Items tagged with instagram
Starting soon Instagram users will be able to silence obnoxious trolls by turning off comments on their own posts. It's not the best solution in the world to dealing with Internet butt-hats who get their jollies by being jerks to others behind the relative anonymity that the Internet provides, but for those who are fed up with nasty comments, it will be an option. Social networking platforms like Instagram, which Facebook acquired in 2012 for $1 billion, have the unenviable task of finding a balance between letting a community organically grow and striking down users who cross a not always clearly visible line with their comments. Through a set of rules dictating what can and can't be posted,...
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Facebook definitely recognized the growth opportunities in Instagram when it bought the company for $1 billion in stock and cash back in 2012. First launched as an iPhone app in 2010, the service had 50 million monthly active users by September 2011. By December 2014, that number had ballooned to 300 million. And today, Instagram has announced that it has over 500 million users worldwide. Of those 500 million monthly active users, over 300 million are active on a daily basis and 80 percent of its user base comes from outside the United States (this metric stood at 75 percent in September). Instagram says that over 95 million photos and video are shared on the app daily, garnering over 4.2 billion...
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Watch out, bug hunters, the scope of your competition is expanding to include younger hackers. Take Jani, a 10-year-old living in Finland who discovered a vulnerability in Instagram that allowed him to delete anyone's comments. He proved the flaw to Facebook and was awarded a cool $10,000 for his efforts.Jani isn't even old enough to use Instagram, but he didn't let that stop him from participating in Facebook's Bug Bounty program. Melanie Ensigtn, a security representative at Facebook, told The Washington Post that Jani's methods were completely ethical and void of any ulterior motives. He didn't even violate Instagram's terms of service, as the hack didn't require that he have an account. Had...
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It's difficult enough trying to decipher simple text messages—it's tough to account for tone and sarcasm—but when you throw emoji into the mix, it takes things to a whole new level. Nevertheless, it's the online language of the day, and one middle school student could end up paying a hefty price for posting the wrong combination of emojis to Instagram. The 12-year-old student from Fairfax, Virginia, is being charged with threatening her school after local law officials said she posted a message on Instagram containing emojis of a gun, bomb, and knife. Part of her message also used the world "killing" and "meet me in the library," which ultimately prompted an investigation once the school found...
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Facebook threw Wall Street for a loop when it acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. The move came just ahead of Facebook’s IPO, but ultimately had little negative impact on Facebook’s efforts to go public. The service briefly drew some unwanted attention later in the year for a change to its terms of service that was meant to attract advertisers, but its popularity has nonetheless soared over the past few years. This week, Instagram announced that it has grown to a “community” of more than 400 million users. What some feared was a rash decision on the part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has turned out to be massive success. Many of the more recent Instagram sign-ups are coming from outside...
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With as much hype as there has been surrounding high resolutions - from "Retina" laptops to 4K TVs -- it's almost embarrassing that a large number of online services still severely throttle the overall resolution of a user's uploaded photos. Imgur is a great example of a service that doesn't suffer too much in this regard, but unlike services like Instagram, Facebook, or even Google+, there isn't too much of a social element. On the topic of Instagram, many of its users have been appalled for some time that their images have been capped at 640x640, and it's easy to understand why. Even modest smartphones today tend to have much higher resolution displays, and a 640x640 image looks quite...
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It's a good thing Facebook was only out of commission for an hour, otherwise can you imagine the uproar that would have erupted from the hundreds of millions of daily active users who would have to find some place else to post their pictures of dinner or political rants? Instagram wasn't an option, because that was also down -- both self inflicted wounds, Facebook says. "Earlier today many people had trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100 percent for everyone," Facebook told USA Today....
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Imagine of the horror of being Justin Bieber and waking up to find that your Instagram fan base has diminished by 3.5 million followers overnight, or 15 percent. Talk about a feeling of loneliness in your sprawling mansion! Except of course for the multiple housekeepers and entourage, but otherwise, how horrific, right? It wasn't just the pop singer who lost scores of followers, either. In an effort to purge spammers, Instagram wiped out millions of fake accounts, causing celebrities to lose a significant amount of their fan base.According to Business Insider, rapper Mase went from 1.6 million followers to 100,000 within minutes. Apparently the sight of a tumbling Instagram fan base was so hard...
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Instagram started off as a simple idea, and though it's grown in capabilities over time, it still at heart a photo (and video) sharing app. There's a certain charm in its simplicity, which is why it's not hard to believe that there are now more than 300 million people using Instagram who collectively share tens of millions of photos and videos each and every day. "Over the past four years, what began as two friends with a dream has grown into a global community that shares more than 70 million photos and videos each day. Instagram is home to creativity in all of its forms, a place where you can find everything from images of the Nile River to the newest look from Herschel Supply or a peek...
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Facebook has been making a push into ad marketing. Earlier this year, it acquired video ad company LiveRail to improve the social media company’s video ads. Now, Facebook has unveiled a rebuilt Atlas for the purpose of allowing advertisers the ability to track and measure the effects of their ad campaigns not only on Facebook, but browsers and devices as well. “People spend more time on more devices than ever before, “said head of Atlas Erik Johnson. “This shift in consumer behavior has had a profound impact on a consumer’s path to purchase, both online and in stores. And today’s technology for ad serving and measurement – cookies – are flawed when...
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Technology is pretty amazing when you take a moment to stop and truly appreciate how far things have come. Back when our folks were kids, they were filming silent, choppy videos on Super 8. And today? There are a number of mobile apps available to shoot hiqh-quality video -- with sound! -- on your smartphone. One of them is Instagram, which now supports time lapse videos. It's called Hyperlapse, and it allows you to take high-quality time lapse videos even while in motion. That's a pretty big deal -- taking time lapse videos usually requires holding a phone or camera perfectly still while you film what's going on. However, Hyperlapse comes with built-in stabilization technology to mimic what...
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After spending $1 billion acquiring the service, it would be pretty silly for Facebook to let Instagram grow stagnant. You needn't worry about that if you're an Instagram user -- effectively immediately, you now have more creative tools to play around with, which apply to both Android and iOS users. These include the ability to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, and more. Once you've installed the new version, you'll find the expanded tools by tapping the wrench icon, which you'll see when selecting a filter. This will bring up a tray of photo editing tools, such as the ones mentioned above. You can also adjust how much of a filter you apply to a photo by double-tapping the filter...
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Yahoo announced some new changes to Flickr with version 3.0 for iOS and Android, and they seem to be aimed at competing with the wildly popular Instagram photo sharing service with a number of filters, advanced editing, intelligent search, and plenty of social elements. There are fourteen different live photo filters you can employ even before you snap a picture, and there are plenty of editing tools beyond that. The live filters work on up to 30 seconds of video, too. Users get Flickr’s 1TB of storage with an AutoSync feature that backs up your photos as soon as you take them (in their original quality), and you can search your own photo database with terms such as a month...
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Facebook isn't afraid to make big acquisitions. Lest anyone need reminding of that, the social networking service dropped a bombshell on Oculus VR fans by announcing yesterday it had acquired the technology for $2 billion. That's just one example of Facebook's willingness to drop big cash on startups. In April 2012, Zuckerberg and company scooped up Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. Wondering how Instagram has fared since then? Back when Facebook acquired the photo sharing app, it stood at between 30 million to 40 million users. The acquisition gave Instagram's growth a boost, as did the company's decision to launch on Android around the same time. Fast forward to today and Instagram...
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If you can believe it, Facebook turns 10 years old tomorrow. That seems completely wrong until you realize that February 4th, 2004 was indeed 10 years ago, even though for anyone over 30 or so the year 2004 seems more like 10 minutes ago. Facebook’s influence on the world is undeniable, with its 1.2 billion users and inspiration of a new generation of social media sites and services that have become the new way people young and old communicate and stay in touch. But things are changing in the ever-fickle tech world, and Facebook is in danger. Regardless of what the numbers may or may not indicate, and irrespective of what Facebook execs such as Sheryl Sandberg say, the site has a serious...
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Social networking has become one of the hottest online activities with 73 percent of adults using a social networking site of some kind, according to data compiled by Pew Internet. Around 4 out of 10 online adults get their social groove going with multiple sites, but which are the most popular? Facebook is the obvious big man on campus, but you might be surprised at where the other sites stand. Like Facebook users, Instagram users are likely to check in on a daily basis. However, Instagram is the least popular social networking (by a hair) out of Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Source: Pew Research Center Mark Zuckerberg's online playground dominates all others with 71 percent of...
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Like everyone that’s trying to make a living in the online world, Instagram is trying to crack the tough nut of monetizing its free service, but the social image-sharing site may just have figured out a solution. Many sites, such as Google, rely on ad clicks, as well as actions such as “likes”, and comments to calculate reach and the value of a given ad, banner, or campaign, but Instagram is trying something a little different. It’s looking at metrics that include reach, ad recall, and awareness, and after a small and gentle rollout of ads in users’ feeds starting November 1st, the results are promising. Facebook-owned Instagram said in a blog post that after completing...
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Instant messaging in some form or another has been around since the dawn of man and woman (slight exaggeration), though don't tell that to Instagram, which yesterday held a major press event to unveil Instagram Direct, its own take on sending messages to friends. While Instagram was super excited to add a feature that's found on just about every major social app for mobile devices, it was a bit of a letdown to members of the press hoping for something bigger. To be fair, this could end up being a big deal for Instagram. At minimum, it's a much needed feature if it's to compete with services like SnapChat and WhatsApp, though rather than blaze a trail into new territory, Instagram is just now...
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Instagram has sent out mysterious invitations for a December 12th event in New York City. Although the message to “share a moment” with Kevin Systrom and the rest of the Instagram team is veiled enough, there’s another layer of intrigue: the invitations are physical, printed on paper, and came through snail mail. Other versions of the invite were apparently actually printed on pieces of wood that were specifically cut to be ready to hang on a wall. Image credit: TechCrunch Instagram is a haven for hipsters, but it’s unlikely that Instagram went to the expense of printing up and mailing these items just because it’s ironically cool. However, it is entirely likely...
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Starting today, Windows Phone users can finally join in the fun that is Instagram, which at its core allows you to add filter effects and "transform everyday moments into works of art," or something like that. That's the good news. The bad news is that in an attempt to rush Instagram to the Windows Phone platform, certain features have been left off, at least for the time being. "We wanted to make Instagram available to people with Windows Phones as quickly as possible, so we focused on creating an awesome experience with Instagram’s core features. We’re not finished, and our team will continue developing the Windows Phone app to keep releasing features and bringing you the best Instagram...
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It’s an old story in tech that one evolving area of a market cannibalizes another, and it’s possible that’s what’s happening with smartphones and high-end digital camera sales. Citing IDC’s research, the WSJ notes that shipments of DSLR cameras with interchangeable lenses will drop 9.1% to 17.4 million units, down from 19.1 million last year. One IDC analyst, Christopher Chute, told the WSJ that he’s found that some consumers are eschewing a high-quality camera such as a DSLR and instead spending their dollars on smartphones and tablets. Nikon Df DSLR There’s no doubt that cameras on mobile devices have blasted sales of compact point-and-shoot cameras,...
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The most surefire way to make teenagers disinterested in something is for their parents to adopt it, and it appears that Facebook is having just such a problem. Facebook has finally admitted that there has been a dip in teen usage--although the company hasn’t provided any numbers. This is a sharp turnaround from Facebook’s position on the matter in Q2, when CFO David Ebersman used the term “urban legend” to describe the assertions that teens aren’t as into Facebook as they used to be. Of course, for as fickle as kids can be and how quickly their interests shift, it’s entirely possible that a fiscal quarter ago there wasn’t a teen problem. Instead, it...
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