Facebook

The Graphics Interchange Format, aka GIF, celebrated its 30th anniversary this week and Facebook took note. The social media giant announced that it would honor the format by sharing some details of the GIF's history on Messenger, making GIFs available in comments for everybody in the main Facebook app and throwing a "GIF party" by introducing a bunch of new GIFs featuring popular internet personalities.

Facebook has unsuccessfully tried to copy Snapchat several times by launching a few failed apps, such as Poke and Slingshot, and today Mark Zuckerberg and team are at it again. This time instead of launching a separate app to copy Snapchat, the social media giant has just added a Snapchat-like feature to its Messenger app.

Owners of the latest Apple TV can now enjoy video and live streaming content directly on the Facebook Video app. Facebook fans interested in watching videos on their Apple TV previously had to use AirPlay from an iOS device. The Facebook Video app for tvOS simplifies this process, and the company plans to bring similar apps to competing platforms including Amazon Fire TV.

If you are a Facebook user you likely sign into it from multiple devices and locations, whether from your personal iPhone, iPad or Mac, or from a computer in the lab, internet cafe or friend's house. Whatever the case may be, you obviously don't want to leave active sessions anywhere, as they would give access to a trove of private information and potentially allow for a lot of mischief. Thankfully there is a way to monitor and log out of open sessions from your iPhone or iPad.

Facebook's regard for its users' privacy has once again come into question after a communications professor from the University of Southern Florida suggested that the media giant's mobile app could be using the iPhone's microphone to listen to conversations to glean information for advertising purposes. This would explain recent claims that ads pertaining to subjects that are spoken about while the app was open are showing up in people's feeds.