TechCrunch reports the absence of Facebook’s Ticker, which typically appears to the right of users’ News Feed to summarize friends’ activity on the network. “It’s not clear why Facebook decided to axe the Ticker,” TC writes. “Generally, Facebook is no stranger to killing off features that are either not being used, or are not progressing in the way it had anticipated.”

Facebook is now inviting Instant Games users to livestream their gaming sessions, Venture Beat reports. Additionally, “Games such as Rovio Entertainment’s Angry Birds will be joining the Instant Games platform next year, along with integrated video chat in multiplayer games starting with Zynga’s Words with Friends,” VB writes. Meanwhile, “Though Facebook doesn’t have specific plans to court broadcasters who are livestreaming on platforms like Twitch, [Facebook’s global director of games partnerships Leo] Olebe says that it’s not a stretch to think that influencers may want to give it a spin to …

Since Twitter extended its character limit, users have been “liking” the longer tweets, and retweeting them at nearly double the rate of shorter tweets. That’s according to new data from SocialFlow, as reported by BuzzFeed News. SocialFlow “determined that tweets above 140 characters are being retweeted 26.52 times on average compared with 13.71 times for tweets of 140 characters and below,” Buzzfeed writes.

YouTube reportedly plans to launch a paid music service in March. “Warner Music Group, one of the world’s three major record labels, has already signed on,” Bloomberg reports, citing sources. “YouTube is also in talks with the two others, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, and Merlin, a consortium of independent labels.”

In 2018, iPhone shoppers can expect better battery life from the gadgets, 9To5Mac writes, citing a new report from KGI Securities. “Battery life has long been a point of contention for iPhone users, with Apple revolutionizing nearly every other smartphone feature while battery life remains stagnant,” it writes. “While a 10 percent increase in battery life may not seem like a lot on the surface, it is a notable increase that could either offset more intense features Apple has planned.”

Bloomberg attributes the popularity of Rodrigo Duterte to Facebook, among other factors. Regarding the president of the Philippines, who has a track record of human-rights abuses, it writes: “He hired strategists who helped him transform his modest online presence, creating an army of Facebook personalities and bloggers worldwide.” More broadly, “The Philippines is prime Facebook country -- smartphones outnumber people, and 97 percent of Filipinos who are online have Facebook accounts.”  

Google is testing a new search program made up of celebrity trivia provided directly from celebrities themselves. “The results come in the form of a video you’d expect to see from a front-facing camera on a phone and cover a range of topics,” Android Authority writes. Already, “It has videos from movie stars like Will Ferrell, James Franco, Mark Wahlberg, and Priyanka Chopra, TV stars like Tracee Ellis Ross, Gina Rodrigues, Kenan Thompson, Allison Williams, and Seth MacFarlane, and others.”

Google just shut down the app section of the Chrome Web Store for Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome, ars technica reports. “Google has started sending out emails to Chrome app developers telling them that Chrome Apps are deprecated, and while previously installed apps still work, the functionality will be stripped out of Chrome in Q1 2018,” it writes. “As Google explained in its blog post last year, Chrome apps are being killed because no one uses them.”

YouTube is reportedly looking to raise rates for spots in the reserved media tier by upwards of 20%. “In return, YouTube will ensure that the placements those clients pay for will come on videos that are brand-safe and appropriate for each brand’s target audience,” Tubefilter writes, citing a paywall-protected story in Business Insider. “In addition to ads sold directly by YouTube, inventory controlled by third parties would likely see its own price hike.”

LaunchDarkly just raised $21 million from Redpoint Ventures and Vertex Ventures, CNBC reports. In describing the startup, CNBC writes: “LaunchDarkly built what it calls a ‘feature management platform’ that any business can use to test, manage and provision software features.” Of note, “The start-up’s platform lets companies make different features available to select groups without shipping everything to everyone at the same time.”