A new look for Facebook News Feed is coming next Thursday

By Christian Zibreg on Mar 1, 2013

Mark Zuckerberg & Co. on Friday issued invites to select members of the press to “Come see a new look for News Feed.” The media event takes place next Thursday, March 7, at 10am PST, at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park. To our non-US readers: it’s an affluent town at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. This invite-only press conference comes less than two months after the company’s January 15 Graph Search launch event.

Facebook has some pretty rabid community so we’re expecting all sorts of backlash when the new News Feed goes live. The company recently updated its iOS client with in-app VoIP calling and a revamped News Feed, with the Like, Comment and Share buttons now found alongside the bottom of posts… Read More

 

Apple ranks #1 again in Fortune’s ‘Most Admired Companies’ list

By Ed Sutherland on Feb 28, 2013

For the sixth year in a row, Apple was named the most-admired company in the world. In spite of a stock free fall and the Apple Maps gaffe, the iPhone maker topped rivals Google and Amazon, Fortune announced Thursday.

Described as a “financial juggernaut” which became the most profitable company on the globe, Apple was named the over-all most admired firm while also topping the list as the most admired technology firm of 2013… Read More

 

Instagram surpasses a hundred million active users

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 26, 2013

Facebook-owned Instagram, despite negative publicity surrounding the controversial terms of service brouhaha, continues to grow its installed base. Today, the company announced a major milestone: Instagram now has over a hundred million active users across mobile platforms. That’s ten million more active monthly users since it announced the 90 million milestone on January 17. By comparison, Twitter over a six-year time span hit 200 million active users, as of end of 2012.

Commenting on the development, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom shared an anecdote in a blog post about how he realized Instagram was going to be different when fans at the Giants Stadium starting posting their Instagrams after another co-founder “with a few quick commands at his terminal” filled the service with images of the game… Read More

 

Facebook improves iOS SDK with enhanced APIs and better mobile analytics

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 25, 2013

Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking company last July released a software development kit (SDK) for programmers to make it easier to write apps that take full advantage of Apple’s deep Facebook integration in iOS 6. It’s been updated a few times since and today Facebook announced that it is enhancing the SDK with better APIs and other improvements. This update also includes bug fixes that improve stability, is backwards compatible and can be downloaded now direct from Facebook… Read More

 

Facebook launches free or discounted Messenger access in 14 countries

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 25, 2013

Facebook on Sunday announced a new promotion that will allow users of Messenger for iOS and Android to exchange instant messages for free or at heavily discounted data rates in select international markets. Partnering with more than eighteen operators in fourteen international markets, the social networking giant said Facebook for Every Phone, basically a bare-bone service for feature phones that is now optimized for chat, is also included in this promotion.

The move arrives just after the company flipped the switch on the in-app VoIP calling feature in its mobile client for iOS and Android devices. Facebook first rolled out VoIP calling in Canada earlier this year, and some parts of the US, via the Messenger app… Read More

 

Facebook app updated with new button design and free in-app calling

By Cody Lee on Feb 22, 2013

Facebook just posted a nice little update for its official iOS app, bringing it to version 5.5. This is the app’s third update in as many months, as the social network continues to improve its mobile experience.

The change log for today’s release includes a new button design, which makes it easier to comment on, like and share stories from your News Feed, and support for Facebook’s free in-app calling feature… Read More

 

How Eastern European attackers hacked Apple

By Ed Sutherland on Feb 20, 2013

Investigators now believe a group of sophisticated Eastern European criminal hackers are responsible for a cyberattack on Apple and other U.S. technology and media firms. Until today, those probing the computer break-ins thought China was behind the electronic assaults. In Apple’s case, malware placed on an iPhone developer website may have been used to ‘bait’ visitors, according to one report Wednesday.

According to Bloomberg, which anonymously cited people close to law enforcement, malware which other victims described as “sophisticated,” was placed on the popular developer forum to potentially gain access to data stored on corporate computers… Read More

 

‘Enable Copy text in Facebook’ makes using the official Facebook app less frustrating

By Mike Schnier on Feb 20, 2013

Have you ever had to jump through hoops to log into a desktop website because an app won’t let you copy the text on your phone? This should never happen, but for some unfathomable reason, major services like Facebook do not allow for copying text in-app (the Facebook app currently allows users to copy text from messages and comments, but not from status updates or posts).

Luckily you can get rid of the annoyance, even if Facebook won’t fix the issue themselves. ‘Enable Copy text in Facebook’ is a tweak that allows jailbroken iOS devices to capture the text directly from Facebook posts themselves… Read More

 

Facebook now sends 180 million clicks to Apple and Google app stores

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 12, 2013

The social network Facebook has become such a behemoth in that space that it’s now sending an astounding 180 million clicks to Apple’s App Store marketplace and Google’s Play Store for Android software. That’s one of the nuggets from a speech Dan Rose, Facebook VP of partnerships gave at The Wall Street Journal-sponsored D: Dive Into Media.

He also touched on Facebook’s mobile strategy and the social network’s future prospects as it competes for our time with other popular mobile services… Read More

 

Facebook iOS app gains in-app voice and video recording capabilities

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 28, 2013

Facebook’s universal iOS client for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini has just been updated with the useful ability to share your favorite places using the improved Nearby tab. More important than that, you can now record a voice or video message right in the app and send it to your friends. The ability to share audio snippets first appeared in an update to Facebook’s Messenger app on January 3, 2012 so having it now in-app via the official client is a welcome addition… Read More

 

Instagram says it has 90M monthly active users, releases other stats

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 17, 2013

Facebook-owned photo sharing service Instagram today for the first time revealed some hard numbers on its performance and user base. Instagram has passed 90 million monthly active users, which is a huge number for any casual photo sharing service, no matter how you look at it. The company also confirmed that it is serving 40 million photographs each day, averaging to a little more than two photos per user shared each day. Wondering about how many likes and comments people post each day? Read More

 

Facebook begins rolling out free Messenger VoIP feature to the US

By Cody Lee on Jan 16, 2013

Earlier this month, we told you that Facebook had added a free VoIP calling feature to its Messenger app in Canada. It was clearly a test, to ensure that the social network’s servers could handle the added bandwidth. And apparently the tests went well.

Today, many users, including us, have noticed that Facebook has quietly started rolling out the VoIP feature to the US version of its Messenger app. It comes by way of a new ‘Free Call’ button, which will allow you to telephone your FB contacts for free… Read More

 

Facebook to take on Google with new search tool

By Cody Lee on Jan 15, 2013

Facebook has just kicked off its highly anticipated “come and see what we’re building” event, and it’s first big announcement of the day is its new search tool. It’s not necessarily a web search per se, but a graph search, capable of crawling all of Facebook’s data.

It will help you answer questions like: what are some things my friends like, what kind of music are they listening to, what about places my friends have been to or liked and much more more. We have more details on Facebook’s new search tool after the fold… Read More

 

How to get Facebook Messenger working on a jailbroken iPad

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 14, 2013

Facebook a week ago issued invites for a major news conference due tomorrow to “come and see what we’re building”. One source claims the iPad version of the popular Messenger client will be on tap as the social networking giant’s last-minute “one more thing” surprise.

What you may not have known is that the current iPhone build of Messenger already has the iPad interface and code in place. And if you happen to have your device jailbroken (as most readers who frequent iDB do), you may want to unlock Messenger for iPad right now. Just follow this simple guide and Jeff’s easy to follow video instructions, embedded right past the break… Read More

 

Facebook ‘totally’ ready to launch Messenger for iPad on Tuesday

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 13, 2013

You may have heard that Facebook has issued invites for a media event due this coming Tuesday to “come and see what [they're] building”. People in the know claim the news conference is a pretty big deal as Facebook could announce a brand new mobile operating system, even a so-called Facebook Phone of some sort. And now, another source has stepped forward with knowledge that the social networking giant will also launch an iPad version of its mobile Messenger app, which in a recent update has gained VoIP capabilities… Read More

 

Rumor: Facebook to announce mobile OS next week

By Cody Lee on Jan 12, 2013

The Facebook Phone is one of the longest-running urban legends in the tech world. I can remember it being reported on as far back as 2010, and I’m sure it goes back further than that. But thus far, nothing has materialized, and Mark Zuckerberg himself has even denied its existence.

Despite all of this, a new report is out today claiming that the social network indeed has a handset in the works. And according to the usual “sources familiar with the matter,” it’s going to use its just-announced January 15th media event to unveil it to the world…

Read More

 

Facebook teases January 15 media event. Facebook Phone, much?

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 8, 2013

Time to step back from the flow of news surrounding CES 2013. The social networking giant Facebook has just teased a media event scheduled for January 15 at 10am Pacific Time. The invite graphics doesn’t reveal much besides asking the media to “come and see what we’re building”. The company has been on a roll lately, having updated its Messenger app with VoIP calling (it’s Canada-only initially) and releasing Poke, a new app which lets you send quick messages, photos or videos… Read More

 

Facebook mobile user stats: 192M on Android, 147M on iPhone

By Cody Lee on Jan 7, 2013

A few months ago, we passed along a report that Facebook was urging its employees to swap out their iPhones for Android devices. It knows Google’s mobile OS has continued to be an afterthought to iOS, and it’s looking to change that.

Well according to some newly-released data, that’s probably a smart move. Enders analyst Benedict Evans has just published Facebook’s mobile app user stats, and, as of November last year, Android users vastly outnumber those on iOS… Read More

 

Facebook Messenger gains VoIP calling, but it’s Canada only initially

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 3, 2013

Facebook has just updated its Messenger iOS and Android app with the voice messaging feature. Facebook Messenger version 2.1, a free download over at Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, now lets you record short voice messages for your friends, up to a minute in length. We’ll see if this is the voicemail for the 21st century, but anyone who updates to the new version gains this feature automatically and that’s a big advantage. But the social networking giant isn’t stopping there.

In the new Facebook Messenger, you can now place voice calls to your Facebook contacts free of charge. Of course, these are VoIP calls so a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection is needed. It looks like Facebook, which some folks though would buy WhatsApp, is adamant to turn the Messenger app into a unified messaging solution. The last piece of the puzzle needed: video chat…  Read More

 

How to copy all your Instagrams to Flickr

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 29, 2012

Instagram’s exploding popularity is having long-time iPhoneography buffs pay notice and watch in horror as mainstream users cannot get enough of its crappy filters and the obscenely low 612×612 pixel resolution. And with Facebook and Android now in the picture, no wonder some early adopters go to the extremes of closing their account while others, like Apple’s marketing honcho, stopped using Instagram for it “jumped the shark”.

To the most ardent fans, the last straw was Instagram’s confusing handling of the recent terms of service changes - even if it was much ado about nothing.

If you’ve been seriously contemplating importing your Instagrams over to Flickr but were put off by the tedious manual uploads – worry not, turns out there are a few ways to get that job done without too much fuss. iDB has you covered with this quick guide to bringing in all your Instagram photos to Flickr with just a few clicks… Read More

 
Page 312345...