Social

Facebook Messenger picks up contact groups, message forwarding and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

The social networking giant, Facebook, has just updated its slick Messenger client for the iPhone and iPod touch with a pair of long overdue feature additions.

The first lets you forward a message to another person (even Apple's own Messages app supports this) and the other finally makes it possible to create groups for the people you message most, with custom group photo and name.

The new Facebook Messenger 4.0 is now live in the App Store so update your copy to check out contact groups and message forwarding for yourself...

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Twitter announces photo tagging, multiple photos per tweet

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 27, 2017

Following a minor update earlier this morning which added enhancements to sharing and uploading photos in its free iPhone and iPad app, the popular micro-blogging service Twitter has just announced a pair of new features that will be making their way to mobile apps.

The first one is the ability to tag people in tweeted out photos, similar to Facebook and other services, and the other lets you attach and share up to four photos in a single tweet. More on both right after the break...

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Twitter for iOS updated with enhanced photo sharing and uploading experience

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

Twitter has just updated its free iPhone and iPad client with unspecified "enhancements to sharing and uploading photos". Behind the cryptically worded iTunes description is a slightly reworked interface for attaching a photo to a tweet, akin to Facebook's Paper app. The update is now live in the App Store and I've included a detailed description along with a few screenshots depicting the feature in action...

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Instagram reportedly testing location integration with Facebook Places

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 30, 2016

Facebook-owned Instagram has traditionally relied on Foursquare for its vast database of points of interest.

For example, upon uploading a photograph Instagram gives you an option of choosing a location where the image was taken using its Foursquare integration, simply by tapping a 'Name This Location' button.

Post acquisition, however, things have become a little weird.

Facebook has long been maintaining its own location database, Facebook Places. Two years into the acquisition, Instagram has now started using Facebook Places as its mapping service, at least for a subset of its users.

Despite this (expected) change, more than the 150 million Instagram fans can continue to share their check-ins to Foursquare from Instagram...

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Twitter pulls #music app from the App Store ahead of April 18 shutdown

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 19, 2018

Twitter will discontinue its #music app on Friday, April 18. Conveniently, April 18 marks the app's first (and obviously last) anniversary. Yup, Twitter #music is officially dead. As part of the move, the micro-blogging startup has already pulled the free iPhone and iPad application from the App Store.

Whenever a piece of software gets removed from the App Store, it becomes unavailable for download or re-download so folks who plan on continuing to use the music discovery app have better backed it up in their iTunes library on their computer.

If you only keep Twitter #music on your iOS device, transfer it to desktop iTunes by connecting your device to a computer and choose the Transfer Purchases option nested under iTunes' File > Devices menu...

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Twitter turns 8, celebrates with new tool that uncovers anyone’s first tweet

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 20, 2014

When Jack Dorsey, along with Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass, flipped the switch on Twitter back in July 2006, there was no chance on Earth they could have predicted how widespread their strange new service would become.

I mean, isn't it remarkable to think that news breaks on Twitter nowadays? Big media like CNN, NBC and other 24/7 media outlets source information from Twitter and celebs who get paid to endorse Samsung devices regularly humiliate themselves by tweeting from their iPhones.

The service that forces you to compress your thoughts into 140-character posts was actually created on this day eight years ago and Twitter is marking the anniversary by launching an interesting tool which lets you check out anyone's first tweet, without having to scroll for hours through their timeline.

Skimming through your followers' inaugural tweeting is an awesome reminder that most folks struggled to figure out this Twitter thing when it launched...

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Facebook update simplifies sharing and posting

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

Following today's update to WhatsApp which brought out nice new wallpapers and privacy controls for your Last Seen, Profile Photo and Status, the social networking giant Facebook has just refreshed its main iOS client.

The new Facebook 8.0 for the iPhone and iPad, now available in the App Store, brings supposed improvements for reliability and speed, a simpler way to see and choose a photo album's audience and a slightly refreshed iPad UI to make it easier to post and share on the tablet...

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FaceTime Plus is like Chatroulette for FaceTime

Lory Gil ∙ Updated May 17, 2018

I’m fairly certain that many of our readers have heard of, if not actually participated in the Internet phenomenon of Chatroulette. A quick summary of the activity is that people visit the website, click on a link and are able to chat with perfect strangers via webcam.

FaceTime Plus is very similar to Chatroulette, except you connect through your iPhone or iPad and it uses FaceTime for video. While the explicit content may be at a minimum right now, don’t worry. Human nature will kick in soon and you will be seeing more skin than you’ve ever wanted in no time at all…

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Google+ gains pinned posts, new location reporting and history settings, more

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 7, 2014

It's been a while since the Internet giant Google updated the Google+ client for the iPhone and iPad, available free of charge in the App Store. Last we heard, Google+ was refreshed more than three months ago with such new features as full-resolution photo and video backup, inline translations and the ability to share your location, to mention but a few.

In today's Google+ update, the app has gained the ability to pin posts to the top of a community stream while allowing you to adjust your history settings and location reporting...

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A year later, Facebook finally starts rolling out revamped News Feed to everyone

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 6, 2014

Precisely 364 days ago, Facebook held an event announcing a major redesign which promised to turn your News Feed into a "personalized newspaper." As we noted in our hands-on with the new News Feed, the  two-column layout featured prominent shortcuts to your About, Friends and Photos sections, with all-new Movies, Books and Photos items in your About view indicating what you read, watched and shared. There was also an Instagram Timeline app and a few other tweaks.

The problem is, users hated it so Facebook has never gotten around to rolling it out to its 1.2 billion users (it was enabled for a single-digit percentage of Facebook users). After spending months refining its look and implementing changed based on user feedback, Facebook on Thursday has finally begun switching its user base to the new News Feed where your "stories have a streamlined look with bigger photos"...

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Facebook wants to buy drone maker Titan Aerospace to bring Internet to far-flung places

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 4, 2014

With nearly 1.3 billion people using its service, Facebook is the undisputed leader in social networking. But if the service is to expand to the next billion users, and the next billion ones after that, Facebook is going to face a significant hurdle: for two out of every three people, a fast and affordable Internet connection is still a pipe dream.

There's no denying that the majority of the world simply isn't online, and when I say 'majority' I'm referring to the circa five billion people who are lacking fast connectivity.

But does it have to be this way?

With more than seven billion people living on planet Earth, technology titans are investing resources in crazy technologies that would bring Internet to the masses. TechCrunch is now reporting that Facebook is considering buying Titan Aerospace, a company that makes solar-powered unmanned aircraft.

The goal: use the drones to bring the Internet - and consequentially the Facebook service - to far-flung places on Earth...

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Twitter ‘system error’ causes mass reset of user passwords

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 16, 2016

Folks who received an email from Twitter tonight letting them know that their password has been reset are not alone. Thousands of users have come forward over the last 6 hours claiming that Twitter has force-reset their passwords, and requested that they create new ones.

The good news is that it doesn't sound like the social network was hacked, or overrun with nefarious bots. A spokesperson for the company has confirmed to tech site Recode that a 'system error' caused the mass reset of user passwords, and the problem should be fixed now...

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