The tussle over animated GIFs
Facebook has begun rolling out their latest feature, photo commments. But no GIFs allowed. Read more »
Snapchat close to raising as much as $100 million at a jaw-dropping valuation
Snapchat, a service allows you to send and receive photos or videos that sort-of-maybe disappear afterward is getting $100 million in new funds from undisclosed investors, a few months after it snagged $13.5 million from Benchmark Capital. Read more »
What makes Instagram such a steal for Facebook
Instagram is one of those rare companies that has been able to marry the digital and the physical and create a community based on delight and relationships. It is one of the reasons why I think it was a steal of a deal for Facebook. Read more »
Picture this: A new Eye-Fi card shares your DSLR pics with your mobile device
Eye-Fi, the company that rose to gadget fame with a Wi-Fi module that transfered pics from a DSLR to a PC has finally gotten hip to the mobile revolution with its new Mobi card. Read more »
Why Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for $1 billion makes a certain horrible kind of sense
Fans of the social-blogging network might not like the idea much, but a $1-billion acquisition of Tumblr would arguably solve a number of problems for Yahoo — and do the same for Tumblr CEO David Karp. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Survey: How apps can solve photo management
A recent survey found that 76 percent of respondents store their digital photos on multiple devices using multiple services.That means ample opportunity exists for companies offering solutions that tackle this “dispersed photo problem.” This report analyzes the aforementioned survey’s results, and also measures 18 different vendors against what respondents value most when it comes to photo-organizing solutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Hipstamatic attempts to revive mobile photographers with the launch of social app Oggl
What does the future look like for Hipstamatic, the original darling of mobile photo shutterbugs eclipsed by Instagram? It’s embracing the social nature of the photo wars with Oggl, a new app. Read more »
Five things you can actually learn from #followateen
photo: Corbis / Blend Images / LWA / Dann Tardif
The battle of adults versus teens has taken on a new format in #followateen versus #followanadult. Read more »
See the Instagram photos you’re tagged in with new “Photos of You” feature
Want to see the photos you’ve been tagged in on Instagram? The company plans to announce a “Photos of You” feature on Thursday that will let you do just that. Read more »
Instagram makes us all paparazzi, but we’re not all celebrities
photo: Shutterstock / Zurijeta
Instagram might be changing the economics of the paparazzi business, but the photo-sharing service and its social media peers can also make celebrities — willing or not — out of ordinary people. Who should pay when digital activity has real-world consequences? Read more »
Mobile apps for Google+ add photo filters, too
Google+ announced Monday that it’s incorporating some photo editing and filtering features into its iOS app from the team at Snapseed, which Google acquired back in September 2012. At this point the “photo wars” seem to have died down slightly, but Google+ gets into the mix. Read more »
What if every ‘like’ and ‘favorite’ came with money? Flattr makes it possible
Content creators no longer need to brandish a Flattr button in order to receive micropayments through the service. All that’s needed is for a Flattr user to ‘like’ their video, tune or tweet. Read more »
Facebook gets simpler with bet that we just want the news that fits
photo: Eliza Kern
Facebook took a step back on Thursday in unveiling the updated News Feed, focusing on the simpler design the company has historically championed and trying to surface more interesting content through changes to the feed. Read more »
Why, again, isn’t there an iPad-optimized Instagram app?
When you look at the ownership trends among tablets, and particularly iPads, it starts to become rather puzzling that there aren’t as many photo apps made specifically for the iPad. Read more »
Instagram hits major milestone of 100 million monthly active users
Instagram announced Tuesday that it’s now hit 100 million monthly active users, a stat that puts it just behind Google+ and Twitter and shows that it hasn’t lost momentum even after a terms of service debate that left some people threatening to quit. Read more »
Snapchat’s video feature comes to Android
Snapchat has rolled out its video product on Android on Thursday, adding a popular feature to a booming app. The company that allows users to send short-lived photos and videos just raised a Series A funding round led by Benchmark. Read more »
Instagram says ‘self-help’ best option for woman suing over photos — and it’s right
Do you remember the huge controversy when people claimed Instagram wanted to sell your photos? In a court filing, Instagram reiterated a familiar refrain by social media companies that users can take or leave it when it comes to their policies. Read more »
Instagram hits the desktop web, but photo uploading remains mobile-first
Facebook has expanded further to a desktop web presensce on Tuesday with the launch of a feed allowing users to like and comment on photos from their followers. But looking to start uploading Instagram photos from your computer? Think again — that process remains mobile. Read more »
Vine is the best we’ve seen in social video, but is it good enough?
When it comes to social video, plenty of people have tried to nail it, but no one’s really succeeded so far. Vine could come closest to making videos easy to upload and share, but will it be the answer to video’s obstacles? Read more »
Live by the platform, die by the platform: Facebook grabs more control of its data
photo: Flickr/spcbrass
It’s always a risk building on top of another technology platform, although building on Facebook’s API has obvious benefits when you’re starting out. But if you pick that route? Be sure to note how quickly the company is changing. Read more »
Want to use Facebook’s social graph to find friends on Twitter’s Vine? Good luck
photo: Flickr/shawncampbell
Users of Twitter’s video-sharing app Vine will already find the deteriorating relationship between Twitter a Facebook a hindrance as they go to start using the product and have difficulty finding Facebook friends on the app through Vine. Read more »
Who’s winning the race in social media? Monthly active users by the numbers [Chart]
Instagram joined the club of social media companies releasing monthly active user stats, a more helpful metric than general registered users. We broke down the metrics from some of the most popular services, taking a look at how long it’s taken each company to get there. Read more »
The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile
The mobile platform wars heated up in a big way as 2012 came to a close. Among other trends, Microsoft launched Windows Phone 8, Android’s dominant market share grew, and mobile commerce reached record highs during the holidays. Read more »
Subscriber Content
How to compete with Facebook in 2013
Specialist networks cater to diverse consumer segments, but Facebook’s sheer ubiquity means 94 percent of all social networkers use it. The bottom line: If any generalist network is going to gain mass-market traction, it will be at the expense of Facebook, not in addition to it. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Revealed: the finalists for the 2012 Crunchies
photo: courtesy of TechCrunch
Five finalists have been chosen in 20 different categories for the 2012 Crunchies awards, and we’re proud to release the worthy nominees today. Voting for the winners starts today, and the winners will be announced January 31st. Read more »
Snapchat rises: Why Poke’s decline shows Facebook’s inability to invent
photo: Zef Nikolla
Facebook’s Poke app, a copy of red-hot Snapchat rose almost to the top of the iTunes appstore on launch. A few days later it has tanked, making me wonder: can Facebook really invent any new Internet behavior or is it destined to be a copycat forever? Read more »
Instagram privacy lawsuit is nonsense say experts
photo: ollyy via Shutterstock
A law firm is trying to capitalize on recent outrage over Instagram’s changes to its terms of services. Despite media hype, the lawsuit has been described as “frivolous” and “flimsy” by social media law experts. Read more »
Instagram rolls out new updates, notes temporary privacy display error
Instagram released a few updates to its iOS and Android apps Thursday evening, adding a new filter called Mayfair and making some changes to how users can sign up add photos. The company has noted a bug related to privacy displays, which might concern some users. Read more »
Facebook to start rolling out updated privacy settings to U.S. users
Facebook announced a new set of privacy tools and features last week, and those updates will begin rolling out to users in the U.S. starting Thursday night. One of the most significant coming changes is users not being able to hide their profiles from search results. Read more »
Instagram changes course and reverts to original terms of service for advertising
Instagram announced in a blog post Thursday afternoon that it would be entirely reverting to the language from its original terms of service in regards to advertising, following several days of concern from users over the updated language in its terms of service. Read more »
Am I the product? Users react to Instagram’s terms of service shift
Instagram released new terms of service on Monday that enraged users who worried that their content would be used for advertising without their permission. Instagram clarified on Tuesday, but it’s unclear if the damage is already done among its customers. Read more »
Instagram responds to user complaints, says it will not sell your photos
Instagram responded to user complaints over the update to its privacy policy on Monday. It explained that it does not intend to sell user photos, and that users can still set their photos to private to maintain privacy controls. Read more »
Report: Despite Systrom’s denial, Twitter made $525M offer for Instagram
A report from the New York Times said Twitter offered Instagram $525 million to acquire the photo-sharing startup before the company went and agreed to a sale by Facebook. Potential legal issues might rest on whether Twitter’s offer was ever considered a formal one. Read more »
Flickr belatedly joins the mobile photo wars with new iPhone app
photo: Flickr
Flickr has been largely forgotten in the mobile photo market. But it’s trying to make a comeback with a new iPhone app that adds better social sharing, photo editing and viewing and discovery tools. Read more »
A question that Twitter needs to ask itself
What are Twitter’s core design, product and engineering capabilities — stuff they are really good at. What is Twitter’s core competency? Those are tough questions for the company to ask itself and answer — for it would help define and set expectations and strategy that is lasting. Read more »
Twitter reveals new back-end photo storage system
As Twitter clearly works to prioritize photos on its service, having just rolled out a filter and editing service Monday, the company explained in a blog post Tuesday that it’s developed its own back-end storage system for photos, replacing its prior partner Photobucket beginning in September. Read more »
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Instagram photos now totally gone from inside your Twitter stream
Users will stop seeing Instagram photos appear in their Twitter streams at all, now that the full effect of Instagram removing Twitter support takes hold. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom announced last week that the company would stop showing photo in Twitter, heating up the photo battle. Read more »
Why Facebook will start serving ads on Instagram soon
photo: Muellek Josef/Shutterstock
When we think about data privacy, we normally think about a company giving or selling our info to a third party. But a single company can also circulate around our information among its various units in ways that raise similar privacy concerns Read more »
What the Instagram fight says about Twitter as a media platform
photo: Flickr user Faramarz Hashemi
Instagram says it is removing the ability for Twitter to embed photos because it wants users to go to its own website instead of Twitter’s to see that content. Other media companies should probably also be asking themselves similar questions about their relationship with Twitter. Read more »
