Displaying items by tag: Instagram

Yesterday (July 5, 2023) Social Networking Giant, Meta launched their competitor to Twitter. This new app is a companion app to Instagram called threads. Ironically, Twitter had a lot of buzz about the new app including from people that routinely talk about how terrible Twitter is under Elon Musk. These Twitter detractors have been posting count down timers, information on how to ensure you can be on threads as soon as it launches and more. It is interesting, if not a bit funny, to see the dialog there. However, there is a very dark cloud (heavy black and pendulous) over the green pastures of Meta’s Threads. This is the very serious concern about Privacy and Security.

Recently Mark Zuckerberg had to admit that Meta not only had lost a significant amount of money but stood to lose more as changes in attitudes around personal data privacy and targeted ads are changing. In the EU privacy protection laws have impacted Meta in, to them, negative ways. Meta has made what could be interpreted as a threat to pull their services from the EU, it some agreement cannot be reached. They are also upset at Apple after Apple made the outrageous, again to Meta, decision to allow users to opt-in to cross app tracking. This means that Meta’s current data collection schemes are at risk.

In yesterday's update, which the owners of smartphones with iOS and Android in version 4.1 and newer can download for free from the market with applications for their devices, Instagram has received a video recording function.

With more than 240 billion photos that have been published on the largest social network, Facebook is still the undisputed king of images on the Internet. Because of this it is not surprising that during the period between (12-31-2012) to the end of 01-01-2013 saw 1.1 billion photographs posted by users. This means that during these two days, the daily average of published images totaled 550 billion. This is a sign that users demolished last year's record when, during that period, Facebook announced 844 million photos of cheerful people.

The Snapjoy service allows users to make their photos stored on one service and device such as smartphones and computers available in other places. Specifically, this free service based on cloud technology puts together photos from Instagram, Flickr, Picassa Web albums, computer (either a PC or a Mac) and iPhone. The photos from the combined album then can be shared via email, links and social networks. Now is looks like Dropbox is taking over Snapjoy and could assimilate the service into themselves.

When I first heard that Instagram now had the right to sell user photographs to third parties I was not surprised or shocked. This was not the case with many news outlets or with many Instagram users apparently. What we find funny is that Instagram is owned by Facebook… you remember them, the same company that did this with their own users’ pictures (Actual profile pictures of their users) without permission and just settled a lawsuit over it.

Google didn’t wait long to respond to Facebook's purchase of popular photo service Instagram. They went out and bought Nik Software an Instagram rival. The terms of the deal are not still known but it is believed that Google's main target was Snapseed. This is a part of Nik Software that is responsible for photo editing and is currently available for iOS, PC, Mac but also with an Android version on the way. It was probably easier for Google to purchase the whole company rather than just one of their apps, so they keep the same team and get all of their products without any concerns about copyright or patent infringements.

Instagram has officially become part of Facebook today. Instagram passed the 5 billion photos mark and Facebook had to pay $1 billion to get a hold of this rising photo service. Both companies claim that Instagram will keep a decent part of their independence. The deal was announced in April but it took them 5 months to finish it because of certain regulations they had to fulfill. ”The Instagram app and its features will stay the same one you know and love, and we’ll keep working together to build a better Instagram for everyone.” came the comment today from Instagram, their team will move to the Facebook offices and work from there.

So the rumors about a “Facebook” phone have begun to pop up again. This time they are claiming that the arrival date of the social device will be sometime next year. These rumors are being fueled by other rumors (which is how you do it) and all seem to back up the possibility that Facebook might indeed be looking to try and enter the smart phone arena. How smart this decision is remains to be seem, but for now let’s just take a look at some of the supporting evidence.

Back when Facebook bought Instagram for a cool $1 billion it was widely thought that Facebook did this to be able to compete in the mobile market against companies like Google, Apple and a few others. In fact Facebook even made the comments that they were not good at mobile and needed to figure it out as it was a week spot. Now only a few weeks after the purchase Facebook has released their own camera app that can add similar filters to your pictures in the same way that Instagram could.