New Instagram 4.1 brings video import feature and support for Android 4.0 ICS

Facebook's Instagram, which had recently added short video sharing support to its mobile application, has now issued a new update for its mobile apps on Android and iOS platforms . The biggest update is the ability to import video from your library, meaning you can share video you've previously recorded with another app. There's also a straightening tool for iOS users, which fixes your photos that are slightly crooked.

Mind you, this may not work for your several minutes long videos(Once the video is uploaded, providing it's shorter than 15 seconds, users can choose to record more video after the pre-recorded footage.). Using the new Instagram app 4.1 , users can import videos and then trim the best parts they wish to be portrayed in the short video. The square-crop will let the user place the action scenes in the center. After trimming, user can apply the filter and choose a frame as the cover.The great thing about the update, which might not so good news for Vine, is that users can add two or more shorter pre-recorded videos into one Instagram post until the 15-second limit is reached.This gives a way for those Vine users who fancy transferring their social video skills to Instagram to upload two of their saved six-second Vine video files from their camera roll into one Instagram post, giving them a reason to leave the Twitter app for good.Those who aren't Vine users wanting to convert to Instagram can now spend time in the app editing together old video clips into one post. However, it does pave the way for the posting of many more nonsense posts, such as ads, spam and pornography.

"We've also made it so that you can choose how you square-crop your clip so you can keep the action front and centre," Instagram wrote in a blog post."There are few things more distracting than a crooked horizon in a photo," Instagram explained. "We're happy to announce that we've developed a brand new technology that brings you straight photos instantly."

The new app also brings automatic straightening of the photos instantly on the iOS mobile platform. The new Straighten icon will appear after the user has clicked an image using the Instagram's in-app camera.Straightening for iOS is a very basic addition, allowing users to straighten their photographs before posting. Unfortunately there's no straightening for Instagram videos.

Instagram has also extended the support of the app to the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update running significant number of devices out there. Previously, video was only available to Android users running 4.1 and up.

The Instagram app 4.1 is already available in the Google Play store for Android devices and Apple App store for the iOS devices.

Facebook Hashtags fail !

This ain't Twitter, hashtagsdon't work here! 

Using hashtags in Facebook posts may be a fun strategy for companies trying to grab the attention of consumers, however, it doesn't appear to be paying off, a new study has claimed. 

The study by a social media analytics firm showed that although 20 per cent of Facebook posts among top brands now include hashtags, however, there is no evidence that such tactics is influencing their engagement. 

Hashtags provide users a way to group messages of similar content. 

Researchers show that posts using the newly introduced hashtags perform only as well as those without it, suggesting that users are not yet finding brand posts by their tags. 

The study showed that visual content is by far the primary driver for engagement on Facebook. 

Pictures posted by top brands average more than 9,400 engagements, which includes likes, comments and shares, per post, while videos average more than 2,500, 'BusinessNewsDaily' reported. 

Researchers said when it comes to text posts, brands must walk a fine line. 

Analysis of more than 500 status updates from the top brands shows that the longer a status update is, the less engagement it typically receives. 

However, if a status update is too short -- less than 50 characters -- it may not be long enough to capture viewers' attention or provide the necessary context to drive the number of likes, shares and comments a company would like. 

"For most brands, Facebook is no longer just a network; it has become the hub of their social marketing efforts and one of the most effective ways to engage with fans," said Adam Schoenfeld, CEO of the firm Simply Measured.

Facebook for every Phone, a smart FB tactic

Facebook has been quietly working for more than two years on a project that is vital to expanding its base of 1.1 billion users: getting the social network onto the billions of cheap, simple “feature phones” that have largely disappeared in America and Europe but are still the norm in developing countries like India and Brazil.

Facebook soon plans to announce the first results of the initiative, which it calls Facebook for Every Phone: More than 100 million people, or roughly one out of eight of its mobile users worldwide, now regularly access the social network from more than 3,000 different models of feature phones, some costing as little as $20.

Many of those users, who rank among the world’s poorest people, pay little or nothing to download their Facebook news feeds and photos, with the data usage subsidized by phone carriers and manufacturers. 

Facebook has only just begun to sell ads to these customers, so it makes no money from them yet. But the countries in which the simple phone software is doing the best — India, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil and Vietnam — are among the fastest-growing markets for use of the Internet and social networks, according to the research firm eM

arketer.

Like many other giants of the technology industry, Facebook is struggling with the seismic shift of its customers away from computers to mobile devices and the erosion of profit that can bring.

Last year, the company overhauled its apps for Apple iPhones and Android-based smartphones to improve mobile access while introducing new types of ads that nudge users to install a new game or other apps on their phones. But customer growth in developed markets like the United States has still slowed markedly because just about everyone who wants to be on Facebook has already joined the network.

Analysts say Facebook has a powerful opportunity to win the long-term loyalty of millions of new global users by giving them their first taste of the Internet through Facebook on a simple cellphone.

“In a lot of foreign markets, people think that the Internet is Facebook,” said Clark Fredricksen, a vice president at eMarketer.

Those users, Facebook hopes, will become more attractive to advertisers as their incomes grow and they gain broader access to the Web.

The feature phone project was driven by a small group of people who joined Facebook in 2011, when it purchased a start-up called Snaptu. The team had to re-engineer Facebook’s software to drastically shrink the amount of data sent over slow cellular networks. They also had to find a way to quickly display familiar Facebook features like chat and photos on phones with very basic computing power and low-resolution screens.

“We actually run the apps on our servers,” said Ran Makavy, who was chief executive of Snaptu and now runs Facebook’s feature phone project. “The result was something that looks almost like a smartphone app.”

The software has features that are common in more advanced versions of Facebook, including sticker-size emoticons in chat and Instagram-style filters to dress up photos. (Facebook for Every Phone can be used by feature phone customers anywhere, including those in the United States. It can be downloaded from Facebook using the phone’s mobile browser or obtained from app stores operated by the phone maker or independent companies like Getjar.)

Brian Blau, who studies consumer technologies at the research firm Gartner, said that given Facebook’s mission of linking the entire globe through its service, it needed to reach out to the least tech-savvy customers.

“They talk about socially connecting the world together,” he said. “They can’t do that until they connect people who don’t have smartphones or computers.”

To understand how far Facebook has come in its approach to mobile devices, consider this: until two years ago, the only way to sign up for the service was through a Web browser, which is much slower to use than an app. Facebook originally viewed phones as mostly useful for posting status updates, not as a primary way to access the service, said Javier Olivan, who heads Facebook’s growth team.

Eventually, the company realized that tens of millions of people in developing countries were eager to try Facebook but had no access to a computer, nor could they afford the $600 iPhones or $40-a-month data plans common in the developed world.

“It became very obvious that the next wave of users would come on mobile only,” Mr. Olivan said in an interview last week.

To go after those customers, Facebook spent a reported $70 million to buy Snaptu, an Israeli company that had begun to offer primitive versions of Facebook and other apps on simple cellphones.

The acquisition “unlocked an opportunity for us,” Mr. Olivan said.

From virtually no users on feature phones a couple of years ago, the company has grown to 100 million active users. Facebook declined to offer any specific predictions about the growth of its service on either smartphones or feature phones.

The immediate prospects of making money from feature phone users are modest. During the first quarter of this year, Facebook got only 24 percent of its $1.5 billion in revenue from outside of the United States, Canada and Europe. It is just beginning to ramp up its mobile advertising revenue, which was 30 percent of its overall global ad revenue in the first quarter. Those mobile ads are not as profitable as desktop ads, whose growth is flat.

The company will report its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, but analysts expect that developed markets will be the biggest source of Facebook’s revenue and profit for a long time.

Still, there is a longer-term business opportunity, for both Facebook and its phone industry partners, as mobile usage grows in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Facebook has struck promotional deals with phone makers like Nokia, which in Mayannounced a $99 feature phone called the Asha 501 that includes free Facebook access for customers of certain carriers, including Bharti Airtel, which serves India and much of Africa.

The social network gets legions of new users from such deals, and the carriers and phone manufacturers hope that once customers get a taste of the Internet through Facebook, they will be willing to pay for more data access and better phones.

“It drives people to use data,” Mr. Makavy said.

Mr. Olivan said Facebook has found that many users of the feature phone software, despite slow and erratic data connections, are more engaged with the service than customers using iPhones on fast networks. That engagement might be attractive to advertisers.

The development of the feature phone technology, which is five to 10 times more efficient than Facebook’s smartphone apps, has paid other dividends, teaching the company how to improve the rest of its software.

“We’re working on bringing a lot of the ideas into smartphone apps,” Mr. Olivan said.

But Mr. Makavy says he sees a strong future for the feature phone version of Facebook. Even in places where sales of new feature phones are slowing, use of the mobile Internet on them is growing.

“Before, maybe 2 percent were connecting,” he said. “Now it’s like 25 percent. I think there is a pretty long runway still.
”

VIA NYTimes

Facebook to not allow users under 13 years

Facebook, which is struggling to remove adult content from the social network, will now display a disclaimer stating that children below the age of 13 years cannot open an account on it. This move of Facebook came after a Delhi High Court bench of Acting Chief Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru asked Facebook to not allow children under 13 years from opening an account, reported IANS.

Senior advocate, Parag Tripathi appearing for Facebook assured the court that the site "will upload the disclaimer on its home page that children 13 years cannot open the account". As of now if you are under 13 year of age, you will not be allowed to open a Facebook account but there is no disclaimer about it on the home page. One will come to know about it when an under aged user tries to create an account and a message will be flashed that says "You are ineligible to register for Facebook". Currently, Facebook has 78 million monthly active users in India and most of them access the site through mobile


BUT SHOULD FB ALLOW USERS BELOW 13?

Facebook is testing new features that would give children under 13 access to the giant social network, according to a report published Monday in the Wall Street Journal. Although one version of this new program would require children to have accounts that are linked to an adult so that supervision is easier, some parents have raised concerns about allowing pre-teens access the network at all due to Facebook’s past handling of privacy-related issues. Others, however, argue that plenty of younger children already access Facebook anyway despite the 13-year-old age limit, and that Facebook is wise to make it official. In fact, the widespread flouting of the 13-year-old limit — a survey by Consumer Reports found that more than 7 million children under that age are on the network — is described as one of the primary motivations behind the proposed changes. TheJournal quotes sources “familiar with the matter” as saying that Facebook is afraid it could face governmental scrutiny because of the large numbers of younger users who access the network, in many cases with the help or knowledge of their parents. The company has already been criticized and sanctioned by regulators a number of times over its handling of privacy. Facebook didn’t confirm that it is working on the kind of features described by theWall Street Journal, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said in the past that the issue of allowing younger users access to the network was “a fight we [will] take on at some point.” And a comment from the company suggested that it is aware of — and concerned about — the problem of unauthorized access by kids. As a spokesman told the newspaper: Recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to enforce age restrictions on the Internet, especially when parents want their children to access online content and services. We are in continuous dialogue with stakeholders, regulators and other policy makers about how best to help parents keep their kids safe in an evolving online environment. When I asked the people who follow me on Twitter for their thoughts on the proposed changes, one of the main arguments for not allowing children under 13 to access the social network was that they aren’t old enough to make appropriate decisions for themselves — about what to share with others, what content they should comment on, what kind of behavior is appropriate, and so on — and that many parents might not supervise them properly. Some said they were concerned children would find ways around any restrictions Facebook might impose, such as requiring parental approval for friending other users or posting content. On a related point, some parents said they were worried about the permanence of Facebook content, and the impact that over-sharing or other bad decisions by younger children might have on their lives as they get older. Just as some university-age users have found that their behavior on the social network can cause problems for them as they apply for jobs, some parents say they don’t want the questionable choices their children might make as 10-year-olds to impact the way their families or friends or others see them. As one child advocacy group told the Journal:The idea that you would go after this segment of the audience when there are concerns about the current audience is mind boggling. The opposing argument is that social networks and the way they affect our lives are things that children are going to have to come to grips with sooner or later, and therefore it’s better to introduce them to the concept gradually rather than blocking them from it until a pre-determined age like 13. Provided Facebook gives parents enough controls over what their children see and do, this theory goes, allowing kids access to the network not only has positive benefits — since it allows them to connect with family and friends more easily — but can provide a good training ground for broader lessons about internet behavior. Supporters of this viewpoint point out that most children are already capable of accessing plenty of other much more questionable internet sites without their parents’ knowledge, and that this can cause far bigger problems than Facebook ever could.Allowing kids access to the social network would be a better alternative in many ways, they argue. Is it better to try and stop younger users from joining networks like Facebook until they reach a certain age, even if we know that large numbers of them are going to do so anyway? Or is Facebook better off making it easy for them and then requiring certain restrictions on what they do, so that they — and their parents — can get ahead of the problem? Let us know what you think in the comments

Facebook's mission: Develop an impeccable mobile experience

Facebook has over 78 million monthly active users in India and for most of them roti kapda, makan, mobile and Facebook seem to be the new basic necessities. So much so that whenever the network is down and Facebook is not accessible some of the users have reported withdrawal symptoms.

In recent times, Facebook has witnessed a major jump in users who access Facebook from their mobile device and this has made the company put on its thinking cap to give its mobile users an impeccable experience.

To achieve it, in the span of the last 24 months Facebook has made its app available on all major mobile operating system platforms, including the basic feature phones. It has worked closely with some handset players like Nokia and HTC to get a dedicated Facebook button on a couple of their devices. It has formed alliances with multiple operators to provide free and discounted data access to Facebook on mobiles.

But the question arises: why only mobile? Of late in India, most of the people who are accessing the internet for the first time are doing it on their mobile phones. Facebook knows it and wants to capitalize on it to get the next billion Facebook users.

We recently interviewed Kevin D'Souza, country growth manager, Facebook India, to know what consumers can expect from the social media giant in the coming days. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Q: In the last couple of months Facebook has been adopting mobile platforms in a big way to reach the masses in India. Comment:

A: We have realised that people spend more than 20 per cent of their time on Facebook app. In fact, on an average, they access Facebook 10 to 15 times a day on the desktop, but probably check their phones over 100 times a day.

Therefore, we have made this big transition where now there are more people using Facebook on mobiles every day than on the desktop. The proliferation of mobile devices is expanding the market for people who can use Facebook simultaneously, driving deeper engagement with our product. Today over 751 million people use Facebook on a mobile device each month, and 70 per cent of them return to Facebook every day compared to 40 per cent of desktop users.

Mobile is the perfect device for Facebook for three reasons. It allows us to reach more people, help them connect and engage, and create opportunities for brands to be part of consumers' mobile Facebook experience in a relevant and integrated way.

Facebook has 78 million monthly active users in India and we believe that the next billion Facebook users will come from mobile devices. We're creating mobile products to help people share their life moments. We're leveraging the power and portability of today's devices to help people capture better and share moments anywhere in real time. We're pushing the limits of each mobile platform to leverage unique capabilities: iOS , Android, feature phones and the mobile web. We've been working with operators to enable free access to Facebook and recently we've been working with device partners to launch phones with "Free Facebook" data packages.

Q: What are the different ways in which Facebook can be accessed on mobile phones?

A: We have recently introduced a number of mobile friendly features to enhance the Facebook experience on mobile phones. Facebook on mobile can be accessed through "Facebook for every phone" app, Facebook Messenger and Facebook Home.

"Facebook for Every Phone" app delivers a smartphone-like Facebook experience on feature phones. In India, the app is available in Hindi and seven other local Indian languages including Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali and Marathi.

Private sharing and connecting is a big part of the Facebook experience. Messenger allows users to be in constant touch with each other, and also lets them share content through instant messaging. One can access these messages even if one is not logged into one's Facebook account, as these messages are received as Facebook SMS s.

With Facebook Home you can see fresh news and content from people and topics you care about every time you turn on your screen. It really brings your phone to life and provides a completely new experience.

This product is still very early, and this is just the first release in a long journey. We're planning on iterating quickly and tuning things based on feedback. We haven't really started encouraging people to install it from within our apps yet, and it's only available on a few phones. But over the next few months we hope to push this out much more broadly and get it in the hands of a lot more people. We're excited about Home because we think it's a great product, but Home is also an important milestone for our company. This is a completely new kind of mobile experience based on people, not apps, and we think this is how phones and computers should work.

Till now we were only developing apps for Android and iOS, but very recently, we also made the Facebook app available on Windows 7.5 and 8 phones, with a focus on Facebook users on this platform as well.

Q: Apart from live feeds on the go what are the value-adds a user can enjoy while accessing Facebook on his mobile?

A: Facebook products are optimised for mobile phones users. We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. Most new smartphones come with Facebook app and so users can update status, comment and do a lot of other things as well. There are so many things we can do on a mobile device that simply aren't possible on a desktop computer, from location services like our recently launched "Nearby” feature, to photo capabilities like Instagram, to mobile messaging, mobile app discovery and Facebook Home, which ensures that users do not even miss a single post of their friends.

Users don't take their desktop computer with them to a wedding, to dinner, on a run, on a trip, or when dropping their kids off for their first day of school. But these are the moments they want to capture and share with their friends as they happen, not when they're back at their "computer".

This inspires us to keep on improvising our mobile products. We have recently added new features to our Facebook messenger such as Stickers, which are a great way of setting the user free of the same old smileys and emoticons. These can be used to spice up the conversations and make them more interesting and fun. Then there is "Chat Heads", which lets the user be just one tap away from the most frequently connected friends on Facebook.

Brands, direct response advertisers and local businesses are utilising Facebook to reach new and existing customers through our mobile ad products. Facebook has made it easier for advertisers to target users on feature phones who do not have the advantage of bigger screens. One such example is the Power Editor feature on Android and iOS apps, through which advertisers can now choose where they want their ads placed and also get a real-time view on how the page will look on a feature phone.

Q: Is there a conscious effort on the part of Facebook to imbibe positive features of other social networks to give a wholesome experience to its users?

A: We want to make the Facebook platform much more accessible and helpful for users. We believe that connectivity is empowering. When people and communities have access to the internet they can connect with new knowledge, new relationships and new opportunities. We understand that users can connect only when they are a part of larger groups and conversations.

Whether it's our recently introduced Graph search, Hashtags, Verified pages or any other feature, our aim is to help people to reach out and find the right information they are looking for through Facebook and connect with people having similar interests.

Q: Some time back an operator in India was making Facebook available to its subscribers for just Rs 5 per day. Can we expect more such announcements from other operators and can you name which service providers will make it available in the country.

A: Facebook is a partner driven company. Enabling connections and offering an engaging mobile experience requires three things: a device, access to data, and applications to connect with people and information. We're working across the entire mobile industry with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.

At the Mobile World Congress held this year, we announced our partnership with Airtel and Reliance in India to provide free and discounted data access to Facebook messaging for their subscribers. Such partnerships help in tapping 'first time' internet users and gradually converting them into full-fledged data customers, thus overcoming the connectivity barriers.

Recently, we announced partnership with Idea to launch Facebook Messenger service free to users. Under this unique offering, users can send messages, share pictures, locations and start group conversations with friends while on-the-move through the Facebook Messenger application, absolutely free.
Copied from Latest Mobile Phone info

Indians willing to shell over a lakh rs for the perfect profile picture in the battle for likes

"If you don't look good on Facebook, then how will you make contacts?" That's the opening line of an online video that sheds light on what is said to be a growing trend in India: Facebook facelifts."Facebook facelifts are relatively minor procedures that people in their 20s and 30s get done to improve their pictures on social media," plastic surgeon Dr. Ajay Kashyap, says in the video that has been picked by Mashable and other publications. Facebook user Jasmeet Singh, who admits in the video he's 'looking for a partner' via the world's most popular social network, wants to go in for a liposuction procedure because his Facebook friends say he should look thinner in pictures posted on the website. Singh is not alone in this quest for 'Likes' and more. In the video, Anuradha talks about the great Facebook comments she got from friends and family after she got laser work and chemical peel done on her face. But all this popularity comes at a cost. While minor procedures like Anuradha's cost between Rs. 25,000 and Rs. 30,000 ($500), chin augmentation procedures, said to be very popular with men wishing to get rid of the dreaded double-chin, can cost over Rs. one lakh ($2000). With such high costs, wouldn't digitally editing or 'photoshopping' your pictures be an easier and cheaper option? Pooja, who underwent a laser surgery to get rid of a 'bump' on her forehead, says that would amount to cheating. "You have to meet people in real life too. If you don't look the same as in your photo, then it's sort of fake, isn't it?" The irony may have been lost in translation, but Dr. Anip Dhir, plastic surgeon, believes the trend will only grow further, as more and more Indians get online and start using social networking sites. Facebook today is more than a social network in India; for most of them it is a part of their life. Today our friends sit on our profile page and we tend to spend more time online than offline. So it is becoming essential for some to look good in their online pictures. Some take the help of image editing softwares but some prefer to go one step further in doing facelifts. The growing trend in India is being termed as Facebook facelifts. Today the world is going online and spending more time on Facebook; users want to look good online too so to get more likes and comments.Nothing wrong in it since we love to get good comments on our looks but isn’t that too much of money for the sake of getting more likes and comments.

Facebook Graph Search to open for all

Facebook users in the US will soon start getting Graph Search – a new search tool announced in January this year that is designed to take a precise query and deliver an answer. According to an ABC News report, Facebook said that several hundreds of millions of people will get the feature this week, though it will be a few weeks before it reaches everyone who uses the site in the “US English” setting. The search feature was made available as a limited preview for English audiences only back in January. According to ABC News, Facebook says in a blog post which will be published on Monday morning: ”Over the past few months, tens of millions of people have helped improve the product just by using it and giving feedback.” Such improvements include the speed of search to accuracy — when you start typing in a search term now the tool will suggest more relevant possible searches, and can better understand what people are searching for in order to display the most relevant results first Facebook’s Graph Search allows users to search for content from their friends that has been shared with them, such as photos, information and things that have been liked by their friends. As we reported before, to give two very random examples, it is possible to search for things such as “TV shows watched by doctors” or “Music liked by people who like Mitt Romney”. The ABC News report says that Facebook is still working on making posts or status updates and comments searchable, with the mobile version also still in the works. As with any new feature from the world’s largest social network, privacy is a key concern for users. Facebook took extra care to set the record straight early on when it launched Graph Search, with Mark Zuckerberg saying that user privacy was taken into account when designing the search feature. In fact, Facebook started prompting users to take a look at their privacy settings when it announced Graph Search. Facebook also recently released an inside look at its Entity Graph, a complicated data set which maps the social network’s 100+ billion connections between people, places and interests, helping to power its Graph Search feature. Users who may have grown frustrated with Facebook's rudimentary search feature are getting an updated version designed to make it easier to find people, places and photos on the site. Facebook unveiled its social search tool in January but only made it available to a small fraction of its 1.1 billion users, as its engineers continued to tweak and test it.
Unlike searches on Google, which are good for finding specific things, Facebook's tool is useful in unearthing information about your social circles. Graph Search lets you find friends who live in San Francisco who are vegan. Friends of friends who live near you and like hiking. Photos of your boyfriend taken before you met him in 2010. Nearby restaurants that your friends like - and so on. But soon after Facebook launched the tool, the internet had a field day with less innocuous and more embarrassing queries, showing just how much information people reveal about themselves on the site, intentionally or not. Care to find out which brand of condoms your friends prefer? Graph Search might tell you. A blog called actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com posted a collection of searches ranging from "married people who like prostitutes" to "current employers of people who like racism." Both yielded more than 100 people. While it is possible that some of those Facebook users are fully aware that what they've shared is easily searchable, it is likely that some are not. It's easy to click "like" on a page and forget about it. To avoid any unpleasantness, Facebook plans to notify users that it's "getting easier for people to find photos and other things you've shared with them" along with a reminder that they can check "who can see my stuff" under their privacy settings. "The goal is to avoid bad surprises," said Nicky Jackson Colaco, privacy and safety manager at Facebook. But she stressed Facebook's view that the search tool "indexes information differently than we have ever been able to do before, in a really positive way." Facebook does not currently show users ads based on what they are searching for, but the company may do in the future. As Google has shown, it's a lucrative business. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Google will take nearly 42 per cent of all US digital ad spending this year, well above Facebook's share of less than 7 per cent. With its new search tool, Facebook is clearly trying to divert traffic and ad spending from its rival. Get ready for your Facebook search bar to start looking a little different. The improvements range from the speed of search to accuracy. Now when you begin typing in a search it will begin suggesting more relevant potential searches. Additionally, the company says it can better understand what people are searching for and will display the most relevant results first. Facebook's goal is not to replace Google, though. "Graph Search isn't Web search. We aren't duplicating what Bing does and what Google does, but rather we are making things easier for people to find on Facebook," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said when asked about the search function at the All Things D conference earlier this summer.

Facebook's Instagram sends a farewell to Twitter's Vine

Instagram's new video feature made a splash in its first week, outpacing its main competitor, Vine. Parent company Facebook introduced 15 sec video sharing plug in on June 20, immediately sending Vine Twitter shares plummeting during the month leading up to Instagram's news, Vine was riding a roller coaster of Twitter popularity, outshining its filtered-photo rival in terms of shares. But after Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom announced video for his photo-sharing app, Instagram links skyrocketed on the micro-blogging site, while Vine usage tumbled.

Instagram, in fact, reported more than 5 million videos uploaded to the site within its first 24 hours of service, plus a peak 40 hours of video uploaded per minute when the Miami Heat won the NBA championship. According to Topsy data, Instagram sharing peaked at about 1.83 million Twitter shares the day it added video. Since then, there have been between 1.4 million and 1.5 million Twitter shares per day from Instagram in the past few days. Vine, meanwhile, had about 1.88 million Twitter shares on June 20, down from 3 million on June 15. But Vine has dropped to about 900,000 to 1 million Twitter shares per day in recent days. Vine is still kicking, though: The Twitter-owned app on Thursday launched an Android update with support for front-facing cameras and a number of other improvements. Vine version 1.2.0 now includes a new upload manager for unsubmitted posts, faster camera loading time, support for more devices, and a boost in overall speed, as well as bug fixes and user interface improvements. The Vine update is currently available in the Google Play store. It’s been just over a week since Face book Inc’s Instagram added a video feature. But the additional video tool is already taking a toll on its biggest rival Vine. Instagram has over 130 million users, and monetization of the tool will further boost revenues for the social networking giant. Facebook Inc shares were up 0.32 percent to $24.74 at 12:58 PM EDT. Think about it, man—you got two apps here, one’s shooting for six seconds, the other is shooting for 15 seconds! Which are you going to pick?! 15, man! While it’s hard to imagine doing anything all that meaningful in an extra nine seconds, it might actually make a difference. Then again more isn’t always better—who would have thought that imposing an arbitrary 140-character cap would have made Twitter one of the most powerful communication tools on the planet? Also, Instagram already has all of the people, so it’s entirely possible that in this case the hitchhiker (to extend the metaphor) will turn out to be totally right and the get-rich-quick scheme will work perfectly. Plus it has all of the filters. Which I guess is pretty if you’re into filters. The only thing keeping Twitter from toppling Facebook in terms of user growth and relevancy is that Twitter doesn’t have a great photo-sharing solution and Facebook is the world’s leading photo sharer. So last year Twitter tried to buy Instagram. What did Facebook do? Swept in and bought the app for $1 billion, even though they were already the leading photo sharer. Next Twitter goes out and builds their own freaking 8 Minute Abs. And what does Facebook do? 7 Minute Abs! You’ve got to hand it to Facebook, they are doing a pretty good job of keeping Twitter down.

Facebook (Y) is now an adult with increase in job for it ........ now also the send button

                     

   Yo FB lykrs . Dis post is spcialy fr dose whu type lyk dis and dnt giv a shit fr da corrkt gram. LOL ! Thankfully i won't post this with weird texting language. The news is that the "like" thats being getting all the love as of late. Facebook has rolled out a minor new feature for both its Android and iOS messaging apps. Though minor , it is still hard to miss. The message box now includes a giant (Y) [like] that swaps places with your send button in the app. Presumably, it's the kind of thing you will tap to if you appreciate the content of what you received or else if you are too lazy to congratulate the other person. From personal experience, i use it pretty much to replace "k " that i often text to my friends. As long as the last message in your conversation is from the other end, you can like it. You aren't bound by a time window thankfully It gets worse, you can even LIKE a [like] by putting a (Y) like. Please resist the urge to do so, let it take away from the evolution of communication that humanity has enjoyed from a 1000 years. Your phone won't vibrate differently nor will it produce another horrible sound to inform you about the like that liked your like . Unfortunately there isnt a thumbs down still available !

Facebook working on something like a flipboard, expected to hit users soon

                 

                        Mark Zuckerberg led Facebook is working on its own news aggregator in an attempt to boost engagement on the social networking site. This design is led by Michael Matas, a former Apple employee. Mark Zuckerberg is said to be following this closely. The firm's usual mantra " Done is better than perfect" and "move fast and break a thing" arent being chanted during the development of its reader. Both tablet and smartphone versions are being made simultaneously and facebook is experimenting with diffrent ways of highlighting trending news topics on the site 

Bug gets info of 6M users from FB

                        Another bug was reported in facebook today. The social media company said on friday that "A bug in its system caused 6M users' contact information to be exposed which included email addresses and phone numbers to be acessed by other users who either had some contact info about the person or some connection to them. Facebook said that the cause of the bug was 'pretty technical'. They also mentioned that the problem is fixed and are notifying affected users via email. The affected account are just a fraction of the over 1Billion users on the social networking site. Facebook, headquatered at california said it had no evidence that the bug was used maliciously and it had not received any complaints