Articles about Social Media

Following a rebrading, late-yesterday, third-party Instagram client Itsdagram shed its name and looks and surfaced as the new Instance on Windows Phone Store. The app, which boasts the same essential functionality as before, now sports a redesigned interface and introduces a couple of new features and enhancements.

According to the developer, Daniel Gary, the app's rebranding follows Microsoft's request to better differentiate Itsdagram from Instagram. The software giant appears to pursue the path of least resistance in order to beef up the Windows Phone ecosystem and keep third-party apps in the running. Gary says that no legal action nor "threats" influenced his decision to comply with the request. Now let's go through the changes introduced by Instance.

Continue reading →

Facebook has announced that it's introducing verified pages to help users find the authentic accounts of celebrities, businesses and other high profile subjects. Verified pages will have a blue check mark next to the name both at the top of the page and in search results.

Given that Facebook has long been plagued by fake pages and that Twitter has had verified accounts -- marked by a blue tick, funnily enough -- since 2009, it's perhaps surprising that the social network has taken so long to make this step. On its official blog announcing the news the company says, "Facebook proactively verifies authentic Pages and profiles, but if you believe that you're being impersonated you can always report a fake account."

Continue reading →

Last week it was pointed out that in the latest Twitter update, the implementation of two-factor verification that we mentioned here, was less than solid. Now, as opposed to working to solve these issues, the company instead concentrates on its latest mobile apps updates.

Today Misha Lushin of Twitter announces that the social network has "just released updates to our iPhone and Android apps. Tweeting is now even easier and more seamless".

Continue reading →

Google is all about searching. Well… not "all" about, but it's what the company is known for. Any firm that logs information about how customers are using its services are usually berated, but Google Trends can provide a fascinating insight into how the rest of the world is using the internet. This tool has been available for a while but there's now a sexy new full screen mode available -- and you can turn it into a screensaver.

If you've ever been curious about what people in other parts of the world are searching for, head over to the full screen visualization tool and you can find out. At the bottom of the screen you can choose from one of several countries, or opt to see an overview of global searches.

Continue reading →

After a number of high-profile account hijacks and criticism from both its users and the tech media, Twitter finally decides to take security seriously. Today, the popular social network introduces two-factor authentication which, when enabled, requires users to type in an additional six-digit passcode received via SMS in order to log in.

Sadly, as I learned, not every user can actually enable the new security feature. Twitter says that folks must have a "verified phone number and confirmed email address", the former of which is still incompatible with my mobile operator: "Sorry, we don't have a connection to your carrier yet!". Other local mobile operators are supported, but not mine.

Continue reading →

Despite Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's promise not to "screw up" Tumblr following its recent acquisition, the move has caused some disquiet in the user community.

Posting on Tumblr, of course, many users are worried about the impact advertising may have on the Tumblsphere, others that Yahoo will change the ethos of the site. There was disquiet about rumors Yahoo would push to make it more family friendly by filtering content too -- around 1 in 6 Tumblr pages is reckoned to contain porn. Despite assurances, and the fact that the circulating message about the clean up has been exposed as fake, there's a lot of distrust out there.

Continue reading →

The Microsoft partner network (MPN) is Microsoft’s ‘official’ body for channel partners. A Microsoft partner is one of the 640,000 companies worldwide that build, sell, or consult with Microsoft products. Most of these companies operate in the small-medium enterprise (SME) space, selling services related to Azure, .NET and SQL, Office 365, and SharePoint.

The MPN isn’t a revenue earner for Microsoft in itself, but the reason for its being is pretty clear. A successful partner ecosystem means lots of lovely license sales for Microsoft. With Office 365 subscriptions to push (and Windows likely following this model sooner rather than later) the MPN is a pretty important area for Redmond guys right now.

Continue reading →

My oldest email address, circa 1996, is with Yahoo -- just three letters. I joined Flickr in October 2005 and Tumblr in May 2008. Three years ago, I stopped paying for Yahoo Mail, mostly abandoned the photo-sharing site and essentially stopped blogging at the social network. But I'm psyched now. Maybe former Googler Marissa Mayer can save the grandpa dot-com after all.

Today colleague Wayne Williams asks: "What will it take for people to care about Yahoo again?" "May 20th" is my answer. On the same day that Yahoo bought Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion cash, the rickety dot-com gave Flickr the biggest makeover ever. Subscribers get 1TB of storage, on a site suddenly beautifully modern and supported by a hot, Android app. Google CEO Larry Page, Mayer just thumbed her nose at you.

Continue reading →

Cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud. This fairly innocuous word has become one that is bandied around with abandon, often with the misplaced notion that it adds an element of 'cool' that was not previously present. But is working in the cloud all it's cracked up to be? Is it necessary? Should you care about it?

You don't have to think back all that far to remember a time when simply being online seemed like a fairly alien concept -- never mind actually working online. When the concept of Active Desktop was added to Windows 9x the notion of staying online throughout the day just to see the desktop update with the latest weather forecast, news, stock prices or other data was unimaginable.

Continue reading →

As has been widely rumored over the last few days, Yahoo has paid $1.1 billion for blogging platform Tumblr. In recent times this is the most paid for an Internet acquisition since Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion last year.

Founded by David Karp in 2007 from a bedroom of his mother's New York apartment, the attraction of Tumblr has always been its clean interface and ease of use, which allows people to be up and blogging within minutes. The service has around 217 million users worldwide and is the 24th most popular site in the US according to research company Quantcast.  The company employs 175 people and claims to have more than 100 million blogs.

Continue reading →

Twenty-ninth in a series. The US Windows 8 apps store crossed the 50,000 apps mark for the first time today; a total of 50,156 apps are listed in the store, with the majority of them free to download and use.

That's an increase of 1,639 apps in the past seven days, a sharp drop over last week's increase of nearly 2400 apps.

Continue reading →

I am not a die-hard Instagrammer, but every once in a while I feel a sudden need to upload a filtered view of the world on the popular photo-sharing social network. That's easy to do with Android handsets and iPhones, but in the Windows Phone realm things are not that simple as there is no official app waiting in the Store. That's not to say there is low demand for one, far from it.

Admittedly, Windows Phone is a smaller market for Instagram than Android and iOS but even so there are likely tens of millions of potential users waiting to grab that official app which never seems to come. Developer Daniel Gary, who is behind a third-party Pinterest app (no official offering available for this one either) called Pinsation, decided to cater to the Windows Phone users' needs for a fully-featured Instagram app and, yesterday, released Itsdagram. The names are quite similar indeed.

Continue reading →

If you were thinking of signing up for a TweetBackup account to create an archive of your Twitter account, it is now too late. Having been bought by Backupify around two and a half years ago, the project has been sidelined, and no new registrations are being accepted. So where does this leave anyone who has come to rely on the service?

Although there are no new sign-ups, TweetBackup is not just going to vanish in a puff of smoke. Existing users will be able to log into their accounts until June 28 2013 but after this time it will no longer be possible to access your backup -- so be sure to download your data before this date.

Continue reading →

The Google I/O keynote has revealed some major changes to Google+. Highlights include a new multi-column stream aimed not only at providing a cleaner design but also at offering greater depth to the user experience.

The columns are customizable so that you can organize them to show the things that are most important to you. Tiles of information can be flipped to show alternative details and thanks to clever landmark recognition technology you can click on a picture to find more information about the location.

Continue reading →

I was weeding through my Steam friends list the other night, looking to remove some of the people that I never see online or playing games anymore. As I scrolled through, I noticed that there were several folks on my list that hadn't signed on for one-hundred days or more. By default, Steam starts itself upon boot, with the option to automatically log yourself in as well.

It made me wonder why these people that I had played with every day or two hadn't so much as even started up the program in such a long time. After all, I don't just send or accept friend requests on a whim. I've only ever add people that I've played with a multitude of times and have spoken to directly via voice-chat or text in-game on a regular basis.

Continue reading →