Facebook hopes to make viral-video magic with Riff

Facebook has another video app for you to download. I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNet update. [MUSIC] Hey kids, there's another. A way for you to create and share a video on social media. If Parascope, Meerkat, Vine, and Snap Chat weren't enough for you, now Facebook has Riff. It's a new app for making short videos with your friends, that are about a single topic. On Riff you can start a fresh topic or jump into an existing topic someone else started. So let's say it's about bananas, you record 20 seconds of video about a banana and if your friend jumps in and his or her friends see it and they jump in the next thing you know there are 100 videos about a banana on Facebook and that makes Facebook happy. Because more people are uploading video, and that means the network can make more money from advertisers. So the next time a viral video of movement comes along, like the Ice Bucket Challenge, or the Harlem Shake, maybe it'll take off on Riff. Or maybe people will just keep using their phone to record video and upload it manually to Facebook. Yeah, how boring. In other news, Nintendo has announced a new wave of Amiibos figurines but some characters are sold exclusively at certain stores. Among the characters coming out on May 29th are Pac-Man, Wario, Charizard and Jigglypuff. A total of 15 will be out in December, including Dr. Mario. Similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity you put these little characters on a sensor to play them in a game. In the fall there will also be little Yoshis made with actual yarn to play in the game Yoshi's Wooly World. Nintendo has sold more than 5.7 million of these Amiibo figurines. And these toys will also unlock a short demo of a classic Nintendo game from NES, or Super NES. And you can buy them in the virtual console store. In mobile news, Google has given you one less reason to log into Google Plus. A major perk of the social networking app is that it automatically saves an online backup of your phone's photos. But now, Google is adding this photo backup ability to another app, the Google Drive app for iOS and Android. Google Drive can automatically save copies of your photos and videos from your smartphone or tablet. Also your photos from Google Plus will show up in Google Drive. It looks like Google is taking steps to separate Google's photo services from Google Plus. And Dyson has a new spacey-looking blade-free fan that also purifies air. It's called the Pure Cool. The purifying fan has a 360 degree glass HEPA filter that's supposed to filter out ultra fine particles including cigarette smoke. It's first coming to China and Japan and there's no price yet for the US, but it's safe to say that it will be more money than you want to spend. About $300 to $450. That's your tech news update. For more head to cnet.com. From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey. [MUSIC]