Facebook Has 100 Million Users in Africa

Facebook now has 100 million users across Africa, the company announced on Monday.

This figure is half of all the Internet users in Africa, which sits at 200 million people. More than 80% of Facebook users are accessing the site from a mobile phone, showing high-growth countries are more connected than ever before.

Facebook engineers started tweaking the company's Android app earlier this year after a trip to Africa revealed that the app was loading very slow, and the lack of memory on the devices resulted in constant crashes. The team members also burned their monthly data plans in 40 minutes. The team reduced the app's download size by 65%, and decreased start times by more than 50% in the six months following the trip.

It looks like their work paid off. The huge numbers of people accessing the Internet on mobile devices in high-growth areas comes as many use their mobile phones not just to communicate, but as a lifeline for banking, employment and other necessary services. Keeping this in mind, Facebook and advertising agencies are customizing features and campaigns based on local insights, data speeds and available devices.

Rob Norman, chief digital officer of media buying firm Global Group M, said in a blog post on Monday that services, such as Facebook, need to deliver maximum use for the smallest amount of data.

"In Africa, we are seeing explosive growth and incredible momentum across the region. At the same time, when you look at the staggering cost of connectivity in many countries, mobile services need to deliver maximum utility on the biggest range of devices and consume the smallest amount of data, which is exactly what Facebook provides," he wrote.

In June this year, Facebook was behind a major initiative to bring Internet to Zambia in Southern Africa. Internet.org gave locals access to basic apps such as health and employment services, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google Search, a women's rights and a weather app.

“Everything Facebook has done has been about giving all people around the world the power to connect,” Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time of the launch of internet.org in 2013. “There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it.”

These newly announced figures seem to prove Zuckerberg's global access mission is getting closer to success.

Fisherman Plucks Giant, Terrifying Shrimp From the Sea

Terrifying creatures lurk under the sea, but the sight of this monster shrimp might make you want to rip your eyeballs out.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reports that a pair of fishermen pulled this creature from the sea while fishing off a dock in Fort Pierce. 

Fisherman Steve Bargeron says that the shrimp measured about 18-inches long and was striking its own tail when they retrieved it from the water.

The FFWCC had scientists review the images, who believe it's a giant mantis shrimp, an undersea wonder known for an complex visual system and a punch that can easily puncture a crab's shell.

Vine Star KC James Makes 6-Second Comedy Sketches His Career

Building a career on Vine is no longer out of the norm. The video-sharing app is home to millions, brands and users alike. So naturally, many have tried to stand out from the crowd.

From stop-motion animators and musicians to dancers and comedians, Vine users have risen to fame by producing six-second looping clips. And six seconds isn't long — but it's still long enough for a breaking news story, promotional teaser or micro-sized comedy sketch.

One Vine celebrity, KC James, recently stopped by Mashable's New York office. In just a year and a half, James has turned a fun hobby into a full-fledged career, with more than 4 million followers on the platform.

He's well known for his series of comedy sketches, many of which involve getting hit in the face by random objects. Honest, creative and fearless, James has made a name for himself as master of capturing comedic slices of everyday situations.

We shot several Vines with James while he was at our headquarters. As expected, he was a natural comedian, and one that gave 110% of his voice, energy and whimsical humor to perfecting a video. 

If you haven't already, watch the video, above, to see our interview with James, as well as behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the Vines.

WhatsApp Hits 600 Million Active Users, Founder Says

When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg held talks with WhatsApp over what would become a mega, $19-billion takeover deal last February, he told the founders he’d love for their popular messaging app to “connect 4 to 5 billion people over the next five years.” It was an extraordinary mandate, yet WhatsApp may be gradually getting there. On Monday founder Jan Koum announced on Twitter TWTR +0.65% that the free texting service he started in his Santa Clara townhouse in 2009, had hit 600 million monthly active users.

In late April, the number was 500 million, meaning the app has been gaining roughly 25 million new active users each month, or 833,000 active users per day. Back in March, WhatsApp founder Brian Acton confirmed to Forbes that the service had been signing up 1 million new users per day since Dec. 1, 2013, so the rate appears to have remained steady since then, when accounting for the people who sign up but don’t remain active.

As indicated in his tweet, Koum has long been irked by the fact that rival messaging services tend to talk about registered users – a number that’s much higher than “active users,” since many people download apps and never use them. When it comes to active users, WhatsApp is the most globally popular messaging app, followed by China’s WeChat and Japan’s LINE. WeChat has 438 million active users, and while it has ambitions to spread to the U.S. it has struggled to find a large base outside of Asia.

WhatsApp in return has yet to become big in China, Japan or South Korea, which are dominated by their own domestic services, but it’s huge in Europe. The app can be found on nearly all smartphones in Spain and Hong Kong, according to the company’s own figures, and is regularly used by half the population of the Netherlands.

Twitter Now Lets Anyone Check How Many People Saw Their Tweets

In June, Twitter began experimenting with opening its analytics dashboard to users outside of its advertisers.

Then, last month, Twitter rolled out an updated analytic dashboard to marketers, verified users and Twitter Card publishers.

The dashboard lets users see how many impressions each tweet has received (how many times users saw the tweet on Twitter), the number of favorites their tweet has received, how many times others have clicked on their profiles, and the number of retweets and replies on a certain tweet. It also shows how many times users engaged with a tweet and what that engagement was.

Now, all users can get access to these types of statistics by visiting analytics.twitter.com.

To view these analytics, your account must be at least 14 days old, and it cannot be deleted, restricted, protected or suspended. You also must primarily tweet in English, French, Japanese or Spanish.

It's not certain what Twitter is hoping users extract from these new statistics. The numbers are certainly useful for brands and individuals who want to better reach a larger audience, the "average" Twitter user simply may not care.

In the past, non-advertisers have had to rely on third party apps for all Twitter metrics. Creating a front-facing product for users is an interesting move for the company. The next thing we're waiting on is when analytics will be integrated into the mobile apps.

Kicked Off Twitter, Islamic State Flocks to Diaspora

As Twitter shuts down access to various Islamic State fighters, members of the group are shifting their social media focus to the decentralized social network, Diaspora.

On Wednesday, Twitter started actively suspending accounts from accounts actively sharing video and graphic imagery related to the brutal beheading of American journalist James Foley. Many of those accounts were related to the Islamic State, the radical Islamist group in Iraq claiming responsibility for Foley's murder.

As Mashable's Colin Daileda and Lorenz Franceschi-Bicchierai reported last month, these radical Islamists in Iraq are using social media to spread fear and propaganda in a way no terrorist group has done before.

With Twitter cracking down on the posts and the accounts, the next step is to move to more anonymized networks.

That's where Diaspora comes in. Originally created in 2010 as a response to Facebook's privacy policies, the service differs from traditional social networks in that it's completely decentralized.

As a result, as reported by the BBC and The Telegraph, IS fighters are moving to Diaspora.

For its part, the Diaspora Foundation — the group which runs the non-profit social network — posted a blog post explaining how its service works and the challenges involved with shutting down postings from IS fighters.

diaspora* is a completely decentralized network, which, by its nature, consists of many small servers exchanging posts and messages. There is no central server, and there is therefore no way for the project's core team to manipulate or remove contents from a particular node in the network (which we call a "pod"). This may be one of the reasons which attracted IS activists to our network.
The diaspora* project team is, however, concerned about the activities of these members inside our network, because of the potential legal difficulties that hosting such material may cause individual pod administrators ("podmins")

"So far," the Diaspora project writes, "all of the larger pods have removed the IS-related accounts and posts. This includes a high-volume account on JoinDiaspora.com which was apparently used as a main distribution channel."

The decentralized nature of Diaspora is part of what makes the project work; the idea is that anyone can create their own pod (social network, in essence) and that's what ensures the network can protect the privacy of users. At the same time, however, those policies are what makes it difficult to act when inappropriate or violent material floods a pod or the general network.

Diaspora says that "each pod administrator has final say over the content hosted on their pod, and we, and our entire community of members, work to help our podmins to keep the network healthy and growing."

Losing the network effect

If there is any silver lining in the way the IS is using decentralized networks such as Diaspora, it is that these networks tend to be very small and lack the network effect that makes services such as Twitter and Instagram effective propaganda tools.

If Diaspora is able to successfully ban content from its most popular pods, the potential impact of that content on smaller pods will be even more minimal.

That said, systems such as Diaspora could serve as new places to build new social networks dedicated to pro-IS postings and propaganda.

It also shows that the IS is not afraid to move to new types of networks and technologies.

Living With Lumia Google+ Hangout: Can an iPhone User Switch?

Want to find out what switching from the iPhone to Windows Phone 8 is really like? Join our Google+ Hangout at 3:00 p.m. EST today and ask away!

When I started the Living With Lumia challenge earlier this week, I wanted to answer a fundamental question, "Can an iPhone user switch to Windows Phone 8?" I'm only three days into the experiment and the truth is, I don't know. There are aspects of Windows Phone 8 that I really like and there are other aspects that are driving me up the wall.

The most interesting part of this process for me, as a reporter, is the feedback from the community. There are lots of smartphone users on other platforms (not just iOS) that are interested in trying Windows Phone 8. The hold-up: knowing if their apps will work and if they can fit the system around their lives.

That's part of why we wanted to have a Google+ hangout so that we can have a discussion about the pros and cons of switching, I can get suggestions on the best apps to try and so I can answer your questions about the Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8.