3 News That Rocked Facebook This Week

Facebook has been a legitimate and reliable source of news for years now. It’s effectively delivered news to users in an unprecedented way. Although, this convention threatens the business of news organizations because people are no longer going to their websites anymore, there’s no stopping publishers to continue promoting their contents on the popular social network platform.

The Facebook algorithm that determines what appears in news feeds also favours content hosted natively—meaning it’s in the interests of people looking for exposure to upload their content to Facebook directly. But it’s the product of a concerted push by Facebook to encourage content creators to publish or share contents to the platform natively.

We’re still halfway through the week, might be too early for a rundown of the most explosive news we’ve heard this week, but the following news are too good to be skipped. Here’s the 3 news that definitely rocked the social network this week.

Hillary Clinton is crushing Jeb Bush on Facebook

It’s presidential campaign launch season, and Facebook has tracked reactions to each candidate’s official announcement since Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) became the first major candidate to jump into the race in March.

The figures include all interactions (likes, posts, comments, shares), positive or negative. They’re less an indication of how popular someone is than of how much interest there is in them, from either side. With numbers now in for Jeb Bush’s announcement, Hillary Clinton is far, far ahead:

 

 

In the 24 hours surrounding Clinton’s announcement on April 12, 4.7 million people produced 10.1 million interactions on Facebook. Cruz is a very distant second, with 2.1 million people creating 5.5 million interactions, about half of Hillary’s performance. Here’s a chart showing the number of interactions for each candidate, rather than the number of people interacting about each:

Hillary’s dominance makes sense. She’s by far the best-known candidate nationally, in either party, and is among the most admired women in the entire world. She faces many fewer, and much less potent, primary opponents than any Republican candidate, meaning the base isn’t as fractured and more Democratic voters are likely to like and share posts about her. She also had a very social media-centric announcement, eschewing a big rally in favor of a video posted on YouTube and (yes) Facebook:

But the Republican results, particularly Bush’s, are interesting. Jeb didn’t embarrass himself by doing as poorly as, say, Martin O’Malley or George Pataki, but he was bested by GOP rivals both serious (Marco Rubio, Rand Paul) and not (Cruz, Ben Carson), as well as by Bernie Sanders. He wasn’t too far ahead of retreads like Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry — even though his last name means he’s better known than any other candidate besides Hillary.

 

The number of people liking, commenting, posting, and sharing in the 24 hours around an initial campaign announcement isn’t likely to tell you much about who’s going to win in the end. But it does tell you a little bit about the degree of public interest (again, positive or negative) at the campaign’s outset. And it doesn’t look like people care all too much about Jeb.

Thanks to Andy Stone at Facebook for the data.

Content that is interesting, unique and of high-quality will arouse strong feelings within its audience. Much more if it directly concerns them, they’ll love it even more.

Out of politics, here’s a horrifying news out of Missouri.

Horrifying Facebook posts lead police to Missouri woman’s brutal murder, daughter’s mysterious disappearance

Two horrifying posts on a Facebook account shared by a Missouri mother and her disabled daughter led police to discover the mom brutally killed in her Springfield home.

 

The teenage daughter, meanwhile, was mysteriously found in Wisconsin the next day with a man authorities have only identified as “a person of interest.”

 

The bizarre case started Sunday afternoon when friends noticed an alarming message on a Facebook account shared by Clauddinnea “Dee Dee” Blancharde, 48, and her 19-year-old daughter, Gypsy Blancharde.

It read: “That Bitch is Dead!”

An hour later, the poster wrote in a comment under the status: “I f—en SLASHED THAT FAT PIG AND RAPED HER SWEET INNOCENT DAUGHTER…HER SCREAM WAS SOOOO F—EN LOUD LOL.”

 

Friends initially responded with a flurry of fearful messages. “Should someone notify the local police??? This sounds scary,” one wrote. Some suggested the account got hacked. Finally, a few went to check on the family, and got no answer at their home.

 

 When police arrived, they found Dee Dee “deceased of a violent nature,” theSpringfield News-Leader reported.

Authorities did not believe it to be a random attack, and thought Dee Dee might have been dead for up to 24 hours before she was found, KOLR reported.

 

Gypsy — who is wheelchair-bound because of leukemia and muscular dystrophy, according to neighbors — was considered missing until Monday morning, when she turned up unharmed with an unidentified man in Big Bend, Wis. The 25-year-old man was arrested, but police are not yet calling him a suspect. They also are not ruling out Gypsy as a suspect.

 

The stepfather of the man found with Gypsy told WREX the two were dating online, and said the man recently visited Missouri to bring Gypsy to Wisconsin.

 

Police have not yet determined how Dee Dee was murdered, how her daughter ended up in Wisconsin and how much of the vile Facebook comment is true.

Almost every week we hear major news out of our most revered tech companies, and this week didn’t fail. Much has been said about Oculus, but this week the exchange of words among stakeholders has gone a little notch higher.

Unlucky, Palmer: Facebook’s going to BAN Oculus pr0n apps

Virtual muck now struck from smut bucket content glut despite Luckey’s pluck

Facebook has contradicted a statement by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and declared that pornographic content will be forbidden from appearing on the Oculus store.

 

Speaking at Silicon Valley’s Virtual Reality Conference in San Jose, in May, 22-year old Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was asked whether his company would be blocking adult content on its headsets.

 

Luckey said the company will allow pornography on its VR buckets because Oculus is committed to creating an open platform.

 

However, Business Insider reported the new details about the Rift that were released on Thursday, which appears to contradict this.

 

The report suggests that Oculus will run its own app store similar to Apple’s app store, which is the only means of getting mobile apps onto iOS devices.

 

Oculus would therefore not be an open platform, and Facebook has said it would use its control to “vet the apps that appear in its store, and even rate the apps” according to the report.

 

However, virtual reality sex games will not be a part of that.

 

“Oculus only distributes developer content that meets its terms of service, which forbids pornographic content from being a part of the Oculus Store,” a spokesman told Business Insider.

 

Business Insider then asked, whether in Oculus’ efforts to produce a family-friendly headbucket, it would also be banning violent content too.

 

“Oculus only distributes developer content that meets their terms of service, but it isn’t open to discuss what those terms are at this time,” came the exceedingly American reply.

 

The digi-goggles will ship to customers in 2016. ®

Credits: Featured Image