Instagram has launched a new service feature, "Photos of You," through updates to its iOS and Android apps. The option lets people tag others in their photos in a manner similar to Facebook; the collected photos will eventually appear in a Photos of You profile section. The tagging also works for corporate brands.
According to reports, a BlackBerry 10-native version of the photo sharing and manipulation service Instagram will not appear. One source told AllThingsD that "there will be no [native] Instagram for BB10 for now. Frankly, I’m not sure there will ever be." An Android-based port is allegedly underway.
Enhancing its universal device compatibility, Instagram today unveiled a web-based version of its newsfeed. The new option is available now, and it allows scrolling through a list of photos posted by accounts followed by the user. Profiles are clickable on the new interface, allowing the view of more associated pictures.
Despite a strong launch with 70,000 applications available, there are some notable holdouts on the new BlackBerry World store. A BlackBerry spokesperson told AllThingsD that it is "in talks" with both Instagram and Netflix for future inclusion in the ecosystem. Also missing are Spotify, Pandora, Hulu, and a dedicated YouTube application. No timeline for addition was provided, and the spokesperson said that they "could not confirm when those apps will make their way into the store."
A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed in San Francisco Federal Court on Friday, the first civil lawsuit prompted by the flip-flop in Instagram's terms of service over the last week. A California Instagram user is accusing the photo repository of breach of contract along several other claims relating to privacy and user data. Instagram has not commented on the suit.
Photo-sharing site Flickr is offering its free users an upgraded trial membership at no charge for a limited time. Messages sent to users under the subject line "Merry Flickr" state that users will gain three months of access to Flickr Pro automatically, and comes shortly after Instagram caused a public outcry by altering its terms of service to reveal that the company could use members' content in advertising.
As a result of immense public pressure and fallout over its new advertising policy, Facebook-owned Instagram has shifted its policies again. This time, the photo archival and modification service is rolling back its privacy and other policies to the original state. The rollback changes the policies to what existed prior to the reveal last week, that seemed to allow Instagram's ability to sell user photos uploaded to the service for advertising with little or no notice to the photographer.
Following outrage from some segments of the Internet over new language in Instagram's updated Terms of Service, the Facebook-owned photo sharing service has issued a response aimed at clarifying its new terms. In a blog post, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom sought today to assuage user concerns over the possibility that their photos might be sold by Instagram without their permission. The company, according to Systrom, is working on updated language to clarify its terms.
Popular photo sharing service Instagram updated its terms of service this week, giving Instagram expanded rights to monetize content its users upload and to serve them ads. The new terms are part of Instagram's ongoing shift toward monetization, as Facebook, which bought the service for $1 billion earlier this year, looks to capitalize on that purchase. Instagram describes the terms as "part of our new collaboration" with Facebook and says they are meant to bring about "better experiences for our users."
In a day shadowed by the wide reveal of Instagram's withdrawal of its tight Twitter integration, the micro-blogging service rolled out its own in-house mechanism to apply color filters to user-uploaded pictures. Twitter's filters are powered by New York-based Aviary, developer of image-editing software for the photo-sharing service Flickr.
Photo sharers who operate across both Twitter and Instagram likely woke this morning to find that the hand-in-glove interoperation of the two sites has come to an end, as Instagram finally cut off support for Twitter's Twitter card feature. The Twitter feature that displays an image of shared photos within the Twitter stream will now show a blank white space when a photo is shared from Instagram. The photo sharing site's decision to kill part of its compatibility with Twitter epitomizes the growing competition between the two sites, a competition that has only intensified since Facebook bought Instagram earlier this year.
Instagram removed its service's compatibility with Twitter's Twitter card feature today, highlighting the tension that has grown between the two networks since Instagram was purchased by Facebook earlier this year. An update from Twitter earlier today pointed out that Twitter users were having problems viewing Instagram photos on Twitter due to Instagram having disabled its Twitter card integration. The change means that Instagram photos appear now appear cropped until they are viewed in Instagram's web portal. Meanwhile, Instagram's CEO maintains that the company still has a close relationship with Twitter.
In a new blog post Instagram has announced that is beginning to roll out web profiles. Web profiles will feature a selection of a user's recently shared images, as well as basic profile information. Through the web interface user's can follow other photographers, like photos, and leave comments. Profiles will be rolled out over the next few days and are expected to be completed for all users by next week.
Instagram has surpassed Twitter in terms of daily active mobile users, according to new figures out today. The new figures come from comScore, which says in its new mobile measurement report that Instagram, recently purchased by Facebook, averaged 7.3 million daily active users in the month of August, while Twitter averaged 6.9 million over the same period. The research firm's figures also showed that Instagram users are spending more time interacting with the service than are Twitter users.
The purchase of Instagram by Facebook has finally completed. The deal, initially worth $1 billion but now slightly devalued, sees staff from Instagram moving into Facebook's offices, with Facebook VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer claiming the company is "committed to building and growing Instagram independently."
In a 5-0 vote, The Federal Trade Commission has voted to close the investigation of Facebook's acquisition of Instagram. The FTC has chosen to do nothing to block or otherwise hinder the merger, but reserves the right to "take such further action as the public interest may require." Mark Zuckerberg claims that Instagram will still share content out to non-Facebook sites, and it would still be possible to add and share with friends who aren't connected even after the merger.
Facebook-owned Instagram has released a major update of its app for iOS and Android, v3.0. The biggest addition this time around is the Photo Map, which appears on a person's profile. This lets users browse images by where they were shot, so long as a photo has geotagged information associated with it. Grid and Chronological views are available, and selecting a stack of photos allows navigating through a collection; if the collection is a user's own, images can be deleted.
A talented designer has shared images of his vision of what a Facebook-dedicated phone would look like on Yanko Design's website. Tolga Tuncer envisions the phone to have blue plastic and aluminum construction, with a 'Like' button taking the place of the where the Home button usually resides. The concept is tall and thin, however, measuring in at about 6.9 by just under 2.2 inches.
Netflix, Instagram, and other web services were hit by an Amazon Web Services outage. Historic thunderstorms in Northern Virginia caused power outages for Amazon data center in the region, forcing services depending on EC2 from it to be severely affected, with Netflix in particular suffering considerable amounts of downtime.
Instagram for iOS (Free, App Store) has received its first major update following Facebook moved to acquire the start up in April for $1 billion. The update includes some tweaks to the UI with a revamp of the Profile tab as well as getting the addition of an Explore section, which replaces the Popular tab. The latest Facebook tie-in is the integration of Likes, which is also linked to Facebook’s Open Graph.
The UK Office of Fair Trading is reportedly planning to investigate Facebook's Instagram purchase, which is valued at $1 billion. According to The Guardian, the OFT is attempting to determine if the acquisition will prevent picture uploads to other sites, such as Twitter, or prevent competing apps from uploading to Facebook altogether, however the agency is still said to be deciding whether or not it has jurisdiction over the takeover.
Facebook has launched its own camera app for the iPhone (free, App Store), complementing the social network's existing iOS utilities. Following on the heels of the company's recent Instagram buyout, Facebook Camera provides a photo editor that can be used to crop shots or apply various filters.
The US Federal Trade Commission is launching a competition investigation regarding Facebook's recent $1 billion buyout of Instagram, say two sources for the Financial Times. The effort has allegedly already begun, with the FTC starting to collect information from "at least two" of Facebook's biggest competitors. The probe is described as routine for deals worth more than $68.2 million, but could delay the Instagram acquisition well past when Facebook told investors things would be completed.
Flickr revamped the web version of its Uploadr tool on Wednesday. The new version has switched to HTML5 with a more natural drag-and-drop interface to load photos. Making the switch now lets Flickr show thumbnails, like the native desktop and mobile apps, as well as reorder images, tag friends, and otherwise handle most tasks that would have needed to wait until afterwards.
Facebook's Initial Public Offering (IPO), believed to be scheduled for May, could be delayed, insiders have revealed to CNBC. This is reportedly due to a number of acquisitions and other distractions, which could lead to a delay of selling shares from the originally-believed week of May 14. Initial trading is now expected to come sometime in early to mid-June.
Facebook just released a new S1 for the first quarter of 2012, showing a drop in profits and operating income. The filing also revealed the total number of active monthly users, as well as the full costs of the social giant's acquisition of image sharing service Instagram.
Curiosity has lead a Mac user to one of the unique "moments" that continue to make Apple a special company: in this case, blogger Clayton Braasch wondered if there might be other reasons why Phil Schiller tweeted that he was quitting Instagram, so he simply wrote to Apple's VP of Worldwide Marketing. Schiller responded personally, and expanded on the reasoning behind his initial tweet, in which he claimed the service had "jumped the shark."
Apple's senior VP for worldwide product marketing has quit Instagram, reports note. Phil Schiller previously had an account under "@schiller," but that profile has since been deleted. The executive is still on Twitter, and explained in a post that "it [Instagram] 'jumped the shark' when it went to Android."
Nik has updated the iOS edition Snapseed, its popular photo-editing tool. The software allows for basic- to mid-level editing of RAW, JPEG, and TIFF files, sized as big as 20.25 megapixels on the third-generation iPad. Snapseed 1.4 supports the new iPad's Retina display, as well as iOS 5.1 devices in general.
Android's app climate had some of its problems exemplified late Wednesday after Sophos discovered a fake version of Instagram for Android. At least one scam site has claimed to offer the app and copied much of the marketing into Russian. Isntead of downloading the real app, it loads a superficial, broken app that secretly loads the Boxer-F trojan, which sends secret paid SMS messages to make money for the creator.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg reportedly excluded the company's board of directors from talks that eventually led to the recent Instagram acquisition. An unnamed source familiar with the negotiations told (sub. required) The Wall Street Journal that the board was "told, not consulted" after Zuckerberg privately established an agreement with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom.
An off-hand leak Saturday has uncovered that Facebook's Instagram deal may have preempted one by Twitter. The New York Times had heard from multiple sources that the microupdate site had been interested in buying Instagram in the past several months. How serious it was hadn't been mentioned.
Photo-sharing service Instagram has managed to gain over 10 million users in the course of 10 days, reports note. When Instagram first reached Android users 10 days ago, the service had a user base of roughly 30 million people. That number is now in excess of 40 million and growing.
Facebook's $1 billion buyout of Instagram was a rapid attempt to land the mobile app developer before it got much bigger, insiders uncovered. Within a day of Instagram's getting a $50 million venture capitalist funding round last Thursday, putting its value at $500 million, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had called Instagram co-creator Kevin Systrom and made his offer known, the New York Times heard. It took just the weekend to resolve differences and finalize the deal for twice the photo app writer's value.
Instagram has updated its Android app yet again to support a much wider range of devices. The app (Google Play) now supports devices using NVIDIA's Tegra 3 processor. Doing so enables both the HSPA+ version of the HTC One X, the ASUS Transformer Prime, and any other phone or tablet running the quad-core chip.
The Instagram Android app (Google Play) has been downloaded more than five million times in the six days since it launched. The sign-up rate has marginally decreased from when it reached over one million in 24 hours.
Facebook had been working with Instagram for weeks before its acquisition of the start-up on the integration of Open Graph into its social photo sharing app. The two companies partnered on helping Instagram roll out Timeline integration to groups of users in deliberately managed stages without any user friction, according to Inside Facebook, which made the discovery. When an Instragram user completes the action “took a photo” it is posted to Facebook and, in particular a user's Timeline, without requiring re-authorization.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, in a surprise move, stated Monday that his company had bought Instagram. The effort was meant to drive improved photo sharing beyond what Facebook does today. Unlike the acquisitions of services like Beluga, however, he stressed that Instagram wouldn't be directly absorbed into Facebook's platform. That separation was valuable, he said.
Instagram for Android in its latest of multiple updates (Google Play) has been given a significant boost to its compatibility. It now runs on tablets and Wi-Fi only devices. While tablets don't get a truly optimized layout, the app should stretch to fit the larger screen.
The launch of Instagram for Android triggered rapid adoption closer to iOS levels, both its stats and Google confirmed less than a day later. The app's listing (Google Play) already showed between one million to five million downloads in under 24 hours. With the iOS user base at 30 million, the initial tally saw Android adding another 3.3 percent or more in a day's time.
Instagram ended one of the more conspicuous gaps in Android's app library with its first Android version (Google Play). The new version brings most of the feature set of the most recent iOS version, including the same art filters, Lux image boosting, and support for both cameras when they exist. It can share to Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, but it lacks the iOS version's Flickr support, which is due "very soon."
Instagram chose Saturday to post a sign-up page for its long-awaited Android port. While it's not clear if the page is to register for early access or just for a notification, visitors are encouraged to give an e-mail address to be "first in line." No clues were given as to when the app itself would show or its features.
Instagram and Hipstamatic together outlined a deal on Wednesday that will see Instagram take photos from an outside service for the first time. Hipstamatic users will soon have the option of sending photos to Instagram along with other services, the mobile app developers told Fast Company. The only clue as to the outside source in Instagram will be a "taken with Hipstamatic" tagline and link below the resulting shot.
A new lawsuit (below) filed last week and uncovered on Friday by CNET could try and take Apple and key iOS app writers to task for alleged unapproved contact access. The potential class action case accuses those who've admitted to any access, such as Path, Twitter, and Instagram, of violating privacy by becoming "mobile radio beacons" that were "broadcasting and publicly exposing" contact lists to everyone. Questionably, however, it also names the developers of numerous other unverified apps of doing the same thing, including Beluga, Burbn, Chillingo, EA, Facebook, Foursquare, Foodspotting, Hipster, Gowalla, Kik, LinkedIn, Rovio (Angry Birds), and ZeptoLab (Cut the Rope).
Instagram's co-creator Kevin Systrom used a presentation at South by Southwest's technology conference to show the Android version of the company's app. Currently in a closed beta, it will support multiple screen resolutions and should run very quickly. Although shy on what it meant, he hinted that there would be some features that the iOS edition was so far lacking, if not permanently going without.
A Brooklyn-based company, Breakfast, is looking to raise funds through Kickstarter to get its InstaPrint project into production. Basically a mobile printer running on Linux, it uses Zink's inkless technology to print Instagram photos from Wi-Fi-connected iPhones and iPods. The photos include comments and are searched for by user-specified hashtags.
Instagram finished the week with a significant update to its app (App Store). The 2.1 update now has Lux, an image adustment option that automatically brings out details in highlights and shadows in a rough equivalent to high dynamic range (HDR) shooting. Similar to the tilt-shift effect, Lux can stack with other filters.
Best Buy as part of a promo has started the run of tech-focused Super Bowl ads with a segment pitching its mobile stores. The ad unites both the inventors of phone technology, such as Philippe Kahn (the camera phone) and Ray Kurzweil (text to voice synthesis) with those making newer hardware and software. Key inventors behind Instagram, Shazam, Square, Words With Friends, and others find their way into the 30-second clip.
A 100-tester limit for iOS apps is causing problems for developers, says the Wall Street Journal. Apple imposes the cap on its standard-level developer accounts; a Journal source claims that Apple picked 100 thinking it would be a large enough sample for most companies but still easy enough to manage. For some developers, though, this is not enough.
Smartphones are now responsible for more than a quarter of the photos and videos people take in the US, new NPD studies suggest. About 27 percent of shots taken in 2011 came from a smartphone, whether it was an iPhone, Android, or other device. Dedicated cameras, meanwhile, dropped from 52 percent down to 44.
