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Everyone likes to get their news in different ways. How you enjoy learning about what’s happening in the world, or just in your town, will often depend on your lifestyle. Some people like to take in the news when they’re relaxing and have some time to really think about it. Others will read or listen to what they can while they’re on their daily commute or just waiting around for something else to happen. Here are some of the favorite ways for people to consume news.
Websites and Mobile Apps
It’s no secret that the internet has taken over when it comes to the media. You can’t get away from the internet, and sometimes it can be exhausting to be kept up to date with the news all the time. But mobile devices and various websites, from newspapers and media organizations to blogs, help us to check up on the news whenever we want.
Social Media
While social media posts often link to an external website, it’s still one of the ways many people get their news. In fact, thanks to the instantaneous nature of social media, many people hear about the latest stories on Twitter or Facebook before they see them confirmed elsewhere.
Television and Radio
Television and radio are still popular ways to hear about the news. Listening to the radio is great for many people while they’re driving. TV gives you a more visual way of learning about the news. And they can both be streamed over the internet.
Newspapers
Newspapers are still popular, both online and in print. They’re trying to keep up with the times, and many of them are managing.
Infographic Design By Cashfloat
Google Play has been on the scene since October 2008 and during this six-year period it has grown to be one of the two biggest mobile app platforms in the world – alongside the App Store created by Apple. Google Play services those who use Android phones and, having started as the relative underdog, now has 84.7% of the overall market share, as pointed out by CNET. Of course market share does not automatically ensure dominance, but there are other signs that Google Play could achieve this.
Although Android has this massive slice of the mobile market, at the moment the actual Google Play app platform only has 39% market share distribution, compared with 61% for the App Store . This translates into higher revenues from the App Store, but the overall app market is growing fast and Android is cutting into iOS revenues, as Google targets users of lower-end smartphones costing less than $200 with its apps. Alongside tablet users this has helped Google Play reach 90% of the total App Store downloads. However, the problem has been converting that into profits, as better-off iPhone users have been more inclined to buy apps, but making the Android OS free and targeting users of Samsung mobiles in South Korea and Japan particularly, is now helping Google close this gap. Google Play’s revenues rose to 38.5% of the App Store’s (compared with one tenth a year before), indicating that sales of Android games apps in these countries is proving effective.
It is not just games apps that are helping Google Play catch the App Store, and increase its share of the market even further, as educational ones are proving a big hit in schools. The likes of Google Apps for Education are becoming a fixture in US schools, showing that the company has a varied strategy. The impressive performance of Google Play since 2008 and the spread of Android phones around the world, suggests we should all Google Play to win. General interests such as fashion, movies, and sports app are also becoming increasingly popular, with many being developed by individuals and companies. For example for sports fans who enjoy to check the odds on matches there is a Sports Bet Predictor app. These are easily downloadable to devices from the play google page and contain all the necessary information such as the developers details and independent reviews to help you make an informative decision.
Facebook has decided to revamp its design, making its website look more like its Android and iOS mobile apps.
The refresh also introduces topic-specific alternatives to its news feed.
One consequence of the change is that adverts can take up more screen space, making them harder to ignore.
However, the project’s lead engineer denied ads were the redesign’s focus. He also played down suggestions that the move was intended to make people spend more time on the site.
Chris Struhar instead suggested his focus had been on stripping back the amount of information being shown on the news feed to make each post more “engaging”.
“One of the consistent themes we heard in feedback from people was that it felt cluttered and that there was lot happening on the page,” Chris Struhar said ahead of the official announcement.
“We wanted to clean up the page, declutter it, make it simpler, more modern and easier for people to use.
“I often compare this to a 1960s television with wood panelling, knobs around it and a tiny postage stamp-sized screen – and what we’re trying to do is take that same TV and translate it into a 40in HD experience.”
Facebook reported in January that 1.06 billion people were using its service at least once a month.
It also revealed that its profit for the last three months of 2012 was 79% down on the same period the previous year despite a rise in sales because of increased spending on research and development.
There are three key changes being made to Facebook:
- The website switches from a three-column format to two-columns letting the main news feed take up more space. This allows all posts – whether they are friends’ updates or adverts – to take up a bigger proportion of the web browser with more prominence given to images and video rather than text describing a link.
- A pop-out black bar is added to the left-hand side of the page. This contains app bookmarks, links to specific friends, the chat and calendar tools, and the live updates ticker.
- In addition to the standard news feed, users can select other alternative feeds. These include one which shows all the updates posted by friends rather than just the ones selected by Facebook’s algorithms; one dedicated to organizations and people the user “follows”; a page featuring only posted photos; and a music-themed feed containing updates from artists the user likes, concert announcements and details of songs their friends are listening to through services including Spotify and Rdio.
It is also noteworthy that the firm has now dropped its “facebook” logo which spelt out its full name, and replaced it with an “f” icon. This change had already been experienced by the selected group of users given early access to its Graph Search facility.
Facebook has decided to revamp its design, making its website look more like its Android and iOS mobile apps
Another tweak involves auto-generating maps to accompany posts about specific locations. This may encourage more members to use the mobile app’s GPS-powered check-in function which competes with Foursquare.
Investors and marketers will be keen to find out whether the alterations make users more likely to read and interact with paid content.
Facebook already knows that engagement with ads in its main news feed is greater than with those that appear on the right-hand side of its web browser. This column of adverts is absent from its mobile apps altogether.
Enlarging the news feed now allows a sponsored post to become by far the biggest element on the screen, taking up roughly a third of the page when viewed on a 13 in (33 cm) laptop display.
Another business-friendly change is that if a user “likes” an organization a horizontal banner photo is added to posts reporting the news in addition to the brand’s logo, making the update more eye-catching.
Chris Struhar acknowledged that sponsored posts from “liked” brands had become bigger, but added that it was not his intention to make users more likely to click them.
“This redesign doesn’t change anything about how people interact with ads on Facebook,” he said.
“We aren’t changing where adverts show up or what ads you see. We’re just trying to take all the content that you do see and make that bigger and more immersive and more engaging.”
Chris Struhar added that further amendments might be made once users had had a chance to provide feedback.
Facebook launches its own app store to promote mobile programs that operate using the social network.
Facebook said the App Center will become the “new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something” and other titles.
Developers will have the ability to charge a fee for apps sold in the store in the near future, Facebook said.
The announcement came as Facebook admitted growth in mobile use could hurt future advertising revenue.
Ahead of its initial public offering, Facebook told potential investors in a statement: “If users increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected.”
Facebook launches its own app store to promote mobile programs that operate using the social network
The App Center is expected to be rolled out globally in “the coming weeks”, said Facebook’s Aaron Brady in a post on the network’s developer blog.
“All developers should start preparing today to make sure their app is included for the launch,” he wrote.
However, Aaron Brady said the store was not designed to compete head-on with the likes of Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
“The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook – whether they’re on iOS, Android or the mobile web,” he wrote.
“From the mobile App Center, users can browse apps that are compatible with their device, and if a mobile app requires installation, they will be sent to download the app from the App Store or Google Play.”
Only apps which make use of Facebook’s log-in system Connect are eligible to be included in the store.
Saverio Romeo, an industry analyst from Frost & Sullivan, said the store announcement suggested an aggressive push by Facebook to become a bigger player in mobile.
He said Facebook needed to become “more significant, to attract more ideas and get more experience in the mobile space”.
“I think the store is an important element – a community of developers is a fundamental element in the growth we have seen with Apple and Android,” Saverio Romeo said.
He also said he believed Facebook could position itself as the first major app store to be platform-agnostic – that is, not tied to a single platform such as iOS or Android.
“The type of applications that the Facebook community can develop can have an incredible open horizon.
“Facebook is ubiquitous – it does not have any preferential routes. The question is the monetisation of all this.”
A new study suggests that free mobile apps, such as Angry Birds and Facebook, which use third-party services to display advertising, consume considerably more battery life.
Researchers used a special tool to monitor energy use by several apps on Android and Windows Mobile handsets.
Findings suggested that in one case 75% of an app’s energy consumption was spent on powering advertisements.
Report author Abhinav Pathak said app makers must take energy optimization more seriously.
Free applications typically have built-in advertisements so developers can make money without having to charge for the initial app download.
Free mobile apps which use third-party services to display advertising, consume considerably more battery life
Abhinav Pathak said developers should perhaps think twice when utilizing third-party advertising and analytics services in their app.
The research, produced by at team at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, looked at popular apps such as Angry Birds and Facebook.
Due to restrictions built into Apple’s mobile operating system, the team was unable to run tests on the iPhone.
In the case of Angry Birds, research suggested that only 20% of the total energy consumption was used to actually play the game itself.
Of the rest, 45% is used finding out your location with which it can serve targeted advertising.
The tests were carried out by running the app over a 3G connection. The results noted that many apps leave connections open for up to 10 seconds after downloading information.
In Angry Birds, that brief period – described by researchers as a “3G tail” – accounted for over a quarter of the app’s total energy consumption.
