Facebook Partners with Spotify and Other News

Another week’s starting here at Q3. And we are very excited to bring you the latest in tech news from all over the web!

Facebook Partners with Spotify

If you ever wanted to share what you are listening to on Spotify with your friends, it was a real hassle, wasn’t it? Well, Facebook has just implemented the solution to this problem in its Messenger platform.

The social media giant has partnered with Spotify to allow users to share a song, artist or playlist on its social network. While chatting on Messenger, a user can press on the ‘more’ button to open the Spotify app, select a song/artist/playlist to share, select a cover photo for the share, and share the item to his/her friend without bouncing between applications or taking screenshots.

In December of last year, Facebook partnered with Uber to provide on-demand ride services though Messenger. The instant messaging platform has more than 800 million subscribed users.

Google Invests in Digital Journalism in Europe

Google is all set to invest more than $30 million to advance news technology in Europe. Calling it the Digital News Initiative, in the next three years, Google wants to promote Digital Journalism in a many organizations across the continent.

“The funding will go to a wide variety of organizations which are wonderfully diverse, ranging from automated content personalization and robot journalism, to hoax-busting apps and tools to verify social media in real-time reporting,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google.

The search engine giant start with 23 countries, and will invest in three types of projects – prototype projects, medium projects, and large projects – each varying with the amount of funding required.

Slack Debuts Voice Calling on Desktop and Chrome

After rumors that the company will launch voice and video services, Slack, the popular cloud-based enterprise collaboration tool, debuts voice calling on desktop and Chrome just a day later.

The move comes after Slack’s acquisition of Screenhero, a screen-sharing and voice calling app. The update allows any user to privately call a user or make a conference call, or join one if in progress. Additionally, users can add visual emoji styles to their profile picture while in a call to simulate emotions during a call.

“Our mission at Slack is to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive. Voice calls are a valuable form of team communication, and so a natural fit for Slack, and why we’re already seeing great usage of third-party apps that offer calling options,” said April Underwood, VP of Product at Slack.

Only around 50% users can make calls at the moment, with more being added. Slack will add video calling as well later on in the year. Interestingly, reports suggest that Microsoft wanted to acquire Slack for as much as $8 Billion.