by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 15, 2:36 PM
Aiming straight at Snapchat, Facebook just unveiled a new camera feature in Messenger -- complete with "art" and special effects for users to spice up their pictures.
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 14, 2:36 PM
In a move that should give Pinterest pause, Instagram is now inviting users to save pictures and videos for later viewing. "Starting today Instagrammers can save posts they'd like to remember and revisit," a company spokeswoman said on Wednesday. "What this means for brands is, their content can now live on to inspire people after it appears in-feed."
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 13, 1:08 PM
As expected, Instagram added live video to its existing app, this week. All U.S. users should now have access to the feature. It came as a surprise to no one when the Facebook unit announced plans to add the feature last month. After all, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a recent earnings call: "We're putting video first." More broadly, the social giant continues to push forward with its video ambitions. In October, it even launched a major ad campaign for Facebook Live.
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 12, 2:21 PM
Dynamic Signal just raised $25 million from Akkadian Ventures, Microsoft Ventures and Focus Ventures, along with participation from existing investors like Trinity Ventures, Venrock, Rembrandt, and Time Warner. What is Dynamic Signal, and why is it attracting such prominent players?
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 9, 12:35 PM
Another day, another mea culpa from Facebook regarding ad-metric inaccuracies, and what it considers to be "improvements." The latest update involves the social giant's estimated reach methodology, a tool in the ad creation flow that shows advertisers the number of users they can expect to reach with potential ad campaigns. "We're now using a methodology less reliant on sampling/extrapolating our audience sizes, which in most cases should show advertisers a less than 10% change (increase or decrease) in the audience sizes shown in the tool," a Facebook spokeswoman explained on Friday. Additionally, "We misallocated the extra reactions per user that …
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 8, 2:35 PM
What's more surprising: Justin Bieber's staying power, the immense popularity of music videos in 2016, or the fact that Vevo users now do most of their viewing via mobile?
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 7, 2:44 PM
What does original TV look like on Snapchat? Well, we're about to find out now that Turner has tapped Snap, Inc. to help develop shows for the social platform.
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 6, 2:44 PM
Instagram really wants to avoid the troll infestations that are plaguing other social networks like Twitter -- and, to a lesser degree, parent company Facebook. For that reason, it will soon let everyone disable commenting on individual posts.
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 5, 2:43 PM
From the gas station to the mall to the restaurant, expect holiday shoppers to use their phones throughout their entire "purchase journey" this year. That's according to some new findings from Nielsen, which tracked the mobile usage of shoppers.
by Gavin O'Malley on Dec 2, 1:56 PM
Twitter just bought Yes. Why? Well, it may admire the app maker's mission to bring people together around events and such.