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Social Networking
whether through Internet Messaging or other Communications Apps to improve productivity and keeping in touch, for business and personal benefits!

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The inspiration for this web page came from a Washington Post article about how, during this period of self-quarantine to prevent the spread of Covid-19, we can still keep in touch with each other, thanks to the Internet! 

The ultimate guide to which socializing app is right for you, from Zoom to Netflix Party (by the Washington Post: Travis M. Andrews 4/6/2020Pictured below: 9 must have social networking apps
As self-quarantining in the face of covid-19 continues, many people have begun socializing via apps: organizing online happy hours, game nights, TV watch parties and more.
But with so many different apps available, it can be tough to figure out which fits your particular social habits. We’re here to help.

If you just want to hang out with a group of friends …Several weeks ago, it seemed like no one really knew about the video conferencing software Zoom. Then came covid-19 and suddenly everyone scrambled to get the new hot app, which was downloaded 600,000 times in a single week.

Zoom has become a go-to app for video work meetings, happy hours and even cocktail parties. The free version allows for up to 100 people to participate in a single chat — the catch being these can last only up to 40 minutes. Some priced options allow up to 1,000 people and more time.

Its most attractive feature is how easy it is to use: A host creates a meeting and shares a link that takes you straight there. You can even join the meeting in a browser window — no need to install the app itself. Once in the chat, you have the option to use any of your saved photos as a makeshift background — you can appear to be at the beach, for instance, or inside a video game or in front of a giant image of your dog.

The app’s sudden popularity has a downside, however, as Internet trolls have begun targeting calls to share unexpected violent images and pornography in a trend termed “ZoomBombing.” The app also recently left thousands of recorded calls exposed on the open Web. For better protection, experts suggest password-protecting calls and not publicly sharing their URLS.

Google Hangouts, another popular option that comes with Gmail or can be downloaded as a Chrome extension, offers much the same capabilities as Zoom, though the free version allows for only 25 people in a single chat. (It does offer the opportunity to share GIFs and emoji while live, a feature Zoom does not have.) And Skype remains reliable but can be frustrating to use, requiring extra steps to invite nonregistered users to a group chat.

​If you want to hang out with one friend or have a date night …While all the other video chat services mentioned above would work for a long-distance date night, Facebook Messenger, Apple’s FaceTime, Google Duo and WhatsApp would also all suffice. They allow fewer people per call than the others.

We’re all video chatting now. But some of us hate it.

If you want to meet new people …Discord can be useful if you’re hoping to connect beyond your social circle. Originally created as a platform for gamers, it’s set up like an enormous message board. You can create your own chat (as with Zoom or the others mentioned earlier) but what’s unique is that you can also join one of the preexisting semiprivate servers (provided you can snag an invite, which isn’t difficult — often you can find these with a quick search on social media).

While Discord hosts video chats, it’s primarily used for voice- or text-based group chats, meaning it’s best for when you want to be engaged with friends while doing something else, such as gaming, painting or whathaveyou.

​And if you’re looking to meet someone romantically without breaking self-isolation, the dating apps are trying to help. Plenty of Fish, for instance, recently announced a feature that allows users to pitch themselves via live stream, engage in speed dating or break off into one-on-one video chats with other users. 

Match has similar plans for a video feature in the near future. Tinder has temporarily made its Passport feature — which allows you to meet people outside your geographical area — free to everyone.

If you want to play games …Houseparty, a video app originally released in 2016, has also seen a surge during the pandemic. Like the others mentioned above, it supports basic video chat — including for groups — with a few key differences.

Instead of requiring you to set up a hangout, you can simply log in and see which of your friends are online, which will remind some people of AOL Instant Messenger from the 1990s. You can also send video voice mails (called “facemails”). But the main difference is that it comes with a variety of simple multiplayer games, such as trivia and card games. You don’t have to play them, but the option is always there.

​If you want to have a dance party …If you’re willing to hang out solely via text, and if you and your friends enjoy swapping tunes, Plug.DJ is an app to try. It allows everyone in a party to queue their own music videos in a master list, meaning no one person needs to pay particular attention to the app to keep the party going. Sure, you can’t talk to one another with your voice, but even in a real club, you can’t hear each other anyway.

If you want to share a movie night …The Chrome extension Netflix Party lets you watch a flick while chatting about it with your self-quarantining friends, and it requires only two things from everyone: a subscription to Netflix (which more than half of America already has) and the Chrome Internet browser (which is free and easy to acquire).

One person fires up a Netflix video in their Chrome browser, then clicks on the extension button to begin a “party” and sends a unique link to anyone interested in joining. Click the link, and whatever the host is watching will pop up, along with a small text chat window that allows for your “Mystery Science Theater 3000”-esque group banter.

A test by The Washington Post revealed that the video doesn’t sync up precisely among screens (even on computers connected to the same WiFi router), but the disparity is minimal enough to probably go unnoticed.

​If you’re seeking something a bit more robust, twoseven lets you create a watch party for videos on Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, YouTube, Vimeo and others, in addition to Netflix.

While a bit more complicated to use than Netflix Party, it even allows you to share private videos stored on your computer and includes the option to simultaneously use your webcams so that you can see all your friends and truly feel like you’re watching together.

If you want to watch a concert together …Since quarantine began, artists ranging from Coldplay’s Chris Martin to John Legend have been taking live shows to the Internet.

For some, such as Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, that means intimate shows broadcast from a home studio, while others such as the Dropkick Murphys put on a full show. Then there’s DJ D-Nice, who has been hosting online dance parties that have attracted fans including Dave Chappelle and Michelle Obama.

There’s no constant for where these shows appear. Some stream on Instagram Live, some on Facebook, some on YouTube and some on Twitch. All allow the same basic experience: You get to watch the show and, if you choose, join in live commenting on the goings-ons — if you’re not too busy dancing.

The best thing to do is to check your favorite musicians’ social media feeds for updates. Mix in another app — such as Facebook or Zoom — to connect with a sweetheart or a group of friends, and it’s like going to a concert together, without having to worry about parking.

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Below, we present alternatives to Zoom, as provided by PC Magazine
​Zoom Alternatives: Best Free Services for Group Video Chatting During the Pandemic

Zoom Meetings has been the breakout hit for connecting while quarantined, but not everyone can or should use it. Fortunately, there are plenty of excellent choices for group video chats—for both work and play. By Michael Muchmore April 9, 2020

YouTube Video: How to Use Facebook Messenger
Pictured below: Facebook Messenger: Best for Facebook Fans
​Zoom Meetings is a wildly popular videoconferencing solution that was previously mainly known by those who frequent board rooms and business-huddle rooms. Thanks to the social distancing that has become the norm during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has entered the national consciousness.

With all the prohibitions against in-person gatherings, most business and education has moved online, and as a consequence Zoom's users have has grown from about 10 million daily to over 200 million, according to the company's blog. And it’s not just businesses, either. A free version lets any group create video rooms for people to socialize in. People are using it to stay in touch with families, hold book club meetings, and even host virtual parties. 

The Problem With Zoom:

But it hasn't been all good news for Zoom: The service has been criticized for privacy and security issues, and the term zoom bombing—when unwanted interlopers interrupt a group video session—has entered the lexicon. This has particularly been a problem for schools, some of which have actually banned Zoom. 

Zoom has been working hard to fix these issues, but if you've been put off by these missteps—or you just prefer another service for your personal video chatting, there are plenty of excellent choices out there, as you'll see below.

Note that we aren't talking here about about business videoconferencing services—BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, RingCentral, Webex, and the like.

PCMag has reviewed those extensively elsewhere. While several of those are currently offering expanded free service during the current stay-at-home health crisis, here we're concerned with personal group video. 

​Zoom vs. the World:

Zoom lets free users conduct video meetings of up to 100 participants (with up to 49 visible at once) for a maximum of 40 minutes. Organizers can send a meeting link over messaging, email, or social network posts so that participants can easily join.

Some of the services below have lower participant limits, but most don't cut your group off after a specified time. Paid Zoom plans start at just $14.99, increasing the time limit to 24 hours and adding a meeting recording feature.

All the services included below have free accounts for the public to use, but they vary greatly in functionality. Read on for the details on each—how many participants they allow, the platforms they work on, and their special features or requirements.
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Facebook Messenger: Best for Facebook Fans:
​​YouTube Video: How to Use Facebook Messenger
​The social network of record just launched a Mac desktop version of its billion-user-plus popular chatting app and updated its Windows store app with goodies like dark mode and a Live Tile in Windows, and group video calling.

With Messenger, you can continue text chatting, spice up your chat with stickers, and apply filters that adorn your face.

Messenger works on all major platforms—Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and web—along with the company's own device dedicated largely to video calling via Messenger, Facebook Portal. There's a kid-specific version, Messenger Kids, which also offers group video, but with parental controls like blocking and monitoring.

You can't simply invite participants by sending a link, however; you need to add them individually and they need an account. On the plus side, you can create persistent groups for easy meeting starting. Up to 50 people can join a group call, but only six of them can be seen at a time. You don't need participants' email address or phone number, but you can invite with those as well as using Facebook usernames.

Read our collection of Cool Tricks and Secret Gems Inside Facebook Messenger to help you make the most of your use of the app.
  • Maximum users: 50 (with six visible at once)
  • Platforms: Android, Facebook Portal, iOS, macOS, web browser, Windows.  
  • Use type: Personal
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​FaceTime: Best for iPhone & Mac Users:
​YouTube Video: How to Use FaceTime
Facetime is a terrific service with great image quality, but it only works if everyone in your chat group is using an Apple device. Group video came to FaceTime in 2018, and quickly met with a privacy scare that has since been plugged up. Unlike Zoom and the other services here, you can't simply send prospective attendees a link to join your group video call; you have to add them with their phone number or Apple ID.

FaceTime allows up to 32 participants in a group video chat, but those talking get larger images in the interface. It integrates with iMessage, so you can start a video with a text chat message. You can add text, stickers, or Animoji during group video chats. For more, read Ready to Video Chat? How to Group FaceTime.
  • Maximum users: 32
  • Platforms: iOS, iPadOS, macOS
  • Use type: Personal
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Google Hangouts: Best for Web-Based Video Calling:
YouTube Video: How to Use Google Hangouts
​The search ad giant has separated its business and personal video calling services, with the former becoming Google Meet and the latter remaining as Hangouts. Google's consumer video chat service allows up to 25 participants, though only 10 can appear on-screen at once.

You need a Google account (normally in the form of a Gmail account), and can invite participants via email or by sending or posting a public link.

During a call, you can continue text messaging and share your screen. It's a very simple, clear interface, though the business-targeted G Suite Meet product offers more features, and

Google is increasing the video limit to 250 participants for Basic G Suite subscribers through September. Those accounts start at $6 per person per month.
  • Maximum number of participants: 25 with 10 visible
  • Platforms: Android, iOS, web browser
  • Use type: Personal and Business
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​Houseparty: Best for Mobile Socializing:
​YouTube Video: How to Use Houseparty
​Risen from the ashes of failed Twitter Periscope competitor Meerkat, Houseparty is a venture-capital success story, having been gobbled up by Epic games, maker of Fortnight and Gears of War.

Unsurprisingly, the "face to face social network" lets you play games while connected with up to seven other users. It notifies your group whenever you open the app. The app's maker, Life on Air, has denied recent accusations that Houseparty was hacked, leaking users' Netflix, Spotify, and bank account details.

The service requires a mobile phone SMS verification to create an account, though I managed to get into the web beta version without this step. Optionally, you can connect your

Facebook contacts to add them to your Houseparty calls. You can also create a link to add people to your party, or search for any user on the service and send a request for them to accept your add. Once your chat room is going, you can lock it to prevent anyone else from joining.

Houseparty's Pass a Note feature (can you guess the app's target demographic from that?), lets users send direct messages and the desktop version lets you share your screen. Among the casual party games available, the highest profile is Heads Up, since it was promoted by Ellen DeGeneres, thanks to a partnership with the comedian's Ellen Digital Network.
  • Maximum group video participants: 8
  • Platforms: Android, iOS, macOS, web browser.
  • Use type: Personal
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​​Microsoft Teams: Best for Large Groups and Organizations:
YouTube Video: How to Use the Microsoft Teams App
The software giant's relatively recent entry in videoconferencing, started as a business-only solution, but now it's free and available to the public at large. Microsoft Teams offers nifty features like background blur (also available in Zoom) and AI-powered noise suppression, so that one participant's rattling bag of chips doesn't upstage what people are trying to say.

Teams will soon become part of the Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions, which also include Office apps and Parental safety features. Those are priced the same as Office 365—$79.99 per year for a family of six, with each getting 1TB cloud storage and downloadable Office applications. The business version of Teams starts at $5 per user per month.

As with Zoom, Teams primarily targets business and educational customers, but the free account (which requires a Microsoft account, such as an Outlook.com email address) also is available for any organization. For friends and family use, you'll be directed to Skype (see next alternative), though there's no verification required. That said, Teams includes a lot of Slack-like business tools, such as file sharing, wiki creation, and a host of third-party business integrations—even, ironically, Zoom.

Maximum group video participants: 250
Platforms: Android, iOS, web browser, Windows.
Use type: Personal and Business
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​​Skype: Best for Loads of Features and Platforms:
YouTube Video: Getting the Most Out of Skype
​Skype has been around longer than any other video chat service in this roundup and has evolved a feature-packed but refined interface.

The now-Microsoft-owned (though still Luxembourg based) service works on more platforms than most, and it allows free group video rooms with up to 50 participants. You can create a Skype video chat room without a Microsoft account, but if you do have one, you'll be able to save your conversation history and contacts.

The new Skype Meet Now feature lets anyone start an ad hoc video conference. You can start or participate either in a web browser or in the Skype app. Like Hangouts, Skype lets you continue text chatting, along with stickers, file sharing, and desktop sharing. In addition, you can create polls, send money, and even share Spotify tracks. If you haven't used Skype in a while, you may be surprised at how far it's come.

For more enjoyment with the service, read Skype Tips for Cheap and Easy Chats.
  • Maximum group video participants: 50
  • Platforms: Alexa, Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, Linux, macOS, web browser, Windows, Xbox.
  • Use type: Personal and Business
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​WhatsApp: Best for Private Chats With up to Three Friends
YouTube Video: How Do You Use WhatsApp?
​The massively popular texting and calling app allows group video chats of up to four participants. Sure, that's a far cry from Zoom's limit of 100, but maybe it suits your needs, and it doesn't have Zoom's 40-minute time limit for free group calls.

Note that you can't access it without a mobile phone, and the desktop apps don't support video calling. Nor is there anything in the way of emoji or text chatting during group video calls.

In a test group call, the image quality on my iPhone X was excellent, with one participant saying she looked better in it than she does in FaceTime sessions. Though WhatsApp allows group chats with up to 256 participants, group video is limited to just four. A big plus for privacy fans: WhatsApp video calls are end-to-end encrypted, according to the company's FAQ.

As an added perk: WhatsApp has added a Coronavirus hub to provide reliable information on the pandemic. For more WhatsApp power, read our Essential WhatsApp Tips.
  • Maximum group video participants: 4
  • Platforms: Android, iOS
  • Use type: Personal







​
Social networking servicePictured below: Social Networks' most popular social networking sites by country  Courtesy of ChristallkeksPixelsnaderTechso01 : Alexa's Top 500 sites in each country as of 2019
A social networking service (also social networking site or social media) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationship with other people who share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.

Social networking services vary in format and the number of features. They can incorporate a range of new information and communication tools, operating on desktops and on laptops, on mobile devices such as tablet computers and smartphones. They may feature digital photo/video/sharing and diary entries online (blogging).

Online community services are sometimes considered social-network services by developers and users, though in a broader sense, a social-network service usually provides an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered.

Defined as "websites that facilitate the building of a network of contacts in order to exchange various types of content online," social networking sites provide a space for interaction to continue beyond in person interactions. These computer mediated interactions link members of various networks and may help to both maintain and develop new social and professional relationships 

Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, digital photos and videos, posts, and to inform others about online or real-world activities and events with people in their network.

While in-person social networking – such as gathering in a village market to talk about events – has existed since the earliest development of towns, the web enables people to connect with others who live in different locations, ranging from across a city to across the world.

Depending on the social media platform, members may be able to contact any other member.

In other cases, members can contact anyone they have a connection to, and subsequently anyone that contact has a connection to, and so on.

The success of social networking services can be seen in their dominance in society today, with Facebook having a massive 2.13 billion active monthly users and an average of 1.4 billion daily active users in 2017. LinkedIn, a career-oriented social-networking service, generally requires that a member personally know another member in real life before they contact them online. Some services require members to have a preexisting connection to contact other members.

The main types of social networking services contain category places (such as age or occupation or religion), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a recommendation system linked to trust. One can categorize social-network services into four types:
  1. socializing social network services used primarily for socializing with existing friends (e.g., Facebook)
  2. online social networks are decentralized and distributed computer networks where users communicate with each other through internet services.
  3. networking social network services used primarily for non-social interpersonal communication (e.g., LinkedIn, a career- and employment-oriented site)
  4. social navigation social network services used primarily for helping users to find specific information or resources (e.g., Goodreads for books)

There have been attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard). A study reveals that India recorded world's largest growth in terms of social media users in 2013. A 2013 survey found that 73% of U.S. adults use social-networking sites

Definition:

There is a variety of social networking services available online. However, most incorporate common features:
  • social networking services are Web 2.0, Internet-based applications
  • user-generated content (UGC) is the lifeblood of social networking services.
  • users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained by the SNS organization
  • social networking services facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

A challenge of definition:

The variety and evolving range of stand-alone and built-in social networking services in the online space introduces a challenge of definition. Furthermore, the idea that these services are defined by their ability to bring people together and provides too broad a definition. Such a broad definition would suggest that the telegraph and telephone were social networking services – not the Internet technologies scholars are intending to describe.

The terminology is also unclear, with some referring to social networking services as social media.

Attempting definition:

A recent attempt at providing a clear definition reviewed the prominent literature in the area and identified four commonalities unique to current social networking services:
  1. social networking services are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications,
  2. user-generated content (UGC), such as user-submitted digital photos, text posts, "tagging", online comments, and diary-style "web logs" (blogs), is the lifeblood of the SNS organism,
  3. users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained by the SNS organization,
  4. social networking services facilitate the development of social networks online by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Social Networking Services:







Social Networks including a List of social networking websitesPictured below: How Social Media Is Shaping Our Fears of — and Response to — the Coronavirus Pandemic*
* -- Article in Time Magazine March 16, 2020 issue follows:

As many school districts across the nation close to prevent the spread of COVID-19, social media groups and comments sections are becoming ground zero for intense arguments over whether such measures are warranted.

“Classic overreaction,” wrote one Facebook user, remarking on a March 4 decision by Washington State’s Northshore School District to close their facilities for 14 days. Others in the thread of more than 250 comments supported the move, congratulating administrators for their rapid response. Still others brought up practical concerns on many a parent’s mind this week. “This great and all, but I still need to go to work,” wrote one.

Such conversations are just one way that social media is both offering a window into our collective response to the coronavirus outbreak, as well as shaping our reaction in the first place — for good and for ill. As COVID-19 spreads in the U.S., social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which didn’t exist or barely existed during past major outbreaks, are facilitating important conversations about the virus, while at the same time allowing sensationalism and misinformation to spread.

Furthermore, the unprecedented level of real-time information at our fingertips can both give us the tools we need to make smart decisions, but also make us more anxious about what’s to come, experts say.

​The optimistic view is that social media could prove useful at a time when many of us are otherwise isolated from one another. Conversations around the coronavirus, especially those at the community level, can help us navigate this crisis, says Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Media Lab.

Those discussions are “reflecting how society is thinking and reacting to the crisis,” Hancock says. “They’re allowing society to sort of talk its way through what is an unprecedented kind of threat.” Scientists and other public health experts are also using social media to more directly engage with the public or discuss emerging research, while community leaders are using it to form ad-hoc volunteer networks to help vulnerable neighbors.

But for every expert trying to share accurate information or community leader organizing a grocery run, there are thousands of users spreading rumors, sensationalism, and other forms of disinformation.

“It pulls everyone out of the woodwork,” says Daniel Rogers, an assistant professor at New York University and co-founder of the nonprofit Global Disinformation Index, which works to counter false information sources on the internet. “Every scam artist, every bunk cure peddler … every conspirator, every internet troll.”

With contradictory information about COVID-19 emerging from the highest levels of government, disinformation experts say it’s more important than ever for those with accurate information to be sure they’re being heard. That’s easier said than done.

The algorithms that shape what we see on social media typically promote content that garners the most engagement; posts that draw the most eyeballs get spread farthest. Researchers say that model is partially responsible for the spread of misinformation and sensationalism online, since shocking or emotionally-charged content is especially good at getting people’s attention.

Rogers says that social media platforms have generally taken an aggressive stance toward countering coronavirus misinformation. In part, that’s because moderating such content runs less risk of angering users than acting as referee on more politically sensitive disinformation.

But even these efforts are a game of “whack-a-mole,” he says, as misleading content spreads faster than these platforms can fight it. More effective efforts to police false content would require a much greater investment of resources on the part of social media companies.

Beyond serving as an arena or community forum, experts say social media is actually changing the way society is perceiving and responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. Humans take cues from other humans, and they may be more likely to panic-buy if they see other people posting about their panic-buying, says Santosh Vijaykumar, a health and risk communication researcher at Northumbria University.

“We’re seeing a worrying trend where specific behaviors triggered by fear and anxiety — such as loading up on toilet rolls or hand sanitizers — get normalized and further diffused because they are constantly discussed on social media,” he writes over email. The flip side could be true, too — if people see photos their friends out and about on Instagram, ignoring the call to practice “social distancing,” they might be more likely to go out, too.

Furthermore, footage and data from hard-hit places like China and Italy have given us ample reason to prepare for what we know is coming.

But Dr. Lee Riley, chair of the Division of Infectious Disease and Vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, says that the daily deluge of infection numbers (due in part to faster, cheaper testing protocols around the world) also adds a frightening dimension to our understanding of the virus’s worldwide spread, contributing to an air of anxiety and even paralysis. “What makes it different this time is this technology that we have for mass communication and social network media,” says Riley, comparing COVID-19 to past outbreaks.

Still, some experts say a healthy dose of fear might be just what we need during a potentially world-altering crisis like this. Khudejah Ali, a fake news and disease communication researcher, has studied how public health officials can design health-risk messages during outbreaks.

She found that “a moderate level of fear-arousing sensationalism” in such messages could increase user engagement. Over email, she says that when such messages are combined with useful information that helps people protect themselves or diagnose symptoms, the combination can “become a powerful and actionable health communication message, and result in wide sharing and engagement across populations.”

And as Hancock explains, in the midst of a public health crisis, it’s not necessarily a problem for people to be nervous, so long as that anxiety motivates them to prepare and stay safe, and they don’t cross into a full-blown panic. “Oftentimes we think anxiety is a bad thing, but sometimes it’s an appropriate response,” he says. “It means people are paying more attention.”

[End of Time Article]
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​Social network:

A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures.

 The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.

Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social psychology, sociology, statistics, and graph theory. 

Georg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations". Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships. These approaches were mathematically formalized in the 1950s and theories and methods of social networks became pervasive in the social and behavioral sciences by the 1980s.

​Social network analysis is now one of the major paradigms in contemporary sociology, and is also employed in a number of other social and formal sciences. Together with other complex networks, it forms part of the nascent field of network science.

Overview:

The social network is a theoretical construct useful in the social sciences to study relationships between individuals, groups, organizations, or even entire societies (social units, see differentiation). The term is used to describe a social structure determined by such interactions.

The ties through which any given social unit connects represent the convergence of the various social contacts of that unit. This theoretical approach is, necessarily, relational.

An axiom of the social network approach to understanding social interaction is that social phenomena should be primarily conceived and investigated through the properties of relations between and within units, instead of the properties of these units themselves.

Thus, one common criticism of social network theory is that individual agency is often ignored although this may not be the case in practice (see agent-based modeling).

Precisely because many different types of relations, singular or in combination, form these network configurations, network analytics are useful to a broad range of research enterprises.

In social science, these fields of study include, but are not limited to: 
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Social Networks:
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List of Social Networking Websites

This is a list of major active social networking websites and excludes dating websites (see Comparison of online dating websites). For defunct social networking websites, see List of defunct social networking websites.

Click here for the List of Social Networking Websites.








Web ConferencingPictured below: What Is Web Conferencing?
Web conferencing may be used as an umbrella term for various types of online collaborative services including webinars ("web seminars"), webcasts, and peer-level web meetings. It may also be used in a more narrow sense to refer only to the peer-level web meeting context, in an attempt to disambiguate it from the other types of collaborative sessions. Terminology related to these technologies is inexact, and no generally agreed upon source or standards organization exists to provide an established usage reference.

In general, web conferencing is made possible by Internet technologies, particularly on TCP/IP connections. Services may allow real-time point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers. It offers data streams of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously, across geographically dispersed locations. Applications for web conferencing include meetings, training events, lectures, or presentations from a web-connected computer to other web-connected computers.
​
​Installation and operation:

Web conferencing software is invoked by all participants in a web meeting. Some technologies include software and functionality that differs for presenters and attendees. Software may run as a web browser application (often relying on Adobe Flash, Java, or WebRTC to provide the operational platform).

Other web conferencing technologies require download and installation of software on each participant's computer, which is invoked as a local application. Many web conferencing vendors provide the central connectivity and provisioning of meeting "ports" or "seats" as a hosted web service, while others allow the web conference host to install and run the software on its own local servers. Another installation option from certain vendors allows for use of a proprietary computer appliance that is installed at the hosting company's physical location.

Depending on the technology being used, participants may speak and listen to audio over standard telephone lines or via computer microphones and speakers. Some products allow for use of a webcam to display participants, while others may require their own proprietary encoding or externally provided encoding of a video feed (for example, from a professional video camera connected via an IEEE 1394 interface) that is displayed in the session.

Vendor-hosted web conferencing is usually licensed as a service based on one of three pricing models: a fixed cost per user per minute, a monthly or annual flat fee allowing unlimited use with a fixed maximum capacity per session, or a sliding rate fee based on the number of allowed meeting hosts and per-session participants (number of "seats").

Presentation of visual materials most often is accomplished through one of two primary methodologies. The web conferencing software may show participants an image of the presenter's computer screen (or desktop). Again, depending upon the product, the software may show the entire visible desktop area or may allow selection of a physical area or application running on the presenter's computer.

The second method relies on an upload and conversion process (most commonly consisting of Microsoft PowerPoint files, other Microsoft Office electronic documents, or Adobe PDF documents).

Etymology:

The term "webinar" is a portmanteau of web and seminar, meaning a presentation, lecture, or workshop that is transmitted over the web. The coined term has been attacked for improper construction, since "inar" is not a valid root. Webinar was included on the Lake Superior University 2008 List of Banished Words, but was included in the Merriam-Webster dictionary that same year.

The term "webcast" derives from its original similarity to a radio or television broadcast.

Early usage referred purely to transmission and consumption of streaming audio and video via the World Wide Web. Over time, webcast software vendors have added many of the same functional capabilities found in webinar software, blurring the distinction between the two terms.

Webcasts are now likely to allow audience response to polls, text communication with presenters or other audience members, and other two-way communications that complement the consumption of the streamed audio/video content.

Features:

Other typical features of a web conference include:
  • Slideshow presentations - where images are presented to the audience and markup tools and a remote mouse pointer are used to engage the audience while the presenter discusses slide content.
  • Live or streaming video - where full motion webcam, digital video camera or multi-media files are pushed to the audience.
  • VoIP - Real time audio communication through the computer via use of headphones and speakers.
  • Web tours - where URLs, data from forms, cookies, scripts and session data can be pushed to other participants enabling them to be pushed through web-based logons, clicks, etc. This type of feature works well when demonstrating websites where users themselves can also participate.
  • Meeting Recording - where presentation activity is recorded on the client side or server side for later viewing and/or distribution.
  • Whiteboard with annotation (allowing the presenter and/or attendees to highlight or mark items on the slide presentation. Or, simply make notes on a blank whiteboard.)
  • Text chat - For live question and answer sessions, limited to the people connected to the meeting. Text chat may be public (echoed to all participants) or private (between 2 participants).
  • Polls and surveys (allows the presenter to conduct questions with multiple choice answers directed to the audience)
  • Screen sharing/desktop sharing/application sharing (where participants can view anything the presenter currently has shown on their screen. Some screen sharing applications allow for remote desktop control, allowing participants to manipulate the presenters screen, although this is not widely used.)

Standards:

Web conferencing technologies are not standardized, which has reduced interoperability and transparency and increased platform dependence, security issues, cost and market segmentation. In 2003, the IETF established a working group to establish a standard for web conferencing, called "Centralized Conferencing (xcon)". The planned deliverables of xcon include:
  • A binary floor control protocol. Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP) published as RFC 4582
  • A mechanism for membership and authorization control
  • A mechanism to manipulate and describe media "mixing" or "topology" for multiple media types (audio, video, text)
  • A mechanism for notification of conference related events/changes (for example a floor change)

Deployment models:

Web conferencing is available with three models: hosting service, software and appliance.

An appliance, unlike the online hosted solution, is offered as hardware. It is also known as "in-house" or "on-premises" web conferencing. It is used to conduct live meetings, remote training, or presentations via the Internet.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Web Conferencing:







Comparison of web conferencing software Pictured below: Top 10 Web Conferencing Software Tools For eLearning Professionals
The list is a comparison of web conferencing software available for Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms. Many of the applications support the use of videoconferencing.

Click here for the List.

​Terminology:

In the referenced table above, the following terminology is intended to be used to describe some important features:
  • Audio Support: the remote control software transfers audio signals across the network and plays the audio through the speakers attached to the local computer. For example, music playback software normally sends audio signals to the locally attached speakers, via some sound controller hardware. If the remote control software package supports audio transfer, the playback software can run on the remote computer, while the music can be heard from the local computer, as though the software were running locally.
  • Co-Browsing: the navigation of the Web by several people accessing the same web pages at the same time. When session leader clicks on a link, all other users are transferred to the new page. Co-browsers should support multiple frames and support embedded multimedia (e.g., if a page contains a video player, the session leader may commence synchronized playback for all users. Passing URLs via other tools such as a chat or phone and entering them into browser by each user is not considered co-browsing.
  • File Transfer: the software allows the user to transfer files between the local and remote computers, from within the client program's user interface.
  • Unified Communications (UC) is a marketing buzzword describing the integration of real-time, enterprise, communication services such as:

Unified Communications is not necessarily a single product, but a set of products that provides a consistent unified user-interface and user-experience across multiple devices and media-types.







​
Video ConferencingPictured below: A video conference meeting facilitated by Google Hangouts
Videotelephony comprises the technologies for the reception and transmission of audio-video signals by users at different locations, for communication between people in real time.

A videophone is a telephone with a video display, capable of simultaneous video and audio for communication between people in real time. Videoconferencing implies the use of this technology for a group or organizational meeting rather than for individuals, in a videoconference.

Telepresence may refer either to a high-quality videotelephony system (where the goal is to create the illusion that remote participants are in the same room) or to meetup technology, which goes beyond video into robotics (such as moving around the room or physically manipulating objects). Videoconferencing has also been called "visual collaboration" and is a type of groupware.

While development of video conferencing started in the late 19th century, the technology only became available to the public starting in the 1930s. These early demonstrations were installed at "booths" in post offices and shown at various world expositions.

It took until 1970 for AT&T to launch the first true video conferencing system, wherein anyone could subscribe to the service and have the technology in their home or office.

Videotelephony also included "image phones" which would exchange still images between units every few seconds over conventional plain old telephone service (POTS) lines, essentially the same as slow-scan TV.

The development of advanced video codecs, more powerful CPUs, and high-bandwidth Internet telecommunication services in the late 1990s allowed videophones to provide high quality low-cost colour service between users almost any place in the world that the Internet is available.

Although not as widely used in everyday communications as audio-only and text communication, useful applications include sign language transmission for deaf and speech-impaired people, distance education, telemedicine, and overcoming mobility issues.

It is also used in commercial and corporate settings to facilitate meetings and conferences, typically between parties that already have established relationships. 

News media organizations have begun to use desktop technologies like Skype to provide higher-quality audio than the phone network, and video links at much lower cost than sending professional equipment or using a professional studio.

More popular videotelephony technologies use the Internet rather than the traditional landline phone network, even accounting for modern digital packetized phone network protocols, and even though videotelephony software commonly runs on smartphones.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Video Conferencing:







Collaborative Software including a List of Collaborative SoftwarePictured: Best Collaborative Software for Business
For a List of Collaborative Software systems, Click Here.

 Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them".

As regards available interaction, collaborative software may be divided into: real-time collaborative editing platforms that allow multiple users to engage in live, simultaneous and reversible editing of a single file (usually a document), and version control (also known as revision control and source control) platforms, which allow separate users to make parallel edits to a file, while preserving every saved edit by every user as multiple files (that are variants of the original file).

Collaborative software is a broad concept that overlaps considerably with computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). According to Carstensen and Schmidt (1999) groupware is part of CSCW. The authors claim that CSCW, and thereby groupware, addresses "how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems."

The use of collaborative software in the work space creates a collaborative working environment (CWE).

Finally, collaborative software relates to the notion of collaborative work systems, which are conceived as any form of human organization that emerges any time that collaboration takes place, whether it is formal or informal, intentional or unintentional.

Whereas the groupware or collaborative software pertains to the technological elements of computer-supported cooperative work, collaborative work systems become a useful analytical tool to understand the behavioral and organizational variables that are associated to the broader concept of CSCW.

​Origins:
See also: MUD

Douglas Engelbart first envisioned collaborative computing in 1951 and documented his vision in 1962, with working prototypes in full operational use by his research team by the mid-1960s, and held the first public demonstration of his work in 1968 in what is now referred to as "The Mother of All Demos."

The following year, Engelbart's lab was hooked into the ARPANET, the first computer network, enabling them to extend services to a broader userbase. See also Intelligence Amplification Section 4: Douglas Engelbart, ARPANET Section on ARPANET Deployed, and the Doug Engelbart Archive Collection.

Online collaborative gaming software began between early networked computer users. In 1975, Will Crowther created Colossal Cave Adventure on a DEC PDP-10 computer. As internet connections grew, so did the numbers of users and multi-user games. In 1978 Roy Trubshaw, a student at University of Essex in the United Kingdom, created the game MUD (Multi-User Dungeon).

The US Government began using truly collaborative applications in the early 1990s. One of the first robust applications was the Navy's Common Operational Modeling, Planning and Simulation Strategy (COMPASS). The COMPASS system allowed up to 6 users to create point-to-point connections with one another; the collaborative session only remained while at least one user stayed active, and would have to be recreated if all six logged out.

MITRE improved on that model by hosting the collaborative session on a server that each user logged into. Called the Collaborative Virtual Workstation (CVW), this allowed the session to be set up in a virtual file cabinet and virtual rooms, and left as a persistent session that could be joined later.

In 1996, Pavel Curtis, who had built MUDs at PARC, created PlaceWare, a server that simulated a one-to-many auditorium, with side chat between "seat-mates", and the ability to invite a limited number of audience members to speak.

In 1997, engineers at GTE used the PlaceWare engine in a commercial version of MITRE's CVW, calling it InfoWorkSpace (IWS). In 1998, IWS was chosen as the military standard for the standardized Air Operations Center. The IWS product was sold to General Dynamics and then later to Ezenia.

Groupware:

Collaborative software was originally designated as groupware and this term can be traced as far back as the late 1980s, when Richman and Slovak (1987) wrote: "Like an electronic sinew that binds teams together, the new groupware aims to place the computer squarely in the middle of communications among managers, technicians, and anyone else who interacts in groups, revolutionizing the way they work."

Even further back, in 1978 Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz coined the term groupware; their initial 1978 definition of groupware was, "intentional group processes plus software to support them." Later in their article they went on to explain groupware as "computer-mediated culture... an embodiment of social organization in hyperspace." Groupware integrates co-evolving human and tool systems, yet is simply a single system.

In the early 1990s the first commercial groupware products were delivered, and big companies such as Boeing and IBM started using electronic meeting systems for key internal projects. Lotus Notes appeared as a major example of that product category, allowing remote group collaboration when the internet was still in its infancy.

Kirkpatrick and Losee (1992) wrote then: "If GROUPWARE really makes a difference in productivity long term, the very definition of an office may change. You will be able to work efficiently as a member of a group wherever you have your computer. As computers become smaller and more powerful, that will mean anywhere." In 1999, Achacoso created and introduced the first wireless groupware.

Design and implementation issues:

The complexity of groupware development is still an issue. One reason for this is the socio-technical dimension of groupware. Groupware designers do not only have to address technical issues (as in traditional software development) but also consider the organizational aspects and the social group processes that should be supported with the groupware application.

Some examples for issues in groupware development are:
  • Persistence is needed in some sessions. Chat and voice communications are routinely non-persistent and evaporate at the end of the session. Virtual room and online file cabinets can persist for years. The designer of the collaborative space needs to consider the information duration needs and implement accordingly.
  • Authentication has always been a problem with groupware. When connections are made point-to-point, or when log-in registration is enforced, it's clear who is engaged in the session. However, audio and unmoderated sessions carry the risk of unannounced 'lurkers' who observe but do not announce themselves or contribute.
  • Until recently, bandwidth issues at fixed location limited full use of the tools. These are exacerbated with mobile devices.
  • Multiple input and output streams bring concurrency issues into the groupware applications.
  • Motivational issues are important, especially in settings where no pre-defined group process was in place.
  • Closely related to the motivation aspect is the question of reciprocity. Ellis and others have shown that the distribution of efforts and benefits has to be carefully balanced in order to ensure that all required group members really participate.
  • Real-time communication via groupware can lead to a lot of noise, over-communication and information overload.

One approach for addressing these issues is the use of design patterns for groupware design. The patterns identify recurring groupware design issues and discuss design choices in a way that all stakeholders can participate in the groupware development process.

Groupware and levels of collaboration:

Groupware can be divided into three categories depending on the level of collaboration:
  1. Communication can be thought of as unstructured interchange of information. A phone call or an IM Chat discussion are examples of this.
  2. Conferencing (or collaboration level, as it is called in the academic papers that discuss these levels) refers to interactive work toward a shared goal. Brainstorming or voting are examples of this.
  3. Co-ordination refers to complex interdependent work toward a shared goal. A good metaphor for understanding this is to think about a sports team; everyone has to contribute the right play at the right time as well as adjust their play to the unfolding situation - but everyone is doing something different - in order for the team to win. That is complex interdependent work toward a shared goal: collaborative management.

Collaborative management (coordination) tools:

Collaborative management tools facilitate and manage group activities. Examples include:
  • Electronic calendars (also called time management software) — schedule events and automatically notify and remind group members
  • Project management systems — schedule, track, and chart the steps in a project as it is being completed
  • Online proofing — share, review, approve, and reject web proofs, artwork, photos, or videos between designers, customers, and clients
  • Workflow systems — collaborative management of tasks and documents within a knowledge-based business process
  • Knowledge management systems — collect, organize, manage, and share various forms of information
  • Enterprise bookmarking — collaborative bookmarking engine to tag, organize, share, and search enterprise data
  • Prediction markets — let a group of people predict together the outcome of future events
  • Extranet systems (sometimes also known as 'project extranets') — collect, organize, manage and share information associated with the delivery of a project (e.g.: the construction of a building)
  • Intranet systems — quickly share company information to members within a company via Internet (e.g.: marketing and product info)
  • Social software systems — organize social relations of groups
  • Online spreadsheets — collaborate and share structured data and information
  • Client portals — interact and share with your clients in a private online environment

Collaborative software and human interaction:

The design intent of collaborative software (groupware) is to transform the way documents and rich media are shared in order to enable more effective team collaboration.

Collaboration, with respect to information technology, seems to have several definitions. Some are defensible but others are so broad they lose any meaningful application.

Understanding the differences in human interactions is necessary to ensure the appropriate technologies are employed to meet interaction needs.

There are three primary ways in which humans interact: conversations, transactions, and collaborations.

Conversational interaction is an exchange of information between two or more participants where the primary purpose of the interaction is discovery or relationship building. There is no central entity around which the interaction revolves but is a free exchange of information with no defined constraints, generally focused on personal experiences. Communication technology such as telephones, instant messaging, and e-mail are generally sufficient for conversational interactions.

Transactional interaction involves the exchange of transaction entities where a major function of the transaction entity is to alter the relationship between participants.

In collaborative interactions the main function of the participants' relationship is to alter a collaboration entity (i.e., the converse of transactional). When teams collaborate on projects it is called Collaborative project management.

​See also: Closely related terms: Groupware type of applications: Other related type of applications: Other related terms: Lists of collaborative software:







Social SoftwarePictured: Leveraging the 4 C’s of Social Software to Drive Talent Management Adoption
Social software, also known as social apps, include communication and interactive tools often based on the Internet.

Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well.

Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behavior, the organisation and molding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals.

Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner.

The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote cooperation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks to learn more about Social Software:
​







Cloud Collaboration including a List of Collaboration SoftwarePictured below: Moving to cloud collaboration improves productivity in the workplace*
* -- Moving to cloud collaboration improves productivity in the workplace
Content provided by PQC Tech Sep 22, 2017

Collaboration in business used to be about face-to-face communication, involving brainstorming, notepads, extensive meetings, and a centralized office environment. Today, it’s about creating similar engagement and teamwork, but without the limitation of a single location or physical closeness. This step forward is possible and popular thanks to cloud collaboration tools.

Cloud-collaboration tools solve operational issues that hamper efficiency. Until now, organizations implemented on premise tools for communication, collaboration and storage purposes.

The legacy solutions came with considerable limitations. Employees could not collaborate faster and more conveniently or access files remotely. As a result, the workforce was bogged down by the need to spend lengthy periods traveling or trying to collaborate with colleagues.

High costs associated with legacy IT systems added to the frustration.

Email was previously the most popular way for businesses to share documents among employees. The downsides of this method included restrictions on file sizes and the multiple people couldn’t work on something at the same time. Additionally, it’s easy to lose the latest version of a file when edits are constantly being sent back and forth. Ultimately, this method is unproductive.

Cloud collaboration tools, on the other hand, increase employee efficiency and productivity. It empowers employees to more effectively and freely interact with each other, enhancing team communication. These applications also improve teamwork and innovation, as ideas are exchanged more easily.

Cloud collaboration’s power lies in allowing people to work together on documents, or other data types, simultaneously. The advantage of cloud collaboration is that it allows people to share and edit projects at the same time across many different locations. Many cloud collaboration applications also include communication tools, and accessibility tools to limit who can view and edit the document, and the ability to see who else is working on the project.

Cloud collaboration tools also maintain one of the most popular benefits of cloud computing – anywhere, anytime access. These tools promote on-the-go productivity and remove the geographical barrier that used to accompany collaboration in business.

Data and applications are available to employees no matter where they are in the world.

Workers can take their work anywhere via smart phones and tablets — roaming through a retail store to check customers out, visiting customers in their homes or offices, working in the field or at a plant, etc.

When it comes to the IT team, there are sometimes worries about implementing new technology. However, cloud collaboration software actually requires less maintenance than in-house options, allowing an IT team to focus their attention on more lucrative business endeavors.

And since the applications are hosted externally in a provider’s data center, businesses will most likely experience higher availability and better support. A business can also quit worrying about file loss, as these documents and projects will be securely backed up and protected in the cloud environment

We’re living in a mobile environment, so it’s important to have mobile business solutions. Cloud collaboration tools provide this mobility, maximizing employees’ time, no matter where they are.

It’s easy and productive to collaborate with co-workers at any time, in any location. For small and mid-size businesses, the benefits of cloud collaboration are endless. Cloud collaboration saves businesses time and money by boosting productivity, improving communication, and promoting innovation.
___________________________________________________________________________

Cloud Collaboration:

​Cloud collaboration is a way of sharing and co-authoring computer files through the use of cloud computing, whereby documents are uploaded to a central "cloud" for storage, where they can then be accessed by others.

Cloud collaboration technologies allow users to upload, comment and collaborate on documents and even amend the document itself, evolving the document. Businesses in the last few years have increasingly been switching to use of cloud collaboration.

​Overview:

Cloud computing is a marketing term for technologies that provide software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. A parallel to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid, where end-users consume power without needing to understand the component devices or infrastructure required to utilize the technology.

Collaboration refers to the ability of workers to work together simultaneously on a particular task. Document collaboration can be completed face to face. However, collaboration has become more complex, with the need to work with people all over the world in real time on a variety of different types of documents, using different devices.

A 2003 report mapped out six reasons why workers are reluctant to collaborate more. These are:
  1. People resist sharing their knowledge.
  2. Safety issues
  3. Users are most comfortable using e-mail as their primary electronic collaboration tool.
  4. People do not have incentive to change their behavior.
  5. Teams that want to or are selected to use the software do not have strong team leaders who push for more collaboration.
  6. Senior management is not actively involved in or does not support the team collaboration initiative.

As a result, many providers created cloud collaboration tools. These include the integration of email alerts into collaboration software and the ability to see who is viewing the document at any time. All the tools a team could need are put into one piece of software so workers no longer have to rely on email.

Origins:

Before cloud file sharing and collaboration software, most collaboration was limited to more primitive and less effective methods such as email and FTP among others. These did not work particularly well.

Very early moves into cloud computing were made by Amazon Web Services who, in 2006, began offering IT infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services. Cloud computing only began to come to prominence in 2007 when Google decided to move parts of its email service to a public cloud.

It was not long before IBM and Microsoft followed suit with LotusLive and Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) respectively. With an increase in cloud computing services, cloud collaboration was able to evolve. Since 2007, many firms entered the industry offering many features.

Many analysts explain the rise of cloud collaboration by pointing to the increasing use by workers of non-authorized websites and online tools to do their jobs. This includes the use of instant messaging and social networks.

In a survey taken in early 2011, 22% of workers admitted to having used one or more of these external non-authorized websites. Cloud collaboration packages provide the ability to collaborate on documents together in real time, making the use of non-authorized instant messaging redundant. IT managers can now properly regulate internet based collaboration with a system tailor-made for the office.

It has also been noted that cloud collaboration has become more and more necessary for IT departments as work forces have become more mobile and now need access to important documents wherever they are, whether this is through an internet browser, or through newer technologies such as smartphones and tablet devices.

The tech industry saw several large paradigm changes:
  • The mainframe computing era enabled business growth to be untethered from the number of employees needed to process transactions manually.
  • The personal computing era empowered business users to run their businesses based on individual data and applications on their PCs.
  • A decade of network computing established an unprecedented level of transparency of information across multiple groups inside a company and an amazing rate of data exchange between enterprises.

Each of these revolutions brought with it new economies of scale. The cost-per-transaction, the cost of automating office and desktop processes, and finally the cost of network bandwidth fell quickly and enabled business users to apply ICT solutions more broadly to create business value.

Most analysts (Forrester, Gartner, etc.) believe that cloud computing will help unleash the next wave of tech-enabled business innovation.

During the mainframe era, client/server was initially viewed as a "toy" technology, not viable as a mainframe replacement. Yet, over time the client/server technology found its way into the enterprise.

Similarly, when virtualization technology was first proposed, application compatibility concerns and potential vendor lock-in were cited as barriers to adoption. Yet underlying economics of 20 to 30 percent savings compelled CIOs to overcome these concerns, and adoption quickly accelerated.

Recent developments:

Early cloud collaboration tools were quite basic with limited features. Newer packages are much more document-centric in their approach to collaboration. More sophisticated tools allow users to "tag" specific areas of a document for comments which are delivered real time to those viewing the document. In some cases, the collaboration software can even be integrated into Microsoft Office, or allow users to set up video conferences.

Furthermore, the trend now is for firms to employ a single software tool to solve all their collaboration needs, rather than having to rely on multiple different techniques. Single cloud collaboration providers are now replacing a complicated tangle of instant messengers, email and FTP.

Cloud collaboration today is promoted as a tool for collaboration internally between different departments within a firm, but also externally as a means for sharing documents with end-clients as receiving feedback. This makes cloud computing a very versatile tool for firms with many different applications in a business environment.

The best cloud collaboration tools:
  • Use real-time commenting and messaging features to enhance speed of project delivery
  • Leverage presence indicators to identify when others are active on documents owned by another person
  • Allow users to set permissions and manage other users' activity profiles
  • Allow users to set personal activity feeds and email alert profiles to keep abreast of latest activities per file or user
  • Allow users to collaborate and share files with users outside the company firewall
  • Comply with company security and compliance framework
  • Ensure full auditing of files and documents shared within and outside the organization
  • Reduce workarounds for sharing and collaboration on large files

A 2011 report by Gartner outlines a five-stage model on the maturity of firms when it comes to the uptake of cloud collaboration tools. A firm in the first stage is said to be "reactive", with only email as a collaboration platform and a culture which resists information sharing.

A firm in the fifth stage is called "pervasive", and has universal access to a rich collaboration toolset and a strong collaborative culture. The article argues that most firms are in the second stage, but as cloud collaboration becomes more important, most analysts expect to see the majority of firms moving up in the model.

See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

List of collaborative software

​This list is divided into proprietary or free software, and open source software, with several comparison tables of different product and vendor characteristics. It also includes a section of project collaboration software, which is a standard feature in collaboration platforms.
​
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for the List of Collaborative Software:







Electronic meeting systemPictured: Electronic Meeting System in Collaborative Management
An electronic meeting system (EMS) is a type of computer software that facilitates creative problem solving and decision-making of groups within or across organizations. The term was coined by Alan R. Dennis et al. in 1988.

The term is synonymous with group support systems (GSS) and essentially synonymous with group decision support systems (GDSS). Electronic meeting systems form a class of applications for computer supported cooperative work.

Mainly through (optional) anonymization and parallelization of input, electronic meeting systems overcome many deleterious and inhibitive features of group work. Similar to a web conference, a host invites the participants to an electronic meeting via email.

After logging into the session, meeting attendees participate primarily through their keyboards, typing responses to questions and prompts from the meeting host.

Electronic meeting systems need to be distinguished on the one hand from classic groupware, on the other from web conferencing systems. In reality, there is some overlap between minor features of products of the named categories.

The main difference from groupware is the intensity of collaboration. According to Lubich's classification, groupware supports collaboration within groups where the individual contributions remain identifiable.

In contrast, EMS enable the group to cooperatively produce a result for which the group is responsible as a whole. In a business process, groupware and electronic meeting systems complement each other: Groupware supports teams when researching and creating documents in the run up to an EMS session or when implementing the results of such a session.

Web conferencing systems and electronic meeting systems complement each other in the online meeting or workshop: EMS extends the web conferencing system by providing interactive tools for producing and documenting group results. On the other hand, web conferencing systems complement EMS with the screen-sharing and voice conferencing functionality required in synchronous online meetings and not present in EMS.

​History:

The beginnings:

Nunamaker et al. cite the CASE project PSL/PSA of the mid sixties as the beginnings of EMS technology.

The first systems recognizable as EMS from today's perspective developed in the early 1980s as university and research projects:
  1. At the University of Arizona, a prototype called Plexsys was developed building on the PSL/PSA project.
  2. At the University of Minnesota a system called SAMM (Software Aided Meeting Management) was created.
  3. At Xerox PARC, Colab was developed.
  4. Researchers at the University of Michigan developed MAC-based EMS-tools.

The efforts differed in their goals: While work at Xerox PARC focused on small cooperating groups of 2 - 6 individuals, work at the University of Arizona focused on groups of 16 - 24.

The late 1980s saw the beginnings of a commercial market for EMS. In 1989, the University of Arizona founded Ventana Corporation to transfer the Plexsys technology from the laboratory to the workplace. In 1992 Xerox PARC spun off Live Works Inc which developed the product LiveBoard based on the project Colab.

The 1990s: Early LAN-based systems:

Group Systems, which was developed by the Ventana Corporation, is generally acknowledged to be the ancestor of modern EMS. Group Systems provided the standard functionality of modern EMS such as brainstorming and categorization, votes and discussions in the context of a chronological agenda. Contributions could be entered in parallel and anonymously. The results of one step of the meeting process e.g., a brainstorming, could be copied to a follow-up tool e.g., a vote.

The product was based on Clients running on Microsoft Windows machines which accessed a server running a Paradox database via a mapped drive on the local network (LAN). The limitation to local ("same place") meetings, the substantial infrastructure requirements and the complexities of controlling the software prevented widespread adoption.

Consequently, Group Systems was developed as a tool for the expert facilitator of computer-aided meetings. These meetings were often conducted in custom computer-equipped conference rooms or by specialized consultancies with dedicated kit.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s further EMS such as the Dutch Inteam or the American Meetingworks sprang up. As LAN-based client-server systems they shared the limitations of such systems. In contrast, facilitate.com adopted HTML suffering the (then) severe functional limitations of that technology for the advantage of working over the Internet.

Web applications:

Since 2005 EMS development has focused on browser-based systems and easy to use GUIs.

Prototypical for this generation of EMS are the product Thinktank which is based on Group Systems, the later MeetingSphere the anonymous electronic brainstorming focused Monsoon and the pure HTML yet another Meeting.

All of these products deliver the functionality of an EMS over the Internet, however, they differ as to their focus and functional depth:
  • MeetingSphere and Spilter are very complete, functional, user-friendly and professional.
  • ThinkTank provides and extends rich functionality with an eye to professionally facilitated workshops. yaM, and other pure HTML options position their products as integrated tool kits for everyday online meetings and workshops as well as the asynchronous work of virtual teams.

A special role is played among EMS by the product nextModerator which provides interactive tools to very large groups assembled in one location for a special event.

On the territory of post Soviet countries and Western Europe an important part in popularization and development of EMSs in recent years played locally-developed systems like SW 6000, PATENTEM, GlavCom etc.

Standard functionality:

An electronic meeting system is a suite of configurable collaborative software tools that can be used to create predictable, repeatable patterns of collaboration among people working toward a goal. With an electronic meeting system, each user typically has his or her own computer, and each user can contribute to the same shared object (session) at the same time.

Thus, nobody needs to wait for a turn to speak and people don't forget what they want to say while they are waiting for the floor. When a group or a group's host deem it appropriate, people can contribute anonymously to most electronic meeting systems tools: this allows the group to focus on the content of ideas, rather than their sources.

Most EMS provide the standard functionalities described below but differ markedly in the handling and functional depth of these tools. Further, they differ by the set of additional tools they provide and by the way they are administered or integrated into a corporate IT environment. They also differ in the degree of interoperability with web conferencing systems for screen sharing and voice conferencing.

Brainstorming and categorization:

In an electronic brainstorming, the group creates a shared list of ideas. In contrast to paper-based brainstorming or brain-writing methods, contributions are directly entered by the participants and immediately visible to all, typically in anonymous format.

By overcoming social barriers with anonymity and process limitations with parallelized input, more ideas are generated and shared with less conformity than in a traditional brainstorming or brain-writing session.

The benefits of electronic brainstorming increase with group size.

In many cases, subsequent to a brainstorming session or the collection of contributions, ideas require categorization. For this, in modern EMS, participants drag contributions from the shared list to category folders or buckets.

Discussion:

Discussion tools in EMS resemble a structured chat which may be conducted on separate topics in parallel, often based on a superordinate task or question. Parallelization occurs at multiple levels:
  1. At the level of multiple topics which are presented for discussion at the same time. Participants are free to contribute to some topics while merely scanning others.
  2. Further, parallelization occurs at the level of contributions which the participants can enter independently of each other. Discussions are conducted anonymously or named. In most EMS group identity is also available (e.g., "marketing department").

Compared to an oral discussion, an electronic discussion enables a much more intensive exchange of arguments in shorter time. With anonymity, interpersonal conflict is minimized, peer pressure reduced. In many cases, a parallel electronic discussion enables the exploration of topics which would have been bypassed in traditional settings for lack of time.

Vote:

Sophisticated EMS provide a range of vote methods such as numeric scale, rank order, budget or multiple selection. In more advanced systems, a ballot list can be subjected to multiple votes on multiple criteria with different vote methods for utility or impact analysis.

Results are available in real time, typically both as tables and charts.

Further features include integration with social media as well as a Q&A system.

In contrast to voting methods available in traditional workshops such as raising hands or the placing of sticky notes on a white board, electronic votes are anonymous and provide for a more differentiated assessment of ideas, opinions or facts. Some EMS provide for voting with group identity for extra insight into the structure of consensus or dissent.

Agenda:

Modern EMS organize the process of a meeting into an agenda which structures the activities of a meeting or workshop by topic, chronology and the use of a supporting tool. From the agenda, the host (facilitator) of the meeting invites ("starts") the participants to contribute to the various activities. In some EMS, agendas can be copied from an existing meeting or from meeting templates.

Automatic minutes:

The results of an EMS-based meeting exist as content in a database. The content can be exported to a file, delivered to an externally integrated system of record, or simply printed.

Formatting and available file formats differ substantially between EMS, with commonly available options including HTML, Markdown, and office document formats.

Synchronous and asynchronous meetings:

Modern EMS support both synchronous (participants meet at the same time) and asynchronous (participants contribute at different times) meetings.

Synchronous meetings provide for immediate, spontaneous interaction between participants.

Asynchronous meetings increase participant availability by setting no more than a time frame in which the participants are free to contribute in their own time. Asynchronous meetings are a good option when reflected input is required rather than instant spontaneous interaction.

Technically, synchronous and asynchronous meetings differ by the time for which tools are available to the participants. In a typical synchronous meeting, all participants are active in one shared activity. For this, synchronous meetings usually require support by a voice conference for oral interaction within the group and screen sharing by web conference for presenting non-EMS content.

In contrast, asynchronous sessions often involve multiple activities for contribution. The actual meeting and direct interaction between two or more participants in a particular activity are coincidental. Asynchronous sessions are often employed for gathering feedback or input.

Asynchronous sessions can be conducted independently of synchronous meetings or in the run-up to such meetings or in the aftermath, e.g. to discuss questions unresolved in the meeting.

EMS differ substantially in the way and the extent to which they support asynchronous meetings. Differences include the duration of asynchronous meetings (24 hours/days/weeks), support for planning and publication of asynchronous meetings (agenda, invitations) and the licensing model (flat-rate, pay-per-use, concurrent meetings, concurrent users, etc.).

Advantages:

Electronic meeting systems have been designed to enhance group effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Face-to-face groups can suffer from a number of process losses including:
  • domination of the conversation by one or more members
  • individuals withholding comments for fear of criticism or negative evaluation
  • members failing to participate because they perceive that their input is not required
  • pressure to conform with senior members of the group

Consequently, the advantages of EMS supported meetings vs traditional face-to-face meetings and workshops are:
  • increased openness and less personal prejudice through anonymity
  • any-place (online) capability which avoids travel time and cost
  • increased participant availability (any place, any time).
  • increased interactivity and participation by parallelization
  • more sophisticated analysis by voting and analysis in real time
  • less effort in preparation by using meeting templates
  • repeatable meeting and workshop process through meeting templates
  • automatic, comprehensive, neutral documentation

Disadvantages:

The majority of drawbacks of EMS versus traditional conferences or workshops have been overcome by technological progress or by adaptation of EMS to particular target groups and their dominant use cases:
  • the formerly high infrastructure requirements have been reduced to Internet access and a web browser
  • the formerly high demands on facilitators have been greatly reduced in systems that are designed to support everyday use by the non-expert user
  • the traditional cultural barriers to the use of technology in meetings have been overcome through the general familiarization of users with telephone and web conferences.

​The remaining drawbacks mostly result from the physical distribution of the participants when meeting online. Video conferences can only make up in part for not meeting in person.








Hybrid EventPictured below: Hybrid Events: 10 Tips for Effective Audiovisual Presentation*
* -- Hybrid Events: 10 Tips for Effective Audiovisual Presentation

​MITRA SORRELLS MAY 9, 2012 (BizBash)

Technology has removed the four walls that traditionally housed events in one space, at one time. Now hybrid is hot. The term has come to refer to an event that offers both an in-person component and at least some of its content live via the Internet to groups of attendees participating from organized satellite locations or to individuals at home or work.

The growth of hybrid events has been driven by society’s increasing adoption of technology and also by economic factors: greater competition in the technology industry is driving costs down, coupled with reductions in corporate travel budgets.

Whether it’s a big, international conference, such as SAP’s Sapphire Now that creates elaborate broadcast studios on its show floor, or a small, internal corporate meeting that may only use one camera, the purpose of a hybrid event remains the same: to engage participants—both in-person and those attending virtually—in a meaningful experience while staying on budget.

Here are 10 production tips to keep in mind to create a successful hybrid event.

1. Quality audio is paramount. Weak sound or static will be even more annoying to remote attendees than to those in the room. “That cuts down on your engagement,” says Samuel J. Smith, C.E.O. of Interactive Meeting Technology, a Minnesota company that specializes in the design, production, and execution of interactive technology for events.

Also consider whether the remote audience needs to be able to hear people other than the main presenter. “If a person asking a question doesn’t have a microphone, the virtual audience can’t hear it. That will be a big downside. They will hear some dead air and then hear the presenter answer and have no idea what he is referring to,” says Dennis Shiao, director of product marketing for INXPO, a Chicago-based company that provides online destinations for events, recruiting, training and communications.

2. Purchase enough bandwidth. Internet bandwidth determines how much data can be transmitted and at what speed; for the virtual audience it determines how your event looks and feels. Without enough bandwidth, the virtual audience will see low-quality video—the signal may drop out or require continual buffering—which can be frustrating for virtual attendees.

In most cases, planners purchase bandwidth from the venue, which usually has an exclusive arrangement with a bandwidth provider. While this is not a place to skimp, look for opportunities to negotiate the cost in the same way you negotiate the cost of space. Also keep in mind that bandwidth requirements are directly related to how many sessions are being streamed at the same time: three sessions going out at once require three times as much bandwidth.

Once you are on-site, verify that you are getting what you are paying for by using one of the many Web sites that offer a free, instant measurement of Internet upload and download speeds, such as InternetFrog and Bandwidth Place.

3. Determine the number and type of cameras needed. Start by determining which sessions will be streamed. For a conference with sessions in multiple rooms, planners can cut down on the number of cameras and operators needed by scheduling the sessions to be streamed at different times so the same room can be used over and over.

A hybrid event needs at least one fixed camera, but (if the budget allows) multiple cameras per session are preferable because different angles and shots can help keep the virtual audience engaged. As for the type of cameras, Smith says even if your event will not be streamed in high-definition, it may be worth using high-definition cameras so videos produced from the event will be top-quality.

If that is not a concern, the choice of camera can be one way to save money. “In a pinch, I used our family’s old digital video tape camcorder and it was just fine,” says Midori Connolly, C.E.O. and chief AVGirl of California-based Pulse Staging and Events, an audiovisual staging company.

4. Vendors need to communicate with one another. A hybrid event can involve multiple service providers, such as the company running the audio and video in the room, the information technology team from the venue, a webcasting provider, and possibly a virtual platform provider.

“Anybody who is touching the experience needs to be talking to one another,” says John Pollard, event services program director at Sonic Foundry, a Wisconsin company that created Mediasite, a platform for hybrid events, webcasting and lecture capture. “These people need to know who the contact is for each other, then they can ask the right questions and take care of a lot of the issues [for the planner].”

5. Stream for all devices. Mobile has become increasingly important, so you’ll need to make sure your vendor’s streaming capabilities work on iOS and Android mobile devices. “You send one stream, which is a Flash stream, for desktop browsers and Android devices, but you have a second stream, which is iOS, for iPhone and iPad,” says Gregg Greenberg, director of global online marketing strategy for SAP, a German business management software company that hosts the annual Sapphire Now conference, a hybrid event with multiple satellite locations worldwide. An event’s webcasting company can create appropriate solutions to handle different types of streams.

6. Test the stream. According to Greenberg, SAP runs two tests for Sapphire Now and its other hybrid events: one the day before (optimally at the same time of day that the event will take place) and a second one about 90 minutes before the first live shot. “The live stream will be on but we will play a recorded video,” he says. “Then, about 10 to 15 minutes before the live shot, we switch to a room shot. That gives us time to fix things.” Greenberg also recommends running at least two encoders—the equipment that compresses audio and video so it can transmit over the Internet—in case one fails.

7. Plan to engage the virtual audience. If speakers will use slides or videos in presentations, how will they be shared with the remote audience? Do they need to be prerecorded or uploaded prior to the live presentation? In an optimal situation, the audio and video are linked two ways. That is, attendees at the physical event can see and hear all of the remote audiences and vice versa.

When that is not possible, due to budget or production constraints, the priority should be that all remote attendees can see and hear the physical event, and that they can submit comments and questions, usually via text or Twitter. Experts also recommend planners develop content specifically for the remote audience, which can be used to fill time when the physical event is on break and to develop camaraderie among the virtual attendees. A virtual M.C. can also help by serving as a host and guide for people participating online or from pods.

8. Make sure speakers talk to the virtual audience. Not only should all speakers be aware of the virtual audience, but they should greet them at the start of the event and several times thereafter. “One fun thing to do is to tape a smiley face to the camera to remind the speaker to address the remote audience [since] a lot of presenters are trained to not look into the camera,” Connolly says.

And when a question comes in from a remote attendee, the presenter should acknowledge who and where it is from. “People love to hear their name,” Smith says. “It makes them feel good, and especially if they are home alone and they don’t have people to connect with in the hallway.”

9. You don’t have to do it all. “You will never be able to fully capture and provide the face-to-face experience to a Web audience,” Shiao says. “It’s a matter of figuring out how to properly narrow the scope.” Planners should expect that most people participating in a hybrid event prefer to allocate a few hours, not an entire day, to the experience. “Face-to-face you can keep people all day,” says Corbin Ball, a Washington-based consultant who helps clients determine how to use technology effectively for events. “With virtual or hybrid events you can’t expect people to be sitting at a monitor all day long as they would be sitting in a meeting room. So you need to provide blocks of time with white space around it.”

10. Focus on the meeting’s objectives. “The most important thing to keep in mind is figuring out what technologies make the most sense to achieve the event’s particular goals,” says Mary Boone, a Connecticut-based consultant who works with clients on organizational communication and meeting design. “A lot of times that gets lost in the excitement of experimenting with new technology.” She recalls a meeting of 200 senior association executives where planners created an app intended to be used by attendees to submit questions to the presenters, only to find that most preferred to ask questions aloud.

“Whatever technology or audiovisual [equipment] you are using, all of it should be in service of making the meeting more effective, and not just for the wow factor,” Boone says.

[End of Article]
___________________________________________________________________________

​A hybrid event is a tradeshow, conference, unconference, seminar, workshop or other meeting that combines a "live" in-person event with a "virtual" online component.

With the growing popularity and cost-effectiveness of virtual events, hybrid events have become a popular way of increasing participation in traditional events at a relatively low cost.

They also enable participation by people who might be unable to attend physically due to travel or time zone constraints or through a wish to reduce the carbon footprint of the event.

The open, participatory nature of unconferences (e.g., Barcamp) and their focus on sharing content, makes them hybrid events too.

Generally, the virtual component involves an online representation of the live event. For example, online participants might have access to:
Provision of internet access, usually via free Wi-Fi, is normal at hybrid events. As well as allowing a physical event to reach a wider audience, these online tools also provide a means for physical attendees to interact with each other, with the event organisers and with online participants, and for online participants to interact with each other.

Some events have featured 'TwitterWalls' (created using applications such as Twitterfall) where Twitter comments about the event are shared with physical attendees.

Event content can also be recorded and made available online to foster further discussions after the event has ended, build out a knowledge portal for event participants, and help market the next year's event by sharing highlights from the current year.

Examples of hybrid events:
  • A Ycombinator StartUpSchool Hybrid event online audience watches the live webcast live, in person audience at the Flint Center in San Jose. Content is now also available in an archive On-Demand. Mark Zuckerberg speaking. Live Twitter Feed and synchronized PowerPoint Slides.
  • A LiveEventReport.com gives an editorial coverage of the event by livestreaming in to the internet. Together with skype, YouTube Live, tweets, chats they create a wider audience.
  • At Barcamp events, all attendees are encouraged to share information and experiences of the event via public web channels including blogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking, Twitter, wikis, and IRC. This is a conscious change from the "off-the-record by default" and "no recordings" rules at conventional conferences.
  • Run by an online community advocating use of social media or Web 2.0 to improve the built environment, Be2camp "unconference" events are also a practical demonstration of how the tools can be used to combine face-to-face and online participation.
  • BASF has complemented a global employee summit with a virtual component. The physical event brought together IT professionals from all over the world to the BASF headquarters. Shortly after the event keynotes, workshop results, street interviews, and other materials were available for virtual participants. This virtual event lasted several months, and especially people whose tough time schedule did not allow them to participate in person were able to participate virtually.
  • Cisco Live on-site conferences run concurrently with a virtual component, called Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual. Cisco Live was awarded Best Hybrid Live+Virtual Program at the 2010 Ex Awards. In addition, it was awarded the 2010 Grand Ex Award.
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held the government's first hybrid event on August 21–24, 2011, with the introduction of an immersive virtual version of the Public Health Informatics conference, (an in-person event held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta hotel). Remotely located state and local partners and public health IT colleagues were able to experience all of the plenary sessions and many other concurrent activities simultaneously with the in-person event. The event was co-sponsored by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) for employees, state and local groups and partners to experience activities remotely during the traditional conference - without everyone having to spend money on travel and lodging or negatively affecting the environment. The hybrid event was well received by attendees, as there were 1,865 online registrations, (after only 1 week of advertising) – with the traditional conference averaging around 1500. The hybrid event was named one of BizBash.com's 15 Most Innovative Meetings of 2012. Other Press: CDC Looks To Virtual Conferences Over Costlier Onsite Events; A Federal Case.
  • At the ACTE conference (Association of Corporate Travel Executives) in Rome, the first virtual panel was introduced on Monday October 15, with 4 panelists live at the Waldorf Astoria and 1 panelist, subject matter expert from British Telecom, attending virtually from Brussels. The session subject titled "Finding the Balance Between Physical and Virtual Travel" and the setup was organized by GVN, The Virtual Airline (Global Videoconferencing Network)
  • Visual Collab 2018  at the RSA House in London, currently Digital Collab.








Facebook MessengerPictured below: Facebook rolls out new business tools for Messenger, kills the ‘Discover’ tab*
* -- by Sarah Perez @sarahintampa / 9:41 am CDT • August 29, 2019 (TechCrunch)
 ​
"​Facebook  today is formally rolling out a new suite of tools for its 40 million active businesses on Messenger,  including appointment booking, lead generation and others announced earlier this year at its F8 developer conference.

As a part of these changes, Facebook will also begin to phase out the Discover tab in Messenger — a feature that became home to both games and businesses following last fall’s redesign.

Today, Facebook says the Discover tab will be pulled from the Messenger app over the next several months. Instead, it will invest in making sure Facebook users are directed to interact with businesses via Messenger in other ways.

“We want to make it more seamless for people to reach out to businesses on Messenger in places where they’re already looking to connect,” explains Facebook, of its decision to kill off the Discover feature. “We will put more investment into tools to connect people and businesses — including updates to m.me links, web plugins, various entry points across our family of apps, as well as ad products — that lead to Messenger,” the company says.

In terms of its new business tools, the lead-generation product will launch as a Messenger template within Facebook Ads Manager this week. The template lets businesses create automated experiences to help qualify their leads in Messenger, then continue conversations in the app or integrate with existing CRM tools to track the leads further.

The feature has been in beta following F8, but will now be publicly available.

Appointment booking was announced at F8, too, but is only now launching into beta with select developers and businesses. This feature allows businesses to accept appointment requests and make bookings in real-time through Messenger. It also integrates with existing calendar-booking software, and can help Messenger conversations be turned into in-store traffic, as well as online and phone appointments, the company says.

The feature will be launched globally to all developers later in the year.
Another update mentioned today involves plans to launch improved event reporting in Messenger later this year, which will allow businesses to report and track their Messenger conversations.

Plus, Facebook says it’s updating the Standard Messaging window for businesses to 24 hours (which is how long they have to respond to inquiries from customers). This brings it in line with WhatsApp’s window.

​After 24 hours, businesses can still use sponsored messages to re-engage customers and message tags (e.g. updates on purchases, event reminders, changes to their account, and now in closed beta, “human agent,” which will let agents respond to issues that need resolution after the standard messaging window closes).

Messenger’s Subscription Messaging beta program, meanwhile, is changing today as well.
It’s now going to be limited to “vetted news organizations.” This came about because some businesses were using the feature in violation of Facebook’s guidelines, the company admitted.

The feature is designed to send regular news updates to subscribers. The timing of this change is somewhat interesting, as Facebook is preparing to relaunch efforts to feature top news stories on its social network, this time vetted by journalists and featuring content Facebook pays for.

There’s room for some interoperability here between the news product and subscriptions/updates, but it’s not clear if or how that will come to pass.

Of course, the biggest Messenger consumer news from F8 — a desktop app for Mac and PC — hasn’t yet come to pass, but is expected sometime this year.

[End of Article]
___________________________________________________________________________

Facebook Messenger (commonly known as Messenger) is an American messaging app and platform developed by Facebook, Inc. 

Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, and subsequently released standalone iOS and Android apps in August 2011 and standalone Facebook Portal hardware for Messenger-based calling in Q4 2018.

Later on, Facebook has launched a dedicated website interface (Messenger.com), and separated the messaging functionality from the main Facebook app, allowing users to use the web interface or download one of the standalone apps. In April 2020, Facebook officially released Messenger for Desktop, which is supported on Windows 10 and macOS and distributed on Microsoft Store and App Store respectively.

Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio, and files, as well as react to other users' messages and interact with bots. The service also supports voice and video calling. The standalone apps support using multiple accounts, conversations with optional end-to-end encryption, and playing games.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Facebook Messenger:






​
FaceTime Pictured: FaceTime User Guide for macOS Catalina
FaceTime is a proprietary videotelephony product developed by Apple Inc. FaceTime is available on supported iOS mobile devices and Macintosh computers that run Mac OS X 10.6.6 and later.

FaceTime supports any iOS device with a forward-facing camera and any Macintosh computer equipped with a FaceTime Camera.

FaceTime Audio, an audio-only version, is available on any iOS device that supports iOS 7 or newer, and any Macintosh with a forward-facing camera running Mac OS X 10.9.2 and later. FaceTime is included for free in iOS and in macOS from Mac OS X Lion (10.7) onwards.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about  FaceTime for the Mac:







Google HangoutsPictured below: Should My Company Use Google Hangouts Video for Conferencing?
Google Hangouts is an American communication software product developed by Google.

Originally a feature of Google+, Hangouts became a stand-alone product in 2013, when Google also began integrating features from Google+ Messenger and Google Talk into Hangouts.

In 2017, Google began developing Hangouts into a product aimed at enterprise communication. Hangouts is now part of the G Suite line of products and consists of two primary products: Google Meet and Google Chat.

Google has also begun integrating features of Google Voice, its IP telephony product, into Hangouts, stating that Hangouts is designed to be "the future" of Voice. Google will shut down the classic G Suite version of Hangouts in June 2020 (being replaced by Meet and Chat), but will continue to support the consumer version of classic Hangouts.

​Features:

Hangouts allows conversations between two or more users. The service can be accessed online through the Gmail or Google+ websites, or through mobile apps available for Android and iOS (which were distributed as a successor to their existing Google Talk apps).

However, because it uses a proprietary protocol instead of the XMPP open standard protocol used by Google Talk, most third-party applications which had access to Google Talk do not have access to Google+ Hangouts.

Chat histories are saved online, allowing them to be synced between devices. A "watermark" of a user's avatar is used as a marker to indicate how far they have read into the conversation.

Photos can be shared during conversations, which are automatically uploaded into a private Google+ album. Users can also now use color emoji symbols in their messages.

As with the previous Google+ Hangouts, users can also perform a group video chat with up to 10 users at a time. In 2016 Google upgraded Hangouts to 25 concurrent users in HD video for Work/Education.

The new Google Hangouts app on iOS integrates a Google Voice number to some extent, but on Android the SMS support in Hangouts doesn't fully integrate with Google Voice for calls or texts. Integration was first expected by 2014, but was deprecated in January 2016. The reason for the delay appears tied to Google switching away from the XMPP protocol it used, as mentioned above.

For Google Chrome, users do not need to install a plugin. However, for Internet Explorer 11, the user must install the "Google Talk Plugin" to be able to use the video features.

In Android 4.4, Hangouts is integrated with text messages sending and receiving functions, which is the default SMS app on the Nexus 5. For other Android phones, users can choose to open the SMS function when they download the new version of Hangouts via Google Play.

SMS conversations are shown in a drawer on the left side. The update also adds GIF support and a new location-sharing button, which allows the user to send their GPS location to their contacts.

Hangouts includes the ability to make free voice calls to other Hangouts users, and charges users (via pre-registered credit) to call landline and mobile phones internationally except for calls to the United States and Canada which are free of charge. 

Currently, Android users must have both the Google Hangouts and Hangouts Dialer apps installed if they wish to call landline or mobile telephone numbers via the public switched telephone network. Users will have to utilize YouTube Live for live-streaming events.

Google Hangouts includes several Easter eggs.

Google Meet:
​
Google Meet is a video communication service developed by Google. It is one of two apps that constitute the new version of Google Hangouts, the other being Google Chat.

Google will begin to retire the classic version of Hangouts in October 2019.

After being invite-only and quietly releasing an iOS app in February 2017, Google formally launched Meet in March 2017. The service was unveiled as a video conferencing app for up to 30 participants, described as an enterprise-friendly version of Hangouts. At launch, it featured a web app, an Android app, and an iOS app.

Features for G Suite users include:
  • Up to 100 members per call for G Suite Basic users, up to 150 for G Suite Business users, and up to 250 for G Suite Enterprise users
  • Ability to join meetings from the web or through the Android or iOS app
  • Ability to call into meetings with a dial-in number
  • Password-protected dial-in numbers for G Suite Enterprise edition users
  • Integration with Google Calendar for one-click meeting calls
  • Screen-sharing to present documents, spreadsheets, or presentations
  • Encrypted calls between all users
  • Real-time, AI-generated closed captioning

While Google Meet introduced the above features to upgrade the original Hangouts application, some standard Hangouts features were deprecated, including viewing attendees and chat simultaneously. The number of video feeds allowed at one time was also reduced to 8 (while up to 4 feeds can be shown in a "tiles" layout), prioritizing those attendees who most recently used their microphone.

Additionally features such as the chat box were changed to overlay the video feeds, rather than resizing the latter to fit.

Google Meet is a standards-based video conferencing application, using proprietary protocols for video, audio and data transcoding. Google have partnered with Pexip to provide interoperability between the Google protocol and standards-based SIP/H.323 protocols to enable communications between Meet and other Video Conferencing equipment and software.

Google Chat:

This article is about instant messaging service launched in 2017. For other uses, see Google Chat.

​Google Chat is an instant messaging service developed by Google. It is one of the two apps that constitute the new version of Google Hangouts, the other being Google Meet.

Reception:

As of May 2013, Google Hangouts faced criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation as they felt that Google was "moving in the wrong direction" by shrinking its support for the open standard protocol XMPP. The new protocol makes it much more difficult for multi-chat clients like Pidgin and Adium to support Google Hangouts. They must reverse engineer the protocol.

Additionally, the tight integration of Google Hangouts and Google+ can lead to the unwilling sharing of personal information with others.

On November 30, 2014, Make Use Of  hailed Google Hangouts as the "best messaging app on Android by far".

As of December 9, 2015, Google Hangouts has a score of 2 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Secure Messaging Scorecard. It has received points for having communications encrypted in transit and for having completed a recent independent security audit.

It is missing points because communications are encrypted with keys that the provider has access to, users can't verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen, the code is not open to independent review, and the security design is not properly documented.

See also:







TikTokPictured: TikTok Clocks 1.5 Billion Downloads on The App Store and Google Play
TikTok (Chinese: 抖音; Dǒuyīn) is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. It is used to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos.

The app was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in markets outside of China. ByteDance first launched Douyin for the China market in September 2016. It became available in the United States after merging with musical.ly on August 2, 2018.

TikTok and Douyin are similar to each other and essentially the same app, however they run on separate servers to comply with Chinese censorship restrictions. The application allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds.

The app is popular in Asia, the United States, and other parts of the world. TikTok is available in China as Douyin; its servers are based in countries where the app is available.

After merging with musical.ly in August, downloads rose and TikTok became the most downloaded app in the US in October 2018, the first Chinese app to achieve this. As of 2018, it was available in over 150 markets and in 75 languages.

In February 2019, TikTok, together with Douyin, hit one billion downloads globally, excluding Android installs in China. In 2019, TikTok was declared the 7th most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019. It was also declared the #1 most downloaded app on the App Store in 2018 and 2019.

​Features:

The TikTok mobile app allows users to create a short video of themselves which often feature music in the background, can be sped up, slowed down or edited with a filter.

To create a music video with the app, users can choose background music from a wide variety of music genres, edit with a filter and record a 15-second video with speed adjustments before uploading it to share with others on TikTok or other social platforms.

They can also film short lip-sync videos to popular songs.

The app's "react" feature allows users to film their reaction to a specific video, over which it is placed in a small window that is movable around the screen. Its "duet" feature allows users to film a video aside another video. The “duet” feature was another trademark of Musical.ly.

The app allows users to set their accounts as "private." Private content remains visible to TikTok, but is blocked from TikTok users who the account holder has not authorized to view their content. Users can choose whether any other user, or only their "friends", may interact with them through the app via comments, messages, or "react" or "duet" videos.

Users also can set specific videos to either “public”, “friends only”, or “private” regardless if the account is private or not.

The “for you” page on TikTok is a feed of videos that are recommended to users based on their activity on the app. Content is generated by TikTok depending on what kind of content a user liked, interacted with, or searched.

Users can only be featured on the “for you” page if they are 16 or over as per TikTok policy. Users under 16 will not show up under the “for you” page, the sounds page, or under any hashtags.

Users can also add videos, hashtags, filters, and sounds to their “saved” section. This section is visible only to the user on their profile allowing them to refer back to any video, hashtag, filter, or sound they've previously saved.

Artificial intelligence:

TikTok employs artificial intelligence to analyze users' interests and preferences through their interactions with the content, and display a personalized content feed for each user.

User characteristics and behavior

Users:
See also: List of most-followed TikTok accounts

In the three years after it launched on September 2016, TikTok acquired 500 million active users.

Demographics:

In the United States, 52% of TikTok users are iPhone users. While TikTok has a neutral gender-bias format, 44% of TikTok users are female while 56% are male. TikTok's geographical use has shown that 43% of new users are from India. TikTok has proven to attract the younger generation, as 41% of its users are between the ages of 16 and 24. Among these TikTok users, 90% say they use the app on a daily basis.

User engagement:

TikTok's user engagement rate is 29%. As of July 2018, TikTok users spend an average of 52 minutes a day on the app. ByteDance has stated that U.S. users open the app eight times a day and individual sessions on the app are the longest at 4.9 minutes.

Trends:

There are a variety of trends within TikTok, including memes, lip-synced songs, and comedy videos. Duets, a feature that allows users to add their own video to an existing video with the original content's audio, have sparked most of these trends.

Trends are shown on TikTok's explore page or the page with the search logo. The page enlists the trending hashtags and challenges among the app. Some include #posechallenge, #filterswitch, #makeeverysecondcount, #wannalisten, #pillowchallenge, #furrywar, #hitormiss, #bottlecapchallenge and more.

In June 2019, the company introduced the hash tag #EduTok which received 37 billion views. Following this development the company initiated partnerships with Edtech start ups to create educational content on the platform.

Spawning viral songs and trends:

The app has spawned numerous viral trends and internet celebrities around the world, propelled songs to fame, and is known to be popular among celebrities due to its popularity and social influence. Studies have shown that in just one year, short videos in China have gone up by 94.79 million.

The most well-known viral TikTok meme in the Western world of 2018 is "hit or miss", from a snippet of iLOVEFRiDAY's "Mia Khalifa" (2018), which has been used in over four million TikTok videos, and helped introduce TikTok to a larger Western audience.

TikTok is believed to have been a major factor in making "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X become one of the biggest songs of 2019, and the longest running #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100.

Other songs that have gained popularity because of their success on TikTok are:
The platform has received some criticism, however, for its lack of royalties towards artists whose music is used on their platform.

Reception:

TikTok became the world's most downloaded app on Apple's App Store in the first half of 2018 with an estimated 104 million downloads in that time. Studies have shown that in just one year, short videos in China have gone up by 94.79 million.

Privacy, cyberbullying and addiction concerns:

Similar to other platforms, journalists in several countries have raised privacy concerns about the app, because it is popular with children and has the potential to be used by sexual predators.

Several users have reported endemic cyberbullying on TikTok, including racism. In December 2019, following a report by German digital rights group Netzpolitik.org, TikTok admitted that it had suppressed videos by disabled users as well as LGBTQ users in a purported effort to limit cyberbullying.

In addition, some users may find it hard to stop using TikTok. In April 2018, an addiction-reduction feature was added to Douyin. This encouraged users to take a break every 90 minutes. 

Later in 2018, the feature was rolled out to the TikTok app.

In January 2020, Check Point Research discovered a security flaw in TikTok which could have allowed hackers access to user accounts using SMS.

National security concerns:
See also: Chinese intelligence activity abroad

In January 2019, an investigation by the American think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics described TikTok as a "Huawei-sized problem" that posed a national security threat to the West, noting the app's popularity with Western users.

They included armed forces personnel and its alleged ability to convey location, image and biometric data to its Chinese parent company, which is legally unable to refuse to share data with the Chinese government under the China Internet Security Law.

Observers have also noted that ByteDance's founder and CEO Zhang Yiming issued a letter in 2018 stating that his company would "further deepen cooperation" with Communist Party of China authorities to promote their policies.

TikTok's parent company ByteDance claims that TikTok is not available in China and its data is stored outside of China, but its privacy policy has reserved the right to share any information with Chinese authorities.

In response to national security, censorship, and anti-boycott compliance concerns, in October 2019, Senator Marco Rubio asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to open an investigation into TikTok and its parent company ByteDance.

The same month, senators Tom Cotton and Chuck Schumer sent a joint letter to the Director of National Intelligence requesting a security review of TikTok and its parent company.

In November 2019, it was reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States opened an investigation into ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly. The same month, following a request by Senator Chuck Schumer, U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy agreed to assess the risks of using TikTok as a recruitment tool.

Senator Josh Hawley introduced the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act to prohibit TikTok's parent company and others from transferring personal data of Americans to China. 

In December 2019, the United States Navy as well as the U.S. Army banned TikTok from all government-issued devices. The Transportation Security Administration also prohibited its personnel from posting on the platform for outreach purposes.

Following its prohibition by the U.S. military, the Australian Defence Force also banned TikTok on its devices. Legislation was subsequently introduced in the U.S. Senate that would prohibit all federal employees from using or downloading TikTok.

Censorship:
See also: Overseas censorship of Chinese issues

On 3 July 2018, TikTok was banned in Indonesia, after the Indonesian government accused it of promulgating "pornography, inappropriate content and blasphemy." Shortly afterwards, TikTok pledged to task 20 staff with censoring TikTok content in Indonesia, and the ban was lifted on 11 July 2018.

In November 2018, the Bangladeshi government blocked the TikTok app's internet access.

Also in 2018, Douyin was reprimanded by Chinese media watchdogs for showing "unacceptable" content, such as videos depicting adolescent pregnancies.

In January 2019, the Chinese government said that it would start to hold app developers like ByteDance responsible for user content shared via apps such as Douyin, and listed 100 types of content that the Chinese government would censor. 

It was reported that certain content unfavorable to the Communist Party of China has already been limited for users outside of China such as content related to the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

TikTok has blocked videos about human rights in China, particularly those that reference Xinjiang re-education camps and abuses of ethnic and religious minorities, and disabled the accounts of users who post them.

TikTok's policies also ban content related to a specific list of foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Mahatma Gandhi. Its policies also ban content critical of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and content considered pro-Kurdish.

TikTok was reported to have censored users supportive of the Citizenship Amendment Act protests and those who promote Hindu-Muslim unity.

In February 2019, several Indian politicians called for TikTok to be banned or more tightly regulated, after concerns emerged about sexually explicit content, cyberbullying, and deepfakes.

In countries where LGBT discrimination is the socio-political norm, TikTok moderators have blocked content that could be perceived as being positive towards LGBT people or LGBT rights, including same-sex couples holding hands, including in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal.

Former U.S. employees of TikTok reported to The Washington Post that final decisions to remove content were made by parent company employees in Beijing.

In response to censorship concerns, TikTok's parent company hired K&L Gates, including former Congressmen Bart Gordon and Jeff Denham, to advise it on its content moderation policies. TikTok also hired lobbying firm Monument Advocacy.

In 2019, TikTok removed about two dozen accounts that were responsible of posting ISIS propaganda on the app.

On 27 November 2019, TikTok temporarily suspended the account of 17-year-old Afghan-American user Feroza Aziz after she posted a video, disguised as a makeup tutorial, drawing attention to the internment camps of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. TikTok later claimed that her account was suspended as a result of human error, and her account has since been reinstated.

In March 2020, internal documents leaked to The Intercept revealed that moderators had been instructed to suppress posts created by users deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled" for the platform, and to censor political speech in livestreams, punishing those who harmed “national honor" or broadcast streams about "state organs such as police" with bans from the platform.

In April 2020, it's reported that Douyin suspended users who speak Cantonese on its live-streaming platform. In a statement, Bytedance said Douyin is “building out content safety capabilities” and that Cantonese is not “fully supported.” But Bytedance did not explain why.

Legal issues:

Indonesian block:

Indonesia temporarily blocked the TikTok app on 3 July 2018 amid public concern about illegal content such as pornography and blasphemy. The app was unblocked one week later after making various changes, including removing negative content, opening a government liaison office, and implementing age restrictions as well as security mechanisms.

Tencent lawsuits:

Tencent's WeChat platform has been accused of blocking Douyin's videos. In April 2018, Douyin sued Tencent and accused it of spreading false and damaging information on its WeChat platform, demanding CNY one million in compensation and an apology.

In June 2018, Tencent filed a lawsuit against Toutiao and Douyin in a Beijing court, alleging they had repeatedly defamed Tencent with negative news and damaged its reputation, seeking a nominal sum of CNY 1 in compensation and a public apology. In response, Toutiao filed a complaint the following day against Tencent for allegedly unfair competition and asking for CNY 90 million in economic losses.

US COPPA fines:

On 27 February 2019, the United States Federal Trade Commission fined ByteDance US $5.7 million for collecting information from minors under the age of 13 in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

ByteDance responded by adding a kids-only mode to TikTok which blocks the upload of videos, the building of user profiles, direct messaging, and commenting on other's videos, while still allowing the viewing and recording of content.

Brief ban in India:

On 3 April 2019, the Madras High Court while hearing a PIL had asked the Government of India to ban the app, citing that it "encourages pornography". The court also noted that children using the app were at risk of being targeted by sexual predators.

The court further asked broadcast media not to telecast any of those videos from the app. The spokesperson for TikTok stated that they were abiding by local laws and were awaiting the copy of the court order before they take action.

On 17 April, both Google and Apple removed TikTok from Google Play and the App Store. As the court refused to reconsider the ban, the company stated that they had removed over 6 million videos that violated their content policy and guidelines.

On 25 April 2019, the ban was lifted after a court in Tamil Nadu reversed its order of prohibiting downloads of the app from the App Store and Google Play, following a plea from TikTok developer Bytedance Technology. India's TikTok ban might have cost the app 15 million new users.

Data transfer class action lawsuit:

In November 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed in California that alleged that TikTok transferred personally-identifiable information of U.S. persons to servers located in China owned by Tencent and Alibaba.

Deaths caused by TikTokThere have been multiple TikTok incidents that resulted in users losing their lives or severely injuring themselves while filming. According to recent data from the "TikTok Death Tracker" website, there has been 48 deaths and 23 injuries since October 19, 2018.

The most common types of TikToks that led to these deaths and injuries included stunts, challenges, weapons, vehicles, and suicides. The country with the highest number of casualties is India.

Other countries in the count include Australia, Pakistan, Canada, USA, Brazil, and Kuwait.

The most recent death on March 11, 2020, took place in India where a TikTok craze caused a newly married man to be crushed by tractor while performing a stunt in hopes to gain fame on the app.

Cyberbullying via the ‘Comments’ section in TikTok also tends to cause users to develop mental conditions that have resulted in self-harm. The first death recorded on October 19, 2018, was in India as well where a Chennai youth male committed suicide from a vehicle due to being bullied for dressing up as a woman in his TikTok videos.

The "TikTok Death Tracker" website was created to promote awareness among people in society in order to ensure users are being safe when posting and viewing content. The TikTok company claims to have a secure and safe app if users follow the terms and conditions that appear on a user's screen when creating an account.

The app discourages performing dangerous stunts or challenges. However, numerous participants become victimized under the influence of popular trends and completing viral challenges on the TikTok app. The TikTok creators developed a modification in the app's algorithm to have suggested hashtags with every uploaded video to promote a more safe and aware environment.

​Some content may not be allowed to be uploaded if deemed inappropriate or against the terms and conditions. This restriction helps protect others from viewing disturbing content while scrolling through the main page.  

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the app "TikTok":







Zoom Video Communications including Essentials for hosting a successful virtual party (USA Today)Pictured below: "Zoom Meetings' claims to fame are top-notch performance, affordability, and generous free plans. Some flaws have recently been discovered in the service and its messaging, but the company has been very quick to address them..."
(by PC Magazine Review: Editor's Choice 4.5 out of 5.0 "Excellent")
​Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (Zoom) is a communications technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. It provides videotelephony and online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform and is used for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations.

Use of the platform is free for video conferences of up to 100 participants, with a 40-minute time limit. For longer or larger conferences with more features, paid subscriptions are available, costing $15–20 per month. Features geared towards business conferences, such as Zoom Rooms, are available for $50–100 per month.

Eric Yuan, a former Cisco Webex engineer and executive, founded Zoom in 2011, and launched its software in 2013. Zoom's aggressive revenue growth and perceived ease-of-use and reliability of its software resulted in a $1 billion valuation in 2017, making it a "unicorn" company.

In 2019, the company went public. As of April 2020, Zoom's software has seen increased use due to the quarantine measures adopted by many countries due to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic.

Its software products have faced public and media scrutiny related to poor information privacy practices and computer security vulnerabilities.

History:
​
Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan, who was inspired to develop the software while, as a student in his native China, he took 10-hour train rides to visit his girlfriend and was looking for an easier way to "visit" her. After receiving a travel visa on his 9th attempt, Yuan immigrated to the United States in 1997 and joined Cisco Webex.

He rose to Vice President, but after realizing that customers were not happy with the product, he left in 2011 to start Zoom. With the help of 40 engineers, Zoom launched a beta version in September 2012 that could host conferences with up to 15 video participants.

In January 2013, the company raised a $6 million Series A round from Qualcomm Ventures, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang, WebEx founder Subrah Iyar and former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman and launched version 1.0 of the program, with an increase in the number of participants per conference to 25.

By the end of its first month, Zoom had 400,000 users.

By May 2013, it had 1 million users.

In July 2013, Zoom established partnerships with B2B collaboration software providers, such as Redbooth (then Teambox), and also created a program named "Works with Zoom", which established partnerships with Logitech, Vaddio, and InFocus.

In September 2013, the company raised $6.5 million in a Series B round from Facebook, Waze, and existing investors. At that time, it had 3 million users.

By June 2014, Zoom had 10 million users. In February 2015, Zoom had 40 million users, with 65,000 organizations subscribed and the company had hosted a total of 1 billion meeting minutes since it was established. 

In 2015 and 2016, the company integrated its software with Slack, Salesforce, and Skype for Business.

On February 4, 2015, the company received US$30 million in Series C funding from investors including Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures (Li Ka-shing), Qualcomm Ventures, Jerry Yang, and Patrick Soon-Shiong.

With version 2.5 in October 2015, Zoom increased the number of participants per conference to 50 and later to 1,000 for business customers.

In November 2015, former president of RingCentral David Berman was named president of the company, and Peter Gassner, the founder and CEO of Veeva Systems, joined Zoom's board of directors.

The company raised US$100 million in Series D funding from Sequoia Capital in January 2017 at a US$1 billion valuation, making it a unicorn.

In April 2017, Zoom launched Telehealth, a scalable telehealth product allowing doctors to host remote consultations with patients.

In May, Zoom announced integration with Polycom's conferencing systems, enabling features such as multiple screen and device meetings, HD and wireless screen sharing, and calendar integration with Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCal.

From September 25-27, 2017, Zoom hosted Zoomtopia 2017, Zoom's first annual user conference in which it announced a partnership with Meta to integrate Zoom with Augmented Reality, integration with Slack and Workplace by Facebook, and first steps towards an artificial intelligence speech recognition program.

On April 18, 2019, the company became a public company via an initial public offering.

After pricing at US$36 per share, the share price increased over 72% on the first day of trading. The company was valued at US$16 billion by the end of its first day of trading.

During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, social distancing requirements forced people to engage in telecommuting, distance education, and online social relations. Thousands of educational institutions switched to online classes using Zoom. The company offered its services to K–12 schools free of charge in many countries.

By February 2020, Zoom had gained 2.22 million users in 2020—more users than it amassed in the entirety of 2019. On one day in March 2020, the Zoom app was downloaded 343,000 times with about 18% of those downloads originating in the United States. Daily average users rose from about 10 million in December 2019 to about 200 million in March 2020 This led to a significant increase in the company's stock price in early 2020, despite a general stock market downturn.

Criticism:

Zoom's data security and privacy practices have been scrutinized. In March 2020, New York State Attorney General Letitia James launched an inquiry into Zoom's privacy and security practices.

Following these inquiries, Zoom was banned from New York City schools by the New York City Department of Education.

In April 2020, CEO Yuan apologized for the security issues, claiming that some of the issues were a result of Zoom having been designed for "large institutions with full IT support. Zoom agreed to focus on data privacy and issue a transparency report.

Zoom claims that its software is compliant with FedRAMP, HIPAA, PIPEDA and PHIPA, and the GDPR.

While its software has been audited for compliance with some of these privacy and security standards, most of Zoom's applications are closed source proprietary software and cannot be verified by independent researchers.

Privacy:

Zoom has been criticized for its digital hoarding practices, which include its collection and storage of "the content contained in cloud recordings, and instant messages, files, whiteboards" as well as its enabling employers to monitor workers remotely the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned that administrators can join any call at any time "without in-the-moment consent or warning for the attendees of the call."

According to the FBI, when Zoom is used for distance education, students’ personal data including IP addresses, web browsing history, academic progress, and biometrics may be at risk during the use of similar online learning services.

There may also be issues with unauthorized surveillance of students and possible violations of students’ rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The company claims that the video services are FERPA-compliant, and also claims that it collects and stores user data only to "provide technical and operational support".

In March 2020, the company's iOS app was sending device analytics data to Facebook on startup, regardless of whether a Facebook account was being used with the service, and without disclosing it to the user. 

On March 27, Zoom stated that it had been "recently made aware that the Facebook SDK was collecting unnecessary device data", and that it had patched the app to remove the SDK (which was primarily used for social login support) in order to address these concerns.

The company stated that the SDK was only collecting information on the user's device specifications (such as model names and operating system versions), and was not collecting personal information.

In the same month, Zoom was sued in U.S. Federal Court for illegally and secretly disclosing personal data to third parties including Facebook, which was not disclosed in its privacy policy. The complaint alleged that the company's "wholly inadequate program design and security measures have resulted, and will continue to result, in unauthorized disclosure of its users’ personal information".

In April 2020, a data-mining feature on Zoom automatically sent user names and email addresses to LinkedIn via a tool meant to match user profiles, allowing some participants to surreptitiously access LinkedIn profile data about other users.

Zoom and LinkedIn disabled their integration. U.S. Representative Jerry McNerney and others pushed for answers to questions about Zoom's privacy practices.

Security:
Further information: Zoombombing

In November 2018, a security vulnerability (CVE-2018-15715) was discovered that allowed a remote unauthenticated attacker to spoof UDP messages that allowed the attacker to remove attendees from meetings, spoof messages from users, or hijack shared screens.

In July 2019, security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh disclosed a zero-day vulnerability allowing any website to force a macOS user to join a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without the user's permission.

In addition, attempts to uninstall the Zoom client on macOS would prompt the software to re-install automatically in the background, using a hidden web server that was set up on the machine during the first installation and remained active even after attempting to remove the client.

After receiving public criticism, Zoom removed the vulnerability and the hidden webserver, allowing complete de-installation.

In April 2020, security researchers found vulnerabilities where Windows users' credentials could be exposed. Another vulnerability allowing unprompted access to cameras and microphones was made public.

Later that month, Zoom admitted that some calls were mistakenly routed through servers in mainland China, promoting governments and businesses to cease their usage of Zoom.

The company later announced that data of free users outside of China will “never be routed through China” and that paid subscribers will be able to customize which data center regions they want to use. The company has data centers in Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America.

"Zoombombing", when an unwanted participant joins a meeting to cause disruption, prompted a warning from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As of April 2020, Zoom has been subject to bans and restrictions by many businesses, schools, and government entities, including among others the Australian Defence Force, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, Google, SpaceX, and the New York City Department of Education.

On 15th April 2020, Motherboard reported that there were two Zoom zero-days selling for $500,000. These exploits target machines running Microsoft Windows and macOS.

Encryption practices:

Zoom encrypts its public data streams, using TLS 1.2 with AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard) to protect signaling, and AES-128 to protect streaming media.

Security researchers and reporters have raised concerns about Zoom's security claims and the nature of Zoom's encryption implementation, criticizing the company for its lack of transparency and poor encryption practices.

Zoom claims to use "end-to-end encryption" in its marketing materials, but later clarified it meant "from Zoom end point to Zoom end point" (meaning effectively between Zoom servers and Zoom clients), which The Intercept describes as misleading and "dishonest".

In April 2020, CitizenLab researchers discovered that a single, server-generated AES-128 key is being shared between all participants in ECB mode, which is deprecated due to its pattern-preserving characteristics of the cyphertext (CVE-2020-11500).

During test calls between participants in Canada and USA the key was provisioned from servers located in mainland China where they are subject to the China Internet Security Law.

See also:







Houseparty (App) Picture below: What is Houseparty and is someone trying to sabotage it? (CNN)*
* -- ​What is Houseparty and is someone trying to sabotage it? (CNN Business 3/31/2020)

London (CNN Business) Houseparty, one of the video calling apps keeping people connected around the world during the coronavirus pandemic, has offered a $1 million reward to anyone who can prove it has been sabotaged.

Houseparty, owned by online gaming firm Epic Games, has offered up the huge bounty following an explosion of online rumors that downloading the app led to people's accounts on other services such as Netflix (NFLX) and Spotify (SPOT) being hacked.

The app creators strenuously denied the claims and issued a statement on Twitter on Tuesday, telling followers they were investigating claims hacking rumors "were spread by a paid commercial smear campaign to harm Houseparty."​

​An earlier tweet insisted that the claims were false."All Houseparty accounts are safe — the service is secure, has never been compromised, and doesn't collect passwords for other sites," it said.What is Houseparty?

Creators describe the app as "the synchronous social platform that lets you connect face-to-face with the people you care about most."

As countries around the world implement social distancing measures in a bid to mitigate the spread of coronavirus, apps such as Houseparty have become increasingly popular.

According to Apptopia, which tracks the performance of apps, Houseparty is currently the third most downloaded app on the iOS app store in the United States -- behind Zoom and TikTok -- and comes top in the United Kingdom.

Also available on Android, iPadOS (for iPad users) and macOS (for Mac users), the app allows partygoers not only to chat, but also to play games and quizzes.
Last year it was acquired by Epic Games, the creators of the phenomenally successful Fortnite.

How does the app work?

Although it has gained massive popularity in recent weeks, Houseparty is not new, having been set up in 2016.

Users are required to submit their name, email address, mobile number and a user name.

​The app can then access their "friends" either via their contacts or by pairing with Facebook or Snapchat.

Once active, it automatically connects with contacts who also have Houseparty accounts.

Particularly popular with children and young people, it is more than just a video calling app as it allows them to interact by playing games and taking quizzes too, including "Heads Up," a trivia game and a Pictionary-type game called "Quick Draw."

Up to eight friends can join you in a "party" and there is the facility to "lock" the party, so that only invited guests can join.Are there security concerns?

Rob Pritchard is the founder of The Cyber Security Expert, a UK-based company which advises companies on technical security issues. He told CNN Business that the reports of hacking he had seen online "don't make much sense."

"There's no way that you downloading an app like this on your phone should lead to your Netflix or bank account being hacked," he said.

He pointed out that a lot of people are signing up for new services, such as Houseparty and Netflix, in the current climate and that they may be using the same passwords for different apps."It's really important that every online service user uses a unique password for every site they use," Pritchard added.

He added that corporate "sabotage" was highly unlikely.

[End of Article]
___________________________________________________________________________

Houseparty (Wikipedia)

​​Houseparty is a social networking service that enables group video chatting through mobile and desktop apps. Users receive a notification when friends are online and available to group video chat.

On average, users spend approximately 51 minutes a day on the app in group or one-on-one chats. It was launched by Life on Air, Inc. in 2016 and is available on iOS and Android mobile devices and macOS devices.

Development:

In early 2015, Life On Air, Inc., a team headed by founder and CEO Ben Rubin, released the live streaming app Meerkat and raised $12 million in venture capital funding from Greylock Partners. Following the release, the creators began developing a new app called "Houseparty" that moved "away from public broadcasts in favor of private chats."

The creators released Houseparty to the App Store and Play Store in February 2016 under a pseudonym. It was developed over 10 months with a website redirecting to the Houseparty app in October 2016.

The company raised $52 million in venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital in late 2016. Each session can host up to eight participants with unlimited sessions. As of 2018, it is available on macOS.

During early 2019, the company partnered with Ellen DeGeneres's app, "Heads Up!". In June 2019, Life on Air, including the Houseparty app, was acquired by Epic Games for an undisclosed amount of money; Life on Air became a subsidiary of Epic Games to continue development of the app.

As many countries have gone into lockdown during the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, the app has experienced a large increase in popularity. As of March 2020, Houseparty is the sixth most downloaded free app in the App store in the United States, and the most downloaded app in New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

In late March 2020, accusations began circulating on social media that Houseparty led to other services such as Netflix and Spotify being hacked. However, its owners, Epic Games, claimed this was a smear campaign against its product and offered a $1 million bounty for anyone able to substantiate their claim.

See also:







Microsoft TeamsPictured below: PowerApps in Microsoft Teams – Make your team more productive
Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage (including collaboration on files), and application integration.

The service integrates with the Office 365 subscription office productivity suite and features extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products. Microsoft Teams is a competitor to services such as Slack and is the evolution and upgrade path from Microsoft Skype for Business.

Microsoft announced Teams at an event in New York, and launched the service worldwide on March 14, 2017. It was created during an internal hackathon at the company, and is currently led by Brian MacDonald, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft.

​Features:

Teams:

Teams allows communities, groups, or teams to join through a specific URL or invitation sent by a team administrator or owner. Teams for Education allows admins and teachers to set up specific teams for classes, professional learning communities (PLCs), staff members, and everyone.

Channels:

Within a team, members can set up channels. Channels are topics of conversation that allow team members to communicate without the use of email or group SMS (texting). Users can reply to posts with text as well as images, GIFs and custom made memes.

Direct messages allow users to send private messages to a specific user rather than a group of people.

Connectors are third party services that can submit information to the channel. Connectors include the following: 
Calling:
Teams supports public switched telephone network (PSTN) conferencing allowing users to call phone numbers from the client.

Meeting:

Meetings can be scheduled or created ad-hoc and users visiting the channel will be able to see that a meeting is currently in progress. Teams also has a plugin for Microsoft Outlook to invite others into a Teams meeting.

Education:

Microsoft Teams allows teachers to distribute, provide feedback, and grade student assignments turned-in via Teams using the Assignments tab, available to Office 365 for Education subscribers. Quizzes can also be assigned to students through an integration with Office Forms.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Microsoft Teams
​






SkypePictured below: Microsoft Teams vs Skype for Business — get to know Teams
Skype is a telecommunications application that specializes in providing video chat and voice calls between computers, tablets, mobile devices, the Xbox One console, and smartwatches over the Internet.

Skype also provides instant messaging services. Users may transmit text, video, audio and images. Skype allows video conference calls.

At the end of 2010, there were over 660 million worldwide users, with over 300 million estimated active each month as of August 2015. At one point in February 2012, there were 34 million users concurrently online on Skype.

In March 2020, according to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Modern Life, Search and Devices, Skype today is used by 100 million people on a monthly basis and 40 million people use it daily. This is a 70% increase in the number of daily users from just a month ago, due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

First released in August 2003, Skype was created by the Swede Niklas Zennström and the Dane Janus Friis, in cooperation with Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, Estonians who developed the back-end that was also used in the music-sharing application Kazaa.

In September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. In September 2009, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced the acquisition of 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from eBay, which attributed to the enterprise a market value of $2.92 billion. 

Microsoft bought Skype in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. Skype's division headquarters are in Luxembourg, but most of the development team and 44% of all the division's employees are still situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.

Skype allows users to communicate over the Internet by voice, using a microphone, by video using a webcam, and by instant messaging. Skype implements a freemium business model.

Skype-to-Skype calls are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones (over traditional telephone networks) are charged via a debit-based user account system called Skype Credit.

Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate, government, home, and education networks, citing such reasons as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage and security concerns.

Skype originally featured a hybrid peer-to-peer and client–server system. Skype has been powered entirely by Microsoft-operated supernodes since May 2012. The 2013 mass surveillance disclosures revealed that Microsoft had granted intelligence agencies unfettered access to supernodes and Skype communication content.

Throughout 2016 and 2017, Microsoft redesigned its Skype clients in a way that transitioned Skype from peer-to-peer service to a centralized Azure service and adjusted the user interfaces of apps to make text-based messaging more prominent than voice calling. Skype for Windows, iOS, Android, Mac and Linux received significant, visible overhauls.

​Features:
Main article: Features of Skype

Registered users of Skype are identified by a unique Skype ID and may be listed in the Skype directory under a Skype username. Skype allows these registered users to communicate through both instant messaging and voice chat.

Voice chat allows telephone calls between pairs of users and conference calling and uses proprietary audio codec.

Skype's text chat client allows group chats, emoticons, storing chat history, and editing of previous messages.

Offline messages were implemented in a beta build of version 5 but removed after a few weeks without notification. The usual features familiar to instant messaging users—user profiles, online status indicators, and so on—are also included.

The Online Number, a.k.a. SkypeIn, service allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialed by conventional phone subscribers to a local Skype phone number; local numbers are available for the following:
  • Australia,
  • Belgium,
  • Brazil,
  • Chile,
  • Colombia,
  • Denmark,
  • the Dominican Republic,
  • Estonia,
  • Finland,
  • France,
  • Germany,
  • Hong Kong,
  • Hungary,
  • India,
  • Ireland,
  • Japan,
  • Mexico,
  • Nepal,
  • New Zealand,
  • Poland,
  • Romania,
  • South Africa,
  • South Korea,
  • Sweden,
  • Switzerland,
  • Turkey,
  • the Netherlands,
  • the United Kingdom,
  • and the United States.

A Skype user can have local numbers in any of these countries, with calls to the number charged at the same rate as calls to fixed lines in the country.

Skype supports conference calls, video chats, and screen sharing between 25 people at a time for free, which then increased to 50 on 5 April 2019.

Skype does not provide the ability to call emergency numbers, such as 112 in Europe, 911 in North America, or 100 in India and Nepal.

However, as of December 2012, there is limited support for emergency calls in the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, and Finland.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ruled that, for the purposes of section 255 of the Telecommunications Act, Skype is not an "interconnected VoIP provider". As a result, the U.S. National Emergency Number Association recommends that all VoIP users have an analog line available as a backup.

​In 2019, Skype added an option to blur the background in a video chat interface using A.I. algorithms purely done using software, despite a depth sensing camera not being present in most webcams.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Skype:







WhatsAppPictured below: WhatsApp to impose new limit on forwarding to fight fake news
WhatsApp Messenger, or simply WhatsApp, is an American freeware, cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP (VoIP) service owned by Facebook, Inc. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other media.

WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices but is also accessible from desktop computers, as long as the user's mobile device remains connected to the Internet while they use the desktop app.

The service requires users to provide a standard cellular mobile number for registering with the service. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app targeted at small business owners, called WhatsApp Business, to allow companies to communicate with customers who use the standard WhatsApp client.

​The client application was created by WhatsApp Inc. of Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion. It became the world's most popular messaging application by 2015, and has over 2 billion users worldwide as of February 2020.

WhatsApp has become the primary means of electronic communication in multiple countries and locations, including Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa.


SMB and Enterprise platforms:

Until 2017, WhatsApp was for individual use between two smartphones. This enabled businesses to communicate with customers, but not at scale (e.g. in a contact center environment).

In September 2017 WhatsApp confirmed rumors that they were building and testing two new tools for businesses:
  • A free WhatsApp Business app for small companies
  • An Enterprise Solution for bigger companies with global customer bases, such as airlines, e-commerce retailers and banks, who would be able to offer customer service and conversational commerce (e-commerce) via WhatsApp chat, using live agents or chatbots. (As far back as 2015, companies like Meteordesk had provided unofficial solutions for enterprises to attend to large numbers of users, but these were shut down by WhatsApp.)

Platform support:

After months at beta stage, the official first release of WhatsApp launched in November 2009, exclusively at the App Store for iPhone. In January 2010, support for BlackBerry smartphones was added; and subsequently for Symbian OS in May 2010, and for Android OS in August 2010. In August 2011, a beta for Nokia's non-smartphone OS Series 40 was added.

A month later, support for Windows Phone was added, followed by BlackBerry 10 in March 2013. In April 2015, support for Samsung's Tizen OS was added. Unofficial ports, Wazapp and Yappari, have also been released for the MeeGo-based Nokia N9 and the Maemo-based Nokia N900, respectively.

The oldest device capable of running WhatsApp was the Symbian-based Nokia N95 released in March 2007. (As of June 2017, WhatsApp is no longer compatible with it.)

In August 2014, WhatsApp released an Android update, adding support for Android Wear smartwatches.

In 2014, an unofficial open source plug-in, whatsapp-purple, was released for Pidgin, implementing its XMPP and making it possible to use WhatsApp on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Linux. WhatsApp responded by blocking phone numbers that used the plug-in.

On January 21, 2015, WhatsApp launched WhatsApp Web, a browser-based web client that could be used by syncing with a mobile device's connection.

On February 26, 2016, WhatsApp announced they would cease support for BlackBerry (including BlackBerry 10), Series 40, and Symbian S60, as well as older versions of Android (2.2), Windows Phone (7.0), and iOS (6), by the end of 2016. 

BlackBerry, Series 40, and Symbian support was then extended to June 30, 2017. In June 2017, support for BlackBerry and Series 40 was once again extended until the end of 2017, while Symbian was dropped. Support for BlackBerry and older (version 8.0) Windows Phone and older (version 6) iOS devices was dropped on January 1, 2018, but was extended to December 2018 for Nokia Series 40. 

In July 2018, it was announced that WhatsApp would soon be available for KaiOS feature phones.

In October 2019, WhatsApp officially launched a new fingerprint app-locking feature for Android users.

WhatsApp Web:

WhatsApp was officially made available for PCs through a web client, under the name WhatsApp Web, in late January 2015 through an announcement made by Koum on his Facebook page: "Our web client is simply an extension of your phone: the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device—this means all of your messages still live on your phone".

The WhatsApp user's handset must still be connected to the Internet for the browser application to function. All major desktop browsers are supported except for Internet Explorer. WhatsApp Web's user interface is based on the default Android one.

As of January 21, 2015, the desktop version was only available to Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone users. Later on, it also added support for iOS, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia S60 (Symbian).

An unofficial derivative called WhatsAppTime has been developed, which is a standard Win32 application for PCs and supports notifications through the Windows notification area.

There are similar solutions for macOS, such as the open-source ChitChat.

Microsoft Windows and Mac:

On May 10, 2016, the messaging service was introduced for both Microsoft Windows and macOS operating systems. WhatsApp currently does not allow audio or video calling from desktop operating systems.

Similar to the WhatsApp Web format, the app, which will be synced with a user's mobile device, is available for download on the website. It supports OS versions of Windows 8 and OS X 10.10 and higher.

Apple iPad:

A story circulated in 2019 that iPad support was coming.

However, as of March 2020, WhatsApp does not run on the Apple iPad. From the WhatsApp iOS page (accessed March 2020): "WhatsApp is a telephony app, so iPod and iPad are not supported devices."

iPad users searching for WhatsApp are shown, numerous third-party clients. Several top results have names and logos resembling WhatsApp itself, and some users do not realize they are using a third-party client. Unfortunately, using third-party clients runs the risk to the user of their phone number being permanently banned.

Technical:

WhatsApp uses a customized version of the open standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Upon installation, it creates a user account using one's phone number as the username (Jabber ID: [phone number]@s.whatsapp.net).

WhatsApp software automatically compares all the phone numbers from the device's address book with its central database of WhatsApp users to automatically add contacts to the user's WhatsApp contact list. Previously the Android and Nokia Series 40 versions used an MD5-hashed, reversed-version of the phone's IMEI as password, while the iOS version used the phone's Wi-Fi MAC address instead of IMEI. A 2012 update now generates a random password on the server side.

Some Dual SIM devices may not be compatible with WhatsApp, though there are some workarounds for this.

In February 2015, WhatsApp introduced a voice calling feature; this helped WhatsApp to attract a completely different segment of the user population. WhatsApp's voice codec is Opus, which uses the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) and linear predictive coding (LPC) audio compression algorithms.

WhatsApp uses Opus at 8–16 kHz sampling rates. On November 14, 2016,Whatsapp added a video calling feature for users across Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone devices.

On November 2017, Whatsapp released a new feature that would let its users delete messages sent by mistake within a time frame of 7 minutes.

Multimedia messages are sent by uploading the image, audio or video to be sent to an HTTP server and then sending a link to the content along with its Base64 encoded thumbnail (if applicable).

WhatsApp follows a "store and forward" mechanism for exchanging messages between two users. When a user sends a message, it first travels to the WhatsApp server where it is stored.

Then the server repeatedly requests the receiver to acknowledge receipt of the message. As soon as the message is acknowledged, the server drops the message; it is no longer available in the database of the server. The WhatsApp server keeps the message only for 30 days in its database when it is not delivered (when the receiver is not active on WhatsApp for 30 days).

End-to-end encryption:

On November 18, 2014, Open Whisper Systems announced a partnership with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end encryption by incorporating the encryption protocol used in Signal into each WhatsApp client platform. Open Whisper Systems said that they had already incorporated the protocol into the latest WhatsApp client for Android, and that support for other clients, group/media messages, and key verification would be coming soon after.

WhatsApp confirmed the partnership to reporters, but there was no announcement or documentation about the encryption feature on the official website, and further requests for comment were declined. In April 2015, German magazine Heise Security used ARP spoofing to confirm that the protocol had been implemented for Android-to-Android messages, and that WhatsApp messages from or to iPhones running iOS were still not end-to-end encrypted.

They expressed the concern that regular WhatsApp users still could not tell the difference between end-to-end encrypted messages and regular messages.

On April 5, 2016, WhatsApp and Open Whisper Systems announced that they had finished adding end-to-end encryption to "every form of communication" on WhatsApp, and that users could now verify each other's keys. Users were also given the option to enable a trust on first use mechanism in order to be notified if a correspondent's key changes.

According to a white paper that was released along with the announcement, WhatsApp messages are encrypted with the Signal Protocol. WhatsApp calls are encrypted with SRTP, and all client-server communications are "layered within a separate encrypted channel". The Signal Protocol library used by WhatsApp is open-source and published under the GPLv3 license.

Cade Metz, writing in Wired, said, "WhatsApp, more than any company before it, has taken encryption to the masses."

WhatsApp Payments:

WhatsApp Payments is a peer-to-peer money transfer feature that is currently only available in India. WhatsApp has received permission from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to enter into partnership with multiple banks in July 2017 to allow users to make in-app payments and money transfers using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

UPI enables account-to-account transfers from a mobile app without having any details of the beneficiary's bank. This feature is being pilot tested with over a million users since April 2019, however there has not been any update on the final roll out.

WhatsApp Cryptocurrency:
See also: Libra (cryptocurrency)

On February 28, 2019, The New York Times reported that Facebook was “hoping to succeed where Bitcoin failed” by developing an in-house cryptocurrency that would be incorporated into WhatsApp. The project reportedly involves over 50 engineers under the direction of former PayPal president David Marcus. This 'Facebook coin' will reportedly be a stablecoin pegged to the value of a basket of different foreign currencies.

Reception and criticism:

Hoaxes and fake news:

Mob murders in India:
Main article: Indian WhatsApp lynchings

In July 2018, WhatsApp encouraged people to report fraudulent or inciting messages after lynch mobs in India murdered innocent people because of malicious WhatsApp messages falsely accusing the victims of intending to abduct children.

2018 elections in Brazil:

In an investigation on the use of social media in politics, it was found that WhatsApp was being abused for the spread of fake news in the 2018 presidential elections in Brazil.

Furthermore, it has been reported that US$3 million has been spent in illegal off-the-books contributions related to this practice.

Researchers and journalists have called on WhatsApp parent company, Facebook, to adopt measures similar to those adopted in India and restrict the spread of hoaxes and fake news.

Security and privacy:
Main article: Reception and criticism of WhatsApp security and privacy features

WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext. Encryption was first added in May 2012.

In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption and earned a 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Secure Messaging Scorecard".

WhatsApp was criticized by security researchers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for using backups that are not covered by end-to-end encryption and allow messages to be accessed by third-parties.

In May 2019, a security vulnerability in WhatsApp was found and fixed that allowed a remote person to install spyware by making a call which did not need to be answered.

In September 2019, WhatsApp was criticized for its implementation of a 'delete for everyone' feature. iOS users can elect to save media to their camera roll automatically. When a user deletes media for everyone, WhatsApp does not delete images saved in the iOS camera roll and so those users are able to keep the images.

WhatsApp released a statement saying that "the feature is working properly," and that images stored in the camera roll cannot be deleted due to Apple's security layers.

In November 2019, WhatsApp released a new privacy feature that let users decide who adds them to the group.

On December 17, 2019, WhatsApp fixed a security flaw that allowed cyber attackers to repeatedly crash the messaging application for all members of group chat, which could only be fixed by forcing the complete uninstall and reinstall of the app.

The bug was discovered in August 2019 and reported to WhatsApp. It was fixed in version 2.19.246 onwards.

For security purposes, since February 1, 2020, WhatsApp has been made unavailable on smartphones using legacy operating systems like Android 2.3.7 or older and iPhone iOS 8 or older that are no longer updated by their providers.

In April 2020, the NSO Group held its governmental clients accountable for the allegation of human rights abuses by WhatsApp. In its revelation via documents received from court, the group said that the mobile application periled to disregard its clients’ “national security and foreign policy concerns”.

However, the company did not reveal names of the end users, which according to a research by Citizen Lab include the following:
NHS:

In 2018 it was reported that around 500,000 National Health Service (NHS) staff used WhatsApp and other instant messaging systems at work and around 29,000 had faced disciplinary action for doing so. Higher usage was reported by frontline clinical staff to keep up with care needs, even though NHS trust policies do not permit their use.

Mods and Fake versions:

In March 2019, WhatsApp released a guide for users that had installed unofficial modified versions of WhatsApp and warned against data loss in case users persisted in using the same as it considered banning such users.

NSO Group:

In October 2019, WhatsApp launched an unprecedented lawsuit against an Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group, accusing that it was behind the highly sophisticated cyber attacks on over 100 human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, and academics. WhatsApp also claimed that the firm violated American law in an “unmistakable pattern of abuse”.

Jeff Bezos Phone Hack:

In January 2020, a digital forensic analysis revealed that the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos received an encrypted message on WhatsApp from the official account of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The message reportedly contained a malicious file, using which Bezos’ phone was hacked.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur David Kaye and Agnes Callamard later confirmed that Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked through WhatsApp, as he was one of the targets of Saudi’s hit list of individuals close to The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Terrorism:

In December 2015, it was reported that Islamic State terrorists had been using WhatsApp to plot the November 2015 Paris attacks. ISIS also uses WhatsApp to traffic sex slaves.

In March 2017, U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said encryption capabilities of messaging tools like WhatsApp are unacceptable, as news reported that Khalid Masood used the application several minutes before perpetrating the 2017 Westminster attack. Rudd publicly called for police and intelligence agencies to be given access to WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging services to prevent future terror attacks.

In April 2017, the perpetrator of the Stockholm attack reportedly used WhatsApp to exchange messages with an ISIS supporter shortly before and after the 2017 Stockholm attack. The messages involved discussing how to make an explosive device and a confession of the perpetration after the attack.

Scams and malware:

It has been asserted that WhatsApp is plagued by scams that invite hackers to spread malicious viruses or malware. In May 2016, some WhatsApp users were reported to have been tricked into downloading a third-party application called WhatsApp Gold, which was part of a scam that infected the users' phones with malware.

A message that promises to allow access to their WhatsApp friends' conversations, or their contact lists, has become the most popular hit against anyone who uses the application in Brazil. Since December 2016, more than 1.5 million people have clicked and lost money.

Another application called GB Whatsapp is considered malicious by cybersecurity firm Symantec because it usually performs some unauthorized operations on end-user devices.

Bans:

China:

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, whose main social media service has been blocked in China since 2009. In September 2017, security researchers reported to The New York Times that the WhatsApp service had been completely blocked in China.

According to Time, Sarsenbek Akaruli, 45, a veterinarian and trader from Ili, Xinjiang, was arrested in Xinjiang on November 2, 2017. As of November 2019, he is still in a detention camp.

According to his wife Gulnur Kosdaulet, Akaruli was put in the camp after police found the banned messaging app WhatsApp on his cell phone.

Kosdaulet, a citizen of neighboring Kazakhstan, has traveled to Xinjiang on four occasions to search for her husband but could not get help from friends in the Communist Party of China.

Kosdaulet said of her friends, "Nobody wanted to risk being recorded on security cameras talking to me in case they ended up in the camps themselves."

Iran:

On May 9, 2014, the government of Iran announced that it had proposed to block the access to WhatsApp service to Iranian residents. "The reason for this is the assumption of WhatsApp by the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is an American Zionist," said Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, head of the country's Committee on Internet Crimes.

Subsequently, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani issued an order to the Ministry of ICT to stop filtering WhatsApp.

Turkey:

Turkey temporarily banned WhatsApp in 2016, following the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey.

Brazil:

On March 1, 2016, Diego Dzodan, Facebook's vice-president for Latin America was arrested in Brazil for not cooperating with an investigation in which WhatsApp conversations were requested. On March 2, 2016, at dawn the next day, Dzodan was released because the Court of Appeal held that the arrest was disproportionate and unreasonable.

On May 2, 2016, mobile providers in Brazil were ordered to block WhatsApp for 72 hours for the service's second failure to cooperate with criminal court orders. Once again, the block was lifted following an appeal, after nearly 24 hours.

Sri Lanka:

WhatsApp, one of the most activated messaging apps along with other social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram were temporarily blocked, banned and had been unavailable for about two days (March 7–8, 2018) in certain parts of the country to eradicate communal violence, especially the anti-Muslim riots. This was probably the first such instance where social media platforms had been banned in Sri Lanka. The ban was finally lifted on March 14, 2018 around midnight time in Sri Lanka.

Uganda:

The government of Uganda banned WhatsApp and Facebook, along with other social media platforms, to enforce a tax on the use of social media. Users are to be charged 200 shilling per day to access these services according to the new law set by parliament.

United Arab Emirates (UAE):

The United Arab Emirates banned WhatsApp video chat and VoIP call applications in as early as 2013 due to what is often reported as an effort for their home grown nationally owned telecom providers (du and Etisalat) to create their own messsaging apps to both monetize and monopolize the space.

User statistics:

WhatsApp handled ten billion messages per day in August 2012, growing from two billion in April 2012, and one billion the previous October. 

On June 13, 2013, WhatsApp announced that they had reached their new daily record by processing 27 billion messages. According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp "has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines."

As of April 22, 2014, WhatsApp had over 500 million monthly active users, 700 million photos and 100 million videos were being shared daily, and the messaging system was handling more than 10 billion messages each day.

On August 24, 2014, Koum announced on his Twitter account that WhatsApp had over 600 million active users worldwide. At that point WhatsApp was adding about 25 million new users every month, or 833,000 active users per day. With 65 million active users representing 10% of the total worldwide users, India has the largest number of consumers.

In May 2017, it was reported that WhatsApp users spend over 340 million minutes on video calls each day on the app. This is the equivalent of roughly 646 years of video calls per day.


As of February 2017, WhatsApp had over 1.2 billion users globally, reaching 1.5 billion monthly active users by the end of 2017.

On January 2020, WhatsApp registers over 5 billion installs on Google Play Store making it only the second non-Google app to achieve this milestone. 

As of February 2020, WhatsApp had over 2 billion users globally.

Specific markets:

India is by far WhatsApp's largest market in terms of total number of users. In May 2014, WhatsApp crossed 50 million monthly active users in India, which is also its largest country by the number of monthly active users, then 70 million in October 2014, making users in India 10% of WhatsApp's total user base. In February 2017, WhatsApp reached 200 million monthly active users in India.

Israel is one of WhatsApp's strongest markets in terms of ubiquitous usage. According to Globes, already by 2013 the application was installed on 92% of all smartphones, with 86% of users reporting daily use. WhatsApp's group chat feature is reportedly used by many Israeli families to stay in contact with each other.

​Competition:

WhatsApp competes with a number of messaging services. Those, as of 2019, were services like iMessage (estimated 1.3 billion active users), WeChat (1 billion active users), Viber (260 million active users), Telegram (200 million users) and LINE (187 million active users).

Telegram in particular was reported to get registration spikes during WhatsApp outages and controversies.

WhatsApp has increasingly drawn its innovation from competing services, such as a Telegram-inspired web version and features for groups. In 2016, WhatsApp was accused of copying features from a then-unreleased version of iMessage.

See also:







SnapchatPictured below: While We Weren’t Looking, Snapchat Revolutionized Social Networks (NY Times 11/30/2016)
​Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app used globally, created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, former students at Stanford University, and developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc.

One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients.

The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users' "Stories" of 24 hours of chronological content, along with "Discover", letting brands show ad-supported short-form content. It also allows users to keep photos in the "my eyes only" which lets them keep their photos in a password-protected space.

Snapchat has become known for representing a new, mobile-first direction for social media, and places significant emphasis on users interacting with virtual stickers and augmented reality objects. As of March 2020, Snapchat had 229 million daily active users. On average more than 4 billion Snaps are sent each day. Snapchat is known to be popular among the younger generations, particularly those below the age of 16, leading to many privacy concerns for parents.

​Features:

Core functionality:

Snapchat is primarily used for creating multimedia messages referred to as "snaps"; snaps can consist of a photo or a short video, and can be edited to include filters and effects, text captions, and drawings.

Snaps can be directed privately to selected contacts, or to a semi-public "Story" or a public "Story" called "Our Story". The ability to send video snaps was added as a feature option in December 2012.

By holding down on the photo button while inside the app, a video of up to ten seconds in length can be captured. Spiegel explained that this process allowed the video data to be compressed into the size of a photo. 

A later update allowed the ability to record indefinitely, but are still segmented into 10 second intervals. After a single viewing, the video disappears by default.

On May 1, 2014, the ability to communicate via video chat was added. Direct messaging features were also included in the update, allowing users to send ephemeral text messages to friends and family while saving any needed information by clicking on it.

According to CIO, Snapchat uses real-time marketing concepts and temporality to make the app appealing to users. According to Marketing Pro, Snapchat attracts interest and potential customers by combining the AIDA (marketing) model with modern digital technology.

Private message photo snaps can be viewed for a user-specified length of time (1 to 10 seconds as determined by the sender) before they become inaccessible. Users were previously required to hold down on the screen in order to view a snap; this behavior was removed in July 2015.

The requirement to hold on the screen was intended to frustrate the ability to take screenshots of snaps; the Snapchat app does not prevent screenshots from being taken but can notify the sender if it detects that it has been saved. However, these notifications can be bypassed through either unauthorized modifications to the app or by obtaining the image through external means.

One snap per day can be replayed for free. In September 2015, Snapchat introduced the option to purchase additional replays through in-app purchases. The ability to purchase extra replays was removed in April 2016.

Friends can be added via usernames and phone contacts, using customizable "Snapcodes", or through the "Add Nearby" function, which scans for users near their location who are also in the Add Nearby menu. Spiegel explained that Snapchat is intended to counteract the trend of users being compelled to manage an idealized online identity of themselves, which he says has "taken all of the fun out of communicating".

In November 2014, Snapchat introduced "Snapcash", a feature that lets users send and receive money to each other through private messaging. The payments system is powered by Square.

In July 2016, Snapchat introduced a new, optional feature known as "Memories". Memories allow snaps and story posts to be saved into a private storage area, where they can be viewed alongside other photos stored on the device, as well as edited and published as snaps, story posts, or messages.

When shared with a user's current story, the memory would have a white frame and timestamp to indicate its age. Content in the Memories storage area can be searched by date or using a local object recognition system. Snaps accessible within Memories can additionally be placed into a "My Eyes Only" area that is locked with a Personal identification number (PIN).

Snapchat has stated that the Memories feature was inspired by the practice of manually scrolling through photos on a phone to show them to others. In April 2017, the white border around old memories was removed. While originally intended to let viewers know the material was old, TechCrunch wrote that the indicator "ended up annoying users who didn’t want their snaps altered, sometimes to the point where they would decide not to share the old content at all".

In May 2017, an update made it possible to send snaps with unlimited viewing time, dropping the previous ten-second maximum duration, with the content disappearing after being deliberately closed by the recipient. New creative tools, namely the ability to draw with an emoji, videos that play in a loop, and an eraser that lets users remove objects in a photo with the app filling in the space with the background, were also released.

In June 2017, Snapchat started allowing users to add links to snaps, enabling them to direct viewers to specific websites; the feature was only available for brands previously.

Additionally, the update added more creative tools: A "Backdrop" feature lets users cut out a specific object from their photo and apply colorful patterns to it in order to bring greater emphasis to that object, and "Voice Filters" enable users to remix the sounds of their voices in the snap.

Voice Filters was previously available as part of the feature enabling augmented reality lenses, with the new update adding a dedicated speaker icon to remix the audio in any snap.

Filters, lenses, and stickers:

Snaps can be personalized with various forms of visual effects and stickers. Geofilters are graphical overlays available if the user is within a certain geographical location, such as a city, event, or destination. A similar feature known as Geostickers was launched in 10 major cities in 2016. 

Bitmoji are stickers featuring personalized cartoon avatars, which can be used in snaps and messaging. Bitmoji characters can also be used as World Lenses.

The "Lens" feature, introduced in September 2015, allows users to add real-time effects into their snaps by using face detection technology. This is activated by long-pressing on a face within the viewfinder.

In April 2017, Snapchat extended this feature into "World Lenses", which use augmented reality technology to integrate 3D rendered elements (such as objects and animated characters) into scenes; these elements are placed and anchored in 3D space.

On October 26, 2018, at TwitchCon, Snap launched the Snap Camera desktop application for macOS and Windows PCs, which enables use of Snapchat lenses in video chat and live streaming services such as Skype, Twitch, YouTube, and Zoom.

​Snapchat also launched integration with Twitch, including an in-stream widget for Snapcodes, the ability to offer lenses to stream viewers and as an incentive to channel subscribers. Several video game-themed lenses were also launched at this time, including ones themed around League of Legends, Overwatch, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

Business and multimedia:

Demographics:

From its earliest days, Snapchat's main demographic has consisted of millennials. In 2014, researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University designed a user survey to help understand how and why the application was being used.

The researchers originally hypothesized that due to the ephemeral nature of Snapchat messages, its use would be predominantly for privacy-sensitive content including the much talked about potential use for sexual content and sexting.

However, it appears that Snapchat is used for a variety of creative purposes that are not necessarily privacy-related at all. In the study, only 1.6% of respondents reported using Snapchat primarily for sexting, although 14.2% admitted to having sent sexual content via Snapchat at some point. 

These findings suggest that users do not seem to utilize Snapchat for sensitive content. Rather, the primary use for Snapchat was found to be for comedic content such as "stupid faces" with 59.8% of respondents reporting this use most commonly.

The researchers also determined how Snapchat users do not use the application and what types of content they are not willing to send. They found that the majority of users are not willing to send content classified as sexting (74.8% of respondents), photos of documents (85.0% of respondents), messages containing legally questionable content (86.6% of respondents), or content considered mean or insulting (93.7% of respondents).

The study results also suggested that Snapchat's success is not due to its security properties, but because the users found the application to be fun. The researchers found that users seem to be well-aware (79.4% of respondents) that recovering snaps is possible and a majority of users (52.8% of respondents) report that this does not affect their behavior and use of Snapchat.

Many users (52.8% of respondents) were found to use an arbitrary timeout length on snaps regardless of the content type or recipient. The remaining respondents were found to adjust their snaps' timeout depending on the content or the recipient. Reasons for adjusting the time length of snaps included the level of trust and relationship with the recipient, the time needed to comprehend the snap, and avoiding screenshots.

Communication:

Snapchat has often been seen to represent a new direction in social media, with its users, particularly millennials, craving a more in-the-moment way of sharing and communicating via technology. With less emphasis on the accumulation of an ongoing status involving the presence of permanent material, Snapchat put the focus on the ephemeral nature of fleeting encounters.

Building on this distinction by launching as a mobile-first company, Snapchat, in the midst of the app revolution and the growing presence of cellular communication, didn't have to make the transition to mobile in the way other competing social media networks had to do.

Evan Spiegel himself described Snapchat as primarily a camera company. Spiegel also dismissed past comparisons to other social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter when he was asked if the 2016 presidential race was going to be remembered as the Snapchat election, although major candidates did occasionally use the app to reach voters.

Nevertheless, the growing mobile app moved to offer distinct publication, media, and news content within its Discover channel, as well as with its overall style of presentation. With Snapchat, a clear and identifiable line was drawn between brand content and user-based messaging and sharing, once again distinguishing the popular app from other social media networks, which typically have blended and blurred their different varieties of content.

Monetization:

Snapchat's developing features embody a deliberate strategy of monetization.
Snapchat announced its then-upcoming advertising efforts on October 17, 2014, when it acknowledged its need for a revenue stream.

The company stated that it wanted to evaluate "if we can deliver an experience that's fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted." Snapchat's first paid advertisement, in the form of a 20-second movie trailer for the horror film Ouija, was shown to users on October 19, 2014.

In January 2015, Snapchat began making a shift from focusing on growth to monetization. The company launched its "Discover" feature, which allowed for paid advertising by presenting short-form content from publishers. Its initial launch partners included CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN and Food Network, among others.

In June 2015, Snapchat announced that it would allow advertisers to purchase sponsored geofilters for snaps; an early customer of the offering was McDonald's, who paid for a branded geofilter covering its restaurant locations in the United States. 

Snapchat made a push to earn ad revenue from its "Live Stories" feature in 2015, after initially launching the feature in 2014. Ad placements can be sold within a live story, or a story can be pitched by a sponsor. Live stories are estimated to reach an average of 20 million viewers in a 24-hour span.

Campaigns:

In September 2015, the service entered into a partnership with the National Football League to present live stories from selected games (including a Sunday game, and marquee games such as Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football), with both parties contributing content and handling ad sales.

The 2015 Internet Trends Report by Mary Meeker highlighted the significant growth of vertical video viewing. Vertical video ads like Snapchat's are watched in their entirety nine times more than landscape video ads. In 2016, Gatorade came out with an animated filter as part of the Super Bowl ads in 2016. The Dunk Lens of Gatorade received 165m views on Snapchat.

In April 2016, NBC Olympics announced that it had reached a deal with Snapchat to allow stories from the 2016 Summer Olympics to be featured on Snapchat in the United States. The content would include a behind-the-scenes Discover channel curated by BuzzFeed (a company which NBCUniversal has funded), and stories featuring a combination of footage from NBC, athletes, and attendees.

NBC sold advertising and entered into revenue sharing agreements. This marked the first time NBC allowed Olympics footage to be featured on third-party property. In May 2016, as part of a campaign to promote X-Men: Apocalypse, 20th Century Fox paid for the entire array of lenses to be replaced by those based on characters from the X-Men series and films for a single day.

In July 2016, it was reported that Snapchat had submitted a patent application for the process of using an object recognition system to deliver sponsored filters based on objects seen in a camera view. Later that year, in Sep 2016, Snapchat released its first hardware product, called the Spectacles. Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., called it “a toy” but saw it as an upside to freeing his app from smartphone cameras.

In April 2017, Digiday reported that Snapchat would launch a self-service manager for advertising on the platform. The feature launched the following month, alongside news of a Snapchat Mobile Dashboard for tracking ad campaigns, which rolled out in June to select countries. 

Also in 2017, Snapchat introduced a "Snap to Store" advertising tool that lets companies using geostickers to track whether users buy their product or visit their store in a 7-day period after seeing the relevant geosticker. On November 13, 2018, Snapchat announced the launch of the Snap Store, where they sell Bitmoji merchandise personalized by avatars from users and their friends. Items for sale include shirts, mugs, shower curtains, and phone cases.

Development platform:

In June 2018, Snapchat announced a new third-party development platform known as Snap Kit—a suite of components that allows partners to provide third-party integrations with aspects of the service.

"Login Kit" is a social login platform that utilizes Snapchat accounts; it was promoted as being more privacy-conscious than competing equivalents, as services are only able to receive the user's display name (and, optionally, a Bitmoji avatar) and are subject to a 90-day inactivity timeout, preventing them from being able to collect any further personal information or social graphs through their authorization.

"Creative Kit" allows apps to generate their own stickers to overlay into Snapchat posts. "Story Kit" can be used to embed and aggregate publicly posted stories (with for example, Bandsintown using Story Kit to aggregate stories posted by musicians), while "Bitmoji Kit" allows Bitmoji stickers to be integrated into third-party apps.

Snap Originals:

In a response to industry competition, Snapchat diversified their content by launching Snap Originals, which is episodic content. The series include both scripted content and documentaries.

Premium accounts and porn:

In 2014, Snapchat introduced a new feature called Snapcash which spurred its popularity among adult content creators.

Snapchat allows private premium accounts in which user can monetize their content. This feature is mostly used by models to monetize their adult content. Snapchat is increasingly becoming an integral part of the online porn industry.

Controversy:

December 2013 hack:

Snapchat was hacked on December 31, 2013. Gibson Security, an Australian security firm, had disclosed an API security vulnerability to the company on August 27, 2013, and then made public the source code for the exploit on Christmas Day (Australian time; Christmas Eve in the US).

On December 27, Snapchat announced that it had implemented mitigating features. Nonetheless, an anonymous group hacked them, saying that the mitigating features presented only "minor obstacles". 

The hackers revealed parts of approximately 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers on a website named "SnapchatDB.info" and sent a statement to the popular technology blog TechCrunch saying that their objective had been to "raise public awareness ... and ... put public pressure on Snapchat" to fix the vulnerability. Snapchat apologized a week after the hack.

Federal Trade Commission:

In 2014, Snapchat settled a complaint made by the Federal Trade Commission. The government agency alleged that the company had exaggerated to the public the degree to which mobile app images and photos could actually be made to disappear.

Under the terms of the agreement, Snapchat was not fined, but the app service agreed to have its claims and policies monitored by an independent party for a period of 20 years. The FTC concluded that Snapchat was prohibited from "misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security, or confidentiality of users' information."

Following the agreement, Snapchat updated its privacy page to state that the company "can't guarantee that messages will be deleted within a specific timeframe."  Even after Snapchat deletes message data from their servers, that same data may remain in backup for a certain period of time. 

In a public blog post, the service warned that "If you've ever tried to recover lost data after accidentally deleting a drive or maybe watched an episode of CSI, you might know that with the right forensic tools, it's sometimes possible to retrieve data after it has been deleted."

Lens incidents:

In September 2015, an 18-year-old was using a Snapchat feature called "Lens" to record the speed she was driving her Mercedes C230 when she crashed into a Mitsubishi Outlander in Hampton, Georgia.

The 107 mph (172 km/h) crash injured both drivers. The driver of the Outlander spent five weeks in intensive care while he was treated for severe traumatic brain injury. In April 2016, the Outlander driver sued both Snapchat and the user of Snapchat, alleging that Snapchat knew its application was being used in unlawful speed contests, yet did nothing to prevent such use so is negligent.

A similar collision while driving at 115 mph (185 km/h), occurred in Tampa, Florida, in October 2016 that killed five people.

"Poor Country" remark:

According to former Snapchat employee Anthony Pompliano in a lawsuit filed against Snap Inc., Spiegel made a statement in 2015 that Snapchat is "only for rich people" and that he does not "want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain".

The incident sparked a Twitter trend called "#UninstallSnapchat", in which Indian users uninstalled the app, and caused backlash against the company in terms of low "one-star" ratings for the app in the Google Play store and Apple's App Store. Snapchat's shares fell by 1.5%.

In response to the allegation, Snapchat called Pompliano's claim "ridiculous", and elaborated that "Obviously Snapchat is for everyone. It’s available worldwide to download for free".

Pompliano Lawsuit:

In January of 2017, former employee Anthony Pompliano filed a state lawsuit accusing Snapchat of doctoring growth metrics with the intention of deceiving investors. Pompliano said that CEO Evan Spiegel was dismissive of his concerns and that Pompliano was fired shortly thereafter.

The judge dropped Pompliano’s claims that Snapchat violated the Dodd-Frank and Consumer Protection Acts in retaliation against him, citing an arbitration clause in his contract.

However, Snap Inc. faced blowback over a lack of disclosure regarding the contents of the lawsuit, resulting in plunging stock prices, several class-action lawsuits, and Federal investigations.

"Snap Map" privacy concerns:

The June 2017 release of "Snap Map", a feature that broadcasts the user's location on a map, was met with concerns over privacy and safety.

The feature, though an opt-in, delivers a message asking if the user would like to show their position on the map, but reportedly doesn't explain the ramifications of doing so, including that the app updates the user's position on the map each time the app is opened and not just when actively capturing snaps, potentially assisting stalkers.

The map can be zoomed in to feature detailed geographical information, such as street addresses. The Daily Telegraph reported that police forces had issued child safety warnings, while other media publications wrote that safety concerns were also raised for teenagers and adults unaware of the feature's actual behavior.

In a statement to The Verge, a Snapchat spokesperson said that "The safety of our community is very important to us and we want to make sure that all Snapchatters, parents, and educators have accurate information about how the Snap Map works". Users have the ability to operate in "Ghost Mode", or select the friends that they wish to share their location with.

Although there has been an increase in advertising on Snapchat, Snapchat has stated that they do not plan on running ads on Snap Map stories.

Rihanna controversy:

In March 2018, an advertisement containing a poll about Rihanna was posted stating, "Would you rather punch Chris Brown or slap Rihanna?" Rihanna tweeted that Snapchat was "insensitive to domestic violence victims" and urged fans to delete Snapchat.

Body image concerns:

The increased use of body and facial reshaping applications such as Snapchat and Facetune has been identified as a potential cause of body dysmorphic disorder.

In August 2018, researchers from the Boston Medical Center wrote in a JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery essay that a phenomenon they called 'Snapchat dysmorphia' had been identified, where people request surgery to look like the edited version of themselves as they appear through Snapchat Filters.

Snapchat employees abused data access to spy on users:

In May 2019, it was revealed that multiple Snapchat employees used an internal tool called SnapLion to spy on users.

Mozilla calls for public disclosures related to use of A.I.

Citing "vague, broad language" in Snapchat's privacy policy, Mozilla issued a September 2019 petition calling for public disclosures related to the app's use of facial emotion recognition technology. When reached for comment by Scientific American, representatives for Snapchat declined to share a public response.

Revenge porn:

During the 2020 lockdown to inhibit the spread of the coronavirus in France, the app emerged as a hub for the dissemination of revenge porn of underage girls.

In 2020 a woman sued Snapchat alleging it helped hide evidence of her rape. She told the court that parent company Snap Inc, "specifically and purposely designed, constructed, and maintained Snapchat to serve as a secretive and nefarious communications platform that encourages, solicits, and facilitates the creation and dissemination of illicit and non-consensual sexually explicit content ... and allowed Snapchat to operate as a safe-haven from law enforcement."

​Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Snapchat:
​






InstagramPictured below: Instagram tests way to let you buy products directly on the app (Shopaholics rejoice!)
​Instagram is an American photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, Inc. It was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 2010 on iOS.

A version for Android devices was released in April 2012, followed by a feature-limited website interface in November 2012, a Fire OS app on June 15, 2014 and an app for Windows 10 tablets and computers in October 2016.

The app allows users to upload photos and videos, which can be edited with filters and organized with tags and location information. Posts can be shared publicly or with pre-approved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, and view trending content. Users can like photos and follow other users to add their content to a feed.

Instagram was originally distinguished by only allowing content to be framed in a square (1:1) aspect ratio with 640 pixels to match the display width of the iPhone at the time. These restrictions were eased in 2015, with an increase to 1080 pixels.

The service also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post, as well as "Stories"—similar to its main competitor Snapchat—which allows users to post photos and videos to a sequential feed, with each post accessible by others for 24 hours each.

As of January 2019, the Stories feature is used by 500 million users daily.

After its launch in 2010, Instagram rapidly gained popularity, with one million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 1 billion as of May 2019.

In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. As of October 2015, over 40 billion photos had been uploaded. Although praised for its influence, Instagram has been the subject of criticism, most notably for policy and interface changes, allegations of censorship, and illegal or improper content uploaded by users.

As of April 2020, the most followed person is footballer Cristiano Ronaldo with over 211 million followers, and the most followed woman is singer Ariana Grande with over 180 million followers.

As of January 14, 2019, the most liked photo on Instagram is a picture of an egg, posted by the account @world_record_egg, created with the sole purpose of surpassing the previous record of 18 million likes on a Kylie Jenner post. The picture currently has over 54 million likes. Instagram was the 4th most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.

Features and Tools:

​Users can upload photographs and short videos, follow other users' feeds, and geotag images with the name of a location.

Users can set their account as "private", thereby requiring that they approve any new follower requests. Users can connect their Instagram account to other social networking sites, enabling them to share uploaded photos to those sites. In September 2011, a new version of the app included new and live filters, instant tilt–shift, high-resolution photographs, optional borders, one-click rotation, and an updated icon. 

Photos were initially restricted to a square, 1:1 aspect ratio; since August 2015, the app supports portrait and widescreen aspect ratios as well. Users could formerly view a map of a user's geotagged photos. The feature was removed in September 2016, citing low usage.

Since December 2016, posts can be "saved" into a private area of the app. The feature was updated in April 2017 to let users organize saved posts into named collections. Users can also "archive" their posts in a private storage area, out of visibility for the public and other users.

The move was seen as a way to prevent users from deleting photos that don't garner a desired number of "likes" or are deemed boring, but also as a way to limit the "emergent behavior" of deleting photos, which deprives the service of content. In August, Instagram announced that it would start organizing comments into threads, letting users more easily interact with replies.

Since February 2017, up to ten pictures or videos can be included in a single post, with the content appearing as a swipeable carousel. The feature originally limited photos to the square format, but received an update in August to enable portrait and landscape photos instead.

In April 2018, Instagram launched its version of a portrait mode called "focus mode," which gently blurs the background of a photo or video while keeping the subject in focus when selected. In November, Instagram began to support Alt text to add descriptions of photos for the visually impaired. They are either generated automatically using object recognition (using existing Facebook technology) or manually specified by the uploader.

Hashtags:

In January 2011, Instagram introduced hashtags to help users discover both photos and each other. Instagram encourages users to make tags both specific and relevant, rather than tagging generic words like "photo", to make photographs stand out and to attract like-minded Instagram users.

Users on Instagram have created "trends" through hashtags. The trends deemed the most popular on the platform often highlight a specific day of the week to post the material on.

Examples of popular trends include #SelfieSunday, in which users post a photo of their faces on Sundays; #MotivationMonday, in which users post motivational photos on Mondays; #TransformationTuesday, in which users post photos highlighting differences from the past to the present; #WomanCrushWednesday, in which users post photos of women they have a romantic interest in or view favorably, as well as its #ManCrushMonday counterpart centered on men; and #ThrowbackThursday, in which users post a photo from their past, highlighting a particular moment.

In December 2017, Instagram began to allow users to follow hashtags, which display relevant highlights of the topic in their feeds.

Explore:

In June 2012, Instagram introduced "Explore", a tab inside the app that displays popular photos, photos taken at nearby locations, and search. The tab was updated in June 2015 to feature trending tags and places, curated content, and the ability to search for locations.

In April 2016, Instagram added a "Videos You Might Like" channel to the tab, followed by an "Events" channel in August, featuring videos from concerts, sports games, and other live events, followed by the addition of Instagram Stories in October. The tab was later expanded again in November 2016 after Instagram Live launched to display an algorithmically-curated page of the "best" Instagram Live videos currently airing.

In May 2017, Instagram once again updated the Explore tab to promote public Stories content from nearby places.

Photographic filters:

Instagram offers a number of photographic filters that users can apply to their images:
  • Normal: No filter applied.
  • 1977: The increased exposure with a red tint gives the photograph a rosy, brighter, faded look.
  • Amaro: Adds light to an image, with the focus on the center.
  • Brannan: Increases contrast and exposure and adds a metallic tint.
  • Earlybird: Gives photographs an older look with a sepia tint and warm temperature.
  • Hefe: High contrast and saturation, with a similar effect to Lo-Fi but not quite as dramatic.
  • Hudson: Creates an "icy" illusion with heightened shadows, a cool tint and a dodged center.
  • Inkwell: Direct shift to black-and-white – no extra editing.
  • Kelvin: Increases saturation and temperature to give it a radiant "glow".
  • Lo-fi: Enriches color and adds strong shadows through the use of saturation and "warming" the temperature.
  • Mayfair: Applies a warm pink tone, subtle vignetting to brighten the photograph center and a thin black border.
  • Nashville: Warms the temperature, lowers contrast and increases exposure to give a light "pink" tint – making it feel "nostalgic".
  • Rise: Adds a "glow" to the image, with softer lighting of the subject.
  • Sierra: Gives a faded, softer look.
  • Sutro: Burns photo edges, increases highlights and shadows dramatically with a focus on purple and brown colors.
  • Toaster: Ages the image by "burning" the center and adds a dramatic vignette.
  • Valencia: Fades the image by increasing exposure and warming the colors, to give it an antique feel.
  • Walden: Increases exposure and adds a yellow tint.
  • Willow: A monochromatic filter with subtle purple tones and a translucent white border.
  • X-Pro II: Increases color vibrancy with a golden tint, high contrast and slight vignette added to the edges.
  • Slumber: Desaturates the image as well as adds haze for a retro, dreamy look – with an emphasis on blacks and blues.
  • Cream: Adds a creamy look that both warms and cools the image.
  • Ludwig: A slight hint of desaturation that also enhances light.
  • Aden: This filter gives a blue/green natural look.
  • Perpetua: Adding a pastel look, this filter is ideal for portraits.
  • Clarendon: Intensifies shadows and brightens highlights. Originally released as a video-only filter.
  • Gingham: Washes photos out. Gives a yellowish tone when used on dark photos or a brighter, dreamy look when used on light photos.
  • Moon: Black-and-white version of Gingham, with slightly more intense shadows.
  • Stinson: Subtle filter that brightens an image, washing out the colors slightly.
  • Crema: A vintage filter that desaturates images. Smooths and washes out skin tones.
  • Lark: Desaturates reds while punching up blues and greens – brings landscapes to life.
  • Reyes: Gives photos a dusty, vintage look.
  • Juno: Tints cool tones green, makes warm tones pop and whites glow – for vibrant photos of people.

In February 2012, Instagram added a "Lux" filter, an effect that "lightens shadows, darkens highlights and increases contrast".

In December 2014, Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Aden, and Perpetua were five new filters to be added to the Instagram filter family.

Video:

Initially a purely photo-sharing service, Instagram incorporated 15-second video sharing in June 2013. The addition was seen by some in the technology media as Facebook's attempt at competing with the then-popular video-sharing application Vine.

In August 2015, Instagram added support for widescreen videos. In March 2016, Instagram increased the 15-second video limit to 60 seconds. Albums were introduced in February 2017, which allow up to 10 minutes of video to be shared in one post.

IGTV:
Main article: IGTV

IGTV is a vertical video application launched by Instagram in June 2018. Basic functionality is also available within the Instagram app and website. IGTV allows uploads of up to 10 minutes in length with a file size of up to 650 MB, with verified and popular users allowed to upload videos of up to 60 minutes in length with a file size of up to 5.4 GB. 

The app automatically begins playing videos as soon as it is launched, which CEO Kevin Systrom contrasted to video hosts where one must first locate a video.

Instagram Direct:

In December 2013, Instagram announced Instagram Direct, a feature that lets users interact through private messaging. Users who follow each other can send private messages with photos and videos, in contrast to the public-only requirement that was previously in place.

When users receive a private message from someone they don't follow, the message is marked as pending and the user must accept to see it. Users can send a photo to a maximum of 15 people.

The feature received a major update in September 2015, adding conversation threading and making it possible for users to share locations, hashtag pages, and profiles through private messages directly from the news feed. Additionally, users can now reply to private messages with text, emoji or by clicking on a heart icon. A camera inside Direct lets users take a photo and send it to the recipient without leaving the conversation.

A new update in November 2016 let users make their private messages "disappear" after being viewed by the recipient, with the sender receiving a notification if the recipient takes a screenshot. In April 2017, Instagram redesigned Direct to combine all private messages, both permanent and ephemeral, into the same message threads. 

In May, Instagram made it possible to send website links in messages, and also added support for sending photos in their original portrait or landscape orientation without cropping.

Instagram Stories:

In August 2016, Instagram launched Instagram Stories, a feature that allows users to take photos, add effects and layers, and add them to their Instagram story. Images uploaded to a user's story expire after 24 hours. The media noted the feature's similarities to Snapchat. 

In response to criticism that it copied functionality from Snapchat, CEO Kevin Systrom told Recode that "Day One: Instagram was a combination of Hipstamatic, Twitter [and] some stuff from Facebook like the 'Like' button. You can trace the roots of every feature anyone has in their app, somewhere in the history of technology".

Although Systrom acknowledged the criticism as "fair", Recode wrote that "he likened the two social apps' common features to the auto industry: Multiple car companies can coexist, with enough differences among them that they serve different consumer audiences".

Systrom further stated that "When we adopted [Stories], we decided that one of the really annoying things about the format is that it just kept going and you couldn't pause it to look at something, you couldn't rewind. We did all that, we implemented that." He also told the publication that Snapchat "didn't have filters, originally.

They adopted filters because Instagram had filters and a lot of others were trying to adopt filters as well."

In November, Instagram added live video functionality to Instagram Stories, allowing users to broadcast themselves live, with the video disappearing immediately after ending.

In January 2017, Instagram launched skippable ads, where five-second photo and 15-second video ads appear in-between different stories.

In April 2017, Instagram Stories incorporated augmented reality stickers, a "clone" of Snapchat's functionality.

In May 2017, Instagram expanded the augmented reality sticker feature to support face filters, letting users add specific visual features onto their faces.

Later in May, TechCrunch reported about tests of a Location Stories feature in Instagram Stories, where public Stories content at a certain location are compiled and displayed on a business, landmark or place's Instagram page.

A few days later, Instagram announced "Story Search", in which users can search for geographic locations or hashtags and the app displays relevant public Stories content featuring the search term.

In June 2017, Instagram revised its live-video functionality to allow users to add their live broadcast to their story for availability in the next 24 hours, or discard the broadcast immediately. In July, Instagram started allowing users to respond to Stories content by sending photos and videos, complete with Instagram effects such as filters, stickers, and hashtags.

Stories were made available for viewing on Instagram's mobile and desktop websites in late August 2017.

On December 5, 2017, Instagram introduced “Story Highlights”, also known as “Permanent Stories”, which are similar to Instagram Stories, but don't expire. They appear as circles below the profile picture and biography and are accessible from the desktop website as well.

In June 2018, the daily active story users of Instagram had reached 400 million users, and monthly active users had reached 1 billion active users.

Advertising:

Emily White joined Instagram as Director of Business Operations in April 2013 She stated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September 2013 that the company should be ready to begin selling advertising by September 2014 as a way to generate business from a popular entity that had not yet created profit for its parent company.

White left Instagram in December 2013 to join Snapchat. In August 2014, James Quarles became Instagram's Global Head of Business and Brand Development, tasked with overseeing advertisement, sales efforts and developing new "monetization products." according to a spokesperson.

In October 2013, Instagram announced that video and image ads would soon appear in feeds for users in the United States, with the first image advertisements displaying on November 1, 2013.

Video ads followed nearly a year later on October 30, 2014. In June 2014, Instagram announced the rollout of ads in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, with ads starting to roll out that autumn.

In March 2015, Instagram announced it would implement "carousel ads," allowing advertisers to display multiple images with options for linking to additional content. The company launched carousel image ads in October 2015, and video carousel ads in March 2016.

In May 2016, Instagram launched new tools for business accounts, including business profiles, analytics and the ability to promote posts as ads. To access the tools, businesses had to link a corresponding Facebook page. The new analytics page, known as Instagram Insights, allowed business accounts to view top posts, reach, impressions, engagement and demographic data. 

Insights rolled out first in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and expanded to the rest of the world later in 2016.

In February 2016, Instagram announced that it had 200,000 advertisers on the platform. This number increased to 500,000 by September 2016, and 1 million in March 2017.

In November 2018, Instagram added the ability for business accounts to add product links directing users to a purchase page or to save them to a "shopping list."  In April 2019,

Instagram added the option to "Checkout on Instagram," which allows merchants to sell products directly through the Instagram app. 

In March 2020, via a blog post, Instagram announced that they are making major moderation changes in order to decrease the flow of disinformation, hoaxes and fake news regarding COVID-19 on its platform,

"We'll remove COVID-19 accounts from account recommendations, and we are working to remove some COVID-19 related content from Explore unless posted by a credible health organization. We will also start to downrank content in feed and Stories that has been rated false by third-party fact-checkers."

Stand-alone apps:

Instagram has developed and released three stand-alone apps with specialized functionality.

In July 2014, it released Bolt, a messaging app where users click on a friend's profile photo to quickly send an image, with the content disappearing after being seen. It was followed by the release of Hyperlapse in August, an iOS-exclusive app that uses "clever algorithm processing" to create tracking shots and fast time-lapse videos.

Microsoft launched a Hyperlapse app for Android and Windows in May 2015, but there has been no official Hyperlapse app from Instagram for either of these platforms to date. In October 2015, it released Boomerang, a video app that combines photos into short, one-second videos that play back-and-forth in a loop.

Third-party services:

The popularity of Instagram has led to a variety of third-party services designed to integrate with it, including services for creating content to post on the service and generating content from Instagram photos (including physical print-outs), analytics, and alternative clients for platforms with insufficient or no official support from Instagram (such as in the past, iPads).

In November 2015, Instagram announced that effective June 1, 2016, it would end "feed" API access to its platform in order to "maintain control for the community and provide a clear roadmap for developers" and "set up a more sustainable environment built around authentic experiences on the platform", including those oriented towards content creation, publishers, and advertisers.

It was reported that these changes were primarily intended to discourage third-party clients replicating the entire Instagram experience (due to increasing monetization of the service), and security reasons (such as preventing abuse by automated click farms, and the hijacking of accounts). In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Instagram began to impose further restrictions on its API in 2018.

User characteristics and behavior​:

Users:
See also: List of most-followed Instagram accounts

Following the release in October, Instagram had one million registered users in December 2010. In June 2011, it announced that it had 5 million users, which increased to 10 million in September. 

​This growth continued to:
  • 30 million users in April 2012,
  •  80 million in July 2012
  • 100 million in February 2013,
  • 130 million in June 2013,
  • 150 million in September 2013,
  • 300 million in December 2014,
  • 400 million in September 2015,
  • 500 million in June 2016,
  • 600 million in December 2016,
  • 700 million in April 2017,[
  • and 800 million in September 2017.

In October 2016, Instagram Stories reached 100 million active users, two months after launch. This increased to 150 million in January 2017, 200 million in April, surpassing Snapchat's user growth, and 250 million active users in June 2017.

In April 2017, Instagram Direct had 375 million monthly users.

In June 2011, Instagram passed 100 million photos uploaded to the service. This grew to 150 million in August 2011, and by June 2013, there were over 16 billion photos on the service. 

In October 2015, there existed over 40 billion photos.

Demographics:

Instagram's users are divided equally with 50% iPhone owners and 50% Android owners. While Instagram has a neutral gender-bias format, 68% of Instagram users are female while 32% are male.

Instagram's geographical use is shown to favor urban areas as 17% of US adults who live in urban areas use Instagram while only 11% of adults in suburban and rural areas do so. While Instagram may appear to be one of the most widely used sites for photo sharing, only 7% of daily photo uploads, among the top four photo-sharing platforms, come from Instagram.

Instagram has been proven to attract the younger generation with 90% of the 150 million users under the age of 35. From June 2012 to June 2013, Instagram approximately doubled their number of users.

With regards to income, 15% of US Internet users who make less than $30,000 per year use Instagram, while 14% of those making $30,000 to $50,000, and 12% of users who make more than $50,000 per year do so.

With respect to the education demographic, respondents with some college education proved to be the most active on Instagram with 23%. Following behind, college graduates consist of 18% and users with a high school diploma or less make up 15%. Among these Instagram users, 24% say they use the app several times a day.

User behavior:

Ongoing research continues to explore how media content on the platform affects user engagement. Past research has found that media which show peoples' faces receive more 'likes' and comments and that using filters that increase warmth, exposure, and contrast also boosts engagement.

Users are more likely to engage with images that depict fewer individuals compared to groups and also are more likely to engage with content that has not been watermarked, as they view this content as less original and reliable compared to user-generated content.

Recently Instagram has come up with an option for users to apply for a verified account badge, however this does not guarantee every user who applies will get the verified blue tick.

The motives for using Instagram among young people are mainly to look at posts, particularly for the sake of social interactions and recreation. In contrast, the level of agreement expressed in creating Instagram posts was lower, which demonstrates that

Instagram's emphasis on visual communication is widely accepted by young people in social communication.

Impact

Awards:

Instagram was the runner-up for "Best Mobile App" at the 2010 TechCrunch Crunchies in January 2011.

In May 2011, Fast Company listed CEO Kevin Systrom at number 66 in "The 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2011".

In June 2011, Inc. included co-founders Systrom and Krieger in its 2011 "30 Under 30" list.

​Instagram won "Best Locally Made App" in the SF Weekly Web Awards in September 2011.

7x7Magazine's September 2011 issue featured Systrom and Krieger on the cover of their "The Hot 20 2011" issue.

In December 2011, Apple Inc. named Instagram the "App of the Year" for 2011.

In 2015, Instagram was named No. 1 by Mashable on its list of "The 100 best iPhone apps of all time," noting Instagram as "one of the most influential social networks in the world."

Instagram was listed among Time's "50 Best Android Applications for 2013" list.

Mental health:

In May 2017, a survey conducted by the United Kingdom's Royal Society for Public Health, featuring 1,479 people aged 14–24, asking them to rate social media platforms depending on anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying and body image, concluded that Instagram was the "worst for young mental health".

Some have suggested it may contribute to digital dependence, whist this same survey noticed its positive effects, including self-expression, self-identity, and community building. In response to the survey,

Instagram stated that "Keeping Instagram a safe and supportive place for young people was a top priority". The company filters out the reviews and accounts. If some of the accounts violate Instagram's community guidelines, it will take action, which could include banning them.

In 2017, researchers from Harvard University and University of Vermont demonstrated a machine learning tool that successfully outperformed general practitioners' diagnostic success rate for depression. The tool used color analysis, metadata components, and face detection of users' feeds.

Throughout 2019, Instagram began to test the hiding of like counts for posts made by its users.

Negative comments:

In response to abusive and negative comments on users' photos, Instagram has made efforts to give users more control over their posts and accompanying comments field.

In July 2016, it announced that users would be able to turn off comments for their posts, as well as control the language used in comments by inputting words they consider offensive, which will ban applicable comments from showing up.

After the July 2016 announcement, the ability to ban specific words began rolling out early August to celebrities, followed by regular users in September. In December, the company began rolling out the abilities for users to turn off the comments and, for private accounts, remove followers.

In September 2017, the company announced that public users would be able to limit who can comment on their content, such as only their followers or people they follow. At the same time, it updated its automated comment filter to support additional languages.

In June 2017, Instagram announced that it would automatically attempt to filter offensive, harassing, and "spammy" comments by default. The system is built using a Facebook-developed deep learning algorithm known as DeepText (first implemented on the social network to detect spam comments), which utilizes natural-language processing techniques, and can also filter by user-specified keywords.

In July 2019, the service announced that it would introduce a system to proactively detect problematic comments and encourage the user to reconsider their comment, as well as allowing users the ability to "restrict" others' abilities to communicate with them, citing that younger users felt the existing block system was too much of an escalation.

Culture:

On August 9, 2012, English musician Ellie Goulding released a new music video for her song "Anything Could Happen." The video only contained fan-submitted Instagram photographs that used various filters to represent words or lyrics from the song, and over 1,200 different photographs were submitted.

Censorship and restricted content:

According to a Facebook spokesperson, on 11 January 2020, Instagram and its parent company Facebook are picking up posts "that voice support for slain Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani to comply with US sanctions".

Illicit drugs:

Instagram has been the subject of criticism due to users publishing images of drugs they are selling on the platform. In 2013, the BBC discovered that users, mostly located in the United States, were posting images of drugs they were selling, attaching specific hashtags, and then completing transactions via instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp.

Corresponding hashtags have been blocked as part of the company's response and a spokesperson engaged with the BBC explained: "Instagram has a clear set of rules about what is and isn't allowed on the site. We encourage people who come across illegal or inappropriate content to report it to us using the built-in reporting tools next to every photo, video or comment, so we can take action. People can't buy things on Instagram, we are simply a place where people share photos and videos."

However, new incidents of illegal drug trade have occurred in the aftermath of the 2013 revelation, with Facebook, Instagram's parent company, asking users who come across such content to report the material, at which time a "dedicated team" reviews the information.

In 2019, Facebook announced that influencers are no longer able to post any vape, tobacco products, and weapons promotions on Facebook and Instagram.

Women's bodies:

In October 2013, Instagram deleted the account of Canadian photographer Petra Collins after she posted a photo of herself in which a very small area of pubic hair was visible above the top of her bikini bottom. Collins claimed that the account deletion was unfounded because it did not break any of Instagram's terms and conditions.

Audra Schroeder of The Daily Dot further wrote that "Instagram's terms of use state users can't post "pornographic or sexually suggestive photos," but who actually gets to decide that?

You can indeed find more sexually suggestive photos on the site than Collins', where women show the side of "femininity" the world is "used to" seeing and accepting."

Nick Drewe of The Daily Beast wrote a report the same month focusing on hashtags that users are unable to search for, including #sex, #bubblebutt, and #ballsack, despite allowing #faketits, #gunsforsale and #sexytimes, calling the discrepancy "nonsensical and inconsistent".

Similar incidents occurred in January 2015, when Instagram deleted Australian fashion agency Sticks and Stones Agency's account because of a photograph including pubic hair sticking out of bikini bottoms, and March 2015, when artist and poet Rupi Kaur's photos of menstrual blood on clothing were removed, prompting a rallying post on her Facebook and Tumblr accounts with the text "We will not be censored", gaining over 11,000 shares.

The incidents have led to a #FreetheNipple campaign, aimed at challenging Instagram's removal of photos displaying women's nipples. Although Instagram has not made many comments on the campaign, an October 2015 explanation from CEO Kevin Systrom highlighted Apple's content guidelines for apps published through its App Store, including Instagram, in which apps must designate the appropriate age ranking for users, with the app's current rating being 12+ years of age.

However, this statement has also been called into question due to other apps with more explicit content allowed on the store, the lack of consequences for men exposing their bodies on Instagram, and for inconsistent treatment of what constitutes inappropriate exposure of the female body.

Censorship by countries:
​​
Censorship of Instagram has occurred in several different countries:

China
See also: Internet censorship in China

Instagram has been blocked by China following the 2014 Hong Kong protests because a lot of videos and photos are posted. Hong Kong and Macau were not affected as they are special administrative regions of China.

Turkey:

Turkey is also known for its strict Internet censorship and periodically blocks social media including Instagram.

North Korea
See also: Internet in North Korea

A few days after a fire incident that happened in the Koryo Hotel in North Korea in June 11, 2015, authorities began to block Instagram to prevent photos of the incident from being spread out.

Criticism

Security:

In August 2017, reports surfaced that a bug in Instagram's developer tools had allowed "one or more individuals" to gain access to the contact information, specifically email addresses and phone numbers, of several high-profile verified accounts, including its most followed user, Selena Gomez.

The company said in a statement that it had "fixed the bug swiftly" and was running an investigation. However, the following month, more details emerged, with a group of hackers selling contact information online, with the affected number of accounts in the "millions" rather than the previously-assumed limitation on verified accounts.

Hours after the hack, a searchable database was posted online, charging $10 per search. The Daily Beast was provided with a sample of the affected accounts, and could confirm that, while many of the email addresses could be found with a Google search in public sources, some did not return relevant Google search results and thus were from private sources.

The Verge wrote that cybersecurity firm RepKnight had found contact information for multiple actors, musicians, and athletes, and singer Selena Gomez's account was used by the hackers to post naked photos of her ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber.

The company admitted that "we cannot determine which specific accounts may have been impacted", but believed that "it was a low percentage of Instagram accounts", though TechCrunch stated in its report that six million accounts were affected by the hack, and that "Instagram services more than 700 million accounts; six million is not a small number".

In 2019, Apple pulled an app that let users stalk people on Instagram by scraping accounts and collecting data.

Content ownership:

On December 17, 2012, Instagram announced a change to its Terms of Service policy, adding the following sentence:

"To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."

There was no option for users to opt out of the changed Terms of Service without deleting their accounts before the new policy went into effect on January 16, 2013.

The move garnered severe criticism from users, prompting Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom to write a blog post one day later, announcing that they would "remove" the offending language from the policy.

Citing misinterpretations about its intention to "communicate that we'd like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram", Systrom also stated that it was "our mistake that this language is confusing" and that "it is not our intention to sell your photos". Furthermore, he wrote that they would work on "updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear".

The policy change and its backlash caused competing photo services to use the opportunity to "try to lure users away" by promoting their privacy-friendly services, and some services experienced substantial gains in momentum and user growth following the news.

On December 20, Instagram announced that the advertising section of the policy would be reverted to its original October 2010 version. 

The Verge wrote about that policy as well, however, noting that the original policy gives the company right to "place such advertising and promotions on the Instagram Services or on, about, or in conjunction with your Content", meaning that "Instagram has always had the right to use your photos in ads, almost any way it wants. We could have had the exact same freak-out last week, or a year ago, or the day Instagram launched".

The policy update also introduced an arbitration clause, which remained even after the language pertaining to advertising and user content had been modified.

Algorithm and design changes:

In April 2016, Instagram began rolling out a change to the order of photos visible in a user's timeline, shifting from a strictly chronological order to one determined by an algorithm.

Instagram said the algorithm was designed so that users would see more of the photos by users that they liked, but there was significant negative feedback, with many users asking their followers to turn on post notifications in order to make sure they see updates.

The company wrote a tweet to users upset at the prospect of the change, but did not back down, nor provide a way to change it back.

Since 2017, Instagram has employed the ability to reduce the prominence of accounts ("shadowbanning") it believes may be generating non-genuine engagement and spam (including excessive use of unneeded hashtags), preventing posts from appearing in search results and in the app's Explore section.

In a now-deleted Facebook post, Instagram wrote that "When developing content, we recommend focusing on your business objective or goal rather than hashtags".

Instagram has since been accused of extending the practice to censor posts under vague and inconsistent circumstances, particularly in regards to sexually suggestive material.

Instagram caused the userbase to fall into outrage, with the December 2018 update. They found an attempt to alter the flow of the feed from the traditional vertical scroll to emulate and piggy-back the popularity of their Instagram Stories with a horizontal scroll, by swiping left. Various backtracking statements were released explaining it as a bug, or as a test release that had been accidentally deployed to too large an audience.

Facebook acquisition as a violation of US antitrust law:

Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu has given public talks explaining that Facebook's 2012 purchase of Instagram was a felony. A New York Post article published on February 26, 2019, reported that "the FTC had uncovered [a document] by a high-ranking Facebook executive who said the reason the company was buying Instagram was to eliminate a potential competitor"

As Wu explains, this is a violation of US antitrust law (see monopoly). Wu stated that this document was an email directly from Mark Zuckerberg, whereas the Post article had stated that their source had declined to say whether the high-ranking executive was the CEO.

The article reported that the FTC "has formed a task force to review “anti-competitive conduct” in the tech world amid concerns that tech companies are growing too powerful. The task force will look at “the full panoply of remedies” if it finds “competitive harm,” FTC competition bureau director Bruce Hoffman told reporters."

Algorithmic advertisement with a rape threat:

In 2016, Olivia Solon, a reporter for The Guardian, posted a screenshot to her Instagram profile of an email she had received containing threats of rape and murder towards her. The photo post had received three likes and countless comments, and in September 2017, the company's algorithms turned the photo into an advertisement visible to Solon's sister.

An Instagram spokesperson apologized and told The Guardian that "We are sorry this happened – it's not the experience we want someone to have. This notification post was surfaced as part of an effort to encourage engagement on Instagram. Posts are generally received by a small percentage of a person's Facebook friends".

As noted by the technology media, the incident occurred at the same time parent company Facebook was under scrutiny for its algorithms and advertising campaigns being used for offensive and negative purposes.

In popular culture:
  • Social Animals (documentary film): A documentary film about three teenagers growing up on Instagram.
  • Instagram model: a term for models who gain their success as a result of the large number of followers they have on Instagram.
  • Instagram Pier: a cargo working area in Hong Kong that gained its nickname due to its popularity on Instagram.
  • Instatoon: cartoons which are on Instagram called in Korea

See also:







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