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10 hidden tricks to get the most out of Facebook Messenger

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Facebook-messenger

On Thursday, Facebook announced there are more than 800 million monthly active users on Messenger. While we can assume they're all at least chatting with each other, there's a whole lot more you can do in the app beyond instant messaging.
Over the last year, Messenger has shown it wants to be a one-stop shop for all your mobile needs — from sending GIFs to requesting an Uber. With so many updates, you may have missed some of the app's best new features.
SEE ALSO: The 100 best iPhone apps of all time
From paying friends to customizing your message threads, we've rounded up 10 of our favorite hidden tricks that will help you get the most out of Messenger.

1. There’s a standalone website for Messenger

Unlike having two different mobile apps, the two different websites make more sense. For example, you can keep chatting with your friends at work without the distraction of your news feed. The interface is minimal and clean — similar to the app but expanded. For each conversation, there’s a sidebar where you can mute notifications for that person, access a call or video chat and see photos you’ve shared with each other.

2. You don’t need Facebook to use Messenger

messenger-sign-up-android

IMAGE: FACEBOOK
Anyone with a phone number can access Messenger and its features, even if you don't have a Facebook account. All you have to do is download the app, and you can select “Not on Facebook?” You can sign up from there.

3. Request an Uber

You can do away with your Uber app, and call a car through Messenger. From within a conversation, select the "More" icon indicated by three little dots and tap "Transportation." You can log in and request an Uber from there. Like the Uber app, you’ll receive updates on your driver’s status, notify friends, track the ride and pay for it.

4. Pin a group conversation for easy access

If you chat with the same group of people all the time, you can pin the conversation so you don’t have to scroll through to find it. Tap the Groups button at the bottom of the app, and you’ll see a Pin button in the top left corner. You can select the conversation you want to add, and you can assign a name to it. You can also add a photo as the group avatar by tapping on the camera button.

5. Mute notifications

You can silence specific conversations by tapping the name at the top of the message. In the drop-down screen of options, tap Notifications and select the period of time you want to mute it — like fifteen minutes, one hour, eight hours, 24 hours or indefinitely until you turn notifications back on. You can also turn off notifications entirely.

6. Make a payment

facebook messenger payments

IMAGE: FACEBOOK
There are a few popular apps that let you pay your friends without any cash, but that means downloading yet another app. If you don’t have anymore room on your phone for Venmo, Messenger is an alternative, in case you don’t plan on deleting the app anytime soon.

7. Share photos instantly with facial recognition

Messenger’s Photo Magic feature uses facial recognition to make it easier to send photos to your friends. When the feature is on, the app will notify you to share photos when it detects a new picture with a friend in your camera roll. To enable it, click the settings gear icon on the bottom right, select Photos & Media and then Photo Magic, and switch the toggle on.

8. Send your location

messenger-location-sharing-coverphoto1

IMAGE: FACEBOOK
Similar to dropping a pin in Apple Maps, you can send your location — or any location — in a message. Select a conversation, tap the More icon, click location, then you can search a place and send it.

9. Send GIFs

Tap More at the bottom of a conversation screen, and you’ll see a list of different apps you can install. You’ll see GIPHY as one option, and you can tap the INSTALL button, which will bring you to the App Store; download it as you normally would. Once installed, you can select the GIF icon at the bottom of a conversation to search and send GIFs directly in Messenger.

10. Customize your message threads with emoji

Change up your conversations with different people by changing the way the threads look. When you’re in a conversation, hit your friend’s name at the top of the screen, and you’ll see options for nicknames, color and emoji. The color will change the outline of icons as well as the chat bubbles.

hakira Is First to 100 Million Fans on Facebook

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Shakira-milan-facebook

International sensation Shakira celebrates her life's milestones like many of us — by posting a status update or photo on Facebook for all to see.
The "Hips Don't Lie" singer announced her pregnancy in a status update in 2012 and shared thefirst image of the baby via a Facebook photo in 2013. Those intimate moments with her fans have helped her become the most-followed Facebook user.
SEE ALSO: How a Facebook Poke Between Strangers Led to a Marriage Proposal
On Friday, fresh off performing at the World Cup final this month, she reached 100 million Likes on her Facebook page and released a "look back" video to recap her experience on the social network, which she joined in 2008.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was among the thousands of people who left comments on the video: "Congrats! What an amazing milestone for an amazing person."
Like on Twitter, musicians are the most-followed people on Facebook. Rihanna, Eminem and Shakira have traded off being in the lead in past years, but Shakira beat them to 100 million.
In another video, Shakira reacted to reaching the 100 million milestone:

Facebook highlighted some fun facts from Shakira's history on Facebook, below:


Uses for Foursquare You Never Considered

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Pinterest pin for Foursquare

Foursquare, the location-based, social game-like service isn't just for checking in, racking up points and unlocking badges.
In May 2014, Foursquare split its user experience into two apps. The Foursquare team launchedSwarm, an app to help people "keep up and meet up" by checking into places, seeing who's nearby and making plans.
SEE ALSO: 9 Excellent Apps For Discovering New Things
By unbundling the check-ins, points and badges, the company tells us they are expecting to introduce a new version of Foursquare later this summer with new, highly personalized ways of finding the best places.
Until then, we can make the most of what Foursquare currently offers. We've rounded up a list of six productive uses for Foursquare you may have never considered.

9 Social Media Resolutions for 2014

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SocialmedianewyearsresolutionsYou know the drill — new year, new start. You may be planning to slim down, give up that gross habit or get your life in order in some way. But have you given any thought to your online world?
We're taking a look at your social media life with a list of new year's resolutions we'd like to see everyone keep, from posting fewer annoying photos to being a bit more positive across your networks.
SEE ALSO: 7 Tech New Year's Resolutions to Pledge Right Now
Take a look at our suggestions below. Have your own suggestions? Add them in the comment section below.

1. No More Humblebragging

Can we please make 2014 the year the "humblebrag" dies a much-needed death? While we're at it, let's also stop namedropping and giving blatantly insincere pleas for advice that are clearly just made to highlight a glamorous, exotic or exciting "dilemma."
If you're excited or proud about something, then just shout it out — your genuine enthusiasm will be better received than if you try to veil it with faux modesty.

2. Create Less #Foodporn

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Image: Flickr, Bryant Wong
We think it's fair to say that we're all fed up with looking at what everyone else is eating for lunch. Although it's oh-so-tempting to Instagram every single morsel that passes your lips, we suggest setting a #foodporn benchmark and stick to it.
Was the food you're about to eat prepared by a Michelin-starred chef? Is it presented in a way that has never been seen before by human eyeballs? Does the meal you're about to consume contain unicorn meat? If the answer to these three questions is "no," don't post that pic.

3. Check Before You Share

Misinformation has played a big part in major events in 2013, especially those first reported on social media sites. Before you blindly forward, retweet or share what appears to be breaking news — or even vital PSAs — hold back until you get verification.
The speedy spread of incorrect information in a crisis situation can be frightening, and in some cases, even downright dangerous.

4. Be More Positive

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Image: Flickr, Vitor Corrêa Fogassa
With social networks only a touchscreen swipe away, it's tempting to use such platforms to speak your mind on minor annoyances, but we should all think twice about posting negative comments and updates.
We're not talking about major bad news that may be worth sharing with your online friends and followers — just the small things: not getting a seat on the train, your coffee order being wrong, sitting in traffic, etc. Are you really bringing anything to the conversation with such clichéd #firstworldproblems?

5. Increase Your Privacy Know-How

Managing your privacy settings, levels and permissions on social networks is extremely important. In terms of the networks themselves, it saves you from sharing content you don't want to make public. In the case of apps and add-ons it protects the data and privacy of both you and your online friends.
As we post more and more content online and via mobile, safety and privacy is only going to become more important. Make sure you're savvy to privacy settings — and changes — in 2014.

6. Stop Sharing TMI Updates

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Image: Flickr, Vinche Chung
Whether it's your baby's bowel movements, workout stats, details of a medical condition or your fragile mental state, we've all seen more than enough cases of oversharing on social. Just because you can share something doesn't mean you should.
Think before you post in the coming year, and you might save your connections from seeing something they can't unsee.

7. Stop Obsessing About Numbers

Your follower or friend count is just a number. It doesn't define you, it doesn't change you in any way and, realistically, it means nothing in the wider world.
Instead of trying to rack up as many social stats as you can, concentrate on making the most out of the networks — and the people within them — that you already have.

8. Post Fewer Selfies

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Image: Flickr, Sarah Barker
Yep, we get it already. At a certain angle, in a certain light, you're gorgeous. We really don't need daily reminders popping up in our various social streams to continually confirm this.
With 2013 dubbed "The Year of the Selfie," maybe we could all make 2014 the year we become a little more selfless?

9. Take Time to Be Kind

A good deed a day IRL is a noble aspiration, but might not be practical. On social media, however, it's a bit more achievable.
Whether it's taking the time to comment on a photo that everyone else has appeared to ignore, forwarding on a plea to help find a missing cat in your area or just hitting "like" on someone's craft project, it really doesn't take much to spread a little kindness online.

The Year in Facebook: Moving Fast, Breaking Less

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Mark-zuckerberg-smilesIf there's one thing Facebook generates, besides selfies and baby pics, it's lots and lots of press.
The company has more than one billion users, one of tech's most recognizable CEOs (still only 29!), and enormous stores of your personal data. Like it or not, we all seem to have a stake, whether big or small, in what happens at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. It makes sense, then, that the social network keeps us all, reporters and readers alike, busy week in and week out.
The company has a reputation for changing its product regularly, and this year was no different. Facebook's 2013 activities ran the gamut from the good (Graph Search), to the bad (Facebook Home), and, of course, the ugly (its misuse of an extremely sensitive image in an ad).
On the business side of things, Facebook stock experienced a resurgence as it collected a number of noteworthy headlines, including the company's first ever Fortune 500 Ranking (#482) and its one millionth advertiser.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision for bringing Internet access to all corners of the globe in 2013, a pledge that could bring great opportunity to the masses — and a few more billion users to Facebook.
The company's motto remains "Move fast and break things," and Facebook seems to be breaking things with less frequency, while moving faster than ever. Here's a look back at the top Facebook headlines that kept us captivated over the past 12 months.

Tangling With the NSA

Facebook found itself in the middle of the year's top tech crisis when reports surfaced in Junethat companies like Facebook, Apple and Google were granting government access to private user data. Facebook denied the reports (along with all the other companies mentioned), but the NSA surveillance program, known as PRISM, dominated the headlines for many weeks following the initial allegations.
Following the revelations, it was Facebook's turn to share information. Less than two weeks after the original PRISM stories ran in the Washington Post and The Guardian, Facebook released its own report, claiming the company receives nearly 1,500 requests for user data per month.
An NSA protest takes place in Berlin.

In August, Facebook released its first ever Transparency Report, documenting the number of users included in information requests. (Facebook, along with other tech companies like Google and Microsoft, publicly asked the government for permission to provide even more details.)
In an interview with The Atlantic in September, Zuckerberg shared that the NSA's report affected users' trust in Facebook. "There's a lot of times where ... someone will criticize us in the press over privacy. What we've found is that stuff tends to not actually move the needle that much on the brand perception around trust," he said. "The NSA stuff did."

Facebook's Teen Problem?

It was a story line that took center stage during the company's latest earnings call at the end of October — is Facebook losing out on teen users? The stock dropped dramatically after CFO David Ebersman hinted that there might be a slight issue retaining younger teens on the platform. "Youth usage among U.S. teens was stable overall from Q2 to Q3, but we did see a decrease in daily users partly among younger teens," Ebersman said. And based on anecdotal evidence, it appears the conversation is one that teens themselves are struggling with.
The stock market reacted, erasing a 15% gain the stock was riding in after hours trading. (Some believe the stock drop was a result of Facebook saying it wouldn't increase the number of ads on the platform moving forward; in reality, both comments most likely caused the dip.) Either way, Facebook's mention of teen use declining, even within a small subset of "younger teens," coupled with Facebook's reported failed bid for Snapchat, doesn't scream confidence that teen users are using the site as much as they once did.
The moral of the story: It's something to pay attention to, says Brian Blau, research director for consumer technology at Gartner. "It's a serious issue and it's a long-term issue," he says. "If we do actually find out that there is a big gap there, a gap in usage, I'm guessing that Facebook will have some kind of answer for that. You can probably guess that if they're going to admit that there's a problem, then they're going to have a solution."

Home (Not So) Sweet Home

It's hard to believe Facebook Home was just unveiled in April, mostly because few people still talk about it. Facebook Home, which came pre-loaded on the HTC First (earning it the nickname "Facebook Phone"), works with Android smartphones to bring Facebook updates and features directly to the phone's home screen.
Some features of Home (like Chat Heads) have been a success, and were incorporated into later versions of the mobile app. Overall, however, Facebook Home received negative reviews, and rumors even circled that the HTC First, the phone that came with Home preloaded, has been discontinued. (An HTC spokesperson denied the allegation in September, but the phone's price dropped to just $0.99 in May.)
Facebook Home has been an abysmal failure," Blau toldMashable in September. "Maybe they had some really great ideas there, but they just didn't deliver it in the right package or the right way."

Graph Search Is Born

Graph Search rolled out in January, and may turn out to be Facebook's most interesting feature in 2014. There is a preponderance of personal user data on Facebook, and Graph Search is the first tool that really comes close to letting users harvest that information for personal use. It's a search engine within Facebook, and the smarter Graph Search becomes, the more benefit users will get from engaging with it.
A serious down side of Graph Search is that it's not yet on available on mobile. Seeking nearby restaurants that your Facebook friends Like is helpful, but less so when you need to be sitting down in front of a desktop or laptop to utilize the search function.

$FB Success

Facebook's IPO did not go as planned in 2012. In fact, it was rather disastrous. But that narrative is well in the rearview mirror, and those who hung on through the company's tumultuous first months on Wall Street are now reaping the benefits.
After closing on Dec. 31 last year at $26.62 a share, Facebook stock has nearly doubled, closing at $TKTK on TKTK. The company has a market cap north of $133 billion (more than four times that of Twitter), and more importantly, revenues continue to climb quarter after quarter. Facebook was listed on the Fortune 500 list for the first time this year at #482 and it should climb close to 100 places next year based on expected 2013 revenues compared to last year's list.

A Second-Screen Battle

There's a battle raging between Facebook and Twitter, and it's happening in front of your TV. The two companies are competing heavily to provide users with the best platform to discuss live television, a phenomenon known as the "second screen." When you watch The Voice or the Super Bowl, Facebook and Twitter want you talking about what you watch online, on their respective network, and that means having your phone or tablet handy to continue the conversation in the virtual world.
Facebook partnered with Fox Sports in September to bring user polls and comments to professional football and soccer broadcasts (Twitter has a similar partnership with ESPN). Facebook also sends weekly reports to major TV studios like ABC, NBC and CBS to fill them in on which shows are generating the most conversations online, data that should help with advertising revenue and show promotions.
It's an important area of focus for Facebook. Discussions around live television bring more users to the platform by giving them a reason to log in, but they also give advertisers confirmation that Facebook is a place to go for reaching an engaged audience. If users are spending the commercial break scrolling through News Feed, advertisers will want to be there — a fact that is not lost on Facebook.

Mobile Growth

Facebook is vocal about being a "mobile-first" company, and in 2013 it proved the words are more than just a Silicon Valley cliché. The company reported $882 million in mobile ad revenue last quarter, nearly six times as much as Q3 2012, and mobile ads now generate 49% of Facebook's revenue total.
Facebook also added over 250 monthly mobile active users in the past year, and that number should continue to grow in 2014. Facebook was the only social networking app in the Top 10 most-downloaded list from the App Store on both iPhone and iPad this year.
A graph depicting Facebook's mobile users as of Q3 2013.
 Source: Facebook Q3 Earnings Report

The Rise of Instagram

Instagram's year was bigger than Facebook's in terms of major rollouts. The photo-sharing app, which Facebook purchased last year for $1 billion, added videos to the service in June,messaging to the service in December, and finally started monetizing with its first set of in-feed ads.
Instagram announced 150 million monthly active users in September, a significant milestone considering the app had 100 million actives in February of 2013. Facebook likely won't admit it (see the teen problem segment above), but it appears that Instagram is the company's biggest weapon against the rising popularity of Snapchat, the photo-sharing app that deletes user photos and videos after they are viewed.
Instagram's new messaging feature, Instagram Direct, now allows private sharing between friends within the app, in many ways mirroring the functionality that Snapchat provides, although the photos do not disappear.
And while the jury is out on whether Instagram Direct will strike a chord with users, the verdict is in on the platform's advertisements — users are not happy, at least in the comments. (Wenoticed this initially when ads rolled out and, based on the comments under recent ads, it appears their rage persists.) The ads are relatively infrequent, appearing approximately once a week from what we've seen, and receive thousands of likes, but they also serve as lightning rods for thousands of angry Instagram users.

A Vanishing Snapchat Bid

Need validation that Snapchat is for real? The photo-sharing app had more total downloads for iPhone in 2013 than Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, respectively. The company claims that users send 400 million "snaps" — images or videos — per day, a number that exceeds Facebook's 350 million daily photo shares. Snapchat does not, however, share data on how many users it has in total.
So it's no surprise that Facebook showed an interest in the company this fall. The world's largest social network reportedly made a bid for the Snapchat — to the tune of $3 billion. That's $2 billionmore than Facebook paid for Instagram last year, another app that wasn't bringing in revenue when Facebook came calling.
The Snapchat guys are crazy for not selling if the rumors are true," says Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "Snapchat is a really interesting little service, but it's really hard to say that there will ever be a business model there."

Perhaps Facebook dodged a bullet; or perhaps Facebook's bid was validation that there's something legitimate to Snapchat. Either way, Facebook's addition of Instagram Direct may mean this courtship is over.

Internet.org

Zuckerberg is not the only tech figure responsible for Internet.org, but he is the most notable and outspoken. The Facebook CEO announced the initiative in August with the intention of bringing Internet access to the four-plus billion people worldwide currently without it.
Internet.org's supporting team includes Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung, and the goals include cheaper data plans and more reliable access, particularly on mobile devices.
Some criticized Zuckerberg for being to self-interested, tackling a problem that could also drive lots of business for Facebook. In theory, if the world has more Internet users, Facebook has more potential clients.
"The unfair economic reality is that those already on Facebook have way more money than the rest of the world combined, so it may not actually be profitable for us to serve the next few billion people for a very long time, if ever," Zuckerberg wrote in the Internet.org mission statement. " 
But we believe everyone deserves to be connected."

With Zuckerberg's plan to bring the entire world online, and the speed at which the company continues to evolve, it appears Facebook won't be short of headline-grabbing developments in 2014. Or any time in the near future — provided it doesn't break anything that can't be put together again.

42 Instagram Pets That Filtered Our Hearts in 2013

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Forget Miley, Pope Francis and Beyoncé — the real stars of 2013 were the famous pets who wagged their adorable tails all over our Instagram feeds.
Those cross-species friendships, dress-wearing pooches and rescue-story kittens cheered us up on even the toughest days.
SEE ALSO: The 75 Absolutely Cutest Animals on Instagram
To pay tribute to our virtual furry friends, we rounded up 42 of this year's biggest animals accounts on Instagram. May 2014 be just as (if not more) "aww"-inducing.

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