You can now download App Store apps without leaving Facebook

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 18, 2012

Remember the App Center, a cross-platform application store Facebook launched ahead of its rebuilt iOS app? Hosted and curated by Facebook, the App Center is available as a link in the main menu of their iOS client, listing Facebook-enhanced apps and games that can be found on the App Store. Previously, tapping an entry yanked you out of the Facebook app and into the App Store.

That’s no longer the case as it is now possible to install App Store software from a pop-up inside the Facebook app, which is an iOS 6 SDK feature available to all third-party developers who wish to implement it… Read More

 

Instagram wants to sell your photos to faceless corporations. Great, now what?

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 18, 2012

As we told you yesterday, realizing it needs to start making money the Facebook-owned photo sharing service has added an interesting clause to its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

The updated rules give Instagram the right to sell access to your photos to advertisers and share your profile data with third-parties. The change enraged some to the point of closing their Instagram account.

The vast majority of users don’t appeaer to oppose the decision with such drastic measures, but there’s no doubt that the company is playing with fire. The move already has backfired. A major backlash ensued and the misstep is now threatening to snowball into a PR catastrophe… Read More

 

Facebook rolling out Nearby update to its mobile apps

By Cody Lee on Dec 17, 2012

Facebook has announced this morning that it will be rolling out an update to its iOS and Android apps later today that will substantially beef up the Nearby feature. The refreshed feature will allow users to discover new places around them and view Yelp-like ratings and reviews from their friends…  Read More

 

Instagram-Facebook data sharing goes into effect January 16

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 17, 2012

Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook in September, just posted an interesting update on its blog confirming plans to share data on users with Facebook, the #1 social network that claims nearly one billion users worldwide. Instagram’s updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy will go into effect starting January 16 to enable deeper integration between the two service, making it easier to “fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly and build better features” for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.

Under the new terms, Instagram can also share User Content and your information with businesses that are “legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of”. In other words, Facebook now has access to Instagram user data. The social networking behemoth is allowed to use this information to “help provide, understand and improve” both its own and Instagram’s service… Read More

 

Facebook app updated with several speed improvements

By Cody Lee on Dec 13, 2012

Back in August of this year, Facebook released a completely rebuilt app for the iPhone that was much faster than its predecessor thanks to its new coding. The social network ditched HTML5 in favor of a native approach.

Today, the app gets even faster with version 5.3. The update also includes a few new features, like the ability to choose an album from within the app while uploading photos, but the main focus here is definitely speed… Read More

 

Facebook confirms Instagram will have ads

By Cody Lee on Dec 12, 2012

Brace yourselves, it looks like advertisements are coming to Instagram. Since its release in late 2010, the popular photo sharing service has managed to remain ad-free. But once Facebook took over the reigns earlier this year in its legendary $1 billion buyout, speculation has been rampant that this would change, and Facebook just confirmed it… Read More

 

Facebook reportedly in talks to acquire WhatsApp

By Cody Lee on Dec 3, 2012

Facebook’s been on a bit of a buying spree this year. Of course we all know about the $1 billion Instagram deal. Then there was the Acrylic buyout. And now the word is that it’s in talks to acquire WhatsApp, the popular cross-platform messaging service that allows users to send and receive text, video and audio messages… Read More

 

Facebook starts rolling out Photo Sync for everyone

By Oliver Haslam on Nov 30, 2012

We told you a couple of weeks ago that Facebook had begun rolling out its new Photo Sync feature which, predictably, lets the Facebook app automatically upload your photos, ready for viewing on the Facebook website or inside any of the company’s apps. Turns out Facebook was rolling it out to a select few, testing the feature with plans to roll it out to everyone at a later date. That date is today.

Announcing the move on its blog, Facebook today said that its Photo Sync feature will be available to all, with all the magic already built right into the existing Facebook app for iOS. The social giant needs to activate your account on their end, and voila, you’ve got a new feature.

Pretty nifty indeed… Read More

 

You can now buy iTunes credits on Facebook

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 26, 2012

This just in: Apple and Facebook have agreed to make digital iTunes gift cards available on Facebook via the social networking giant’s Gifts platform. It’s pretty straightforward: simply select a desired iTunes Digital Gift Card and Facebook will charge the amount using the credit card on file. You can then choose a Facebook friend to send the card to. An e-commerce initiative involving Facebook and Apple: now, that’s something to write home about, isn’t it?

Be that as it may, it certainly blows my mind that Apple agreed to give up some of the revenue from these cards. And how could it not to: Facebook handles these transactions rather than the iTunes Store. By the way, the iTunes Gift Card is a $2 billion business annually… Read More

 

Facebook urges employees to switch to Android

By Cody Lee on Nov 25, 2012

This is kind of an interesting story. Apparently Facebook has launched an internal campaign to get its employees to trade in their iPhones for Android devices. After years of giving its workers Apple handsets, the social networking giant is urging them to make the switch to Google’s platform in an effort known as Droidfooding… Read More

 

Facebook and Instagram to merge profiles

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 21, 2012

Don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming. Ever since the social networking behemoth Facebook acquired Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service, folks have been wondering if the two will perhaps merge down the road. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been adamant that Instagram will be maintained separate of Facebook, but that doesn’t mean the two shouldn’t play nicely.

Just recently, Instagram brought us Facebook-like web profiles and previously rolled out automatic translation of Instagram @mentions to correct Twitter usernames in tweets. According to Reuters, Facebook is now proposing to combine user data with that of Instagram and is thinking about “loosening restrictions” on emails sent to @facebook.com address… Read More

 

Facebook rolls out Photo Syncing

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 19, 2012

The social networking giant Facebook has begun rolling out a new feature aimed at automatically uploading each photo a user takes on his or her device. This capability exists in some other third-party iOS apps, like the Dropbox app and the Google+ client. Facebook has figured out how to implement the feature without breaking Apple’s rules, by using standard API calls for background uploads and not relying on location APIs or its deep integration with iOS 6… Read More

 

Facebook app updated with new sharing features and emoji

By Cody Lee on Nov 15, 2012

Facebook has released an update for its mobile app this afternoon, bringing the iOS app to version 5.2. The update comes less than two weeks after its big 5.1 update, which included new messaging and photo-sharing features.

Today’s release includes a few new features as well. Most importantly, Facebook users will now be able to repost and share stories right from their news feeds, kind of like how you can retweet something in Twitter… Read More

 

Steve Jobs biopic to focus on products and friction between execs

By Ed Sutherland on Nov 15, 2012

Lights! Action! Steve! Well, sort of. A biopic focusing on late Apple CEO Steve Jobs won’t be a cradle-to-grave review of the man who pulled Apple out of the ditch. Instead, the film will feature three behind-the-scenes glimpses into Jobs’ most famous products. According to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin who was hired to develop Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs for Sony Pictures, the upcoming flick will be comprised of just three 30-minutes scenes backstage before the introduction of the original Mac, NeXT and the iPod. Sorkin is known for his screenplays featuring character studies, such as his acclaimed look at Facebook, The Social Network… Read More

 

How to add Facebook, Twitter, and more search options to Spotlight

By Jeff Benjamin on Nov 14, 2012

The awkwardly named SLightEnhancerSearch, is a recently released jailbreak tweak that adds a ton of new search options to the stock Spotlight search on iOS. When it was first released, I ran into many issues with the tweak, namely, the search options not showing up on the Spotlight page when enabled.

The tweak was updated today, and the developer seems to have stamped out all of the bugs that plagued the initial release. SLightEnhancerSearch, as silly as its name may be, is a quality jailbreak tweak that many will no doubt find useful… Read More

 

Facebook updates iOS app with quick chat tab, multiple photo sharing [updated]

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 5, 2012

Facebook has just updated its iOS app with a couple new features that make it easier to chat with your friends and share multiple photos. You can now swipe left anywhere in the app in order to see who’s available versus hitting the icon in the upper left to bring up the slide-out interface to hit Chat. Even more importantly, the program finally lets you share multiple photos at once and add friends you message most to the top of your Favorites.

UPDATE: As noted by many of our readers in the comment section, there seems to be a problem with this Facebook update. We recommend you stay away from it until Facebook can figure out what the problem is… Read More

 

Instagram launches Facebook-like web profiles

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 5, 2012

I always hated that my Instagram account lacked a public profile easily viewable in a desktop web browser. That began changing with Facebook’s acquisition of the popular image sharing service as Instagram slowly but surely started putting basic pieces of the web profile puzzle in place, letting people at least like and comment on photos without having to depend on mobile apps. Today, the company has finally rolled out full-blown web profiles and boy do they look a lot like Facebook’s profile design… Read More

 

MyPermissions lets you nuke Facebook apps that invade your privacy

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 2, 2012

So you’re on Facebook and pride yourself with making sure only a select few apps are allowed to access your personal information. But you could be in for a surprise learning just how many apps actually are granted access to the data Facebook has collected on you.

Enter MyPermissions, a new iPhone app which – as the name suggests – scans your Facebook permissions and alerts you when new apps and online services gain access to your personal information on the web. It’s a free download and I urge you to check it out right now and take control of your privacy.

You can also revoke Yahoo and Facebook apps right from within the app itself and do more with a handy Chrome extension. More info and a nice video right below… Read More

 

Facebook hits 1 billion active users

By Christian Zibreg on Oct 4, 2012

Facebook today announced it now serves a billion active users monthly, one out of every seven people on planet Earth. Even more interesting, Facebook now has more than 600 million mobile users. Celebrating the milestone, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who started the social networking behemoth in his Harvard dorm room eight years ago, posted a short notice on the company’s blog alongside a promotional clip and a fact sheet with some interesting numbers… Read More

 

New jailbreak app integrates Facebook and Google Chat into iOS

By Jeff Benjamin on Oct 2, 2012

QuickIM is a new jailbreak tweak that allows you to quickly send Facebook messages and Google chat messages from anywhere within iOS.

Seeing as this feature is totally relegated to standalone apps on non-jailbroken phones, QuickIM is an app that’s sure to catch the eye of fans of either of the aforementioned instant messaging services.

How exactly does it work? Check inside for a brief video explanation. Read More

 
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