Five for Friday: Facebook Aims to Please, Amazon Goes the Way of Uber, & More!
June 19th, 2015 by
1. Facebook Update Takes Into Account Time Spent Reading Stories – Search Engine Journal
Facebook looks to be taking the next step forward in studying user behavior. The social networking giant is now directly measuring user activity and engagement, even when the user isn’t interacting with content. How important to us are news stories that we just want to skim? The next time you stop scrolling to look over a story, you are casting a silent vote for that type of content in comparison to other stories in your feed. Facebook has already rolled this update out, which means you no longer have to comment on or like a story for your feed to be modified. If you feel like you’ve been seeing more of what you want to see, well, you probably are.
2. Twitter Makes Your Conversations Easier to Follow – Mashable
Having trouble following that long chain of tweets and retweets? Good news! Reading Twitter discussions will no longer test your mental sorting abilities. Dialogues are now conveniently grouped for maximum readability. If you have frequently wondered who is talking to whom, fret no more! Talks are joined by a single solid line.
3. Google Uses Sitelinks Based on Significance – SEO by the Sea
Google, acting as the undisputed market leader in search, is continually looking to improve the way their search performs. In a patent granted earlier last week, Google now seeks to identify the most “visually and/or functionally significant hyperlinks within the document.” This means that the location a link points to isn’t the only attribute considered when Google thinks about links, but where a link visually is on a page matters as well.
4. Amazon Debates Paying People for Deliveries – The Wall Street Journal
A big part of Amazon’s costs come from shipping, so it seems only natural they should be seeking to cut costs. Only, this time it isn’t drones: Amazon would like to turn every potential income-seeking individual into an Uber-like delivery driver.
5. European Sites Are Declared Liable for User Comments – Techdirt
On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that sites can be declared liable for what any random user posts on them. This has massive implications for sites that allow users to regularly post content. What lies in the future of censorship?
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