You can now transfer money internationally through Facebook

NO: You can now transfer money internationally through Facebook.

The money transfer startup TransferWise has launched a new chatbot that enables Facebook (FB, Tech30) users to move funds abroad using the social platform’s Messenger service.
The bot can be used to move money between the U.S., Canada, Australia and the European Union. It will also notify users via an alert when their regularly used currencies hit favorable rates.
Facebook users were previously able to transfer money within the U.S., but not between accounts in foreign countries.

Messenger is the creepy front-end of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s creepy vision of the future.

21Posted at 8:10 am by Stephen Green   

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This is Facebook's creepy vision of the future

FACEBOOK is deeply invested in virtual reality – and now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed how the world's most popular social network plans to use the technology in the not-so-distant future.

By AARON BROWN

PUBLISHED: 10:49, Wed, Apr 13, 2016 | UPDATED: 11:17, Wed, Apr 13, 2016

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Facebook Mark Zuckerberg hinted at the VR-fuelled future of the social network

Facebook believes the future of sharing online will be 360-degree video and virtual reality (VR) headsets.

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The US social network purchased Oculus VR – the team behind the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR – for a cool $2 billion, back in 2014.

When my daughter Max takes her first steps, I want to capture the whole scene with a 360-degree video

Mark Zuckerberg

VR headsets have a number of difference use-cases, from rollercoasters at Alton Towers, to computer-generated theme parks and hardcore pornography – but Mark Zuckerberg thinks the technology will also play an important role for Facebook users.

Opening the social network's annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed his vision of VR on Facebook.

"We all have a desire to be understood and to relate to each other. So we're always looking for better and richer ways to express ourselves and share with one another," he told the crowd.

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Developers and journalists test-out the Samsung Gear VR at Facebook's F8 conference

"When I was a baby and I took my first steps, my parents wrote down the date in a baby book, so that they could share it with their friends and family.

"When my nephews' took their first steps, my sister took photos and videos on her phone, so she could send them to us.

"And when my daughter Max takes her first steps – hopefully later this year – I want to capture the whole scene with a 360-degree video, so I can send it to my family and my friends and they can go into VR and feel like they're actually right there in the living room with us. 

"We're always trying to get closer to this purest form of capturing an idea, or an experience."

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The Facebook CEO showed an example of the immersive family home video

Whether friends and family will start to plug into their Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR headsets to catch-up on their loved ones' first steps in an immersive 360-degree Facebook video, remains to be seen.

It is also unknown whether the average Facebook user will feel comfortable enough with the privacy settings on the social network to allow their online friends to freely peer around their home video in virtual reality.

And especially through a website that manipulated its users' emotions using the Facebook News Feed for a university study.

But the 31-year-old multi-billionaire's example nevertheless hints at why he decided Oculus VR was a good fit for Facebook's ever-growing portfolio of technology firms, which now includes Instagram, WhatsApp and MSQRD.

The news comes as a new report by The Information suggests that Facebook is struggling to encourage users to post as much as they used to.

Overall sharing is believed to have fell 5.5 per cent between mid-2014 and mid-2015, that means Facebook now has fewer posts to pick from to populate your News Feed.

And worse still, personal updates – in which Facebook users share their thoughts, their life stories, photos – plummeted by 21 per cent during the same timeframe, a trend that reportedly continued into this year.

It's safe to assume that a 360-degree video of your baby's first steps would fall into this latter category.

The news comes as Facebook tried to test the loyalty and patience of its Android users to the limit.

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Facebook has struggled to encourage users to share their thoughts and photos

The US firm secretly rolled-out a slew of artificial errors within the Android app that would automatically crash the mobile app for hours at a time, a source has claimed.

The experiment was designed to test at what point a Facebook user would give-up and ditch the Facebook app from their device all-together.

Speaking anonymously to The Information, a source familiar with the one-time test, which is believed to have taken place a few years ago, said Facebook was never able to reach this threshold.

"People never stopped coming back," the source said.

Facebook wanted to see whether users would abandon the social network or simply switch to the far-inferior mobile website while their Android app was artificially broken.

Former Facebook data scientist JJ Maxwell defended the move, saying tests like these are "hugely valuable" to the company and "their prerogative," The Verge reports.

Admittedly, Facebook is not alone – many technology firms quietly test new features on users.

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Overall sharing is believed to have fell 5.5 per cent between mid-2014 and mid-2015

Google famously cycled between 41 different shades of blue on its homepage, to see which promoted the best response from its users.

But tweaking a shade of blue is very different to testing the loyalty of your users by deliberately crashing their access to the service.

Especially when you state your company mission is to "connect the world" and you have a feature – dubbed Safety Check – to allow users to log-in and signal to one another that they are safe in a time of disaster. It's criticial to ensure people can stay connected. 

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First of all, I’m not a big proponent of complaining when Facebook changes a security setting or deletes a useful feature. We don’t pay a fee to use Facebook so they pretty much have free game to do what they want. It’s our responsibility to not post content (pictures, posts, videos, etc.) that we wouldn’t mind the whole world seeing.

Facebook is migrating its chat feature to a brand new app called Facebook Messenger. The Facebook Messenger app was launched in 2011 and already has 200 million users. Soon, you won’t be able to chat in the stand-alone Facebook app. I’m sure this is a feature many of you use often. And I’m sure many of you will download the new Messenger app without a second thought; however, here are seven things you should know before doing so.

Why the New Facebook Messenger App is Creepy!

1. Facebook can alter your connection to the Internet or mobile service service. This means that Facebook can turn on features of your smartphone for their own personal evil reasons (I added the evil part here – I’m sure they aren’t evil). 

2. Facebook can send SMS messages or phone numbers. This is not as scary as it sounds because you can call or text your Facebook friends from the app so you need to give them permission, however, if Facebook wanted to be evil and send evil things to your friends, they could.

3. Facebook can record audio, take pictures and take videos any time they like. This means the folks at Facebook can look through your camera lens any time they wish. Again, this isn’t too bad. If you take pictures using Facebook right now, you’ve already given them a lot of permission.

4. Facebook can read your smartphone contact data including who you call and email (and how often). They will use this information for personalized advertisements. You might notice this feature if you use Gmail. The ads are strangely tailored to write you write about in your emails.

5. Facebook can read and record personal profile information stored on your smartphone. They can see your addresses, pictures, personal info, etc.

6. Facebook will find out which apps you use and how often. It will also see how you use them and what information you store in those apps.

7. Facebook will recommend dinner ideas based on the pictures you take in Instagram. KIDDING!

What do you think about the new Facebook Messenger app? Will you download it? Or will you cry PRIVACY INVASION and delete Facebook from your phone. The important takeaway here is to study the privacy settings carefully and see if you are okay with them. If not, stay away from the app and chat inside the Facebook website. If you’re okay with it, download the new app and chat away