Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Ashleigh.
1.Does Facebook really know how teenagers feel?
It was leaked this week that Facebook might be able to monitor the emotions of vulnerable teenagers, to provide the data to advertisers.
These can be feelings of self worth, ie ‘looking good’ etc. or other emotions such as ‘overwhelmed, defeated, stressed, anxious, nervous, stupid, silly, useless or a failure’.
A 23-page document labelled as ‘Confidential: Internal Only’ and dated 2017 about what they are calling ‘sentiment analysis’ was obtained by The Australian newspaper and contained detailed information about Facebook users as young as 14.
2. Google and Facebook generate 20% of the world’s ad revenue
The two advertising giants’ combined revenue hit $106.3bn last year, two times the figure of five years ago, and just shy of one fifth of the global advertising spend in 2016, up from 16.3% in 2015 and 10.6% in 2012.
Online advertising has pipped TV to the post when it comes to largest advertising medium, according to data and analysis agency, Zenith; and Twitter was the fastest growing media owner between 2012 and 2016.
3. Prince Philip is dead!?!
Well that’s what The Sun mistakenly reported this week.
The story was published following the Queen’s call for an emergency meeting, which was actually to report that Prince Philip was alive and well but has decided to step down from his royal duties and retire at the ripe old year of 95. Can you blame him?
4. New HTML5 games now available in Facebook Messenger
Facebook has rolled out ‘Instant Games’ within Facebook Messenger, with no need for downloads from the app stores.
Now available globally, after first launching in the US in November, there are around 50 titles available including, Pac-Man and 8 Ball Pool.
To start with there will be no ads in the games, but it probably won’t be long until they are monetising them, if they are a success.
For more information visit: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/02/messenger-games/
5. Surfer survives 32 hours at sea with just his surfboard for company
Glaswegian Mathew Bryce was extremely lucky to be found alive, a whopping 13 miles from the Scottish shore, after setting off from Machrihanish beach 32 hours previous.
He was found by the Belfast Coastguard after being in the water from 11:30 on Sunday to 19:30 on Monday. Luckily, “he was kitted out with all the right clothing including a thick neoprene suit and this must have helped him to survive for so long at sea” said Dawn Petrie, from the coastguard. After being lifted from the water into the helicopter he was flown to hospital in Belfast, hypothermic but conscious, and is very grateful to the coastguard, RNLI volunteers and police officers involved in his rescue.
For footage of the rescue, visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-39774208
