According to The Vancouver Sun, Facebook is bringing the adolescent version of its popular Messenger app to children in Canada. The app has proved controversial in the United States since it launched last year, with health experts worrying continued exposure to “digital devices and social media is harmful to young people.” Messenger Kids is an app which allows kids too young for a Facebook account – which means under thirteen years old – to video call and message with selected contacts. Parents can control the contacts their children access, and messages cannot be hidden or deleted. As The Vancouver Sun

On May 30th, Facebook announced it had plans to build a data center on a 490-acre site in Eagle Mountain, Utah. The center is expected to open in 2020, and will create around 30 to 50 full-time jobs and additional contract opportunities on an as needed basis. The City of Eagle Mountain has said that the project “represents a $750 million investment in [the city],” according to Fox Business. Facebook has announced it will invest $100 million in local infrastructure in Eagle Mountain. This includes roads and a new electric substation. To make this investment appealing for Facebook, the company

In the latest addition to the post-Cambridge Analytica Facebook saga, the social media giant has suspended 200 third-party applications after a privacy audit. According to SlashGear, Facebook’s “data misuse investigation found signs that they may have been acting improperly.” Cambridge Analytica has closed its doors following the scandal, but it was likely not the only company abusing data it collected from the platform. This is where the investigation of all apps that “had access to large amounts of information” became necessary. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised that all suspicious apps, as well as developers that refused to comply with the

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica story broke, the world has been frenzied over a fact that we already knew before this scandal arose: Facebook makes money from advertisers, and part of that is selling our data so that they can target ads directly to us. As TechSpot explains, “In the early days of the Internet, advertisers were essentially fishing with a blindfold on – they’d cast a wide net in the form of a static banner ad and hope the product or service they were pitching would be of interest to a site’s visitors. These days… advertisers utilize all sorts

If you’re one of the 87 million Facebook users who might have been involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, you’ll soon find out. Facebook will be sending all the implicated users – including 622,161 Canadians – a detailed message in their newsfeed. Over 70 million of these individuals are based in the United States. If you don’t receive a specific message saying your data was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, Facebook still will be reaching out. According to CBC, “all 2.2 billion Facebook users will receive a notice titled ‘Protecting Your Information’ with a link to see what apps they use

Since going public in November of 2013, Twitter had never finished a quarter in the black – until now. According to Forbes, Twitter “announced fourth-quarter net income of $91 million on Thursday. Last year, the firm reported a loss of $167 million in the same period.” CEO Jack Dorsey was happy to share his thoughts alongside the earnings. “Q4 was a strong finish to the year,” Dorsey said in a statement. ““We returned to revenue growth, achieved our goal of GAAP profitability, increased our shipping cadence and reached five consecutive quarters of double digit [daily active user] growth.” It took

Have you ever wanted to look back on your past Instagram stories? Be it for nostalgia purposes or engagement analytics – the feature would be nice to have. According to The Verge, this will be possible with Instagram’s new service, which starting now will “add your expired stories to the archive feature.” Until now, Instagram archives have only been used to store photos and videos you no longer want to display publicly. Now it will include all your past stories for both Android and iOS users. If you don’t want to have your stories archived, you can opt out of

Instagram has had some great news this month. According to SlashGear, the social media platform recently revealed it now has 800 million monthly users, growing an incredible 100 million since April of 2017. Perhaps even more impressive is the company’s 500 million daily active users. To put that number in perspective, Instagram’s closest competitor Snapchat announced in August it has 173 million daily active users – a huge number of users, yet still dwarfed by Instagram’s platform. According to SlashGear, “This acceleration in Instagram’s daily active user count is likely thanks to the roll out of Instagram Stories. That’s somewhat

Facebook announced earlier this year that it was making a push into video streaming, focusing on both licensed shows and original content. This came to fruition this month with the introduction of Watch, a new video streaming platform that will available to a limited group of Facebook users in the United States. According to BGR, “Some of the shows available at launch include Nas Daily, a daily show where a creator makes videos with his fans; Gabby Bernstein, a show from a motivational speaker who answers questions and gives advice; and Kitchen Little, a show about kids who try to