Karissa Bell says, “Following a quiet rollout in a handful of countries, Facebook’s stripped-down, data-efficient Android app is finally ready for primetime. The social network officially launched Facebook Lite, the barebones version of its app, in Asia on Thursday. The company said it will roll out more broadly in Europe, Latin America and Africa “in the coming weeks.” Facebook’s lightweight version aims to provide “a reliable Facebook experience when bandwidth is at a minimum,” the company wrote in a statement Thursday. People in areas with slow or unreliable... [...]

Yael Grauer says, “Facebook has demonstrated as well as any company could that sometimes the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Take the news that Facebook is now supporting strong encryption in the emails it sends. Yes, this from the company that broadcasts user location data within a meter in Facebook Messenger and requires the use of real names. Facebook now lets  users to add OpenPGP public keys to their profile, and to sign up for encrypted Facebook notifications. PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, is a program that lets people encrypt and decrypt emails, and allows users... [...]

Raymond Wong says, “Windows 10 arrives this summer. After years of stumbling around in the dark with Windows 8, Microsoft’s finally getting its act together with its upcoming operating system. It goes without saying that you have questions (possibly lots of them) about Windows 10. Not to worry, we’re here to help. Below, you’ll find answers to the most frequently asked questions regarding Windows 10. Will your PC be able to run the OS? What’s Cortana and Microsoft Edge? We’ve got answers for all of those and more. Follow along and you might learn something“. Windows... [...]

Christina Warren says, “Prepare yourselves — Facebook now has serviceable GIF support. That’s right children, you can now post GIFs to Facebook and have them display not only inline, but in the mobile app as well. Longtime Facebook users (read: old people like me who have been using the service since it was for college students only), will recall that if offered GIF support in the very early days. The ability to embed or upload GIFs was removed a decade ago, probably because of the negative impacts a ton of GIFs in the Newsfeed had on the product“. Rejoice: Facebook gets GIF... [...]

JP Mangalindan says, “Facebook Messenger said two months ago that it was getting into the payments game — along-awaited move on Facebook’s part. Now, the team also plans to phase in two additional ways that people can pay each other inside the app. Messenger announced on Wednesday new tweaks to its payments feature that tightens integration with the overall app. Facebook also expanded the availability of payments, which is being rolled out over the next few months; it’s already available in a handful of U.S. cities, such as Seattle, Portland and Austin, but will now include... [...]

JP Mangalindan says, “Getting messages from someone you don’t know can be a pretty intimidating experience. How did they find you? Why did they reach out? To make new connections less jarring, Facebook Messenger is introducing a new feature on Thursday that gives you bits of information about someone messaging you for the first time, whether the person is one of your Facebook friends or not. The Messenger team is rolling it out to iOS and Android users in the U.S., UK, France and India over the next few weeks. Think of it almost like an icebreaker, or “a way to give you more... [...]

JP Mangalindan says, “Internet.org, the Facebook-backed service that wants to bring free Internet to people in emerging markets, seemingly can’t catch a break. More than 60 civic and digital liberty groups from 28 countries signed an open letteraddressed to Mark Zuckerberg on Monday contending that Internet.org in its present state violates net neutrality, thereby “threatening freedom of expression, equality of opportunity, security, privacy and innovation.” Internet.org, which Zuckerberg launched in 2013, partners with local telecomm companies and developers to offer a... [...]

Seth Fiegerman says, “By the time Facebook went public on May 18, 2012, the company had more than 900 million monthly active users, topped more than $1 billion in annual profits and even had an Oscar-winning film with Justin Timberlake cementing its place in popular culture. But Wall Street, largely unimpressed with former members of NSync, was still wary of the social media giant’s ability to keep it going. Portfolio managers were “comparing it to MySpace and they were just worried,” recalls Arvind Bhatia, an analyst who covers many of the big public Internet companies... [...]

Lance Ulanoff says, “Welcome to the new world of Facebook native content — or, as Facebook calls it, Instant Articles. The social media giant uses the term “instant” because stories in this new format open instantly, sans 8-second load time. This is quite a noticeable change from articles you access through links that take you to content outside of Facebook. Instant Articles are more than just a faster way to read news stories, though. They’re ostensibly a new way of publishing. In the Facebook mobile app, stories built by the New York Times and other media companies... [...]

Greg Finn says, “One of the biggest struggles when sharing a post to Facebook from your mobile device is the flipping back from browser to app and copy-pasting of URLs. That may soon be going the way of the dinosaurs thanks to a new “Add A Link” feature from Facebook. Instead of toggling back and forth between programs on one’s phone, the “Add A Link” feature will allow users to perform a quick search to find relevant URLs to  share. They will have the ability to quickly view the story then share along with their text update“. Facebook’s “Add A Link” Search Feature... [...]