Facebook, Instagram hit by 13hr outage, Zuckerberg not stepping down as chairman

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were yesterday hit by a 13-hour outage that affected some users throughout the world, the company confirmed. The outage comes at a particularly sensitive time when businesses use Facebook and Instagram to promote pivotal Black Friday sales, some of which have already started. “Earlier today, a server configuration caused intermittent problems across all apps globally creating a degraded experience for users. The issue has since been resolved, we are back to 100 percent for everyone and we’re sorry for any inconvenience,” a Facebook spokesperson told ABC…

Facebook institutional investors want Zuckerberg ousted as chairman

Amidst increasing incidences of data breaches such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw the personal data of 87 million Facebook members used without permission, to Russian sourced posts aimed at influencing the midterm elections, a report from Reuters states that four institutional investors in Facebook are looking to have Zuckerberg replaced by an independent chairman. A similar proposal was defeated by stockholders in 2017. The filing asking for a vote to remove Zuckerberg was made to Facebook’s board by the state treasurers of Illinois, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, who…

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook is no longer a just for friends’ Platform

Facebook has always made sure that its audience know what their friends are having for lunch and how the new borns in the family look like. Now the Facebook CEO is acknowledging that connecting people online isn’t enough. Facebook is unveiling a new mission: “To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” It’s a culmination of months, perhaps years, of apparent soul-searching on Zuckerberg’s part and strategic directional changes for Facebook as a product. The social network has been moving in this direction for…

Zuckerberg “deeply disappointed” by the Internet.org, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explosion

Earlier today, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad for no apparent reason. While we’re still trying to learn more about what happened, we already know that the company was doing a test, and an anomaly created a big mess. Fortunately, all personnel were clear of the launch pad. But this incident is going to affect Facebook’s Internet.org effort in a significant way as a satellite was also destroyed in the process. While insurance companies are going to pay out for today’s failure, the SpaceX rocket was…

Andela Receives $24 Million From The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Andela

Andela announced yesterday that it had banked $24 million in a round that was led by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s fund. Additionally, Andela had also received a new investor, GV( formerly known as Google Ventures, CNN Money reports. Andela is a startup that trains Africa software developers and places them in international companies such as Google and IBM. Currently it has offices in Lagos and in Nairobi. The selection of software developers is rigorous and very selective. Applicants are taken through skills and…

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg speaks Chinese in Beijing visit

Facebook has been blocked by Chinese authorities for over five years, but company founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to be on a new charm offensive to crack the massive market. In a move that has sent tongues wagging across China and around the globe, Zuckerberg on Wednesday showed off his nascent Chinese language skills in Beijing by participating in a 30-minute question-and-answer session conducted entirely in Mandarin. When asked about Facebook’s plans in China, Zuckerberg said the company already has a presence in the country, focused on helping Chinese companies grow in…

Facebook reinforces its presence in Africa

facebook

Facebook reinforces its presence in Africa Facebook is in Africa’s good books yet again and this time, the tech giant hopes to develop products made by Africans, for Africans, and the rest of the world. In 2016, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg visited Nigeria on what was his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. While the attraction to the budding tech ecosystem which was already producing some of Africa’s best-known startups was obvious, there was also the underlying influence of Facebook’s pool of high-ranking Nigerian-American executives. Four years later, that influence…

Facebook considering WhatsApp, Messenger Integration

facebook

The last year, Zuckerberg said he was planned to merge Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in a unique service. So, if you have a Facebook account, you might be able to reach your friends having WhatsApp. News report by WABetaInfo is that Facebook is considering integrating WhatsApp into Facebook Messenger. The report cited developer Alessandro Paluzzi, who found references within Facebook code regarding the integration of these Facebook-owned services. “In particular, Facebook is creating some tables in a local database in order to manage messages and services with other WhatsApp users,”…

Opinion: Factors that will likely shape ecommerce in the second half of 2020

COVID 19 Read consumer

As we enter the second half of 2020, Dan Barker examines the key trends that are set to shape ecommerce, and how retailers can respond to them. The first half of 2020 has been eventful for ecommerce. Of course technical innovation has progressed: Shopify launched a marketplace, Google relaunched organic product listings, Facebook introduced ‘shops’, and thousands of other changes. But much of the first half of 2020 was shaped by a disease named after 2019. The effects of ‘SARS2’ on ecommerce are tough to overstate. Tens of thousands of…

Digital WhatsApp Payments for SMEs launched, Pilots in Brazil

Digital WhatsApp Payments for SMEs launched, Pilots in Brazil

Facebook has launched its WhatsApp payments service in Brazil, enabling people to send money and make purchases from within the chat app. You use it by linking up your WhatsApp account to your Visa or Mastercard credit or debit card. This now adds Facebook as one of the digital payments and mobile money providers like Mpesa WhatsApp began testing P2P payments in India in 2018 but Brazil, where the messaging service has 120 million users, becomes the first country to get a nationwide rollout. Brazil would be the first to…