Tag Archives: Andrea Vaccari

Facebook’s Hello Is a Social Caller ID App for Android

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Facebook Hello 01

The social network has just started public testing for Hello, an Android-only app that can identify unknown number of both outgoing and incoming calls by matching them to Facebook profiles.

People are sharing an awful lot of information about themselves on Facebook, and with the help of Hello, some of that information will make its way to Hello, the caller ID app that tells on you. The new Android-only app (since iOS doesn’t allow apps to mess with phone calls) has some extra functionality besides displaying contextual data about the person who’s calling you. It can warn you if a certain number is spam, based on the reports of other people.

Xiaomi’s integrated caller ID could also prevent people from answering spammy phone calls, and Google has displayed names and profile pictures for quite a while now, provided that the name was bound to a G+ page, so it’s great to see that Facebook is jumping on this bandwagon, as well.

Assuming that people calling you have their phone number in their Facebook profile, and that their privacy settings don’t block others from seeing their info, you’ll get to see their name, their profile picture and even their city, employer, website, etc. More than that, Hello can remind you of any significant events the person at the other end of the phone call is celebrating.

Andrea Vaccari, Hello Product Manager, explained that “More than 1 billion phone calls are made in the US ever day,” and the main problem is that the “the experience of the phone call hasn’t evolved in a long time.” In order to change that, Facebook opened up public testing in the US, Brazil and Nigeria. What do these three countries have in common? Not much, besides being on the 3rd, 5th and 7th place, respectively, in the list of the most populous countries in the world.

“Anyone with your number can ring you day or night and interrupt you,” added Vaccari. “Calling is really big. It’s core to how people connect with each other, including family and close friends, but also businesses and colleagues.”

Supposing that the public tests go out well (and I really can’t imagine why they wouldn’t), more countries will be added to the list in the near future, so stay tuned for that! Also, there’s still time to hide your details or change your privacy settings.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the trimmed-down Facebook Lite app for Android, or the Facebook stickers in comments.

Facebook’s Nearby Friends Service Is Now Available on Android and iOS

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Facebook Nearby Friends

As if Facebook wasn’t already a nearly perfect medium for stalking, the social network launched a new features for its mobile apps, simply called Nearby Friends.

Fortunately, the new service is not on by default, and on top of that, people can choose the people they’re sharing their location with. The feature does not mean to replace such location services as Foursquare or Facebook’s own Check-In. Instead, it just enables you to see which of your friends are around. This would be particularly helpful when you have a lot of friends from other countries and you’d like to receive notifications when they’re in town.

Andrea Vaccari, Product Manager of Facebook, explained the concept of the new feature: “For example, when you’re headed to the movies, Nearby Friends will let you know if friends are nearby so you can see the movie together or meet up afterward.”

He went on to point out that the location is not just shared with other people, and you have the liberty of enabling or disabling it at any time: “You and your friends both have to turn on Nearby Friends and choose to share with each other to see when you’re nearby.”

Vaccari stated that Nearby Friends has the potential of becoming a helpful tool: “When you see a friend visiting a place you’ve been, it’s the perfect opportunity to send a recommendation for a great restaurant. You can also make last-minute plans to meet up with a friend who happens to be in the same place you’re headed to.” In this context, it’s surely easier to gather up all your (nearby) friends and throw a party.

All in all, it seems that all social networks got the update fever lately, as Twitter pushed some new profiles (that are quite frankly terribly similar to Facebook’s) and chat-like pop-up notifications, Google+ brought view counts and Facebook now has this. It may be a coincidence that all of them decided to update their platforms basically at the same time, or it may be a strategy to make the social networks more popular at the beginning of the second quarter. If everything goes well and these new features are well-accepted by the users, it will definitely all be reflected in the earnings reports released in July.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the new Twitter profiles and Twitter’s new chat-like pop-up notifications.