Israel is waging war on Hamas, but it is also waging an information war using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other tools. How firmly do these networks support the principle of free speech, and how do they decide what content to permit and what to remove? Read more »
You can now see EyeEm images embedded in tweets. Frankly, it’s surprising and a bit impressive that the service got to a million downloads without the virality that feature brings. Read more »
The popularity of image sites like Instagram and Pinterest means more photo sharing — but also more copyright infringement. If we’re to avoid the bitter experience of the music industry, image owners should look to Dreamstime’s example of turning infringers into customers. Read more at paidContent »
Joshua Kushner, the well known founder of New York-based Thrive Capital, an investor in hot startups such as Instagram, Fab, CodeAcademy and Warby Parker is working on his second startup, that is said to be focused on the healthcare industry. It is all very hush-hush. Read more »
According to Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, increasing speeds of the mobile app experience immediately encourages people to use the apps more. When mobile broadband speeds inhibit speed, app makers have to speed things up on their end. Read more »
With more than 100 million registered users now signed up for Instagram, the company is taking a big step forward with profiles for users on the web, available to anyone with public profiles to share, view, comment and like their images across the web. Read more »
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said Hurricane Sandy was probably the company’s biggest moment, with users tagging 800,000 photos with the “#Sandy” hashtag, compared to about 85,000 photos tagged with the Super Bowl hashtag this year. He said they embraced the participatory nature. Read more »
It might look like just a touch of color, but photo filters could represent a significant move on Twitter’s part into the photo space, previously dominated by Facebook and Instagram and one of the most valuable areas on the web. Read more »
Android 4.2, the version that’s debuting on the Nexus 4, swipes functionality from Swype – but its implementation of photo filters could spell trouble for multiple startups. Read more »
Why is it that Heroku, Foursquare, Pinterest, Reddit, Instagram et al are still so heavily dependent on Amazon’s aging and problematic US-East region? Very good question. Here are some potential answers. Read more »
GigaOM’s RoadMap conference is exactly two weeks from today and will feature speakers like Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen, Tumblr CEO David Karp, fuseproject CEO Yves Behar, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, The Obvious Corporation CEO Evan Williams, MINIMAL Founder Scott Wilson and many more. Read more »
The way that social-media tools like Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram have changed our lives is often taken for granted, but the way that they can inject some much-needed serendipity into our lives is often overlooked — even by those who use them a lot. Read more »
The service, which lets users search for Instagram photos by location, had a great start – for a day or so. With sudden popularity hitting the ceiling of API limits, it’s just as well Worldcam is a side-project. Read more »
Intelligent and simple design is the key solution to creating meaningful experiences out of the connected world. Come hear from our speakers on this topic at RoadMap, including the CEOs of Instagram and Tumblr, designers Yves Behar and Tony Fadell, and former Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Read more »
Announcing our initial speaker lineup for our 2nd RoadMap conference! Our focus this year: design in the age of connectedness. It is scheduled for Nov. 5th in SF. Some of our speakers include Kevin Systrom, Evan Williams, David Karp, Tony Fadell, Yves Behar and more. Read more »
With the photo app’s new ‘Discover’ feed pulling context from an impressive variety of sources, and with monetization plans including an entry into the stock photo business, we may be seeing evolution past the focus on art filters. Read more »
Facebook and Instagram finally closed the deal on their acquisition today, as Instagram noted the popular photo sharing app hit 5 billion photos uploaded so far, a huge number and testament to growth as it prepares to merge with the social media giant. Read more »
Twitter’s ongoing moves to control more of its network — in order to monetize it — is an attempt to turn back the clock and undo some of the openness it started out with. But will it also rob the service of what made it so powerful? Read more »
With so many different photo and social networks out there, our digital memories are usually all over the place and out of sync on a variety of different services. Irrive gathers these things into a single product that makes it easy to share single events across the web. Read more »
Facebook is now free to move ahead with its purchase of Instagram now that the FTC has given its blessing. The deal, however, is not as lucrative for Instagram, which took a lot of Facebook stock as compensation. Read more »
Twitter seems to be at a crossroads, and according to a recent GigaOM survey, its prospects for the next five years are promising. Key challenges in the near future will be establishing a revenue model and survive the backlash from developers. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The market is tough for photo apps outside the realm of Facebook and Instagram, as shown by layoffs at the photo-sharing app Hipstamatic on Thursday. Read more »
With nearly 80 million members and 4 billion photos that are growing by hundreds every second, Instagram is taking an ambition step ahead by using geo-data to create a better photo consumption experience. The new version could lead to possible business opportunities, or so I think. Read more »
Smartphones can enable an amazing level of connectivity, but they can also allow that activity to be monitored and used in controversial ways. But for mobile marketing to realize its full potential, consumers may need to sacrifice their privacy to one degree or another. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
MIT released Halide, a programming language that makes it easier to process photos without resorting to slow, custom algorithms. Halide might be the software equivalent of a sewing machine for sites such as Instagram that previously had to stitch their imaging processing code by hand. Read more »
New York City-based Mobli gets mentioned in the same breath as Instagram and a raft of social video competitors like Socialcam and Viddy. But it’s got a bigger goal: it want be a “visual platform” where users can find timely images on anything in the world. Read more »
The same kind of criticism levelled at the photo-sharing service Instagram — that it ruins photography, or makes it cheap and shallow — has been made about other forms of media, including blogging, citizen journalism and Twitter. And in each case the critics have been wrong. Read more »
Apple and Google still dominate the smartphone space, but look out for Microsoft, which finally has some muscle behind its mobile strategy. Meanwhile mobile-browser developers went head-to-head with native apps, and Facebook continued to buy mobile expertise via acquisition. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Social TV is any application, website or software that allows viewers to interact with television programming and share that interaction with others. Startups in this space hope to combine ubiquitous second-screen technology with well-established audience behavior to drive new value around shows. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud-based storage and cross-device syncing of media content are two of the most competitive areas in consumer IT. Apple, Google and Amazon see cloud-based media services both as a way to increase attachment to their platforms and a means to extend and amplify their broader strategic goals. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Massive thunderstorms knocked out Amazon’s web services on Friday night and the cloud giant was still struggling to get service back up on Saturday. To me the news raises the question: is it time for data center operators to more seriously investigate off grid options? Read more »
Massive thunderstorms notwithstanding, the fact that Amazon’s U.S. East data center went down again Friday night while other cloud services hosted in the same area kept running raises anew questions about whether Amazon is suffering architectural glitches that go beyond acts of God. Read more »
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz likes his coffee black and his politics nonpartisan. Last year, in a move to break gridlock in Washington, he launched a campaign urging CEOs to boycott political donations. Now he’s leading “Indivisible,” an initiative focused on job creation. Read more at paidContent »
For second time in less than a month, Amazon’s Northern Virginia data center has suffered an outage and is impacting many popular services such as Instagram, Pinterest & Netflix. Amazon previously suffered an outage in its Northern Virginia facilities on June 14, 2012. Read more »
Minor updates to Instagram’s website today come as the originally mobile-centric site begins to move further toward desktop interactivity. Users will now be able to like and comment on Instagram photos through the Instagram website, and they’ll be able to follow new users as well. Instagram […] Read more »
Less than two months removed from Facebook buying Instagram, and one of the many other mobile photo-sharing services out there is calling it quits. PicPlz put up a notice on its blog that it will be shutting down the service and deleting all photos next month. Read more »
A former Justice lawyer and antitrust expert says Facebook’s purchase of photo-sharing site Instagram will take between 4 months and one year to clear regulatory hurdles. In the meantime, the deal is effectively on hold. Read more »
If drawing is the universal language, Doodle.ly wants to be the app for that. But first it has to solve a problem: A lot of people are pretty bad at drawing. Read more »
In a recent conversation, an art historian pointed out that the “art world” these days is less about art and more about “the spectacle of art.” I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between art and our world of technology. Read more »
Luxury brand Burberry is in legal trouble for using an iconic image from the film Casablanca in a social media campaign to promote its trenchcoats. Read more at paidContent »
