Tag: Facebook

U.S. tech look to Africa for developers

Andela

Tech companies founded in the United States are setting up software development centers in Nigeria and Kenya, where a number of young developers has led to growing tech communities. Microsoft has launched its Microsoft 4 Afrika initiative, aiming to help empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers and others to make their ideas a reality. Steve Case, the AOL founder, and his wife Jean, Generation Investment Management and Sir Richard Branson have provided $19 million to Kenyan pay-as-you-go energy start-up M-KOPA Solar. Andela, which has attracted $24 million of funding from a scheme led by…

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European Union privacy officials asks Facebook told to stop exploiting WhatsApp data

WhatsApp launches end-to-end encryption on messages for all its users

European Union privacy chiefs said Facebook must stop processing user data from its WhatsApp messaging service while they are investigating the privacy policy changes the company announced in August. The Article 29 Working Party, made up of privacy chiefs from across the 28-nation EU, told Facebook it had “serious concerns” about the sharing of WhatsApp users’ data for purposes that were not included in the terms of service and privacy policy when existing users signed up to the service, according to a statement e-mailed on Friday. European privacy watchdogs don’t…

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

Staff Writer

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…

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CyberXchange Conference And Hackathon To Be Held In Nigeria In November

Staff Writer
CyberXchange

The Facebook Sponsored CyberXchange Hackathon will be held in Lagos, Nigeria in November. The Hackathon is a competition geared towards finding the best prototypes by starting from scratch to build a workable idea with the help of collaborating colleagues on their teams. As aptantech reports, during the Hackathon, teams will compete against other teams with less than 2 years experience from all over Nigeria. These participants will have the opportunity to build a hack against a cybersecurity issue. The pre-qualifier registration for the Hackathon closes on August 30th, successful parties…

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Statista analyses Sandberg’s eighth anniversary at Facebook

Staff Writer
Sheryl Sandberg

In 2008, Facebook was still a startup. Early investors were excited about its user growth — Microsoft had put $240 million into the company at a crazy-seeming $15 billion valuation the year before. BusinessInsider reports Mark Zuckerberg  CEO and founder then hired Sheryl Sandberg, then the VP of global sales and operations at Google, to help run the company as its chief operating officer. Today is Sandberg’s eighth anniversary at the company, and this chart from Statista shows it all. Facebook has grown its revenue more than 65x, gone from a $56…

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Apple Gains Support From It’s Greatest Rivals

Staff Writer
Apple

The last couple of weeks have been interesting in the world of tech, as we are in the throes of what might be the biggest tech battle of the decade. As we had reported last week, Apple was facing pressure from the FBI and the Department of Justice to not only hack into the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone but to also create a permanent backdoor into all future versions of the iOS. In the beginning, tech enthusiasts declared their support for Apple but now tech giants have gone a mile…

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Study: Retailers Ignore Over 80% of Customers’ Requests via Social Media

Staff Writer

Sprout Social has found most that merchants fail to respond to consumer questions on Facebook and Twitter, a problem compounded during the holiday shopping season when the volume of requests increases. The stats from the Spout Social’s Q4 2015 Index are damning. Retailers failed to respond to more than 80 percent of consumer questions and requests on social media in the last year. And the cold shoulder from merchants was coldest when you’d think they could least afford it, during the holiday shopping season. During the fourth quarter of 2014,…

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25% internet users’ account hacked in 2015 says Kaspersky Lab Report

Staff Writer

MUMBAI: If you are on the internet, chances are that your Gmail, Facebook or Twitter account was hacked in last few months. According to a latest research by Kaspersky Lab study one in four internet users had at least one of their online accounts hacked. In most cases unauthorised messages were sent out in the users’ name with a malicious link included and the loss or theft of personal data, the study said. According to another study by the lab just about 38% of the users create strong passwords and…

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European Court of Justice Privacy Rule Could Ruffle American Tech Companies

Staff Writer
Privacy

A top European lawyer made a decision this morning that could prove a massive headache for American tech companies in Europe. Advocate General Yves Bot, an advisor to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said the “safe harbour” agreement for transferring data between the US and EU is “invalid,” because of concerns over US spying. Bot’s opinion isn’t legally binding, and the ECJ judges will make a formal ruling in the coming months. But as The Irish Times notes, the judges follow such opinions “in most cases.” But if…

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Tech IPOs indicate slowest pace since the banking crisis

Staff Writer
Banking Crisis

With the end of the first half of the year in sight, it looks like Fitbit may be the last tech IPO of what so far has been the slowest year for new public offerings in the sector since 2009. That was the middle of the banking crisis and just after Sequoia Capital made its “RIP:Good Times” presentation to its portfolio CEOs in 2008. There have only been two tech companies from the Bay Area to go public so far this year — Box and Apigee — and San Francisco-based…

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