Jason Abbruzzese says, “Facebook is tweaking how stories appear on its News Feed in an attempt to minimize “clickbait,” or headlines that attract users to click on a story that may not offer much substance. The social network revealed the change in a blog post on Monday, citing continued pressure from users to present better content in the News Feed. To do that, Facebook is employing a metric becoming increasingly popular across the Internet: time spent on page”. You Won’t Believe This: Facebook Tries to Weed Out ‘Clickbait’ Mashable  [...]

Stan Schroeder says, “For years, Facebook has maintained a bug bounty program to reward those who find problems with its platform. Now, it’s expanding that program to Oculus Rift, which it acquired as part of Oculus VR for $2 billion in March. The company is offering money for identifying issues in any major part of Oculus Rift’s code, from the development software to the website — with a minimum payout of $500 for bugs and software vulnerabilities. There’s no upper limit, so the more critical or inventive the find, the more it could be worth”. Facebook Will Pay Up If... [...]

Brian Anthony Hernandez says, “Like a child shaking an Etch A Sketch with both hands, celebrities on Monday’s Emmys red carpet will be shaking a new toy created by Facebook. Facebook told Mashable that on Aug. 25 it will debut the Facebook Mentions Box, an interactive device that stars will wield to answer questions from fans. It’s similar to the InstaStop Video Q&A Station that Instagram launched at the Golden Globes in January. Though the Facebook Mentions Box will be used for the first time at the Emmys, anchor Katie Couric is already slated to use the device during... [...]

Sylvan Lane says, “Millennials are so last year. As the generation that inspired countless thinkpieces eases out of the public eye, marketers are honing in on the next wave of consumers: Generation Z. These folks, born in 1995 or later, make up 25.9% of the United States’ population, contribute $44 billion to the American economy and differ from their predecessors in a few key ways. While millennials — a.k.a. Generation Y — grew up alongside the World Wide Web, Gen Z is growing up with social media”. Beyond Millennials: How to Reach Generation Z Mashable  [...]

Christina Warren says, “Twitter just took another step toward becoming more like Facebook. Several days ago, we noticed that Twitter rolled out an experiment to some users that began showing actions — like favorited tweets — on the main Twitter timeline. (Earlier this month, it experimented with showing tweets from accounts users didn’t follow.) At the time, it appeared this feature was just a test, since it hadn’t been universally deployed to all users. Now, Twitter has updated some key language on its help page that indicates a permanent change, as Quartz pointed out”. Twitter... [...]

Christina Warren says, “Twitter is known for experimenting with different features in its mobile apps and on its website. Its latest experiment — which treats favorites more like retweets on the main timeline — has some users seeing red. A number of users are seeing tweets that users they follow favorite — or even popular tweets from accounts others follow — posted directly to their main Twitter timeline. The Next Web reported on the new experiment, which has impacted users such as Re/Code’sPeter Kafka, investor Hunter Walk and The Next Web’s editor-in-chief Martin... [...]

Jason Abbruzzese says, “Kevin Rose, the mind behind former Internet powerhouse Digg, will scale back his time with Google Ventures to pursue a new startup. Rose’s new company is called North Technologies, and details are still scarce. The company will be in the “consumer Internet space,” according to Re/code, which along with TechCrunchbroke the news of Rose’s move. Rose is one of the most well-known entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, having started a variety of other companies in addition to Digg. In 2012, Google acqui-hired Rose and some of the team behind his... [...]

Kristen Kampetis says, “The Mashable Events Board is a great place to find leading conferences in your industry, whether it’s advertising, technology, media or public relations. This week we’re highlighting five events that we think can help move your career forward. If you don’t find something below that’s right for you, check out the dozens of event listings on our board. You can sort listings by date added, receive exclusive discounts and watch videos of past events to get previews of what to expect. Also follow @MashableEvents on Twitter to catch the best events... [...]

Todd Wasserman says, “If you see a Facebook ad on your phone for a shirt and then bought that shirt 18 hours later on your desktop, should the mobile ad get the credit? Facebook believes it should — and is rolling out “cross-device reporting” on Wednesday to make that case to advertisers. The new feature lets advertisers see where a consumer saw an ad, the device they used and then the device they used when they “converted” or bought the product. The tracking is made possible via a small snippet of code called a “conversion pixel.” Advertisers who want... [...]

Christina Warren says, “Google announced on Tuesday that it has added new spam filtering support to Gmail to help crack down on phishing attacks. Last week, Gmail added support for non-Latin characters as a first step in helping email become more global. This is good news for countries where users speak and write in non-Latin languages, but it can also present potential security challenges”. Google Introduces Better Spam Filters to Combat Gmail Phishing Mashable  [...]