Instagram is planning to launch video functionality in two days. But don’t go deleting Vine just yet. Before shoving Vine’s into the deadpool, let’s just calm it down a second.
Vine has been declared by many as the “Instagram for Video.” Instagram’s own video product is likely already too late to squash Vine like a bug. Heck, Facebook couldn’t even get Poke and Messenger off the ground after… → Read More
Here’s a fun comparison from Optimal, a social advertising and analytics startup: If you look at big brands on social networks, their following seems to be growing more quickly on Twitter than on Facebook.
Optimal says it looked at the data from 4,330 brands, representing a total of 3.49 billion Facebook Likes and 595 million Twitter followers. Last week, those brands added 18.5 million new… → Read More
We’ve been working on getting more details on a press event that Facebook is having this week. Earlier, we wrote it could launch a news-reading app, but we have since heard more details that point to something else entirely. On June 20, a source says Facebook will unveil that Instagram, its popular photo-sharing app, will begin to let people also take and share short videos. Call it the Vine… → Read More
The upcoming death of Google Reader, the addition of hashtags, and other signs say Facebook may launch a new way to discover and read news at the June 20th press event it’s just sent out mysterious invites to. [Update: However, a TechCrunch source says Facebook may launch a new way to share videos, either within Instagram, Facebook's apps, or in a new standalone app. More update details within.] → Read More
Last week, Facebook announced that it will be streamlining the ad-buying process by eliminating more than half of its 27 ad units. Today it’s taking one step towards that goal by announcing that it will be eliminating the Sponsored Results unit starting in July.
The unit officially launched in August 2012, allowing businesses to run ads in the “typeahead” results that show up when users enter a… → Read More
Move over Reeder, Feedly, Digg, NewsBlur, Feedbin and the rest of the RSS players who hope to pick up some new users with the impending demise of Google Reader. Facebook may also be looking to wade into the game. → Read More
Facebook just announced that it is indeed launching ability to follow conversations via hashtags, as was reported in March.
In the blog post announcing the new feature, Facebook acknowledges that this isn’t exactly a new idea, noting that it will be “similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest” — when you click on a hashtag, you’ll get a feed of comments using the… → Read More
The PRISM story has progressed significantly since last week, when Mark Zuckerberg published Facebook’s official response to the reports that it is among a group of tech companies that have been secretly cooperating with the United States government to provide user data. But at Facebook’s annual shareholder meeting held today in Millbrae, California, Zuckerberg said the company continues to stand… → Read More
Salesforce.com is releasing what it calls The Facebook Ads Benchmark Report, which shows how Facebook ads performed on Salesforce’s social advertising service Social.com.
As the name implies, the report’s main purpose is to let businesses see how their ads stack up against the average, so to a certain extent, it’s basically a data dump — and I’ll try to highlight some of the more interesting… → Read More
Facebook’s empire was built on photo tags and sharing, but it’s a grueling process many neglect. Luckily, new Facebook patents give it tech to continuously capture video whenever your camera is open, rank and surface the best images, and auto-tag them with people, places, and businesses. They tease a future where pattern, facial, and audio recognition identify what you’re seeing for easy sharing. → Read More
Mark Zuckerberg has just taken to Facebook to personally respond to the accusations that Facebook is involved in PRISM, an alleged secret government program that gives the government access to user information, denying that Facebook has ever given any government “direct access” to its servers.
This comes just hours after Google responded to the unfolding events regarding PRISM, which… → Read More
PRISM is real. Even the U.S. government now acknowledges its existence. The question that remains unanswered, though, is how involved Google, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, Paltalk and Facebook were. These companies are all named as “providers” on the original slides, including the dates the NSA started collecting data from them. The reporter with the most direct access to these documents, Glenn Greenwald… → Read More
The Washington Post today reported that Google, Apple, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL (TechCrunch’s parent company) and Yahoo participated in the so-called PRISM program which provided the NSA with what looks like virtually direct access to their servers and their users’ data. We have now reached out to all of these companies and so far, Facebook, Google and Apple have denied that they… → Read More
Facebook is wrapping up a press session at its Menlo Park headquarters where it talked about the progress that it’s making with advertisers and announced it will be eliminating and consolidating a number of ad units.
The big vision, according to Product Manager Fidji Simo, is to simplify the general process of running ads on Facebook. She said that when Facebook looked at its 27 different ad… → Read More
While Facebook Home hasn’t proven to be a smash success so far, it picked up a handful of features today that might just coax a few more users to hop on board.
Amongst other things, the new Home allows you to pin your favorite apps to a dock — a basic feature, certainly, but something that’s been sorely missed since launch. → Read More
Google is broadening its reach into the mobile app development world today through a partnership with Kinvey, which will provide an enterprise backend-as-a-service (BaaS) layer on top of Google App Engine. With Kinvey, Google App Engine will support iOS, Android and HTML 5.
Kinvey, which will integrate with Google’s new Mobile Backend Starter, a basic backend platform for Android apps … → Read More
Facebook’s board of directors and stockholders will convene on June 11th, and anyone will be able to virtually sit in as Facebook today announced it will webcast its first stockholder’s meeting. The move will likely set a precedent for webcasting future Facebook stockholders meetings, similar to how Google does, but in contrast to Apple’s un-streamed assemblies. → Read More
Facebook confirms that Facebook Messages experienced a limited outage today. It prevented some users from sending or receiving messages on both the web and mobile for 90 minutes, but chat is back at full-strength as of 7:30pm PST. The outage comes at an inconvenient time as Facebook is seeing increasing competition in the messaging space from Google and mobile-first startups. → Read More
After weeks of rumors, Facebook has just signed a ten year lease to move its New York office into a new, nearly 100,000 sq ft office over two floors at 770 Broadway, Manhattan. The interior will be designed by famed architect Frank Gehry who is masterminding its Menlo Park Headquarters expansion. Facebook NY’s engineering, design, marketing, sales, and comms teams will move there in early 2014. → Read More
Sources confirm Facebook will test the option to send private messages from its website’s homepage status composer to increase messaging rates. It will also help Facebook compete with Google, whose web chat presence is strong, and just combined its Gmail, Google+, and mobile chat systems into Hangouts. It’s a risky move, as users could accidentally post private messages as status updates. → Read More
No automated system can identify what will offend people. What some humans find disgusting, others find controversial, and others still find funny. Computers just don’t understand. That caused trouble for Facebook this week when women’s activism groups got advertisers to boycott after the social network failed to suspend accounts accused of publishing hate speech. → Read More
Desperate to make its homescreen replacement Home seem less invasive, Facebook is advertising that you can temporarily deactivate it and use your HTC First or other Android phone as normal. The fact that Home replaces your widgets and app folders has been a core complaint. Facebook vows to fix that, but until then it’s reminding people they can leave Home for stock Android or their old launcher. → Read More
Gartner Research reports worldwide server sales are down 5 percent for the first quarter of the year, with IBM, HP and the other members of the top five taking the biggest hit. Server shipments declined 0.7 percent.
But the drop in server sales is not at all surprising. Cloud apps are popping up by the thousands across the market, as the developer movement speeds up. But these apps are not… → Read More
Facebook has just announced a new verified feature for pages and profiles, designed to give high-profile accounts an added level of authenticity. This is clearly a straightforward copy of Twitter’s own verified accounts, and even features a similar, small blue checkmark to indicate that a person or business is indeed the legitimate account holder. The mark appears on the pages themselves, as well… → Read More
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that the recent launch of Facebook Home is just the first version of the company’s effort to make the smartphone more social. Today at the D11 Conference, she said that the company will continue to update the platform monthly, as it seeks to improve the user experience. → Read More
Photo uploading and sharing is growing at an incredible pace, according to data shared by KPCB’s Mary Meeker in the Internet Trends report she presented on stage at D11 today. Well over 500 million photos are shared per day on average so far in 2013, the report estimates, which is on pace to become a 2x increase by the end of 2013, compared to share volume in 2012. → Read More
Facebook used to have a blogging feature called Notes. It still does, but it got buried by the Timeline redesign and widely forgotten. Facebook needs to overhaul Notes, and signs say a refresh may already be in the works. It could help people express themselves, make Notes a legitimate competitor to Tumblr, and soften the blow of Facebook reportedly failing to buy Yahoo’s new baby. Back in… → Read More
Paul Adams, who was previously Facebook’s global head of brand design, has joined a startup called Intercom, where he will be serving as head of product design.
Adams told me earlier that he wasn’t looking to leave Facebook, but he had also been advising Intercom and became excited about the opportunity. The startup, which is backed by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, 500 Startups and others… → Read More
After being acquired by Facebook, the mobile back-end service Parse has been busy integrating itself into the company, as well as launching new services like web hosting for developers.
The service has built tools to help developers focus on the front-end of their product, while handling all of the messy back-end things like cross-platform compatibility and testing. Naturally, Facebook… → Read More
Amazon has reportedly submitted plans for a new futuristic headquarters in Seattle that couples a skyscraper and an accompanying tri-sphere bio-dome like structure. According to the plans, the structure will be able to hold various forms of plant life and become a place where employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.”
Because God forbid employees walk to the park… → Read More
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