Facebook Introduces Groups app for iOS and Android

This year, Facebook has pushed its Messenger app for mobile like never before, even forcing people to use only that for messaging one another. Furthermore, now the social network has announced another standalone mobile app that concentrates on one single part of your Facebook experience. In this case, we’re discussing about Groups.

The new Facebook Groups application is now accessible in both the iTunes App Store for iOS and the Google Play Store for Android.

This is simply to make using of Facebook Groups simpler and less difficult, helping you share stuff faster and providing easier access to this usefulness. The application shows groups sorted by frequency of utilization, and you can easily start a new group without much of a stretch. Notifications for groups are demonstrated inside the application as well, and you can likewise control which notifications you want to see.

There’s a Discover tab too, which shows bunch of group suggestions based on Pages you’ve liked in the past, groups your friends are in, and even where you live.

Unlike what happened with Messenger, regardless you will still have the capacity to utilize the Groups functionality inside the main Facebook application for iOS and Android, and in addition on the desktop. For the time being, this new app acts generally as an alternative way of getting to Facebook Groups.

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Facebook Acquires Fitness Tracking Mobile App Moves

The company behind the popular fitness tracking app Moves announced that it got officially acquired by Facebook. Financial details of the transaction have not been revealed.

Moves, an activity diary for your Smartphone, has been acquired by Facebook for an undisclosed amount. It will continue running independently, and Facebook says it will use Moves to help people "take small steps toward more healthy habits and lifestyle," The Wall Street Journal reports.

The developers of the application will not share data with Facebook for the time being. Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t talked much about fitness apps specifically, although he did note that he was impressed by another app, RunKeeper, a few years back. RunKeeper is much larger than Moves with more than 23 million users, and collects exercise information via a phone's GPS.

Facebook has been focused on beefing up its mobile portfolio. The apps, like Moves, are “part of the full ecosystem of different ways that people want to share with different people,” Zuckerberg said during Facebook’s latest earnings call.

Moves is available for both Android and iOS. Launched in January 2013, the activity tracking app has raked in more than 4 million downloads to date.

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Facebook Introduces New ‘Nearby Friends’ Feature

Facebook has announced a new feature for users of their mobile apps. Called Nearby Friends, the feature is designed to let you catch up with your friends on Facebook if they are close to your location.

Nearby Friends obviously requires you to share your location with your friends for it to work but you can choose whom to share it with. Your friends also need to enable sharing with you for you to see them. Once enabled, you will get notifications when your friends are nearby. You can also share a precise location so that people can see where exactly you are on a map.

The feature will be available on iOS and android in the US in the coming weeks and is disabled by default. It’s a little useful but also a little creepy. Just like the rest of Facebook.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Salary Falls to Just $1

Ranked as the 22nd richest person on the planet by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg decided to follow suit with other extremely wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, taking a $1 salary in 2013.

The news comes by way of a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday. The $1 salary is down from the over half a million Zuckerberg was paid the year prior. While this may come as a surprise to some, it is quite a common practice; people like Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin both take home $1 in salary as well. Many feel the practice was popularized by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

With a total worth of around $27 billion and with Facebook shares doubling in value last year, the half a million dollar hit Zuckerberg took last year isn't going to do much damage. He made $3.3 billion in 2013 after purchasing 60 million shares with enough left over to give 18 million of them to charity.

On top of the $1 in salary, the Facebook co-founder still spent more than $650,000 in compensation for private planes and catering. All of which is necessary for his personal safety and was down from nearly $2 million in 2012, according to the SEC filing.

It wasn't just Zuckerberg taking a hit either, COO Sheryl Sandberg, who recently became a billionaire when Facebook shares skyrocketed earlier this year, was docked around $10 million in 2013 compared to 2012. Other Facebook execs saw a drop in compensation last year as well, including CFO David Ebersman, CTO Mike Schroepfer and VP David Fischer.

Read more >> http://www.techspot.com/news/56217-facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-salary-drops-to-just-1.html

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Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp for $16 Billion

Facebook said on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire WhatsApp, the
massively popular messaging client in a $16 billion cash and stock
arrangement with the popular messaging application's parent company.

This is facebook's biggest acquisition to date.

The deal for WhatsApp includes 183,865,778 shares of Facebook stock,
valued at $12 billion, along with $4 billion in cash. Once the
acquisition closes, Facebook has promised to
grant 45,966,444 restricted stock units (RSUs) to WhatsApp founders
and employees, tacking on an additional $3 billion in value to the
deal. The additional RSUs will vest over four years following closing.

In a statement, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg described WhatsApp's
services as "incredibly valuable". He also said in a post published to
Facebook. "Our mission is to make the world
more open and connected. We do this by building services that help
people share any type of content with any group of people they want.
WhatsApp will help us do this by continuing to develop a service that
people around the world love to use every day."

"You can continue to use WhatsApp no matter where in the world you
are, or what smartphone you're using," koum said. "And you can still
count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication. There
would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to
compromise on the core principles that will always define our company,
our vision and our product."

Congrats to them both..Mark is really not slowing down :)

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