Tech Savvy: Facebook Groups connect users across the world
Got a hobby or an interest you want to learn more about? Facebook Groups are a great place to connect with other people all over the world who might be interested in the same things.
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Facebook groups dedicated to specific interests, like Harry Potter, are a great way to connect with like-minded people from all over the world, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Screenshot by Theresa Bourke / Brainerd Dispatch
Social media is a double-edged sword.
I appreciate that apps like Facebook allow me to keep up with my family in other states and give me a good laugh from time to time, but on the other hand, I’m guilty of getting sucked into the comment section on controversial posts and coming out with my blood boiling. That’s especially been an issue over the past year with, what with the COVID-19 pandemic, a big presidential election and all the other chaos that was 2020.
Throughout the pandemic, though, I managed to find more positives in Facebook than just funny memes and adorable pictures of my nieces and nephews. I found a new community of people who I’ve never met before but now consider friends. I found a fun way to spend some of my free time instead of camping out in front of the TV.
Through Facebook Groups, I’ve found a new hobby of sorts, and it’s really helped pass the time while having to quarantine and social distance.
There’s pretty much a Facebook group for everything. If you have a specific hobby or interest, you can more than likely find a group of people on social media who share that same interest and want to talk about it. Being the self-proclaimed nerd that I am, I joined a Harry Potter group a few months back that has come to take up more and more of my time in the best way possible.
It’s a group of about 1,600 adults who share a love of all things Harry Potter. Members join one of the series’ four “houses” and compete each month for what’s called the “house cup.” Those familiar with Harry Potter know what I’m talking about. For those who aren’t, let’s just say it’s a big prize. We compete for this imaginary prize (and bragging rights) through various Harry Potter-themed games and activities like trivia, bingo, crosswords, word scrambles and jigsaw puzzles. I eventually became a moderator and then an admin, which is Facebook speak for one of the people who’s more or less in charge of the group. There are 20 moderators and admins in this group — five from each of the four houses — and along with that status comes a group chat where we facilitate daily operations of the group. But it’s more than just that. We get to know one another on a personal level and share stories and jokes and whatever else might be going on in our lives. These are people from all across the country who I’ve never met in person but still feel like I know to some degree. It’s been great to feel like I’ve made new friends from afar without having to leave my apartment or break COVID-19 protocols.
I’m also in a Facebook group for fans of Jane Austen and other Regency era literature and entertainment. I’m not as active in this group, but it has given me some good suggestions for books, movies and TV shows to get me through the quarantine — not that I don’t have enough unread books on my shelves already, but that’s another matter.
The Jane Austen group also offers opportunities for in-depth discussions about books and their characters, which is also a positive, especially for those who might not have people in their immediate circles of friends or families with the same interests. The ability to have intellectual conversations about your favorite books with people from other parts of the world is both stimulating and eye opening.
I’ve talked with friends who have joined various groups to assist with new hobbies taken up during the pandemic, too. Whether it’s gardening, maple syrup making, knitting or any other hobby or interest, connecting with like-minded people is just a click or two away.
I understand that as vaccines become available to more people, more businesses are opening up and people are starting to get out of the house more than they were a year ago, but even so, I think it’s important to recognize and understand the tools we have at our fingertips. For those who still aren’t 100% comfortable venturing out into the outside world — or for those who are just natural homebodies — making connections through technology from the comfort of your home is still a possibility and something I think should be celebrated.
THERESA BOURKE may be reached at theresa.bourke@brainerddispatch.com or 218-855-5860. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DispatchTheresa.
![youtube-shorts-monetization-guide-[how-much-can-you-make?]](https://www.social-ping.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/135449-youtube-shorts-monetization-guide-how-much-can-you-make-400x240.png)
Every week over 1 billion people connect with businesses on our messaging apps. Many of these conversations are made possible by the thousands of developers who build innovative and engaging experiences on Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Since opening access to our Llama family of large language models, we’ve seen lots of momentum and innovation with more than 30 million downloads to date. As our messaging services continue to evolve, we believe the technology from Llama and other generative AI models have the potential to enhance business messaging through more natural, conversational experiences.
At Connect Meta announced that developers will be able to build third-party AIs – a term we use to refer to our generative AI-powered assistants – for our messaging services.
We’re making it easy for any developer to get started, so we’re simplifying the developer onboarding process and providing access to APIs for AIs that make it possible to build new conversational experiences within our messaging apps.
All developers will be able to access the new onboarding experience and features on Messenger in the coming weeks. For WhatsApp, we’ll be opening a Beta program in November – if you’re interested in participating please sign up to the waitlist here to learn more.
We’ll keep everyone updated as we make these tools available to more developers later this year. We look forward to your feedback and seeing what you create.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Enabling developers to create innovative AIs on Messenger and WhatsApp
Meta Used Public Instagram, Facebook Posts to Train Its New AI Assistant
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Introducing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0
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