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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...