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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 17 Issue 39
Volume 17, Issue 39 Atari Online News, Etc. October 16, 2015
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2015
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1739 10/16/15
~ Chrome's Web Security! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Firebee News Update!
~ Star Wars Battlefront! ~ League of Legends! ~ Blizzard's Overwatch!
~ ~ 'PC Does What' Campaign ~
-* Yahoo Mail & Third Party Mail *-
-* Yahoo Aims To Phase Out Passwords! *-
-* Facebook's Goal: To Be More Like Youtube! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, this has been a "short" week due to the Columbus Day holiday.
As usually happens, the news has been in short demand this past
week; I guess more people are concerned with the Kardashians rather
than focus on new technology and the issues that arise because of
them!
The weather has been changing, as has been evident by the
ever-changing colors of the leaves. The foliage is starting to
really show here in southern New England - perhaps another week
before it gets to "peak" colors.
As I said above, it's been a short week. This issue reflects the
limited news, and size this week. Hopefully everything will pick
up again soon!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
FireBee News
by Fred Horvat
In a prior submission I mentioned that I wanted to try and setup
the FireBee to be a main use or day to day machine. What I will
be testing will obviously only applies to my personal workflow.
Everybody has different uses and needs out of their computer.
The first set of applications I will be testing will be Web
Browsing on the FireBee. Currently the Web Browser may be the
most used/important program on any computer. My thought process
on testing the browsers on the FireBee was to hit many of the
sites that I visit on a daily basis like I would any other PC I
use.
I did try running CAB 2.7 on the FireBee but it did not run at all
for me. I have heard that other users were able to load CAB but
there is no OVL file specific to the FireBee/MiNT so CAB cannot
access the network which means you cannot access the Internet.
Not a huge loss since CAB was from the late 90s but I still like
having an additional browser handy for special occasions.
Netsurf 2.9 http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ comes with the FireBee
MiNT installation. I tried the latest test build version 3.4 of
Netsurf found here : http://ci.netsurf-browser.org/builds/atari/
that I am using under Aranym but on the FireBee it is fails to run
stating that this build requires a FPU. So the 2.9 build that
comes with MiNT on the FireBee is a special Coldfire build. The
only other Web Browser I found for the FireBee was Highwire.
http://highwire.atari-users.net/ As with Netsurf there is a
special Coldfire build available here
https://freeshell.de/~monokrom/geeklog/downloads/index.php?id=file_HighWire_0.34b5_v4e
Of the two browsers I was initially using Highwire the most as I
was using that under AFROS and Aranym for the past year. I also
had all my most used sites bookmarked for Highwire under Aranym.
I transferred over the bookmark.htm file to the FireBee and was
running quickly. But as I got more time with Netsurf I started
using it more often than Highwire. Netsurf simply rendered sites
better and had more functionality over Highwire though Highwire
seemed faster on simple sites. A big negative with Highwire is
that it does not handle SSL or Secure Sites (like sites that start
with HTTPS). So just about any site that would request a User ID
and Password Highwire cannot access. Netsurf can handle SSL so I
did try some sites that required it for logging in. I went to
Gmail and I was able to log in and it stated that JavaScript is
required for Gmail Standard View. If you wanted a Mobile Version
or the Standard HTML non JavaScript version of Gmail click on
your choice. I chose the Standard View. In standard view Gmail
worked fine. A couple of other web sites complained about the
lack of JavaScript and or Cookies. Sometimes the sites would let
you continue warning you about the possible loss of functionality
while other sites would not let you in at all. I did try logging
into a financial site I believe it was Paypal and the JavaScript
and Cookie warning came up. So I ended up not continuing any
further.
One test I did do was load and run Netsurf on other computers and
Operating Systems to see if any issues were specific to the Atari
build or not. Under Ubuntu Linux the current Netsurf build from
the Ubuntu application repository was also Version 2.9. With
Ubuntu Netsurf behaved almost identically to the Atari build.
Under Linux I could not access any more sites than I could than
on the FireBee. So whatever strange behavior I had on the
FireBee I also experienced that with Linux. With FreeBSD the
Netsurf Version was 3.0. I did get a little different rendering
and behavior but not much. There is no official build of Netsurf
for Windows but there are Test Builds currently Version 3.4.
These builds were really strange acting. One nightly build could
run sites the day before could not and some builds seem to have
SSL and some didnt. I tried official and Test Builds of Netsurf
for OS X from version 2.9 to 3.4 and none of them ran very well
and would crash at random times. Lastly as mentioned before I
run both official and Test Builds of Netsurf under Aranym and
generally for the Atari platform they work well. Biggest take
away from testing on non Atari platforms is that the official
build is more stable than the nightly test builds. It is nice
though that Netsurf is very portable than can run on many
platforms.
Now I mostly use Netsurf on the FireBee. Because it can access
more sites and generally renders sites much better than Highwire.
Here are some things I ran into that affected my web experience
with the FireBee. I cannot access my primary E-mail Account with
Netzero. The page just displays a white screen. This behavior
was the same regardless of what version or platform I ran Netsurf
on. I could add this E-mail account to Gmail and have Gmail Send
and Receive mail from that account. I did this many years ago
combining a couple of different accounts in a Webmail account but
I just didnt care for it. I will attempt shortly to setup an
Email Client on the FireBee to access this account. Dropbox on
the FireBee the Log In button was displayed over another button
and neither one worked. With the same version of Netsurf on
Linux the same thing happened. If I used a newer build of
Netsurf on any platform the buttons worked but I could not log on
completely to see my data. I would get the User ID and Password
screen and would fill it out and click Login but thats as far as
I got.
Some interesting things I discovered while using Netsurf on the
FireBee. Generally memory usage was 20-40MB of RAM to view most
sites. Some sites though memory usage was over 130MB just to
load the first page of the site. One that I remember was
http://weather.com/ To my eye there was nothing special to the
web page but the further I went on the site the memory usage
climbed. Good thing the FireBee has 512MB of RAM! This also
leads into the time to render sites. Normally after hitting
Enter after typing in a URL a few seconds later the web site
would appear on the screen. Some sites would take well over a
minute sometimes even 2 minutes. The mentioned
http://weather.com/ was one site as was http://yahoo.com/ and
http://atari.com/ At first I thought the FireBee had locked up
but the action icon in the upper right on Netsurf showed that it
was still processing so I waited and waited and finally the page
displayed. Somewhere I read that the Coldfire processor in the
FireBee is similar to a 120mhz 68060 chip if one existed. (I
cannot find where I read that so I cant link to it here.) So
overall the speed of Netsurf on the FireBee is not bad at all.
A feature of Netsurf on all platforms is the F3 option allowing
you to save Web Pages to your local machine. I did this when I
went to the ACEC Swap Meet at the end of August. I knew I would
not have Internet capability while at the show. I went to a few
Atari related sites before the show and saved them to the SD
Card and read them in both Highwire and Netsurf at the show to
show people the speed and rendering capability of the browsers
and machine.
Something I noticed with Highwire is some sites think you are on
a mobile device and the sites will serve up their Mobile
Versions to you. http://osnews.com/ and http://accuweather.com/
are two that come to mind. This is both good and bad. Good that
the sites are lighter and process less data for increased speed.
Bad thing is that you dont get the same content or style that
you are used to with the non-mobile page.
Final thoughts with surfing the Web on the FireBee. There is no
Java or Adobe Flash available on the FireBee (nor any Atari
Platform as far as I am aware). This is not a bad thing to me.
Some can say that these are vectors for security exploits to your
system but for me they are added bloat and slow your experience
at times considerably. On my personal machines I do not have
either installed and run Chromium Browser as my main browser
which has no plugins installed. If I need functionality as Java
or Flash I load Google Chrome which has these and many other
plugins included. On the FireBee I could not access all the
sites I normally do with my Windows or Mac machine. I did not
try that many financial sites. Security was not my main concern
as I understand it the SSL is initiated on the Server Side (Web
Site) and if you have the type and level of SSL that the site
requires in your browser then the site will allow you to attempt
to log in. But in my experience on the couple of sites I did
try the lack of JavaScript as stated here:
http://www.netsurf-browser.org/webmasters/ affected my ability
to log into the sites. As I stated in the very beginning
everybodys usage is different. Generally outside of required
JavaScript or an occasional website that Netsurf had an issue
with my surfing experience was very good. Sites rendered well
and speed was acceptable to me.
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Blizzard's 'Overwatch' Entering Public Beta
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Star Wars Battlefront: A First Look!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Blizzard's 'Overwatch' Shooter Entering Public Beta
Blizzard is almost ready to put its colorful team-based shooter
Overwatch in the hands of the public. An "extremely limited"
number of US players will gain access to the closed beta on
October 27th, followed by fans in Europe and Asia at a later
date. Blizzard says it wants this group of testers to scrutinise
every part of the gameplay, including the various heroes, maps
and abilities. There's much to dissect, but in particular we
suspect Blizzard will be looking at the individual characters
and whether they're all balanced. If you fail to get into this
elite group, fear not. Blizzard will also be running "Beta Test
Weekends" from time to time, with the sole purpose of
stress-testing its servers. The company will be limiting the
modes, maps and heroes available, but it should still give you a
flavour of the game and indicate if it's your cup of tea.
Team-based shooters are nothing new, but Blizzard's pedigree
means it's hard not to be just a little curious about the game.
Its first cinematic trailer looked like something out of a Pixar
movie, and if it can offer deep, over-the-top shooter mechanics,
it could be a welcome break from the ever-proliferating MOBA
genre.
Star Wars Battlefront: A First Look
The Beta for Star Wars Battlefront has ended, and it was great.
First off, the game is simply beautiful to look at. From the icy
mountains of Hoth, to the dry deserts of Tatooine, to the
perfectly curated soundtrack, everything in Battlefront has been
rendered with the utmost care and attention to detail. Developer
DICE went so far as to even create menus and load screens that
feel more modern art gallery than ancient space action video
game.
After gawking over the menus I decided to cut my teeth on the
16-player competitive deathmatch and wave-based survival modes
first. Of the two, the deathmatch gave more of what youd come to
expect from a typical shooter. The survival mode was just the
opposite, feeling more like it was initially designed as a
tutorial but was later repurposed for use in the beta. Completing
the six available waves required little to no skill or
coordination with a teammate, and enemies often seemed as if they
were fighting with blindfolds on.
New players begin their fight with a simple blaster rifle and
level up to upgrade to more advanced weaponry like sniper rifles
and jetpacks. Scattered throughout the different maps are various
power-ups that allow players to use special gear and vehicles.
The most coveted of these will see players become Luke Skywalker,
or even Darth Vader himself.
But unlike most modern shooters, the beta lacked any real option
to customize your gameplay. That means no class distinctions, no
weapon customization, and no true custom load-outs. For players
looking for an experience in the vein of Call of Duty, this might
not be the game for you. Instead, Battlefront imposes a level
playing field and in doing so, focuses almost entirely on players
individual skill level.
So heres the bottom line, if youre a fan of the original Star
Wars trilogy and you dont mind playing a stripped down shooter,
then youre probably going to love Star Wars Battlefront. And
while it was a beta, it seems like the team at Dice has mastered
the look and feel of the Star Wars universe. Personally, I cant
wait to see what the full game has in store on November 17th.
League Of Legends Trolliest Game Mode Returns,
Teemo Immediately Gets Banned
Riot just reintroduced one of its whackiest creations back into
League of Legends, the companys inexplicably popular team-based
multiplayer game where angry little gerbil things do battle
against gigantic, vicious dragons. Only this time its missing
everyones favorite bloodthirsty fuzz monster Teemo.
One For All is a special alternate game mode that Riot first put
into League of Legends in 2013. Like all of Leagues best
intentionally ridiculous for fun game modes, Riots only made it
available for a few weeks at a timea somewhat silly decision the
developers made to preserve Leagues singular appearance as a
high-pressure competitive game. The conceit of One For All is that
each five-person team chooses a single champion to play as for a
match.
Leagues predominately played with five unique champions on each
team playing against each other with meticulously crafted and
thought-out plays and counterplays, so One For All, much like the
games annual April Fools Day treat Ultra Rapid Fire mode URF),
is totally fucking bonkers compared to normal games. Thats the
whole point. This year, things are even sillier thanks to Riot
enabling mirror matches, meaning that all ten players can take
the same champion. One For All matches make for some hilarious
moments, like when five different versions of the old bearded
wizard dude Zilean are all chucking their clock-bombs at a wave
of incoming Dariuses (via Reddit):
Darius is an overpowered monster of a melee champ in League of
Legends since his major reworking earlier this year, so Id say he
deserves every single one of those face-fulls of bombs.
Its also a hoot when you have a one team of Azirs using the sand
warriors spirit-soldier summoning powers to play ping pong with
the other team of Azirs:
...or when ten different Teemos fill an entire map with the
master-troll champions infamous poison mushroom bombs:
Errrrrr. Wait. That last one doesnt apply to this years One For
All mode, actually. Just a few hours after OFA went live
yesterday, Riot put out another update for League that disabled
the notorious and disgustingly cute champion from the mode.
Riot also disabled Karthus, a Grim Reaper-esque champion who has
a powerful spell move that sends a ghostly pillar of death energy
down on all five enemy champions like so:
In a post on the League of Legends forums, Riot said that Teemo
and Karthus were both disabled lest their core fantasies end up
trolling the enemy team a bit too hard:
Heya guys, quick PSA.
Teemo and Karthus have historically been disabled in the One
For All game mode (their core fantasies create a degenerate play
pattern for the opposing team, that goes above and beyond what the
other champions can accomplish), but this morning they were
accidentally still enabled for a few hours. Weve since disabled
them in the One For All queue.
You can still use Teemo & Karthus in custom games if you want
to though, on the map of your choice! :D
As Riot said, they both have been disabled historically. But
theyve also been playable in OFA at other points in the game
modes history as well.
It seems silly to ban two champions for their troll potential
when youre making an optional game mode thats literally based
on the conceit of trolling your opponents and your teammates with
ridiculous 10 v. 10 clone mirror match games. But at least there
are 120 other champions you can do so with.
One for all is available in League of Legends until October 26 at
2:00 AM PDT. You can find by logging into the League game client
and selecting either player-vs.-player or player-vs.-bots games.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Microsoft Teams Up With PC Makers To Launch 'PC Does What?' Campaign
Microsoft is partnering with Intel, HP, Dell, and Lenovo in a big
marketing push to get consumers to buy new PCs with Windows 10.
All five companies are contributing to a new campaign called PC
Does What?, thats designed to target consumers who have four-
or five year-old computers. Intel claims there are around 500
million old machines out there, and naturally all of the companies
involved want consumers to upgrade.
The marketing campaign will launch initially on October 19th in
the US and China, which is around 50 percent of the entire PC
market. Normally these types of joint marketing campaigns dont
involve competitors products in the same spot, but thats exactly
what Dell, HP, and Lenovo are doing on some of the 30-second
commercials. All of the spots involve someone shouting PC Does
What? after seeing an edge-to-edge display, 360 degree rotations,
or amazingly thin designs.
Microsoft has launched several campaigns over the years to try
and boost PC sales, including laptop hunters searching for a
new PC for Windows Vista, and Im a PC for Windows 7. This new
PC Does What? campaign feels a lot like those, targeting
consumers directly to convince them to refresh their hardware.
With PC sales constantly in decline, it feels like the top OEMs
are finally joining forces instead of running their own separate
campaigns.
These PC makers dont want their sales going down without a fight,
so get used to seeing these ads in newspapers, on TV, and online
because this is a big push to get people to buy new computers.
Chrome Shows Sites With Minor Security Issues as Totally Insecure
Google has just launched Chrome 46, and there's a significant
change in how it notifies you about web security. If you're on
an HTTPS site that's 100 percent secure, you'll still see a green
lock icon, and broken sites show a red "X" symbol, as before.
However, when you hit a protected site with minor issues, you'll
see absolutely no symbol, as if you were on a regular,
unencrypted HTTP site (below). That's a big change from
Chrome 45, when Google showed a lock symbol with a yellow
triangle on such "mixed" sites.
Google said it made the change to give Chrome users "fewer
security states to learn. We've come to understand that our
yellow 'caution triangle' badge can be confusing compared to the
HTTP page icon." In other words, users might feel that a
protected HTTPS site with minor errors is less secure than an
HTTP site with no security, which is obviously not the case.
More importantly, Google said that "this change is a better
visual indication of the security state of the page relative to
HTTP." The search giant's theory is that the lack of any warning
won't discourage folks from browsing sites that are in the middle
of migrating to HTTPS encryption. That in turn will encourage
sites, it hopes, to make the switch, knowing they won't turn
users off during the transition.
In a separate post, Google said that number of HTTPS sites
significantly increased, with 63 percent now secure compared to
58 percent last year. It plans to eventually reduce the number of
states to two, either "secure," or "not secure." It likely won't
do that until the internet reaches a certain threshold of HTTPS
sites, however. In other words, if you're the webmaster of an
insecure HTTP site, you may want to get ahead of that before you
get a big, red "X."
Yahoo Mail Will Now Let You Access Multiple Third Party Mailboxes
In honor of Yahoo Mails 18th birthday, the company is announcing
a major update to the mail client. In addition to a new interface,
the app is designed to be more intuitive than previous versions.
The update includes new design elements as well as new contact
forms with more nuanced information, a more secure inbox, search
filters, an undo-button, the death of passwords, and the ability
to access multiple email clients through the Yahoo Mail app. The
updates are rolling out across desktop and mobile starting
yesterday.
Perhaps the biggest update is that Yahoo Mail will now let you
access email from other account providers through the Yahoo Mail
app. Users will now be able to connect mail accounts from
Outlook.com, Hotmail and AOL to Yahoo Mail. But not Gmail, which
may be a bummer for a lot of people. Think of this feature as an
answer to Apples iOS mail client.
With Multiple Mailboxes, users will be able to search across all
email boxes at once.
Yahoo vice president of product Dylan Casey says that passwords
and even security questions are an antiquated solution for
protecting Web users.
We built a system thats entirely complex, outdated, and doesnt
actually protect the user, says Casey off the Webs dominate
security protocol.
To rectify that broken authentication system, Yahoo is killing
off passwords in its latest release. Through a new feature called
Account Key, users can choose to prove their identity by way of a
push notification sent to their phone. The notification ask users
if theyre trying to log into their account. Pressing yes
allows access to the account, pressing non denies it.
This new feature builds on a product the company release earlier
this year called on-demand passwords, a two-factor authentication
like experience where Yahoo emails a new password to your phone.
Earlier this year Yahoo announced that it would hook into Twitter,
Facebook, and Linkedin to help to help flesh out Mail contacts
and make them more relevant. This has led to the use of avatars
to identify senders.
The avatars are also a security provision. Yahoo Mail only
delivers mail from authorized senders or those that stand up to
the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and
Conformance authentication policy. That means less spam and less
malware in your inbox.
Hooking into social sites means more contextual data about your
contacts. Yahoo Mail says with this data it can determine whether
the person contacting you is a top contact and inputs the
senders other contact details into a main contact card. The
contact card also contains information about your email history
with that person as well as stats, like how many emails youve
exchanged. It also makes recommendations for other people who may
be related to your contact like friends or colleagues. Yahoo
senior director of product Fernando Delgado says this feature is
especially helpful if you cant remember where you met someone.
Yahoo Mails heavy use of data also helps it to make
recommendations on who you should add to an email chain.
Yahoo Mail now has an undo button for returning emails you
accidentally deleted. After you delete an email a button will
appear at the bottom of the screen asking if you want to undo
your last action. Though a simple addition, its a much nicer
experience to bring deleted emails back to your inbox with the
touch of button rather than having to pull them from your trash
box. You can undo other actions to, like if you accidentally move
an email to another folder or mark it unread.
Yahoo Mail now has added filters for sifting through emails. The
app lets you filter emails based on whether youre looking for
something you sent or received and also lets you search for
images and documents. You can also search within a contact card
for all the images or documents that a given person has sent you.
The real power of this tool is finding older content, like
photos from that trip to Paris you took three years ago. Yahoo
Mail also keeps a record of your query history, so if youve
searched for something before, it will auto-populate the search
field as you type it.
Yahoo made some slight tweaks to the app to optimize it for each
operating system. For instance on Android the Yahoo Mail app
uses Googles Material Design. The Android version lays out
emails in a conversation format, so multiple email exchanges
appear cleaner.
On iOS, when you search from the phones search bar for a
contact, it will surface relevant Yahoo Mail emails. The company
also said there are some special shortcuts for iOS 9, but didnt
go into details.
For the most part the apps offer a mostly similar experience. On
both iOS and Android, a swipe left on both interfaces with
return you to the screen you were on before, for example.
Overall
This is a pretty big update for Yahoo, one that directly
challenges Googles Mail client. Yahoo is trying to make its
email client increasingly relevant to users by incorporating
news feeds and social data, hopefully drawing them away from
Google. Last year the company rolled out travel and event
notifications, in which Yahoo Mail pulls relevant details from
your email to let you know youre supposed to be somewhere.
All this to say, its clear Yahoo is trying to find more ways
to keep its customers within its own ecosystem.
Yahoo Aims To Phase Out Passwords With New Service
Yahoo's next step in password security is to eliminate them
altogether.
Starting on Thursday, the company announced, users of the Yahoo
Mail app on both iOS and Android will have access to a new
service called Yahoo Account Key, which uses smartphones to verify
identities in lieu of traditional passwords.
Here's how it works: When users who sign up for Account Key try
to access Yahoo Mail, they will no longer need to enter their
password. Instead, the Account Key service will send a message
to the smartphone connected to the account.
With a tap on yes or no, users can indicate it is a legitimate
attempt to get into the account or deny unauthorized access.
If their smartphone is lost or stolen, users can verify
identities through an email or a text message sent to
alternative accounts and numbers.
In a blog post on Yahoo's Tumblr page, Dylan Casey, vice
president of product management, said Account Key is more secure
than traditional passwords because it prohibits anyone from
signing in to access an account without the verification that
Account Key provides.
Satnam Narang, a security manager with Symantec, called the
approach "a step above a password" but said it still falls short
of the golden standard of what's known as two-factor
authentication, which requires users to confirm their identify
with two different pieces of information.
He also expressed doubts that most users will let passwords die
easily and encouraged widespread adoption of password management
tools until a new verification method replaces them for good.
"I think passwords are going to be around for a little while, I
don't think they're going away as soon as we'd like them to.
They're so ingrained in everything we do from banking to email to
shopping, you name it," Narang said.
In addition to Account Key verification, Yahoo executives
announced a revamped version of Yahoo Mail that allows users to
connect with, manage and search Outlook, Hotmail and AOL email
accounts while signed in to their Yahoo account.
The new Mail also connects to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to
add photos and create "contact cards" with email, telephone and
social media information for contacts.
Facebook Will Stop at Nothing To Be More Like YouTube
Its been a big week for video on Facebook. The social networking
giant announced it will test a dedicated place on Facebook where
users can go when they exclusively want to watch video whether
thats videos theyve saved for later, or videos from friends,
Pages they follow, and other video publishers on Facebook. Those
videos will be relevant to users, to use one of Facebooks
favorite terms. The new section, the company says, will let us
watch, discover, and share videos that Facebook thinks wed
like and Like.
All of which sounds awfully similar to another dedicated place
to watch videos online: YouTube.
In the past year, Facebook has been rapidly encroaching on
YouTubes turf as the place to catch a BuzzFeed clip or Star Wars
preview. In April, Facebook said it surpassed four billion daily
video views as it continues encouraging users to embed videos
natively on its site. Last month, Facebooks ad product lead Ted
Zagat said a year or two from now, we think Facebook will be
mostly video. Now, Facebook is testing new video-specific
features, like the new video section and immersive VR-like
360-degree video in the hopes of making moving pictures an even
more prominent part of the Facebook experience.
Behind it all, a question lingers: what will this mean for Googles
YouTube, which until now has been the unchallenged king of video
on the web? People watch a lot of video onlinea Millward Brown
study this week found that Gen Xers watch as much digital video as
TV, much like millennials and teens do. Earlier this year, I wrote
that Facebook isnt a threat to YouTube yet, mostly because, well,
Facebook users use Facebook differently than they use YouTube.
You probably use Facebook to see whats happening in the world,
whereas you head to YouTube to hang out to watch videos.
Facebook, however, seems keen on narrowing that divide. While
video remains something you might stumble upon in your feed, the
tech company wants to make video a destination and make it easier
for you to find what you want. It wants its 1.49 billion users to
think Facebook when they want to watch videos. For YouTube, the
time to sound the alarms may have finally arrived.
Video on Facebook has so far not been a problem for Google as
almost all of it has been shared to Facebook via YouTube, says
Richard Windsor, an analyst at Edison Investment Research. This
has meant that Google has still had access to the data generated
from users watching videos within their News Feeds.
But over the past 18 months, such cross-linking has shrunk
radically, Windsor says. He reports that 70 percent of videos on
Facebook are being uploaded directly compared to just 25 percent
in early 2014.
Facebook isnt just coming for YouTube. Its starting to catch
up.
In an effort to make video-viewing more compatible with the
scroll-y nature of the News Feed, Facebook is testing other
features that mimic YouTubes. Find yourself wanting to skip
videos because you dont want to pull out your headphones on the
bus? No worries, Facebook is testing a Saved bookmark so you
can come back to videos later. (YouTube lets you do that, too.)
Want to multi-task on Facebook? The company is testing a way for
you to watch videos in a floating screen in the corner as you
scroll through the rest of your feed. (YouTube has been there,
done that.)
The company has also, unsurprisingly, been working on suggesting
videos similar to ones youve already seen in the past. (Remind
you of anything?) The company says that the tests show that
people to whom its made the suggested video feature available
are watching more new videos, which is exactly what Facebook
wants.
Its also exactly what advertisers want. Facebook and Google are
currently running neck and neck when it comes to spending by
advertisers on digital video, but all the momentum is currently
with Facebook, Windsor says. He adds that Facebook videos elicit
better interaction and comments, which help advertisers better
understand who theyre advertising to.
Video is becoming increasingly central to our experience of the
web and mobile platforms, where advertisers are anxious to reach
us there. But Facebook and YouTube are not the only ones seeking
to score with video online. Everyone from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon,
and HBO to Comcast, Verizon, and even NBC are hoping to increase
the number of viewers who subscribe to their online services or
head to them first when they want to watch video. Could Facebook
one day compete with these more dedicated video services,
becoming, say, our new TV? I would not be surprised to see
Facebook launch a premium video offering over time, Windsor
says.
Facebook, after all, wants to capture your attention for as long
as it can. And you only have so much time and attention to give.
Whether it means allowing you to multitask, save things for
later, find the things you really want to watch, when it comes to
video, Facebook will be there for you, the company says. As your
News Feed morphs into a never-ending stream of videos, turning
Facebook into a dedicated place for TV and films starts to make
a whole lot of sense.
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