Facebook’s changing its news feed again. The Detroit Auto Show has begun – and today’s keynote is being delivered by BlackBerry CEO John Chen.
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Trending on – where else? – Facebook is the latest changes to the social network’s signature news feed. In a Jan. 11 post on his public Facebook page, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that moving forward, users would be seeing fewer posts from businesses, brands, and media in favour of posts from family and friends. The goal, he said, was to make time spent on Facebook more valuable, noting that the company expects the amount of time people spend on Facebook and certain measures of engagement to go down. Wall Street was apparently less than optimistic about that second part, since Facebook shares dropped nearly four per cent after the announcement.
If you think automated and connected cars took over CES, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The North American International Auto Show, otherwise known as the Detroit Auto Show, began on Saturday and runs until January 28. Expect the numerous automakers who revealed new concept cars, partnerships, and vehicle platforms at CES to have even more to say at the automotive industry’s biggest event of the year. So far, according to Google Trends, Ford, which revealed that it’s developing an open-source platform for connected cars at CES, and Infiniti, which skipped CES but unveiled the semi-autonomous QX50 at the Los Angeles Auto Show last year, have secured the most attention.
Most relevant to our listeners, however, is the Auto Show’s keynote speaker: BlackBerry CEO John Chen. In a presentation scheduled for 2 PM today, Chen is expected to discuss BlackBerry’s transformation from a smartphone manufacturer into a world-class cybersecurity solutions provider – and, more importantly for the Auto Show’s audience, autonomous car software developer with more than 50 per cent of the automotive infotainment market. Chen is also expected to unveil and demonstrate a new BlackBerry product that, according to the company, will help shape and secure the future of connected and self-driving cars, but nothing specific had been released at press time.
That’s what’s trending today. Hashtag Trending is produced by IT World Canada. Today’s episode is brought to you by SAS, the world leader in advanced analytics and Official Analytics Partner of the Canadian Olympic Team.
