Hasta La Gadget!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, sworn off using social networks
or have been on an extended vacation, you’ve probably been stumbling
over the marriage equality symbol that’s cyberventilating its way across
Facebook and Twitter. The pink equal sign on red background, with all
it’s various permutations is now considered the de facto logo of
supporters of gay marriage. And as such, according to Chris Gayomali at theweek.com, "it ticks all the requisite checkboxes. . . it’s simple, instantly recognizable, and well, everywhere."

Facebook has just announced another great new feature that should make commenting and replying on your favorite Facebook Pages easier. The new feature creates comment threads under Facebook posts (similar to the comment threads you see here on SlashGear), so you no longer have to include the @ symbol when you’re replying to only one person. Everything is much more organized and clean.

This new feature improves engagement between websites, page moderators, and their followers. Now celebrities, politicians, and other popular figures can have a more personal conversation with their followers. They can start a Q&A session where they can answer a series of questions asked by followers, similar to Reddit’s AMA threads. The new service also consolidates reply threads with a drop down-esque menu.

Those of you with a Facebook page will be able to opt-in to the new conversation threads feature through your admin page. The option is located in your Manage Permissions section. Those of you that have Facebook pages with over 10,000 followers will automatically be opted into the service. And all Facebook pages will have the service auto-enabled on July 10th, 2013.

Facebook really is making its social network much more efficient and personable. It is planning on implementing hashtags into its service, so that users will be able to find statuses and events surrounding the topic. A new timeline will be rolled out to all users in order to bring a much cleaner interface to your newsfeeds, and Facebook Events have gotten more efficient with its new addition of weather forecasts. What will Facebook come up with next?

[via Facebook]

Facebook implements conversation threads into Pages is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Everyone in the States at this point in time is very familiar with the
term "sequester" as it applies to limiting the size of the U.S. federal
budget. British Airways, on the other hand is using the concept as
originally defined — "to cause to withdraw, into seclusion." British
Airways’ latest innovation is titled, ‘Innovation Lab In The Sky,’
and their sequestration will not be limiting at all, because their plan
is to expand upon talent and opportunities, with a little help from
their friends.

Pent-up demand, content monetization and copyright stamps have been
instrumental in distinguishing the new social network called Pheed from
the pack. It became the No.1 free social networking app in Apple’s App
Store for the month of February, out pacing competitors like Twitter and
Facebook.

Remember last month when we showed you Facebook data of NFL fans across the US? It’s back again, only this time it’s all about the NCAA men’s basketball tournament that just started yesterday. The data is from over 1 million Facebook users who have “liked” a fan page of one of the 68 teams in the tournament.

Just like the NFL fan map from last month, the data from the NCAA tournament is quite interesting. One of the biggest things you’ll notice is that fans are very state-loyal, especially in the midwest, where almost all counties in a state are rooting for one team, even if that state has multiple teams in the tournament. Indiana, for example, is completely rooting for Indiana University, who is a number one seed this year. Other Indiana teams include Notre Dame and Butler, the latter of which made it to the championship game last year.

It’s interesting to see the states that have multiple teams in the tournament, such as Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Florida. Some states are split in the middle as far as what home team they’re rooting for, but some states are almost 100% loyal to a single team, including Michigan and North Carolina, both of which are rooting for the Michigan Wolverines and the North Carolina Tar Heels, respectively.

What’s perhaps more interesting, however, is that there are 17 teams in the field of 68 where zero counties were rooting for them (one of them being Indiana’s Notre Dame). Furthermore, there are regions of the US that are pretty much scattered as to who they’re ultimately rooting for, Texas being the most obvious, which is just one of the states that don’t have a home team in the tournament this year.

[via Deadspin]

Facebook data shows NCAA tournament fan statistics in the US is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.