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 »
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 »
The battle of adults versus teens has taken on a new format in #followateen versus #followanadult. Read more »
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 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 »
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 »
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 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 »
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 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 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 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 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 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 »
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 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 »
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 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Instagram has disabled its Twitter cards, according to Twitter. That means images are no longer displaying properly in Twitter feeds. The move is yet another example of the ongoing tensions between the two social networks. Read more »
Are you cheating on your quantified self? Even if our quantified selves are a little better, fitter and more hardworking than our actual selves, they’re still part of a new kind of virtual, fluid and filtered identity that’s becoming more common place on the internet. Read more »
The photo and video app market is a sizable one undergoing rapid changes right now. With low barriers to entry, this is a market that also consists of a large number of developers and is certainly not limited to a handful of well-financed startups. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook is proposing integrating user data with Instagram user data, and abolishing a voting system that allowed users to weigh in on potential changes to the site. The changes bring some privacy concerns for users, but come from Facebook’s desire to monetize and streamline user data. Read more »
In the past, information flow during a military campaign was mostly controlled by the armies involved, but now that everyone has the ability to publish and distribute data including photos and videos, it changes the nature of attacks like the latest Israeli campaign against Hamas. Read more »
