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A ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST NEWS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
FACEBOOK’S DATING GAME
YOU might imagine Facebook would think again if it was hatching plans to ask us to trust it with even more of our personal data.
But, no. Last week at Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference in California, boss Mark Zuckerberg, inset, announced plans to bring a dating element to the social network.
The new platform, which will be built within the main Facebook app, offers you the chance to get your self out there properly, a la Tinder.
It is, perhaps, telling that Tinder’s owner, Match Group, saw its stock drop 17% after the announcement.
Details are sketchy and a release date has not been given.
And if you have any security concerns, don’t worry. Zuckerberg’s word is his bond: “We have designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning. Your friends aren’t going to see your profile, and you’re only going to be suggested to people who are not your friends.”
APPLE’S X-EPTIONAL QUARTER
ALL the talk prior to Apple’s quarterly figures were of how the iPhone X was selling poorly. Of course, the analysts were wrong, and Apple posted record results for the quarter.
In total, Apple sold 52.2m iPhones in those three months and made revenues of $61.1bn (£44.9bn), up 16% on the year before.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said: “This is the first cycle that we’ve ever had where the top of the line iPhone model has also been the most popular.”
NOKIA’S ‘HEALTHY’ RETURN
WITHINGS made great healthtracking hardware, like watches, air quality monitors, scales, and thermometers. So good that two years ago Nokia bought the company and rebranded it Nokia Health, and a new app was launched. Nokia hoped this would give it a stand-out feature to regain some ground in the smartphone wars. It didn’t work. Nokia revealed this week that it was selling its health business back to the founder of Withings – presumably at a considerable loss.
Hopefully now it will receive the kind of care and attention that made it worth buying in the first place.