dailylicious!
Real-time crowd sourced traffic map Waze is looking at an acquisition bid from Google following a report that Facebook is making an offer to the Israeli startup recently. While Google already has traffic report and even public transportation data on Google Maps, Waze’s method is preferable to 40 million of its users. With bids from Facebook and Google, the company is likely to pull this situation into a bidding war in addition to considering further venture funding instead to expand its services should the bids prove to be unfavorable. Waze’s map service is free for users but the company makes money from selling advertising within its maps.
The sale of Instagram to Facebook for a cool billion in the spring of 2012 was the ultimate Silicon Valley fairy tale: 18 months from launch to offer. But, for co-founder and C.E.O. Kevin Systrom, it was more of a roller-coaster ride, with several missed opportunities, at least two “aha” moments, and one major reboot.
Here’s the long story of how Facebook acquired Instagram
the Google – Facebook war is sure to be more vicious than the Google – Apple war because Google and Facebook have the same customers: advertisers. Users are their currency, and Facebook is about to rob the bank.
This report from All Things D cites a source saying that Instagram will not be coming to BlackBerry 10, at least not in the native version. While currently BlackBerry is working on an Android port of the app, the company requires Facebook’s and Instagram’s approvals to have that ported version distributed on Blackberry World. Without approval, the app cannot go live.
Conversely, we have our own sources inside BlackBerry saying that the deal has already been signed with Instagram but whether this is about the port or the native version, it’s unclear. We tend to believe that it’s about the ported app.
Facebook and Google+ may lay claim to the largest and second largest social networks in the world (excluding China) but when it comes to advertising agencies and brands, Twitter is number one, at least when judged by TV ad spots on this year’s Super Bowl. 26 ads feature references to Twitter while the others are barely mentioned at best. Google+ is clearly not in their minds.
A common practice among online services these days is to include login mechanism using one or more third party services. This may be through accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, or other identity providers. There was a movement to develop and popularize a single online identity service called OpenID but it seems to have been pushed aside by larger, non-ID specific services mentioned earlier. The question remains, should your site or service use their logins in place of your own? David Moth at Econsultancy puts forward some arguments for and against.
Facebook has activated a feature in its iOS Messenger app to allow members in the United States to make voice calls to each other using just their Facebook accounts. This feature was first made available to Canadian Facebook users. The repercussions of this is clearly quite significant. With calls available over WiFi as well as cellular connections, Facebook has managed to deliver the long awaited Facebook phone without producing an actual device and without having to deal with mobile network carriers the way phone vendors do in many markets.
As always in Silicon Valley, act first, clarify, retract, or apologize later.
To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear
The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question
For comparison, here are terms of services for Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, and SkyDrive as dissected by The Verge.
So Instagram released a new terms of service which will take effect in mid January. This is the translated version if you’re not sure what the document means.
Dear Users: You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk.
In line with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s claim that the company has seen four fold increase in sales of phones running Windows Phone, The Next Web came across some evidence which may support that claim. Although Ballmer never mentioned any numbers, Windows Phone’s Facebook app may have given them away.
This month, the Facebook app recorded more than 620,000 monthly active users, easily more than four times the figure recorded last year, which was 150,000, confirming the claim. So where did the 4.2 million figure came from? It’s based on a ratio of one Facebook app activation per six or so phones sold. For more details, check out the TNW post.
