Facebook has hired Yann LeCun, founding director of New York University’s Centre for Data Science, to be at the helm of Facebook’s new AI research centres. LeCun made the announcement on Facebook’s blog Tuesday, adding that the Centre for Data Science and Facebook are entering into a partnership to explore the potential of machine learning and AI.

Zofari adds a personalized touch to the bustling travel app industry. Touted as the “Pandora for Places,” the app debuted in May 2013, generating a lot of buzz but with initially disappointing results. The new version features beefed-up content, a wider range of destinations and a more professional interface design.
The app stands out from the field of thousands of travel app competitors by matching users with place content that resonates with their personal experiences of the kinds of places they already like. It avoids abstract ideas of “cosy” or “elegant,” which can of course differ by personal taste. Based on user thumbs up and thumbs down responses to suggestions, Zofari recommends places to stay and eat. Recommendations for music and other entertainment venues are in the testing phase.
Weinstein was inspired by his own travels. Stuck in a tourist trap hotel in Bógota watching bad TV, Weinstein yearned for a way to find places with a vibe similar to his hometown, New York’s East Village. The question emerged, “if I have a place I love, can I use that to find other places that I love?”
Former marketing manager for Google/YouTube, Weinstein was looking for a new challenge, so he and friend Jason Kobilka began the start-up in San Francisco. On a shoestring budget, Weinstein learned to code to get the initial version of Zofari off the ground. The New York Times covered it as an app answer to common travel woes. Though contributor Seth Kugel reported: “It’s not quite there yet,” he recommended that readers check back with Zofari.
This is a good time to check back. The small team did some fundraising and hired engineers to rework the product. Zofari uses public data and sources like Foursquare as a base from which to draw. The algorithm used to make the personalized recommendations relies on a wide variety of signals to indicate place similarities. Zofari’s algorithm is designed to act as a local friend and contact.
Weinstein explains: “In reality, the best local recommendations come from a good friend who knows the city, knows you, and can tell you the places you’ll love. We know we can’t replace that friend (yet), but we can be there for the times when he or she doesn’t exist.”

Facebook has been coming out with a series of News Feed updates recently that promise to affect how people consume news and the impact of content. Last Monday Facebook announced that its News Feed ranking system has been re-engineered so that high quality articles figure more prominently on users’ computer and mobile screens.

Matt Cutts is seeking feedback about adding new features and improving Google’s Webmaster tools. In a personal blog post today, the head of search spam offered some of his thoughts but asked for user opinion to guide 2014 enhancements.

A cache of up to 2 million Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo passwords have been discovered by security experts. These experts from SpiderLabs based in Chicago, found the data during an investigation into a Netherlands based server.
Cyber based criminals had been using the server to assist them in hacking a huge network of computers. They named the conspiracy, ‘Pony botnet’. The victims of this conspiracy were from around the world, but mainly in the U.S, Singapore, Germany, and Thailand. Most surprisingly, of the two million, almost 16,000 of the accounts used the password ‘123456’.
The hackers are thought to have accessed more than 300,000 Facebook accounts, 22,000 Twitter accounts, 60,000 Google accounts, and 59,000 Yahoo accounts. The good news is that Facebook and Twitter have already reset the passwords of the users that were affected, although Google and Yahoo will no doubt quickly follow suit.
A spokesperson from Facebook has said: 'Facebook takes people’s information security extremely seriously and we work hard to protect it…While details of this case are not yet clear, it appears that people’s computers may have been attacked by hackers using malware to scrape information directly from their Web browsers.'
Authorities in the Netherlands have been contacted by SpiderLabs, and have been asked to take action against the Pony botnet sever.
This incident shows the necessity of creating a secure password for all of your important online accounts, as this incident shows that your password may not be as secure as you might have thought.

Snapchat successfully wooed Facebook executive Emily White, who had been director of operations for Facebook’s mobile operations, reported All Things D Tuesday. The mobile app company Snapchat is moving Emily White into its Los Angeles headquarters as their new COO, working alongside CEO Evan Spiegel.
Emily White began working with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom this April to bring in advertising for Facebook’s photo-sharing platform. The move to the number two position at Snapchat was abrupt: "It happened really quickly, but to have an actual COO role in one of many companies that is disrupting the communications arena is one I could not pass up," White commented.
A group of Stanford undergraduates developed Snapchat, an image-sharing app that now works on both iOS and Android, two years ago. How does it differ from Instagram? Snapchat, like Instagram, began as a popular image-sharing app that became wildly popular. Instagram allows users to modify their images with creative filters and to instantly share them on social media platforms. These platforms include Facebook, which acquired the company and also recently offered to buy Snapchat. Videos and photos sent through Snapchat on iOS and Android mobile devices evaporate within 10 seconds of viewing.
Snapchat reported in November that users of the app send 400 million self-destructing visual messages every day, which is about on par with the number of photos and videos shared through Facebook. According to the Business Insider, users shared 200 million “snaps” in June.
White elaborated to All Things D: “I have always been captivated by the creativity that has gone into the product…and I think that Evan has been looking for someone who can help him grow and scale what is already something that has changed a lot of the way people think about the mobile experience.”
The new platform provided by Snapchat opens new social media advertising options, which companies like MTV, Dorito, and Oreo have begun to explore. Ephemeral ads with humour engage audience and create a relationship to products. The video production efforts required for these brief ads come with lower budgets, making video advertising a more accessible strategy.

Having people “like” a Facebook page is only the very first step on the road to achieving a fan base of interested and engaged followers. There is a close similarity with the dating world, where so many mandatory steps apply between that first meeting and eventually getting together as a couple.

In a deal exceeding $200 million, Apple confirmed on Monday its acquisition of Topsy, a firm that assesses customer sentiment by crunching Twitter’s immense tweet stream. With Gnip and DataSift, Topsy is one of the few firms with comprehensive access to Twitter data.
This is a curious move for Apple, not known for its presence in social media. Apple generally sticks to hardware, software and apps. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the deal in characteristically tight-lipped fashion: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." The same statement accompanied Apple’s acquisition in November of PrimeSense, a company that makes 3-D sensors.

It has certainly been the year of content with a capital C and it is no secret that keeping on the right side of Google’s Hummingbird now requires top quality content - and plenty of it!

Who wants higher online visibility, increased authority, greater influence, more clicks and higher conversion rates? A seemingly redundant and rather superficial question. Maybe not, these metrics, the highly desired holy grail of marketers, are all given a significant boost through Google authorship; remarkably, many have not yet taken advantage of this content strategy.