Author: Josh Wolford

Twitter has just released an update to both their iOS and Android apps that allow you to see Trends from all over the world as well as choose to see Trends specifically tailored to your interests and who you follow. The update also brings a few other good improvements like improved playback on Vine videos.

When accessing Trends on Twitter’s “discover” tab, you’ll now see the option to get “tailored trends” or also to change location. Here’s what Twitter will tell you when you attempt to change location:

“Tailored Trends are based on your location and who you follow which make them more relevant to your interests. If you change location, you’ll see Trends based around geography only.”

You can then pick from dozens of locations – mostly larger cities across the world. if you do so, your trends will simply be based on what’s popular around you – it’ll have nothing to do with who you follow.

Updates to iOS & Android apps: See Trends from all over the world or choose to have Trends tailored to your interests.

— Twitter (@twitter) May 1, 2013

With today’s update, replies to retweeted tweets now show both the author of the tweet and the user who retweeted it. Here’s the full list of updates to come along with version 5.6:

See what’s happening near you or around the world by viewing Trends in hundreds of locations.

Also:
• Invite friends to join Twitter from within the app
• Improved playback of Vine videos
• Replies to retweeted Tweets now include both the author and person who retweeted the Tweet
• Enjoy a smoother experience due to bug fixes and other improvements.

You can download the updates now in the App Store and on Google Play.

Over the weekend, Coffee County, Tennessee Commissioner Barry West posted a photo on his public Facebook profile that has many in the area and across the country up in arms (no pun intended).

The image, which is being called a “hate filled post targeted at Muslims,” features an older man in a cowboy hat aiming down the sights of a long-barreled shotgun. “HOW TO WINK AT A MUSLIM,” says the caption. Here’s a screencap of the post, courtesy of The Daily Dot. West has since deleted the post:

West says that he didn’t actually create the image, but he did share it. He also said that it was meant to be humorous.

“Why am I being singled out?” he asked.

“I’m prejudiced against anyone who’s trying to tear down this country, Muslims, Mexicans, anybody,” he told The Tullahoma News. “If you come into this country illegally or harm us or take away benefits, I’m against it”

“I just showed it to somebody else,” he continued. “If you’re going to harm this country, I’m not in favor of you…I don’t appreciate people trying to tear down this country.”

Concerned with a recent string of anti-Muslim acts in Middle Tennessee, The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro had this to say:

“This does not only incite hatred but also violence against law-abiding citizens of our great country. Mr. West obviously lacks in wisdom and judgment and, therefore, cannot be trusted as commissioner. I wonder what would Mr. West’s response would be if the same photo was posted by someone with a caption that says: ‘How to Wink at Mr. West, a Coffee County Commissioner?’”

West is also drawing criticism from groups on Facebook, like the Christian Left.

“Coffee County, TN Commissioner Barry West (D) posted this on his facebook page on Saturday. This is a hate filled post targeted at Muslims and is not acceptable from anyone, let alone someone holding a public office!
Tell Commissioner Barry West this is NOT acceptable and that he needs to apologize to the Muslim community immediately,” they say in a post.

Coffee County Mayor David Pennington has released a statement distancing himself from West:

“As the Mayor of Coffee County I apologize to the Muslim people. I have no control over what the commissioners do outside of public meetings. I personally wouldn’t have done it, I have a great relationship with the Muslim community.”

LinkedIn is giving users a new way to showcase their work by allowing them to add photos, videos, and presentations to their profiles.

Let’s say you’re a photographer, and in your LinkedIn “experience” section you want to add some samples of your work – now you can do that. Let’s say you worked incredibly hard on a big presentation and wish to showcase that to everyone who views your profile – now you can do that.

“For the first time, you will now have the ability to showcase your unique professional story using rich, visual content on your LinkedIn profile. This means you can illustrate your greatest achievements in the form of stunning images, compelling videos, innovative presentations and more. From the analyst who makes annual predictions on tech trends to the 3D animator who is looking to fund a new short film, the opportunities are limitless for how professionals can now use the LinkedIn profile to help showcase these unique stories in a visual way,” says LinkedIn’s Udi Milo.

In short, LinkedIn is letting users create a more visual resume.

To get started, just edit your profile and look for areas to add visual content in your “summary,” “experience,” and “education” sections. LinkedIn says that they rollout of this new feature begins today with English-speaking users.

According to UNICEF, 19,000 children die every day from preventable causes. And your Facebook like isn’t going to save a one of them.

The United Nations Children’s Fund Sweden division is calling people out with a powerful new ad campaign: we need money for polio vaccines and your slacktivism isn’t helping.

“Like is on Facebook, and we will vaccinate zero children against polio,” reads a press ad developed pro bono by ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors. “We have nothing against likes, but vaccines cost money. Please buy a polio vaccine at unicef.se. It will only cost you 4 euros, but will save the lives of 12 children.”

The campaign, which is running in print, television, radio, and online, also has a powerful video ad featuring a 10-year-old boy named Rahim.

“My name is Rahim. I’m 10 years old and I live here with my brother,” says the boy as the camera zooms in on a ragged apartment. “Sometimes I worry that I will get sick, like mom got sick. Then who will look after my brother?”

“But I think everything will be alright. Today, UNICEF Sweden has 177,000 likes on Facebook. Maybe they will reach 200,000 by summer. Then we should be alright.”

With the rise of social media, we’ve also seen a rise in “armchair activism” or “slacktivism,” the terms used to describe lazy attempts to support a cause via social media. One prime example was last year’s Kony 2012 campaign, which saw millions of Facebook and Twitter users share viral video about the atrocities of Ugandan LRA leader Joseph Kony.

But you can see fragmented slacktivist campaigns every day on Facebook. “Like this photo and this baby gets the transplant it needs” and so on. Sure, clicking like or sharing a status may make you feel good, but it doesn’t accomplish much more than that.

[Images via UNICEF Sweden]

There is something poignant, and unnervingly beautiful about this. It’s also incredibly depressing in a way. Google’s autocomplete feature uses algorithms to suggest queries based on their popularity with other users, so when Google is suggesting something to you, just know that a whole hell of a lot of people have search it before you.

And that’s what makes this so…just…yeah:

“Using billions of searches, Google has prototyped an anonymous profile of its users. This reflects the fears, inquiries, preoccupations, obsessions and fixations of the human being at a certain age and our evolution through life,” says creator Marius B. Well said.

And just FYI, he made this video in a incognito window with no user signed in, no cookies, and with a deleted history. This is pretty much the human condition, visualized via Google autocomplete. Life really is all about sex.

[Marius B via reddit]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, champions of the public interest in matters related to free speech and digital privacy, has just released their latest report on which companies actively help protect your data from the government. It’s called the “Who has your back” report and this is the third year that EFF has published it.

The methodology is simple enough. The EFF looks at 18 prominent tech companies including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Apple, and Amazon, and judges them based on 6 different categories (up from 4 last year). It then awards stars to the companies if their actions in those categories are on the side of protecting user rights.

This year, Twitter and ISP Sonic.net were the only two companies to receive full 6-star ratings from the EFF. Last year, they were the top two performers in the report, scoring a 3.5 and 4 star rating, respectively.

Here are the 6 categories that the EFF looks at for their report:

1. Does the company require a warrant for content of communications?
2. Does the company tell users about government data requests?
3. Does the company publish transparency reports?
4. Does the company publish law enforcement guidelines?
5. Does the company fight for users’ privacy rights in court?
6. Does the company fight for users’ privacy in Congress?

Verizon and Myspace received zero stars, while Apple, AT&T, and Yahoo received 1 star. On the flip side, Dropbox, Google, LinkedIn, and Spideroak got nearly perfect marks, coming in with 5 stars out of 6.

Readers of this year’s annual privacy and transparency report should be heartened, as we are, by the improvements major online service providers made over the last year. While there remains room for improvement in areas such as the policies of location service providers and cellphone providers like AT&T and Verizon, certain practices – like publishing law enforcement guidelines and regular transparency reports – are becoming standard industry practice for Internet companies.

And we are seeing a growing, powerful movement that comprises civil liberties groups as well as major online service providers to clarify outdated privacy laws so that there is no question government agents need a court-ordered warrant before accessing sensitive location data, email content, and documents stored in the cloud.

Remember: you entrust most of these companies with almost everything in your digital life – photos, personal info, location, financial info. It’s important to know exactly where each stands in terms of protecting that info against prying eyes. The EFF warns that the absence of a star doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is thwarting user rights in that category – it simply may mean that they haven’t been given the chance to defend user rights in that arena. Here’s the EFF’s full star report:

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty worldwide marketing campaign is nearly a decade old, and in that time the company has spent millions on telling women that their natural beauty is just that – real beauty. Their latest viral campaign with that message, Dove Real Beauty Sketches, went viral earlier this month.

You may recall the video, which featured an artist comparing women’s perceptions of their physical appearance to descriptions from other people. In the end, it showed that people sell themselves short. You are most likely a lot more beautiful than you think you are. Great message. Well, men need that sort of confidence boost from time to time. Especially when it involves their balls. I don’t think that I have to explain that this excellent parody video is a little bit NFSW (some ball drawings):

[via AdhocVids]

YouTube has just announced that members of the U.S. Congress will now be able to live stream video, as well as access enhanced features on their YouTube channels.

“Video plays a powerful role in bringing us closer together, especially when it connects people in real time. By transcending borders, empowering citizens, and increasing transparency, it’s one of the many ways technology allows democracy to thrive. Starting this week, all members of the U.S. Congress will have the opportunity to access enhanced features on their YouTube channels, including the ability to live stream video,” says Robert Kyncl, Vice President, Global Head of Content Partnerships for YouTube.

Google also made public the letters sent to both the House and the Senate from the Committee on House Administration and the committee on Rules and Administration, respectively. In these letters, the committees outline that YouTube is making live streaming an option, and that it will be free.

The House letter makes a point to liken YouTube livestreaming to Skype or ooVoo, and the Senate letter assures Senators that YouTube fully complies with Senate Internet Regulations, as they have already been doing so under a previous agreement.

Google isn’t forthcoming with the exact nature of the other “enhanced features,” but the live streaming part is a huge deal. Members of Congress can choose to broadcast speeches, meetings, or any other aspect of their daily routines. If done right, it’s a good way for Congresspeople to connect with the American people and for the American people to get a window into the Congressional daily grind, you know, if they so chose.

Digg has just published the results of part 2 of their user survey into what makes a good RSS reader. It’s all part of their quest to build a Google Reader replacement, which they announced on the same day Google announced they would be killing their product in July.

In part 1, we learned that users want very little changed – they want a simple, fast, feature-light RSS reader. This time around, Digg found that a majority of users aren’t really into social features inside readers. They also uncovered that 40% would pay for a good reader. And that led Digg to all but announce that Digg Reader will be a paid service.

Although they don’t come right out and say it, Digg says that they were “pleased” to see that 40% of their survey respondents said that they would pay for a Google Reader replacement.

Also, Digg says that they would like their users “to be customers, not our product.” Sounds like Digg is pretty much set on charging for their RSS reader:

Free products on the Internet don’t have a great track record. They tend to disappear, leaving users in a lurch. We need to build a product that people can rely on and trust will always be there for them. We’re not sure how pricing might work, but we do know that we’d like our users to be our customers, not our product. So when we asked survey participants whether or not they would be willing to pay, we were pleased to see that over 40% said yes.

Although Google Reader was a free product, and yes, it is being shuttered, I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that free products on the internet don’t have a great track record. Plenty of free products have thrived and continue to thrive, with the help of advertising.

Either way, Digg probably needs to go ahead and get their reader on the market – sooner rather than later. It’s already been over a month and a half since Google announced the end of Google Reader. Users have already had plenty of time to find alternatives like Feedly, NewsBlur, Netvibes, FlipBoard, and many, many more. Digg has targeted June for the beta release – but will that be too late? And how amazing would it have to be to get people to pay for it?

We’ve got another premiere date for a Netflix original series to report. This one is for the company’s new dramedy Orange is the New Black, starring Taylor Schilling, That 70′s Show‘s Laura Prepon and Jason Biggs.

The show will launch on July 11th at 12:01 am PT in all Netflix markets. As is customary with Netflix original series, all 13 episodes will be available at launch. Here’s Netflix’s synopsis of the series:

Orange is the New Black follows engaged Brooklynite Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), whose decade-old relationship with drug-runner Alex (Laura Prepon) results in her arrest and year-long detention in a federal penitentiary. To pay her debt to society, Piper must trade her comfortable New York life with fiance Larry (Jason Biggs) for an orange prison jumpsuit and a baffling prison culture where she is forced to question everything she believes and form unexpected new alliances with a group of eccentric and outspoken inmates. The series’ diverse ensemble also includes Kate Mulgrew, Natasha Lyonne, Pablo Schreiber, Danielle Brooks, Laverne Cox and Taryn Manning.

Orange is the New Black comes to you from Jenji Kohan, who you may know as the creator of Showtime’s hit comedy Weeds.

This series will be Netflix’s fourth major original series to drop (Lilyhammer, House of Cards, and Hemlock Grove). Before OITNB launches in July, Netflix subscribers will ge to enjoy a Netflix exclusive – season 4 of Arrested Development, set to premiere on May 26th.

Twitter’s 6-second video app Vine has just received an update. Version 1.1 add front-facing camera support, mentions, and improved people search.

When shooting your Vine, all you have to do is tap a new button on the bottom-left=hand corner to toggle between using the front-facing and regular camera on your device. Naturally, this will help Vine auteurs who fancy including selfies in their videos.

Vine finally supports @mentions as well.

“Vine now supports mentions, so you can tag people in your post. Users who are mentioned will receive a notification in Activity. To mention a user, type @username and select the name among the suggestions you’ll see. See the screenshot below for an example — when I type @chris, I see suggestions for Chris Fry, Chris Hardwick and Christofer Drew. When I select Chris Hardwick, his Vine profile will automatically link in my post’s caption,” says Vine engineer Kristian Bauer.

Vine’s last iOS app update added trending hashtags to help users surface more content. Vine also recently made videos embeddable via both the web and on mobile.

Last week, Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann confirmed that Vine is coming to Android soon.

You can grab the update for Vine for iOS over at the App Store.

“Trust is the key to our community,” says Airbnb’s Vivek Wagle. “There is no place for anonymity in a trusted community.”

And with that, Airbnb announces a move that is likely to ruffle the feathers of some users, while engendering a more serious trust in the service in others. Today, the online service that connects travelers with location renters all across the world is unveiling a heightened verification process which they call Airbnb Verified ID. It will force users to match their online IDs (via Airbnb accounts, Facebook, or LinkedIn) with their offline identities, verifiable with a government-issued ID or some sort of official questionnaire.

“Verified ID provides a connection between the online and offline spaces. Airbnb users can earn a “Verified ID” badge on their profile by providing their online identity (via existing Airbnb reviews, LinkedIn, or Facebook) and matching it to offline ID documentation, such as confirming personal information or scanning a photo ID. The name provided by both channels must match for verification to succeed,” says Wagle.

Airbnb is dipping its toes into the new verification, only requiring a random 25% of users to get verified. Users who wish to make last-minute bookings will also be asked to verify their identities. That percentage is likely to increase quickly, as Airbnb says that their end goal is to make all users have a verified ID.

Of course, you may be forced into verifying your account if you want to book certain locations. Hosts can now require that guests are verified.

At Airbnb, hosts can set reservation requirements that they feel comfortable with. Some may choose to only invite guests into their homes who have verified their IDs. If you would like to book with a host who requires their guests to verify their IDs, we’ll prompt you to do so in order to complete the booking process. Any host who requests their guests to verify their ID must also get verified.

If you want to verify your account, you can start the process here. Or, you can simply wait for Airbnb to require it. If Airbnb asks you to do so during a booking, you’ll have 12 hours to complete the process.

Airbnb has to know that this is a bold move. For some users, this will be a deal breaker. That’s unavoidable from Airbnb’s perspective. But there are few online services other the Airbnb where this sort of thing makes sense. I mean, people are hosting and booking homes and apartments with strangers. For a company that has had its share of negative press regarding poor user experiences, this is definitely a strong move to show that they’re all about trust and legitimacy.

For the past couple of years, Twitter has been slowly adding business partners to its self-service af platform, which allows users to easily build marketing campaigns on the site via promoted tweet and account targeting.

And today, Twitter is finally opening Twitter Ads up to all U.S. users. You no longer need an invite.

“When we built our self-service ad platform last March, our goal was to create an experience that would be powerful and also extremely easy for anybody to use. Whether you’re an individual looking to grow your personal brand, or an online retailer looking to increase sales, Twitter’s ad platform has the right products to help achieve your unique goals. Over the past year we’ve listened carefully to feedback from the thousands of businesses and individuals who’ve had access to the self-serve tool, and made enhancements based on their suggestions, including more targeting and reporting in the UI,” says Twitter Product Manager Ravi Narasimhan.

Last month, Twitter unveiled new interest, device, and gender targeting to its self-service ad platform. And earlier this month, they finally launched keyword targeting.

Twitter says that nothing will change for those already using Twitter ads. But if you’re new and wish to sign up, all you have to do is visit their self-service page for businesses to get going.

According to acting CEO Andy Forssell, Hulu is had a hell of a start to 2013.

In a blog post, Forssell says that Hulu set a new record for revenue in Q1, and that for the first time ever, Hulu users streamed over 1 billion videos in a single quarter. Coming of a year when subscription to Hulu Plus doubled, Forssell says that Hulu’s premium service topped 4 million subscribers in Q1.

Forsell also has this to say about where Hulu users are streaming content:

“Mobile viewing is growing at a significant rate and will account for approximately 15% of Hulu’s consumed videos in 2013-2014. For context, mobile viewing was nonexistent on our service only two years ago. Living room viewing is also growing; it currently accounts for 29% of Hulu’s content consumption, and 80% of Hulu Plus subscribers have watched with someone else.”

With stats out of the way, Forssell went on to announce two new Hulu original series, Quick Draw and East Los High. The former is “a comedic half-hour western set in 1875 that centers on a Harvard-educated sheriff and his quest to introduce the emerging science of forensics to an unruly Kansas town,” while the latter is an all-Latino cast English language drama set in an inner city high school.

These new series joins nearly a dozen Hulu exclusive series heading to the service this summer. Also, Hulu just launched new seasons of All My Children and One Life to Live.

Of course, much of this patting itself on the pack is a direct pitch to advertisers. Mainly, “Look! We have 4 million Hulu Plus subscribers who are paying to see your ads!”

“Our advertising mission is to be the world’s most effective video advertising service, and we are well on our way. According to comScore, Hulu is #1 in engagement among top ad supported sites. Hulu viewers stay with us for 45 minutes per session—without fast-forwarding or skipping ads. Hulu is also #1 in market share of all premium online video providers, delivering 1 in 3 of all premium video ads in the U.S. Our reasonable ad load drives the highest recall and awareness for brands, which results in higher effectiveness for the video ads,” says Forssell.

But it’s a strong pitch, especially for a company that is in a highly-competitive industry. The streaming video sector is booming, and Hulu is staying above the fray and setting records.

The iPhone, yes the original one, is about to be considered obsolete. I know, it already is from a practical standpoint – but Apple is about to make it official.

Internal documentation reveals that the iPhone will be classified as “vintage” or “obsolete” by June 11th. This will affect the Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States.

Here’s what the internal document says (obtained by 9to5Mac):

For vintage products in the U.S., service parts are only available to repair older Apple products purchased in the state of California, as required by statute. Owners of these products may obtain service and parts from Apple service providers of Apple retail stores within the state of California. Apple does not provide service parts nor service documentation for obsolete products. Obsolete products (obsolete and vintage in the U.S.) cannot be facilitated as Mail-In Repairs to AppleCare Repair Centers.

In the U.S., you won’t be able to walk in to Apple Stores and have your original iPhone serviced. But you can call directly to AppleCare and Authorized Service Providers, as it has “vintage” status.

It’s not just the iPhone that’s being given this status. Various iMacs and MacBooks are also being laid to rest, so to say.

Of course, this will rarely affect anyone in a practical way. The original iPhone, with its EDGE 2G and 128 MB of RAM is not really in the circulation anymore. It’s been discontinued for years, and you would have to look pretty hard to find a conclave of original iPhone users – considering the low price and availability of something like the iPhone 4.

But it is significant, nostalgic even. We’re now living in a world where the original iPhone, heralded as such an innovation back in 2007, is now considered obsolete. Officially.

In light of the recent hacking attacks that have hit news organizations around the world, Twitter has warned news outlets that they expect the attacks to continue.

“There have been several recent incidents of high-profile news and media Twitter handles being compromised. We believe that these attacks will continue, and that news and media organizations will continue to be high value targets to hackers,” said Twitter in a memo obtained by BuzzFeed. “These incidents appear to be spear phishing attacks that target your corporate email. Promoting individual awareness of these attacks within your organization and following the security guidelines below is vital to preventing abuse of your Twitter accounts.”

As you may remember, the Associated Press’ Twitter account was hacked last week, and it sent out a false tweet claiming that there had been an explosion at the White House and that President Obama was injured. This tweet, though only visible for minutes before the AP took down the account, sent the stock market into a dive. Earlier this week, The Guardian also fell victim to a hack.

Twitter’s warning to news organizations suggests many of the things you would expect: change your passwords, make them strong, and keep your email accounts secure, since Twitter uses email to verify. Twitter also asks hack victims to contact them immediately so they can work on finding the problem as soon as possible.

But there is a pretty strange and severe request from Twitter: make sure you have a single computer that’s just for Twitter. Don’t do anything else on it. What?

“Designate one computer to use for Twitter. This helps keep your Twitter password from being spread around. Don’t use this computer to read email or surf the web, to reduce the chances of malware infection. Minimize the number of people that have access. Even if you use a third-party platform to avoid sharing the actual Twitter account password, each of these people is a possible avenue for phishing or other compromise.”

Interesting. Twitter is obviously taking this very seriously, and thinks you should too. If you operate an account that you think would be a high target of hackers, it’s time to up the concern a little bit.

Recent reports indicated that Twitter was working on two-step verification (finally) to make it a bit harder for attackers to compromise accounts. Although that wouldn’t totally fix the problem, it would be a start. It’s interesting that although we heard that this two-factor verification is on the horizon, Twitter is suggesting in this letter that organizations seek out help from a third-party two-step verification provider.

Apparently, the idea of sitting down and grabbing a cup of coffee is so damn exciting that someone decided to use a stolen credit card to try and make it happen.

I’m sure you’ve been following the escalation of a particular charity auction on the site Charitybuzz – the one that offers a 30 minute to an hour-long coffee date with Apple CEO Tim Cook for the winner and a friend. Tim Cook is giving all of the money generated from the auction to the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with auctioning yourself for charity. It’s admirable, actually, and it has the ability to generate a game-changing amount of funding for the center.

The big surprise here is just how much people are willing to bid for the date.

Charitybuzz placed an estimated value of $50,000 on the date, but zealous bidders have eclipsed that mark – and then some. The bid topped $50,000 very quickly, and then exploded as the bidding reached $605,000 by last Friday night. Yep, you read that right. $605,000 for a short break with Tim Cook at Apple HQ in Cupertino.

Well, it turns out, there was something off about that $605,000 bid. Fortune noticed that this morning, the bid had fallen to $600,000. Why did it fall? Was it a glitch?

Nope. Charitybuzz confirmed that the top bid was removed when it was found out that it was placed with a stolen credit card.

But the fact remains, there is a legitimate $600,000 bid that’s currently winning this thing. And there are still 15 days left to go in the auction. To put this all in perspective, Charitybuzz’s previous record for something like this was set back in 2011 when someone paid $255,000 for some time with former President Bill Clinton.

Gangnam Style, as impressive as it was (in terms of sheer global reach), it pretty much over as a thing, a fad, and craze – whatever. As a culture, we’ve run it into the ground. Plus, Psy already has another song out. We’re not hating on Gangnam Style, we’re just mercifully pronouncing it dead, having lived a good life.

But Samsung has decided to kill it again. At a Galaxy S4 launch event in India, the smartphone makers tapped Bollywood star Ranveer Singh to lead a Gangnam Style reimagining that replaces most of the lyrics with Galaxy S4 spec praise. Why, oh why?

[FIlms of India]

Facebook has removed an option on pages that allowed users to filter recent posts to show only the ones made by friends. As of now, the “Posts by friends” filtering option located on the clickdown menu at the top of pages’ Timelines is gone.

Now users can only filter by “Highlights,” “Posts by Page,” or “Posts by Others.” The latter will naturally include posts by friends.

Facebook confirmed to Inside Facebook that the option was indeed removed:

We continue to improve pages to make them a place for people to learn and interact with different businesses. News Feed is where people can engage we posts and content from their friends and connections. Given that, we removed ‘posts by friends’ on pages. Those posts can still be seen in ‘posts by others.’

Of course, with their updated “new” news feed, Facebook added an option to filter by “All Friends,” removing page posts.

The “Post by Friends” filter was useful at times when filtering out page posts – oftentimes users want to see just what their friends had to say about a restaurant or other business. It’s likely that Facebook simply removed this option because it wasn’t being used or was deemed superfluous. Either way, it’s gone. That means that until Facebook adds posts to the content able to be found using Graph Search, there’s no real way to find out what a friend said about that new local brewery.