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Social networking is a competition of sorts with your friends. In recognition of that, Zynga is launching a new mobile party game called GIFs Against Friends for you to play with your friends via iMessages.

In this game, up to 32 players submit GIFs, or photos with basic animations, on a particular topic. A judge votes on which one best represents the topic.

The new game is part of a collection of 12 iMessage app games that Zynga has launched, including Words With Friends. Zynga developed the game in collaboration with Tenor, the fast-growing mobile GIF sharing platform. The title is available to play today within Apples iMessage app store.

Its a different kind of game, and it was inspired by all of the ways that people are using GIFs to express themselves.

Above: Zyngas GIFs Against Friends is an iMessage game.

Image Credit: Zynga

As one of the foremost game publishers on the App Store for iMessage, were constantly looking for new ways to innovate on how mobile users are playing and communicating, said Mark Kantor, General manager at Zynga, in a statement. GIFs Against Friends is a brand-new social game thats perfect to play right within an iMessage conversation. Were proud to partner with Tenor, the leading mobile GIF platform, in reimagining how people are connecting by bringing this engaging, entertaining GIF competition directly into the conversations players are already having with their friends and family.

GIFs Against Friends curates the perfect GIF through a deep integration with Tenors full search applications programming interface (API), allowing players to access the entire collection of hilarious, iconic GIFs.

Above: Zyngas GIFs Against Friends pits friends against each other in a photo GIF competition.

Image Credit: Zynga

In GIFs Against Friends, players kick off the GIF gameplay by sending a pre-selected or custom prompt to friends directly in Messages. Once theyve received the prompt, up to 32 players can anonymously submit their choice for the most fitting GIF to the entire group. The group chat judge then selects the funniest, most relevant or undeniably accurate GIF and crowns the ultimate GIF champion. At the end of each round, the winning GIF is shared within the iMessage conversation for the whole group to see.

Messaging is quickly becoming a primary way people communicate and socialize with friends, and Tenor is defining a visual language for this new medium, said Frank Nawabi, cofounder and head of business development at Tenor, in a statement. GIFs Against Friends is a great example of how Tenor helps people communicate their thoughts and feelings, better than words ever could.

The new iMessage app taps into the Tenor Emotional Graph, which is built on our 200-plus million daily GIF searches, Nawabi said.

GIFs Against Friends is available to play for free today on the App Store for iMessage.

Across our franchises, were committed to driving organic growth through social innovation, said Frank Gibeau, CEO of Zynga, in a recent earnings call. Last month, we became one of the first gaming companies to innovate on the App Store for iMessage with the launch of our Words With Friends iMessage app. While its not a major audience or revenue driver for the Words franchise, the experience has created more ways to engage existing consumers and bring new players to our network.

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Zynga's GIFs Against Friends is a big social GIF contest - VentureBeat

Narcissism and social networking -- ScienceDaily Science Daily Social networks are an ideal stage for narcissists to showcase themselves. Accordingly, a lot of people with narcissistic traits are drawn to these platforms as a ... and more »

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Narcissism and social networking -- ScienceDaily - Science Daily

LEONID BERSHIDSKY

Last updated09:53, April 20 2017

Reuters

Founder of Telegram Pavel Durov: "It's pointless and time-consuming to maintain increasingly obsolete friend lists on public networks."

ANALYSIS: The man who set up the most popular social network in Russia axed all of his online friends in one fell swoop this week. Having them, he wrote, was so 2010.

That may be a sign of the times: Predictions from a few years ago that social networks would lose ground to messenger apps appear to be coming true.

Pavel Durov has often been called Russia's Mark Zuckerberg because he set up a Facebook clone called Vkontakte, which quickly beat the original in Russia because it became the medium for sharing pirated movies and music.

Durov lost control of the network long ago, and the piracy is somewhat less rampant, but Vkontakte is still far ahead of the competition in its home country.

READ MORE: *Minimalist's guide to social media *Should you quit social media for your career? *The rules of sifting through someone's profile on social media *Why celebrities are leaving social media *The two reasons I have grown to hate social media

Durov, meanwhile, has funded the development of a messenger app, Telegram.

Based in Berlin and structured as a non-profit, the messenger has about 100 million monthly active users - formidable yet far less than industry leaders such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger (who claim a billion users each).

He explained his decision to purge: "Everyone a person needs has long been on messengers. It's pointless and time-consuming to maintain increasingly obsolete friend lists on public networks. Reading other people's news is brain clutter. To clear out room for the new, one shouldn't fear getting rid of old baggage."

Durov is right when he says everyone is on messengers these days.

Back in 2015, messengers overtook social networks in terms of total active users. And back in 2014, when Facebook separated Messenger from its main offering, Zuckerberg himself acknowledged the trend, saying that "messaging is one of the few things people do more than social networking".

And the messengers' growth is faster than that of social networks: Facebook Messenger's mobile audience increased 36 per cent in the between July 2015 and June 2016, while Facebook's grew 19 per cent, according to Comscore's mobile app report.

By measures that register actual human engagement- rather than fake accounts and bot activity - Facebook does not seem to be growing at all.

In 2016, its users generated about 25 per cent less original content than in 2015. The time users spend on Facebook dropped from 24 hours in mid-2015 to 18.9 hours in February, Comscore reported.

There are no reliable data on why humans are less enthusiastic about social networks today than a couple of years ago.

But chances are it has to do with fatigue from living in a public cage, irritation with the growing amount of invasive advertising, perhaps belated privacy concerns since the advertising often seems to follow browsing histories and the content of supposedly private messages.

Then there's the prevalence of low quality content and the potential of being confronted by disturbing acts of video streaming.

Messengers are a safer ground: They're about personal communication, not broadcasting.

Zuckerberg, who has been touring the USin what some see as a pre-presidential campaign and others as a series of focus groups to turn Facebook into a community-building tool, appears to have seen this trend coming long ago. Facebook, after all, owns the two most popular messenger apps.

If the numbers keep shifting from social networks to messengers, advertisers will figure out that something is wrong with the platforms they've been paying.

YouTube's advertising boycott is likely just a precursor of things to come, including better analysis of usage and engagement metrics. When the ad-based social network model is challenged - or even before that - Facebook will be forced to monetise its messenger offerings. That may undermine the quality of these products, as advertising did with the social networks.

Snap, now forced to make money as a public company, may already be experiencing the fallout. Time users spend on it is declining.

After having hijacked user attention and advertising money from professional content producers, social networks may be facing a reality check.

As people figure out what they want from the digital revolution, there may be far less money in facilitating content sharing than in creating the content itself.

Instead of submitting to the mercy of Facebook's massive audience, traditional publishers should have faith that the public will always demand professionally crafted content, no matter where it is shared.

The social networks may look like all-powerful intermediaries now, but they may not be around forever.

-Bloomberg

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Social networks are fading as messenger apps rise up - Stuff.co.nz

Shoes of Prey co-founder Mike Knapp is embarking on his next startup adventure with a new experimental social networking app designed to spark real world conversations and connections with people.

Knapp says he has designed Mottle, a social networking app launched on Wednesday, with one core goal: To drive human connection.

Once you download the app, you login with Facebook and you can see a list of people ranked based on their interests and how close they are to you and also theyre age, Knapp tells StartupSmart.

The only communication possible on Mottleis to send a hello, after which users can speak with each other in a phone chat through the app. Once users hang up, they can rate each other.

People who are inappropriate will have this reflected in their rating, he says.

I wanted a way to be able to have conversations with new people easily, Knapp says.

Its a very experimental app Im hoping that people will enjoy it and use it.

Knapp came up with the idea for it while travelling and meeting different people when he realisedthere needs to be a more meaningful solution to connecting human beings in an increasingly digital and detached world.

Im very interested in human connection and particularly as robotics takes over more jobs and displaces a lot of the economic activity in the world I worry about what will people do, Knapp says.

And talking to each other is something were uniquely capable of doing.

Theres a lot of pain and suffering in the world. My grandmother is in her early 90s and a lot of her close friends have died and having someone to talk to is really important to her.

Knapp believes the app could also be used as an alternative to dating tools like Tinder.

He says Mottle is a low cost way of getting to know someone before wasting time and money on a date with someone you have no real sense of.

I developed it over the last two months pretty quickly and Ive been working on it sort of seven days a week, he says.

Considering the apps experimental nature in getting people to speak to strangers in real life, Knapp says it may be a long journey for people to develop trust in Mottle and see its benefits.

I dont expect it will be a raging success on day one, he says.

However, during Shoes of Preys early days, he says people were similarly reserved about its potential.

When we started Shoes of Prey, people said thats crazy that youre going to design your own shoes on the internet, he says.

Today, the company is a world-renowned brand and it raised $21.3 million in funding last year.

Theres a lot of parallels once you do something the second time, youre familiar with the doubts that can set in and sometimes the hard work thats required to get past certain checkpoints [like registering a business and domain names], he says.

I felt sort of some of the same emotions and feelings [like] youre always doubting is this a good idea? And you talk to people and they think oh, thats a bit strange.

Despite this, Knapp says its crucial to turn up each day and after building Shoes of Prey, he says its exciting to be at the start of a growth journey again.

One learning from Shoes of Prey is dont jump too quickly into being international really work on the core product first, he says.

Knapp hopes the five countries Mottle is available in now will be a good user base to start.

These include Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and the UK.

While Knapp doesnt have any strong plans for monetising Mottle yet, his aim now is to bring its vision to life and share it with the world.

I want to help people connect with each other [and] to create a sense of community how that translates into a business, Im not sure at this stage, he says.

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Shoes of Prey co-founder Mike Knapp launches social network Mottle, but it won't be a raging success just yet - SmartCompany.com.au

SAN JOSE, Calif.After Facebook's Aquila internet-beaming drone crashed during a test flight last year, the company's engineers realized it would take years before its key strengththe ability to beam internet signals via millimeter wave technologywould be ready.

The reasons for the delay are as much regulatory as they are technical, according to Yael Maguire, the head of Facebook's Connectivity Lab. Speaking at the company's annual f8 developers conference here on Wednesday, he explained that it could take up to 10 years before Facebook can realize the full potential of the drone, which has the wingspan of a Boeing 737 but weighs less than a Toyota Prius. Besides building a reliable plane, the company also has to secure the permits to use the millimeter wave spectrum that will connect it to the ground.

So even as the Connectivity Lab forges ahead on the drone projectit is still testing Aquila prototypes, one of which was on display here (above)it is turning towards other rapid-deployment aeronautical innovations that could help connect more of the 4.1 billion people who Maguire claims don't have reliable internet access.

One of them, nicknamed "Tether-tenna," is a small autonomous helicopter equipped with a tether to a fiber line that can stay aloft for more than a day. It's one of a few tools in Facebook's arsenal to solve the problem that Google, Verizon, and other companies have experienced in their fiber buildouts: delivering fiber to individual homes and businesses is incredibly costly and complicated.

"Connectivity starts with fiber, but it doesn't end there," Maguire said. "Fiber is the backbone," he explained, but it's too expensive and takes too long to expect it to deliver fast and reliable internet in the rural and remote areas where it's needed most. So the idea is that those zones will get wireless links to the closest fiber infrastructure via the Tether-tenna, among other wireless bridges.

Maguire said the Tether-tenna is "just a few years out" from commercial deployment, unlike the 10 years that Aquila will take. It will complement the previously announced Terragraph project, which aims to bring low-cost, ground-based antennas to the rural areas of developing nations. If a Terragraph-served area is affected by a flood or other natural disaster, for instance, the Tether-tenna could quickly step in to fill the void created by the damaged antennas or other internet infrastructure.

Of course, flying helicopters (even pilot-less ones tethered to the ground) costs much more than flying a fixed-wing craft like the Aquila. Maguire claimed that the Terra-tenna and other projects will improve the price, performance, and speed of internet connections, but one thing Facebook hasn't talked much about in its infrastructure unveilings is the profitability of its designs, other than to say they're part of the company's general mission to connect more people to the internet.

And even as Facebook continues to experiment with planes, helicopters, and Terragraph (which is now in testing mode here in San Jose, just a few blocks from where Maguire was speaking), it still cannot avoid the need to build more fiber. So it is doing that, too: a recently announced project in Uganda involves building a 448-mile fiber line to provide backhaul connectivity covering more than 3 million people.

But perhaps more than any technical or regulatory challenge, the company's mission to deliver better internet access to underserved areas is also threatened by broader social and economic factors. By some estimates, more than two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050, up from just over half today. So many of those 4.1 billion people without access will simply move to better-connected urban areas over the next 10 years, before Aquila and Terra-tenna get the chance to really soar.

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Facebook Really Wants to Beam Internet From Planes - PCMag India