Google acquires Fabric developer platform and team from Twitter

Google is taking over Twitter’s mobile app developer platform Fabric, as well as its Answers mobile app analytics, and Crashlytics crash reporting system. Twitter launched Fabric as a modular SDK in 2014 to allow developers to pick and choose different tools to improve their apps, and it now serves apps reaching 2.5 billion users built by 580,000 developers.

But as Twitter tries to get into better financial shape, it’s cutting non-essential divisions, as it did with its change from Vine to Vine Camera. By passing the platform off to Google, it can cut the costs of running Fabric without screwing over its developers by suddenly shutting it down.

The Fabric team announced “Today we enter the next chapter for Fabric and are pleased to announce that we’ve signed an agreement for Fabric to be acquired by Google and for our team to join Google’s Developer Products Group, working with the Firebase team.”

Google Is Launching Automated Call Extensions In Mobile Ads on February 6

Google has been sending emails to AdWords advertisers informing them that call extensions will be automatically included in mobile ads beginning February 6, 2017.

Not all advertisers are receiving this notice, only those whose landing pages prominently feature a phone number. Google will pull the phone number from the landing page and include it in the advertiser’s mobile ads as a call extension.

Reporting for automatic call extensions will be available at the campaign or ad group level. They will not be reported in the automated extension report, either, but in the main call extension report. That at least means that you’ll be able to see all numbers being used for call extensions–whether of your doing or Google’s–in one location. A Google spokesperson has confirmed that if you do have call extensions set up in a campaign, Google will not add other call extensions.

Google is taking the liberty of making this change by default, while emphasizing that mobile search is predicted to drive 19% more calls to businesses than using landing pages alone. For advertisers using dynamic phone numbers on landing pages and are not using call extensions, the Google spokesperson says that for now it will screen for those scenarios and not generate automatic call extensions when dynamic phone numbers are detected on the landing pages.

However, there are several reasons why advertisers may not be in favor of this change. Some may not want to pay for calls being placed to their business through mobile search ads, and some may not even want to encourage phone calls if they’d prefer to capture leads in otherwise.

If for whatever reason, you do not want call extensions to be automatically added to your mobile ads you will have to opt out manually. You can opt out by following these steps:

1. Navigate to the Ad extensions tab
2. Select “View: Automated extensions report”
3. Scroll down to “Automated extension options (advanced)”, then click on “Edit”
4. Select the option that says “Do not use specific automated extensions for this account”

If you’re in favor of having call extensions automatically added to your mobile ads then you can simply do nothing and let the change take effect when it rolls out next month. If you already have call extensions in place, then this change will not affect you at all.

Amazon India Now Lets You Sell Used Products

Amazon India has introduced a dedicated section for posting ads and selling products as an individual. Furthermore Amazon.in will also be taking care of the logistics part and will charge a nominal fee for the service.

Amazon has just launched a new service called Sell as Individual, which allows you to sell your used goods. The service is currently only available in Bengaluru. With Sell as Individual, you can sell products locally in your city, and Amazon offers doorstep pick-up, packing, and delivery of used goods you're selling.

To sell a product, just go to the Sell as Individual Page, and you have to fill in a small form, where you choose the category of the product, add a photo, price, and the pickup details.

Once you've made your listing, the product is listed on Amazon.in (as a used product), at the price you have listed. Other customers can now shop for it as usual, and make the purchase. Amazon will then email you once the product is sold, and schedule a pickup.

It will then come, collect the product, package it, and ship it to the buyer. In case the product it returned by the buyer, Amazon will ship it back to you, at no charge. Once the sale is completed, Amazon will transfer the money to you - minus a small fee. Amazon.in will deduct Rs 10 for item value below Rs1000, Rs 50 for items sold between Rs 1000- Rs 5000 and Rs 100 for items valued above Rs 5000. The fee is very nominal considering the efforts one puts to sell his wares on listing sites like OLX and Quikr. As an incentive, Amazon.in will also be offering Rs 1,000 as Amazon Pay Balance if you manage to sell either five books, video games, movies, music or one mobile phone/tablet/laptop. 

Twitter Will May Have Edit Button Soon

On Thursday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asked users to suggest improvements to the platform for 2017. While responses spanned clamping down on online harassment, filtering spam, and improving the site's optics, one request was especially prominent: give users an edit function. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Twitter.

"This is our most requested feature (today & always). Mostly to quickly fix mistakes. Anything beyond would need to show revision history"

It shows they are considering it very seriously and we may have have edit button in Twitter in near future. How ever we are not sure at what time and at what level we will be able to edit on twitter. In a separate reply thread, Dorsey noted the big difference in implementation if users can edit their tweets any time or can only do so over a short window. Due to Twitter often being used as public record of statements made by individuals, giving users the ability to edit tweets at any time will require an accessible change log.

Adding an edit button to Twitter might sound like a good idea to some people, especially those who are prone to making typographical errors who have no choice but to delete the tweet and re-post it after corrections if they make such mistakes. How ever this could be harmful or difficult in some scenarios. We have often seen that, tweets from the celebrities gets re tweet in thousands of numbers in matter of seconds and later on if they edit it, will it affect to all retweets or how they will have manage it. Also as mentioned earlier world leaders and celebrities uses twitter to make a statement on twitter. What if they edit it after long time. So twitter will have to deal with all this situation.

In my personal opinion, edit button in Twitter will be very useful and meaningful.