Facebook celebrates 12th birthday

Its February 4th, 2016 so won’t you please join us in wishing Facebook a very happy 12th birthday? As we reported last week, the social network site is doing just fine, thank you very much, and on this day is sharing with its users a little present in the form of so-called “Friends Day” videos.

Throughout the day, Facebook will place personalized videos created from your uploaded photos at the top of your news feed in celebration of the friendships that have made a difference in your life, according to CEO Mark Zucherberg. If you don’t like the pics Facebook automatically selects for the video, you can change them out. And whether you share the video with others or just enjoy it to yourself is entirely up to you.

As Facebook celebrates its day of birth with friendliness, some media headlines are taking the opportunity to examine Facebook in a, shall we say, less positive light. For instance, CNBC penned a piece examining how Facebook users have squandered some $3.5 Trillion in productivity. Oh Yeah? That’s a lot. We wonder how much productivity got squandered watching garbage TV shows on Hulu? You know what they say about glass houses, right NBC?

Apple music subscribers using Android smartphones just got some cool new functionality that Apple isn’t even giving its own iPhone users. As of today, Apple is rolling out an update that will not only allow Android users to download music for offline playback, but, for the first time, Apple is allowing those files to be stored on a Micro-SD card.

This move has some tech pundits shaking their heads, as Apple has sort of missed an opportunity to coerce Android users to its own ecosystem by offering them something they can’t get on Apple’s own devices. It’s an interesting play in which Apple is tossing its software and cloud services out in front of its hardware. The question I think lots of people are asking is: How does this benefit Apple, exactly?

Are you a Spotify user who’s getting a little tired of your own playlists? Is your music sounding a little … stale? We can relate, sometimes it’s hard to discover new stuff, and even when you can, it takes time you might not have when all you wanna do is check out new music you might actually like. Well, we have good news for you: A new app called “Playlist a Day” does exactly what it sounds like it would do.

Each day the app will offer up a playlist of new music taken from what is now a pool of about 175,000 songs. The playlists come from playlists.net, a community based around collecting and sharing Spotify playlists. So, it’s not some bot or algorithm choosing the music you’re listening to with this app, it’s real people with musical tastes — good and bad — putting together music they love. Hey, if nothing else, you’re gonna get exposed to something new … you might just like it. Give it a shot and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Also, we want to remind you to keep your smartphone and PC browser pointed at Digital Trends as we head into the Super Bowl weekend. We’ve got all kinds of killer Super Bowl-related stories for you, including a run-down of the best Super Bowl ads from Super Bowls past. You won’t wanna miss it. That’s it for DT Daily today. We’ll see ya again tomorrow!