MySpace is ready to become popular once again, and it just might do exactly that with its sleek new looking interface. Check out the video which shows that the company after a major rebrand is ready to get back into the game. The sleek interface is quite appealing and you can sign up for a preview at the link below.
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Google has let out a sly update to their Google+ apps on Android and iOS. The biggest addition is now allowing, Android phones to join Hangouts on Air, a feature we might use as soon as Today.
For iOS the app, it now allows you to open links in Chrome instead of Safari, making the dreams of a default chrome browser more real than ever.
What’s in this Android version:
– Teens can now create and join Hangouts from mobile
– Join Hangouts on Air from mobile
– Floating timestamp in photos view
– Shortcuts for post creation
– Ability to report abuse in Events
What’s in this iOS version :
? Web links in posts now open in Chrome (if installed)
? Teens can now join and create Hangouts
? Instant Upload bug fixes to improve performance
[App Store] [Google Play]
The website that started massive image uploading has now given its image service yet another makeover. The new Facebook Image management will be a new tool for thumbing through galleries across the site, presenting photos in a new square format with the option to “highlight” certain shots to increase their footprint on the page.
The new system is yet to go live, But, Facebook has already made the announcement so expect it soon.
Today we’re announcing improvements to the photos section that make viewing photos more enjoyable.
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See bigger photos
Now when you click Photos at the top of your timeline, you’ll see larger pictures that fill up the page. You can use the menu to find shots you’re tagged in, pictures you’ve shared and albums you’ve created.
Showcase photos you like
With your Facebook photos all in one section, it’s simple to show friends your favorites. Click the star button to make important photos stand out.
We’ll continue to improve the experience and then begin rolling out globally. To learn more about the tools you can use to make your photos look better, visit the Help Center.
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Talk about big acquisitions! Social networking giant Facebook will buy popular imaging app Instagram for $1 billion in cash and shares. This comes soon after the app was developed for Android.
We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.
-Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom
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Facebook to Acquire Instagram
MENLO PARK, CALIF.-April 9, 2012-Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.
The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, posted about the transaction on his Timeline:
I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.
For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.
We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.
That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.
We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.
These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.
This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.
We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.
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This is possibly going to be the biggest battle since the Apple vs Samsung saga began, Yahoo has allegedly filed a lawsuit to sue social networking giant Facebook for infringing on several patents that are owned by Yahoo. These patents include a series of things Facebook is famous for, ten patents in all, which cover everything from advertising and privacy measures to messaging and social networking itself.
Yahoo claims that the company licenses its patents to several other companies but the matter of Facebook remains unresolved.
Yahoo! has invested substantial resources in research and development through the years, which has resulted in numerous patented inventions of technology that other companies have licensed. These technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court. We are confident that we will prevail.”
– Yahoo Spokesperson
Facebook on the other hand claims that there has been no real discussion when it comes to the matter of Facebook infringing Yahoo Patents.
We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation. Once again, we learned of Yahoo’s decision simultaneously with the media. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.”
Apple has filed a new patent that will enable the use of next-generation cameras and invisible ink to negotiate digital handshakes.
Snap a picture of a cash register with a barcode and your iDevice will generate a unique ID to pair up. but in order to keep the technology secure, the codes would have to be painted on with “invisible” fluorescent coatings. Similarly to share information between 2 iPhones or iDevices, the screen of one will display the information while the camera from the other will simply click to transfer the info.
While the whole world is looking forward to NFC, you can leave it up to Apple to think of a different standard. Remember the whole world was using regular size sim cards before apple managed to make the Micro-sim a standard.
Google’s recently announced Google+ is now open to anyone who would like a refreshing change. So no more need for invites. Google noted that it has added 100 new changes which include 91 in the website along with 9 major in the mobile apps.
Notable changes include
A new service for Blackberry Messenger services has now been officially announced after being tossed around in the rumor mill for the past weeks. BBM Music is a new cloud based music streaming service for Blackberry owners. For $5 per month, users may keep up to 50 songs in their personal library. A social component allows you to add BBM Music friends, which gives you access to their current 50 songs, and up to 25 songs per month can be swapped out for new ones, and your current library can be stored locally on the handset.
A launch of several music based services has happened over the months, it seemed only logical that RIM jumps the bandwagon.
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RIM Announces BBM Music – A New Social Music Sharing and Discovery Service
New Cloud-Based Music Service Makes Music a Social Experience
Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) today announced BBM Music, a new BBM (BlackBerry® Messenger) service for socially connected music fans.
BBM Music is an easy-to-use cloud-based service that enables social and viral music discovery by allowing users to build an evolving, community-based music library that is shared amongst their BBM Music friends. The size of the music library continues to grow as new friends join the community and each user can select music from a catalog with millions of songs from leading music companies – Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI.
“More than 45 million customers already love the social communication benefits delivered through BBM and we are thrilled to be extending the experience into a uniquely social and interactive music service,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “We have partnered with leading music companies to provide a „full track? music sharing and discovery experience that will provide users with quality music on demand and allow them to connect with friends on a whole new level.”
Key features of BBM Music include:
– Music made social – BBM Music is a cloud-based, social music service that allows you to share and discover music with your friends, creating a continually evolving music library:
– Build a personal music profile with 50 of your favorite songs. You can refresh your profile by swapping out up to 25 songs each month.
– Invite your BBM friends to subscribe to BBM Music and to join your BBM Music Community.
– With each friend that is added to BBM Music, you grow your music collection since the songs from the profile of each BBM Music friend are available to you at any time.
– Up to 50 tracks from your personal profile are shared with your BBM Music Community, and each member of your community shares up to 50 songs from their profile with you.
– Enjoy a truly social community-based music experience – the more friends who join your community, the more songs you can listen to.
– Easily discover music that your BBM Music friends are listening to, and comment on your friends? songs and playlists.
– You can create multiple playlists from music in your profile as well as all of your friends? profiles, and with one click you can shuffle the entire collection of music from your BBM Music Community. You can even see which friend contributed each song while it plays.
– Within your BBM Music app, you also see a visual timeline that shows the recent updates of all users within your community. It gives you a chronological view of community updates, including who added new friends, which songs were added or removed, which playlists were created and what comments were made by your BBM Music friends.
– Listen to Full Tracks – BBM Music subscribers can listen to full tracks from their friends? profiles – not just previews.
– Offline Listening – Music can be saved to smartphones for offline listening, allowing users to access songs even when they don?t have wireless coverage.
– Topping the Charts – Keep track of how many friends are listening to your tracks.
“A major component of online music continues to be about community, and the ability to discover new artists and music through word of mouth,” stated Rob Wells, President of Global Digital Business for Universal Music Group. “BBM Music dynamically and elegantly integrates the excitement of this social music discovery process with a high quality music service, enabling tens of millions of BlackBerry users to experience new music and to share those experiences with their friends virtually anywhere and at anytime.”
“We are pleased to be partnering with Research In Motion on their BBM Music service. RIM and its large base of BlackBerry Messenger users represent an exciting platform for expanding the reach of commercial digital music around the world,” stated Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, U.S. Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment. “The combination of a premium music solution and instant messaging will enable viral music discovery and emphasize the social power of digital music. It also offers an effective way of serving younger consumers by integrating music into the fabric of an important hub of their digital activity.”
“A dynamic social music experience is a powerful way for our artists to connect with fans and also for fans to discover music by interacting with each other,” said Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy & Business Development, Warner Music Group. “Addressing more than 45 million BlackBerry Messenger users with a service tailor-made for its mobile community, BBM Music has the opportunity to reach a broad and engaged audience.”
“We are very excited to work with Research In Motion to bring our artists? music to BBM?s huge and very loyal user base,” said Mark Piibe, Executive Vice President of Global Business Development at EMI Music. “BBM Music?s unique social discovery experience offers fans a great new way to discover music, share their favorite tracks with their friends and build a stronger connection with the artists they love.”
“The widespread adoption of mobile devices provides the perfect foundation for consuming and sharing music. Brands that want to deliver a unique interactive experience must create services that are mobile, social, and contextual,” said Maribel Lopez Principal at Lopez Research and Constellation Research Group.
A closed (limited) beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting today in Canada, the United States and the UK. The BBM Music service is expected to be commercially available to customers later this year for a monthly subscription of $4.99 USD* in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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Skype has also added Facebook live chat to their windows client. Skype 5.3 for windows enables people logged into Skype to talk to their Facbook friends via an easy interface.
Import your Facebook News Feed to keep up with the latest from your friends. Comment, Like and call them direct from Skype. Update your Facebook status from Skype, too.
Get all the latest Skype features plus send instant messages direct to Facebook chat. See when your friends on Facebook are online and get in touch in one click.
Its only available for Windows Right now, But expect a Mac client soon. Hit the link below if you rock a PC.
Facebook has just announced Facebook Video calls, in partnership with Skype. The Video feature embeds directly into Facebook chat and is a free to use service.
There were three major announcements today.
In a direct approach the Member downloads a tiny Skype applet .jar file and Facebook Video chat becomes available. Users can now click the video button in the chat module to initiate a video call. The user on the receiving side, get a popup, much like a Skype call. The video camera on either side is turned on only when the recipient accepts the call.
As Mark pointed out, the interface is buggy. we tested it out and after several repeat failures we were able to get a stable connection.
The popup is pretty simple and is always on top. The video chat can be made full screen and minimized or muted. Mark also noted that more developments will come as and when improvements are done to the system.
Tony Bates from Skype noted that over 150 million video calls are made each month through Skype, and now this feature will be available on Facebook.
visit the link below to get started
Google has always wanted to be a king of Social Networking, after Orkut and Buzz that failed to catch up and sustain themselves to the competition. Google has today launched the new Google + Social networking engine. In a simple attempt a black bar appears at the top of the google pages with a +you button.
One of the most notable services in the Google+ networking is the Circles. What this basically lets you do, it that it allows you to select your group of friends and assign them into groups (or circles) then when yo post updates you can select who all you want to update.
Hangouts is also an interesting aspect as it allows a multi-person video chat right in your browser. Sparks is a multi interest feed organizer, that lets you remember your likes and keeps you updated on that.
Google has gone all out by launching the mobile app along with the service, which for one has an instant uploads folder which would upload all your images on the Google+ account in a private album and you can share those images with your status.
Google+ is still in a limited trial mode and looks like all their invites are gone, we will have more on this soon !
Check it out at plus.google.com