To protect privacy, many tech companies encrypt data for their products. The Guardian reported that Facebook Messenger is soon to be encrypted for the chatting messages.

Mobile chatting app is the most popular applications for smartphones. Facebook has already dominated the global mobile chatting market. WhatsApp obtained more than 1 billion users and it has been encrypted to protect the communications.

Its another popular chatting app Messenger also obtained 900 million users. The difference between WhatsApp and Messenger is that Messenger was launched by Facebook. Facebook announced to introduce chatting robot on Messenger at the developer conference. It will allow users to book tickets or shopping by chatting.

As The Guardian reported, Facebook will encrypt Messenger end-to-end communications. The difference from WhatsApp encryption is that the encryption is optional to Messenger instead of by default.

The optional encryption is the practice for some apps, however, its security level is lower than the encryption by default.

The encryption mode that Messenger applies is similar to Google Allo which was released at Google I/O 2016.

Facebook did not confirm this news yet. If the apps apply the end-and-end encryption mode, the service providers such as Google and Facebook won’t be able to access the communication content. Even the police or agency require to the communication content, the service providers could refuse as the content has been encrypted.

Pebble made crow-funding for its smart watch at Kickstarter three years ago. Now it released its latest Pebble 2. Pebble 2 has better body sign and is upgraded with heart rate check. It also introduced Pebble Time 2 as well as with heart rate check sensor. Pebble claimed that all its smart watches will be upgraded with heart rate check feature in the future.

Pebble considers health tracking has become an important element as well as notification and basic communication for smart watch. It realized that it has to keep innovation to compete with the giants.

Pebble 2 is thinner than its last generation. It applied the black and white display. Besides the optical heart rate check sensor, Pebble 2 is equipped with microphone.

While Pebble Time 2 combined the features of Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel. It is made of stainless steel material. It is waterproof as well.

The battery life is an important feature for Pebble smart watch. It is said that Pebble 2 can keep working for one week while Pebble Time 2 can keep running for 10 days.

Pebble 2 and Pebble Time 2 are available on Kickstarter. Pebble 2 charges $99 which is supposed to be delivered in September. Pebble Time 2 charges $ 169 and will be delivered in November.

Even though Pebble updated the heart rate sensor for its new releases, there are already similar smart watches on the market. It might not help a lot for Pebble to gain more user share.

Pebble CEO & Co-founder Eric Migicovsky claimed the firm has already sold 1.8 million Pebble smart watches. This figure is just a small portion compared with Apple Watch, Fitbit wearable devices.

Microsoft introduced Edge browser when it released Windows 10. It hoped to compete with Chrome and Firefox in browser industry with Edge. The current statistics showed that the usage share of Edge keeps increasing. However, many of the users abandoned IE and switched to Edge.

StatCounter statistics in the past three months indicated that the usage share of IE and Edge declined. This contributed to the usage share of Firefox ranked in second in the current browser market. The first went to Chrome.

Judged by the statistics given by StatCounter, the usage share of IE and Edge declined from 16.6% in Feb to 15.5 % in April. The usage share of Firefox is ahead of IE and Edge in spite of it suffered decline a bit in the past three months.

Google Chrome made positive performance. Its usage share was 59% in February and increased to 60.5% in April. That’s, there is more than one pc using Chrome browser in every two computers. There are wide gaps compared with Firefox and Edge.

Edge was given great expectation to obtain more usage share for Microsoft. Microsoft will make great update for Edge this summer when Windows 10 arrives its first anniversary. Edge may have chance to compete with Chrome as the new update will support plug-in extensions.

Firefox usage share also faces much pressure. Firefox was beaten by Chrome regardless of its popularity in software community.

Microsoft announced Azure Mobie Services will be ended in December on May 11, and Azure App Service will offer similar features from September 1st, reported VentureBeat.

Azure Mobile Services offers the Push Notification feature, authentication and data storage.

From September 1st, Microsoft will automatically transfer the Azure Mobile Service to Azure Application Service. Azure Application Service was released by Microsoft in last year to back up the mobile applications and websites. It means that the application service and mobile services share the same features. Azure Mobile Services was released in 2012.

In the field of mobile background, Azure Mobile Services face much competition from Amazon network service AWS. Amazon’s AWS obtained many users and performed well as it made profitable revenue.

There are also other rivals such as Google Cloud Endpoints, Firebase and Facebook Parse. Facebook also carried out the similar measure for its Parse mobile backstage as Microsoft does.

The senior project manager of Azure mobile services Andrian Hall claimed that Microsoft will notify its Azure Mobile Services users for ending this service in May.

He revealed that all Azure Mobile Services users won’t be able to use this platform to edit from August. Microsoft will transfer this service from free website to Azure application service in September. The Azure mobile services will be completely disabled by then end of this year.

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins confirmed that the company is developing a network tv service which is similar to cable tv when he was interviewed by New York Times this week.

Hopkins claimed that the network tv service is a part of the new strategy. It emphasizes on personalization.

The subscription fee of this service is undecided yet. The confirmed source indicated that it might charge users about $40 per month.

Hulu announced on Wednesday that this new service has already obtained 12 million users, while Netflix subscribed users are only 45.7 million. It is said that Hulu might seek business in original documentary filed. The first documentary it bought was The Beatles: Eight days a week directed by Ron Howard.

Network tv service becomes more popular in recent years. The broadband speed has been improved a lot. Some tv networking companies are willing to authorize the broadcasting rights by networking tv service.

Its new network tv service will compete the service against cable tv service and other network service such as Sling TV and PlayStation Vue.

Hopkins implied that Hulu, Disney and Fox will come into an agreement in terms of the new network service. The new service just aims to attract more audience who like to watch subscribed tv shows.

Apple released its last quarterly earnings on Tuesday. Its annual revenue has decreased for the first time since 2003 with the result of a decline in quarterly iPhone sales.

It officially revealed $50.6 billion in revenue to its investors on Tuesday, with a 12% decrease.

The statistics showed that Apple made 51.2 million sets for iPhone sales, with a 16% decrease from 61.2 million sold during 2015’s second fiscal quarter.

Apple sold 10.3 million iPad in the same period last year, while it encountered a 19% drop this year. 4.03 million Macs were sold and with $5.11 billion in revenue in last quarter. The subscription steaming service, Apple Music has obtained more than 13 million subcribed members so far.

The drive market for Appler performance growth is Chinese market in recent year. It realized $12.48 billion in revenue last quarter in Chinese market, with a 26% drop.

Even though its revenue declined, it still brought Apple $ 10.5 billion in profits for the quarter. It could still consider as a great success among many tech firms.

Apple aims at making $41 billion and $43 billion in revenues for its current fiscal quarter which is under the average evaluation of analyst at $47.3 billion.

Besides the sales decline, Apple also faces the embarrassed situation: profitability decline. Its current gross profit margin keeps at 39.4%, however, it might decrease to 37.5% 38% for next quarter.

Apple faces much challenge to stimulate more sales and gain more profits.

Facebook is the leader in social networking filed. But there are also rivals aiming to obtain more users share.

Bloomberg reported on Monday that fewer users posted their personal information on Facebook now. The more Facebook users made friends on this platform, the fewer are willing to share their personal life there. In the meanwhile, they prefer to share their personal life on Snapchat or Facebook subsidiary Instagram.

The Information reporter Amir Efrati quoted from Facebook internal data that the share of Facebook users posted personal
details there declined 21 % from 2014 to 2015. Last Week, Mark Zuckerberg stressed the new application to share personal
information on Facebook.

Even though Facebook has over one billion users, only they share unique experience on it and attract more friends can show its
worth. The reason why Facebook launched the live video feature last week was to attract more users to share their experience.

Speaking of Snapchat, this app attracts more users in age 18-24 and age 25-34. According to the statistics reported by ComScore, Snapchat had great users share increase between these two groups from 2013 to 2015.

Even though Snapchat obtains fewer users than Facebook, more young people would like to share their snapshots on it instead of
the latter. They have more common friends and families on Facebook account.

Snapchat allows users to public their video films or photos. Users can also send them to their friends. Users can totally control their photos. It is more convenient to share daily details on Snapchat.

Facebook just launched a Facebook Live feature. It is amazing that users can watch the live video on Facebook now.

Facebook Live is not just broadcasting the videos. It has a picture that users can search videos from all over the world. The new feature allows users to use the filter when playing videos. Facebook Live combines with Facebook Reactions.

Reactions is biggest product that Facebook released in the past few years. However, most of flaring features of Reactions are similar with other websites’. Speaking of it Live video, Facebook also replicated or imitated the live video features from Periscope, Meerkate and other websites.

Mark Zuckerberg explained the differences between Facebook Live and Periscope live video when he was interviewed by Buzzfeed News last week.

His answer was simple, Facebook has audience while Periscope doesn’t. It offers convenience for users to search friends though they just wish to share videos with them.

Facebook and Periscope are close functionally, but the former is mot popular and welcome by the public. Its applications are easy accepted without promotion.

To use this new feature, users can also set live videos as their profile pictures. There will be more moving profile pictures instead of the static ones then.

However, not all video formats will be supported. Fortunately, users can transform the static profile pictures into the dynamic images through some third-party apps including Vine, MSQRD, Boomerang and so on.

If you are interested, please draw attention to learn more Facebook news concerning the new apps and features.