If you’re shipping a Rift title in Q1, you’ll need early access to Rift hardware and new platform features to finalize your game or application. The Rift SDK 1.0 and runtime include features tied to the consumer product, so we’ve currently limited the release to developers putting final touches on launch titles.

If you’re planning a launch title and don’t yet have hardware, you can now upload a preview of your app through the Oculus submission tool, and we’ll be in touch with next steps.

We’re shipping more Rift hardware out to developers every week in the run up to launch. In the meantime, DK2 and SDK 0.8 continue to be the right platform for early Rift development — you only need SDK 1.0 if you’re imminently shipping.

We’re looking forward to seeing your VR experiences on Rift when it launches in Q1!

— The Oculus Team

As a reminder, every Rift comes bundled with Lucky’s Tale by Playful, and we’re also including CCP’s EVE: Valkyrie for free with every pre-order!

This is going to be an exciting week for VR, so Oculus founder Palmer Luckey will be answering all your questions during a Reddit AMA this Wednesday, January 6 at 6pm Pacific Time. We look forward to hearing from you.

Stay tuned for more updates this week. We can’t wait to share what’s coming next!

Remember how mad the internet got when news broke that Facebook had covertly turned 700,000 of its users into unwilling test subjects for an experiment on "emotional contagion"?

Facebook doesn't.

Either that, or, perhaps more likely, the company hadn't considered that people would ever find out they'd been messed with in the name of data again.

A report published this week by San Francisco-based tech publication The Information has industry journalists and casual Facebook users alike shaking their heads over what the social network is now alleged to have done in an effort to glean information: Make its own Android app crash, on purpose, to see how people would react.

"Facebook has tested the loyalty and patience of Android users by secretly introducing artificial errors that would automatically crash the app for hours at a time" writes veteran tech reporter Amir Efrati for The Information, referring to Facebook's app in the Google Play store.

"The purpose of the test, which happened several years ago, was to see at what threshold would a person ditch the Facebook app altogether," he continues. "The company wasn't able to reach the threshold. … Even if the native app continued to not work, the users would open Facebook on their phone's mobile browser."

But not before letting everyone know how annoyed they were, judging by the volume tweets about Facebook Android app crashes in recent years (though it is not known if these crashes occurred as a result of any experiments.)

A representative from Facebook Canada responded to a CBC News by email Wednesday morning after being asked about the report.

"At this time we do not have a statement to provide," wrote the PR rep. "However if that changes we will let you know."

The question of why Facebook would intentionally "sabotage" its own app, as some have put it, just to test how loyal users are can be answered by looking at the company's history with Google.

Facebook's rocky relationship with the search giant does in fact comprise most of The Information's now-viral report.

Specifically, it focuses on what Facebook is doing to prepare for a potential conflict with Google that would see its apps booted from the Android app store.

Finding out "how addicted Android phone users are to Facebook apps" was the company's way of testing its own independence from the Android operating system, which was being used by 1.4 billion people worldwide as of September.

The contentious app crash experiment took place "several years ago" according to Efrati, who spoke with "people who have been involved in different parts" of Facebook's Android strategy for his report.

One of said people also told him that it was a "one-time experiment." The number of users subjected to intentional app crashing is not known at this point.

Still, as news circulates that Facebook may have experimented on its own users – again – shock, anger and disbelief is percolating among those following the story.

"You can't on one hand position your company as the place to declare your safety in the wake of terrorist attacks at the same time you're selectively disabling access to your own service," wrote The Verge's Casey Newton of the Facebook app crash report.

"Perhaps this experiment was controversial inside Facebook itself — it would help explain why it was apparently a one-off test. Maybe the company's ethical standards have evolved over time," he continued. "What's troublesome is that we simply don't know, because Facebook itself won't say."

The current version of Facebook's data use policy says that the company collects information "from or about the computers, phones, or other devices where you install or access our Services, depending on the permissions you've granted."

"We are able to deliver our Services, personalize content, and make suggestions for you by using this information to understand how you use and interact with our Services and the people or things you're connected to and interested in on and off our Services," the policy reads. "We conduct surveys and research, test features in development, and analyze the information we have to evaluate and improve products and services, develop new products or features, and conduct audits and troubleshooting activities."

the company reported that it earned 79 cents per share on $5.84 billion in revenue in the quarter ending in december, 2015. The highest estimates on the street had called for earnings of 75 cents and revenue of $5.67 billion, according to data from thomson reuters.
On average, analysts had expected facebook to report earnings of about 68 cents a share on $5.37 billion in revenue, according to thomson reuters.

The company announced the three-for-one stock split to create a new class of non-voting shares in a filing Wednesday at the same time that it announced first-quarter earnings. With the split, Facebook shareholders will receive two non-voting shares for each single share they hold.
Shareholders will vote on the proposal at the company's annual meeting on June 20.

The move lets Zuckerberg sell Class C shares to fund philanthropic endeavors without losing voting control of Facebook.

Google parent Alphabet made a similar move in 2014 and trades under two stock tickers.

Facebook Wants to Help Sell Every Ad on the Web

The social network will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

Facebook has set out to power all advertising across the Internet.

To that end, the social network and online advertising company said Thursday it will now help marketers show ads to all users who visit websites and applications in its Audience Network ad network. Previously Facebook only showed ads to members of its social network when they visited those third-party properties.

“Publishers and app developers have some users who aren’t Facebook users. We think we can do a better job powering those ads,” said Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform.

Facebook disclosed in March that about 1.65 billion people now use the site each month. According to the International Telecommunication Union, a total of 3.17 billion people used the Internet globally in 2015.

To date, Facebook has only showed ads across its Audience Network to Facebook users, targeted based on information the company has collected about its users’ tastes and behaviors. Now Facebook plans to collect information about all Internet users, through “like” buttons and other pieces of code present on Web pages across the Internet. It will then use the information it collects to target ads to non-Facebook users.

“Our buttons and plugins send over basic information about users’ browsing sessions. For non-Facebook members, previously we didn’t use it. Now we’ll use it to better understand how to target those people,” Mr. Bosworth said.

One way it will do so is by placing small pieces of code on users’ devices called cookies, which can be used to identify them as they move around the Internet.

This type of tracking and ad targeting is now commonplace online and is already being employed by a wide range of online advertising networks and ad companies to help marketers place ads across the Internet.

But Facebook thinks it can use the technology and tactic more effectively than other online advertising companies, thanks largely to the enormous amount of data it has on its own users. That can help it spot patterns in people’s behaviors and better infer what a non-Facebook user might be interested in based on a relatively small amount of information, Mr. Bosworth said. Online advertisers sometimes refer to this tactic as “lookalike” targeting.

“Because we have a core audience of over a billion people [on Facebook] who we do understand, we have a greater opportunity than other companies using the same type of mechanism,” Mr. Bosworth said.

If widely used by publishers and media companies, the new feature could mean Facebook will have a hand in selling and placing a larger portion of online ads, which could help it generate additional revenue. The company generated over $17 billion in ad revenue in 2015.

Facebook gets an unspecified cut of the revenue from ads it sells through its Audience Network. Typically, the company takes a roughly 30% share and gives the rest to publishers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Marketers buying advertising across the Facebook Audience Network will have the option to not show ads to non-Facebook users if they wish, but that ad space will be included by default, the company said.

Instagram's user base grows to more than 500 million

SAN FRANCISCO, June 21 (Reuters) - Instagram now boasts more than 500 million users, more than 80 percent of whom are outside the United States, the company said on Tuesday, in a sign of the photo-sharing app's rapidly growing global reach.

The company owned by Facebook Inc had 400 million users last September. It has seen its user base more than double over the past two years. Instagram added that 300 million people used the app every day.

Instagram has quickly eclipsed its rivals, notably Twitter Inc, which has seen its user base stall at just above 300 million. Facebook has about 1.6 billion users.

Instagram has grown into one of the most popular social media apps worldwide and is expected to contribute significantly to Facebook's revenue, with research firm eMarketer predicting the company will generate $1.5 billion in ad revenue this year.

It is able to leverage Facebook's popular advertising technology and resources to target highly specific audiences.

Instagram said users shared on average more than 95 million photos and videos every day, with posts garnering 4.2 billion "likes" each day.

Instagram's ad business is growing even faster than Wall Street expected

With Facebook's second-quarter earnings right around the corner on July 27, Wall Street is taking stock of its estimates for the company's mammoth ads business.

One particularly bright spot: Instagram, the photo-sharing app that's owned by Facebook.

"Our conversations would suggest Instagram ad loads are rising faster than our initial expectations," UBS analyst Eric Sheridan wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday.

UBS has subsequently raised its estimate to $550 million in Instagram revenue for Q2.

Facebook doesn't actually break out Instagram's financial numbers, but Sheridan estimated that $330 million of its $5.38 billion in revenue last quarter came from the photo-sharing app.

"Given the momentum we have seen over the past 9 months (i.e., since the rollout of monetization) and the continued strength in Instagram user growth (reaching 500mm users in June), we are raising our full-year estimate for Instagram to $2.27bn for 2016," Sheridan wrote.

Given that Instagram started ramping up its ad business broadly last year, those numbers imply that Instagram has essentially created a $2 billion business in about a year.

The UBS estimates are quite a bit higher than another estimate we saw this week: SunTrust's Robert Peck pegs its revenue at about $1.5 billion in 2016 and about $3 billion in 2017. But it's in-line with the expectations of RBC's Mark Mahaney, who has called Instagram the "story of 2016" for Facebook, and thinks it could hit $2 billion in revenue by the end of the year.

Here's how UBS expects Instagram's revenue to continue to rocket:

July 20, 2016

Thank You! ♥ Messenger

People use Messenger to connect with the people and businesses they care most about. They make plans, share dreams, send payments, tell jokes, play games, let their loved ones know they’re thinking of them and much, much more. Today we are announcing that more than 1 billion people now use Facebook Messenger every month, making Messenger one of only a handful of apps worldwide that touch so many lives.

We’re grateful for all the people who are sending billions of messages every day and we hope to send 1 billion thank yous in the form of a new floating balloon gift that everyone can use to celebrate. Just send a balloon emoji to your friends to add a touch of whimsy and delight to any conversation.

We know that every message is important to you — no matter what you want to say — and our team is committed to building experiences you love and to making all the interactions in your life easier no matter who you are communicating with.

Thank you for using Messenger and being part of our one-billion-strong community.