and Dr. Osa Olayemi, however there was low participation among doctors in the affected areas. Dr. Ahjoku Amadi-Obi of Hudibia app also demonstrated the use of his telemedicine app in the education and tracking of the meningitis outbreak.

  • Facebook to step up fight against fake news with fact-checking

    FACEBOOK is to send more potential hoax articles to third-party fact checkers and show their findings below the original post.

    The world’s largest online social network said this yesterday as it tries to fight so-called fake news.

    The company said in a statement on its website it will start using updated machine learning to detect possible hoaxes and send them to fact checkers, potentially showing fact-checking results under the original article.

    Facebook has been criticised as being one of the main distribution points for so-called fake news, which many think influenced the 2016 United States (U.S.) presidential election.

    The issue has also become a big political topic in Europe, with French voters deluged with false stories ahead of the presidential election in May and Germany backing a plan to fine social media networks, if they fail to remove hateful postings promptly, ahead of elections there in September.

    Yesterday, Facebook said in a separate statement in German that a test of the new fact-checking feature was being launched in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany.

  • School teacher in Court for defaming Senate President

    School teacher in Court for defaming Senate President

    A 37-year-old primary school teacher, Biodun Baba, was on Thursday arraigned before an Ilorin Senior Magistrates Court forallegedly defaming Senate President Bukola Saraki on Facebook.

    Baba, a teacher at LGEA School, Olorunlana in Moro Local Government Area of Kwara was alleged to have through his Facebook postings been inciting the public against Saraki.

    The criminal charges were filed following a complaint by Alhaji Jimoh Adesina, Chairman, Kwara South Chapter of the APC to the Chamber of S. I. Solagberu and Co, Ilorin.

    Adesina, accused Baba of printing or engraving matters on his Facebook wall  known to be defamatory.

    Sollagberu, who filed criminal charges on behalf of Adesina, accused Baba of inciting disturbance, disturbance of public peace and injurious falsehood posts on Facebook.

    He also alleged that Baba’s postings was capable of causing disaffection and disparaging against Saraki.

    The offences, he said, were contrary to sections 113, 114, 393, 394 of the Penal Code of Northern Nigeria and section 883and 204 of the Criminal Code Act.

    However, the matter took a dramatic twist as counsel to the complainant, Sikiru Solagberu, said he had filed an application before the court seeking to withdraw the charges.

    Solagberu read a letter he received on July 26, instructing him to withdraw the case against the accused.

    The lawyer cited section 248 of the Criminal Procedure Act, Cap 41, Laws of the Federation 2004 to support the application for withdrawal.

    He said the instruction of the complainant to withdraw the case was as a result of intervention by well meaning Nigerians, including Ilorin Emirate Traditional Council, leaders of the various communities in the state as well as party loyalists.

    Solagberu, urged the court to grant his application.

    Responding, counsel to the accused, Mr Sambo Muritala, said his client would ordinarily not object to the complainant letter to withdraw.

    Muritala, however, submitted that in a situation of non compoundable offence, it is safer for the complainant’s counsel to make proper application before the court and support it with an affidavit.

    According to the counsel, coming by way of proper application and affidavit will demonstrate the wish of the complainant to withdraw the charges saying the application was an abuse of court process.

    Replying to the accused counsel’s submission, Solagberu argued his application was not an abuse of the court’s process adding that since  matter was not a civil action there was no need of deposing to an affidavit.

    “There is nothing in Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Act and Criminal Procedure Code that enjoins a complainant to depose to an affidavit before a case is withdrawn from the court,” he added.

    Solagberu added that the complainant’s letter before the court has satisfied the conditions for withdrawal of cases of this nature.

    “If a party says he wants to withdraw in a criminal case, the court should use its instrumentality to assist the parties to withdraw.

    The Magistrate, Ahmed Dasuki, later adjourned the matter to Aug 3 for ruling on the application.