Posts Tagged ‘Instagram’

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

Facebook Camera App Launches for iOS (TechCrunch)
Facebook began rolling out a standalone photos app Thursday with which users can shoot, filter and share single or sets of photos and scroll through a feed of photos uploaded to Facebook by your friends. Facebook Camera for iOS lets users rapidly pick one or more photos, apply filters, tag friends and locations, add a description and post. Gizmodo iOS users are used to pulling down at the top of apps to refresh a stream, but this action reveals your iPhone’s photo album, instead. This takes getting used to, as does the process of selecting multiple photos to upload or changing your mind and removing one. Wired The product highlights the company’s commitment to its mobile business. But considering Facebook’s recent purchase of the photo-sharing app Instagram, it’s hard not to compare the two. Silicon Valley Mercury News Facebook agreed to acquire Instagram on April 9 for cash and stock then valued at $1 billion, but the value of the stock has widely varied after the Menlo Park, Calif.-headquartered social network went public last week and has experienced volatility on Wall Street. The deal has not closed, and Facebook recently changed wording in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings that indicated it did not expect the acquisition to be complete in the current quarter. Reuters Less than a week after its IPO, Facebook is already facing multiple lawsuits by disgruntled shareholders who claim that the company and its underwriters told only select institutional investors about the social media company’s weakened growth forecast. This is not the first time investors in a hot tech company’s initial public offering have alleged that underwriters favored their regular clients at the expense of the little guys. Read more

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

Study: Google Ads Work Better Than Facebook’s (Boston Herald)
Facebook may be this week’s stock market darling, but when it comes to online display advertising, search engine Google provides advertisers with “significantly more value” than the social media giant in terms of growth rates, performance, targeting options and formats, according to a study released Tuesday. The study compares the value of Facebook advertising to Google’s Display Network. PC Magazine Facebook moved quickly — again — to address concerns that it wasn’t doing enough to satisfy mobile users, buying the developers of the Lightbox Android photo app. However, the company also made it clear that Facebook was not acquiring the company or the photos that users had stored on the Lightbox website, just the developer team. AdAge General Motors said Tuesday that it is “reassessing” its spending on Facebook advertising — about $10 million — but “remains committed” to the social network as part of “an aggressive content strategy with all our products and brands.” Meanwhile, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, said that the automaker is bullish about Facebook ads — particularly “sponsored stories” that contain a social layer — and intends to “accelerate” spending on them. AllFacebook Facebook followed up last week’s introduction of its app center with two new metrics to its insights for applications: app ratings and negative feedback. The new app ratings dashboard will bring developers information on how users rated their apps with the five-star ratings system Facebook recently implemented. The negative feedback feature shows developers how many times stories from their apps have been hidden or reported as spam, as well as how many times the app itself has been blocked. Mashable Two Colombian criminals almost got away with robbing an Internet cafe, but one of them checked Facebook first — and ended up being identified and arrested because he forgot to log out. The two men whipped out guns at the cash register to demand money and made a clean getaway on a motorcycle. After the men escaped, an employee at the cafe called the police turning in information from the Facebook page that led to his arrest. Read more

With Internet Week in full swing, I stopped by the W Hotel in Times Square to get a look at the Instagram photography exhibit, a collaboration between the hotel and a photography community called Instagram NYC.

Read more

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

In Facebook IPO, Frenzy, Skepticism (The Wall Street Journal)
Facebook’s coming initial public offering has set off a frenzy of anticipation among Main Street and Wall Street investors desperate to get their hands on the stock. Late Monday, the social network raised the price range for its IPO to $34 to $38 a share, from $28 to $35 a share, said a person familiar with the matter, in a sign of investor appetite for the offering. Inside Facebook Facebook has announced a new design for its mobile newsfeed that displays posts in individual boxes similar to how they appear on timeline. As part of the redesign, photos now appear three times larger than before, which could make browsing more efficient since there is less need to tap to see an image full-screen. Yahoo! News/The Lookout Is Facebook a flash in the pan? Nearly half of Americans think so, according to a new AP/CNBC poll. Forty-six percent of those polled said the social networking giant is likely to “fade away as new things come along,” while 43 percent predict it will be “successful over the long term.” CNBC The poll also shows that 57 percent of Facebook users say they never click ads or other sponsored content when they use the site, with another 26 percent saying they hardly ever engage in such activity AllFacebook Recent college graduate Suleika Jaouad found out that when she opened up about having leukemia on Facebook, there was a community ready to embrace her as she faced this new challenge in life. Caretakers and fellow cancer patients, friends and family all were there waiting to offer support and share advice. Read more

Want to know whose obsession with sharing photos on Instagram is becoming a problem? Step 1: Look in the mirror. Step 2: Check out this infographic from Flowtown.

If you love the photo-sharing app for its easy sharing capabilities and sexy light filters, you are not alone. There are now 40 million users who have fallen for its charm. A sore thumb from excessive scrolling is to be expected; disdain for Android users and Instagram’s new parent company, Facebook, are signs of a more serious problem.

Read more

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

Facebook IPO Week: The Basics (PC Magazine)
Big news for Facebook this week — and no, not just because the company is testing new ways for its users to annoy each other in the form of paid-for “highlighted” posts. Actually, it’s Facebook IPO week! The significance of this fact carries a ton of importance if you’re an institutional investor, a small amount of importance if you’re a neophyte investor, and absolutely no meaning whatsoever if you think the stock market is little more than organized gambling. ZDNET Going public brings with it all new pressures. For venture-backed companies such as Facebook, it means a difficult transition from the multi-year expectation on delivering returns to the quarterly results horizon. Even in the extremely fast-moving world of Internet companies, this can come as a shock to the system. AP He famously wears a hoodie, jeans and sneakers, and he was born the year Apple introduced the Macintosh. Today is his 28th birthday. With eight years on the job, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has logged more time as leader than the average CEO, whose tenure is a little more than seven years, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. Bloomberg News Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said he will buy shares in Facebook when the social networking company sells stock to the public. Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer with Steve Jobs and co-founded the company with him in 1976, said he would buy Facebook’s stock regardless of its valuation. Mashable Facebook, infamous for its changing policies and confusion among users about what they’re getting themselves into when they use the world’s largest social network, has finally aggregated all its terms and policies under the same roof. That roof — Facebook.com/policies — contains, in the words of Facebook, “Everything you need to know, all in one place.” Read more

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

Bing Reinvents Social Search and Discovery (Mashable)
Bing has been reinvented, offering enhanced search results that tap into the power of social media. Microsoft has done this by pulling people out of search results and putting them in their place: A right-hand social column that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. AllFacebook The new Bing will gradually be rolled out to users, and those interested in getting it earlier can sign up. The search engine makes its suggestions based on information in friends’ Facebook profiles, their likes and photos they have shared. The New York Times Strengthening the ties between Bing and Facebook is a sign of how Microsoft and Facebook are working together to provide a counterbalance to their common adversary, Google. While Google is by far the dominant player in the Internet search business, it also competes with Microsoft in productivity applications and with Facebook through its Google+ social network. The Wall Street Journal Microsoft’s share of U.S. Web search was 15.3 percent in March, according to comScore, while Google had a 66.4 percent share. Combined with Yahoo!, for which Bing also powers search, Microsoft had a combined 29 percent market share. Forbes In 2007, Microsoft spent $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, which goes public next week. And the two nabbed headlines in October 2010 by announcing their plan to team up on social search. Read more

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

Myspace Faces 20 Years of Government Scrutiny for Privacy Violations (Mashable) Myspace’s privacy practices will be kept under close watch by a third-party observer for two decades as part of a settlement related to an investigation of the company’s advertising sales strategy, the Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday. The agreement also prevents Myspace from making “future privacy misrepresentations” and requires it to make significant changes to its privacy policy. The New York Times The FTC asserted that from January 2009 through June 2010, and again from October 2010 through October 2011, Myspace transmitted information, including internal identification numbers of users, and their ages and genders, to outside ad networks that served ads to Myspace. Using that information, the FTC said, third parties could obtain the user’s name and other personal information and use a file placed on the user’s computer to view a history of websites the user had visited. AP The settlement is similar to deals the FTC struck previously with Facebook and Google. In March 2011, the FTC settled with Google over charges that it deceived users and violated its own privacy policy when it started a social-networking service called Buzz. In November, the agency reached a settlement with Facebook in which the company agreed to get explicit approval from its users before changing their privacy controls. CNET Myspace was sold by News Corp. to digital-media company Specific Media last June for a rumored $35 million. News Corp. had purchased the social networking site in 2005 for $580 million with the hopes of using it to drive traffic to Fox’s various media efforts. PC Magazine In a statement, Specific Media said it “thoroughly examine[d] the company’s business practices and, where applicable, make improvements” following last year’s purchase. “A major focus of this review was to ensure that Myspace delivered advertisements to consumers in a manner that safeguarded their privacy,” Specific Media continued. Read more

 Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.

Introducing Google Drive… Yes, Really (Google Blog)
Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out that one of the two actually does exist. BGR Google on Tuesday unveiled a new cloud storage service being billed as the next step in the evolution of Google Docs. Dubbed Google Drive and built to compete directly with Microsoft’s SkyDrive and other similar services, Google’s new cloud storage solution features 5GB of free space and deep Google Docs integration that allows users to collaborate and share all of their documents. GigaOM The new service will be accessible from a Web browser along with different client devices including Mac OS X, Windows and Android devices (tablets and phones). The iOS version of Drive will arrive soon, the company says. Lifehacker Each user gets 5GB for free, and can upgrade to 25GB for $2.49 a month, 100GB for $4.99 a month or even 1TB for $49.99 a month. If you upgrade, it’ll also raise your Gmail storage to that level. Read more

When Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1 billion, investors at Andreessen Horowitz walked away with $78 million: a 312% return on a $250,000 investment. When an article in the New York Times suggested that the venture capital firm should have gotten more, co-founder Ben Horowitz fired back with a blog post defending the firm’s decision to invest more money in an Instagram competitor called PicPlz.

Read more