Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, July 10

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• Facebook Redefines 'Clicks' In Significant Changes to Pricing Model on Online Ads: Facebook is redefining the term “click” to appease its many advertisers. The social network will no longer charge marketers for what are known as engagement clicks — things such as “Likes,” comments or shares of an ad. Instead, Facebook will only count a click that generates a desired result for a marketer, like a website visit or an app install. The change comes just a few weeks after Facebook also changed up its definition for video “views.” Essentially, it’s responding to advertisers that aren’t interested in paying for someone to “Like” their advertisement when they would rather have an app install instead. These clicks are typically more expensive, but Facebook argues that they are also more valuable. It’s a new approach for Facebook but not a new approach for the industry. Twitter started testing this kind of ad — called direct response ads — almost a year ago and rolled them out to all advertisers at the end of May. It’s clear that advertisers want this model; Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t change things up unless advertisers were clamoring for it.


• IBM Discloses Working Version of a Much Higher-Capacity Chip: IBM said on Thursday that it had made working versions of ultradense computer chips, with roughly four times the capacity of today’s most powerful chips. The development lifts a bit of the cloud that has fallen over the semiconductor industry, which has struggled to maintain its legendary pace of doubling transistor density every two years. Intel, which for decades has been the industry leader, has faced technical challenges in recent years. Moreover, technologists have begun to question whether the longstanding pace of chip improvement, known as Moore’s Law, would continue past the current 14-nanometer generation of chips. Each generation of chip technology is defined by the minimum size of fundamental components that switch current at nanosecond intervals. Today the industry is making the commercial transition from what the industry generally describes as 14-nanometer manufacturing to 10-nanometer manufacturing. Each generation brings roughly a 50 percent reduction in the area required by a given amount of circuitry. IBM’s new chips, though still in a research phase, suggest that semiconductor technology will continue to shrink at least through 2018. The semiconductor industry must now decide if IBM’s bet on silicon-germanium is the best way forward. It must also grapple with the shift to using extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, light to etch patterns on chips at a resolution that approaches the diameter of individual atoms. In the past, Intel said it could see its way toward seven-nanometer manufacturing. But it has not said when that generation of chip making might arrive. IBM also declined to speculate on when it might begin commercial manufacturing of this technology generation. This year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company said that it planned to begin pilot product of seven-nanometer chips in 2017. Unlike IBM, however, it has not demonstrated working chips to meet that goal.


• How to use Facebook’s new News Feed controls: Facebook made a pretty big announcement Thursday, saying it will now allow users much greater control over what appears in their News Feeds. Prioritize whom to see first: There are a few things you can customize in the new menu, starting with telling Facebook which friends of yours should always be at the top of your news feed. Facebook calls this the "See First" crowd. Unfollow people to hide their posts: The next step gives you a chance to unfollow people whose posts may have been making you avoid the news feed. Reconnect with people you unfollowed: Facebook also gives you the chance to "Reconnect with people you unfollowed" if you're in a forgiving mood. Discover new Pages: This section is more or less a way for Facebook users to find the more professional pages on the site — those run by brands, celebrities or other public figures.


• Slew of Developer-Focused Announcements from Amazon, Including “Amazon Fling,” A Developer Toolkit For Sending Media From Mobile Apps To Fire TV: Amid a slew of developer-focused announcements from Amazon today focused on things like using AWS for app testing, and the arrival of a new API Gateway service, for example, the company also introduced the new “Amazon Fling” service. Available as an SDK for iOS and Android applications, Amazon Fling allows developers to build apps that can send media content to Amazon’s Fire TV as well as work as “second screen” or companion apps to what’s already running on Fire TV. “Flinging,” which is basically Amazon’s own version of Chromecast’s “casting,” lets a mobile app maker send a video, audio or images from their iOS or Android app to a user’s big screen TV by way of the Amazon Fire TV media player. It does this by simplifying the underlying network discovery and communication technologies that would otherwise be difficult to implement, the company explains. With Amazon Fling, Amazon made a point to appeal to developers who are already leveraging Chromecast functionality in their apps by making it possible to integrate the new Amazon SDK with an existing Android or iOS Chromecast app. To simplify the process, the company released developer documentation that explains how to modify an existing app that’s using the Google Cast Companion Library to also support Amazon Fling. Developers who have already built an Amazon Fire TV app can use the SDK to both control their app, if it’s already installed, or remotely install it if not. For developers without an Amazon Fire TV app, they’re able to use the Amazon Fire TV media player instead.