The link to the full story is here
Google+ came out of its holiday slumber today with an addition to its Photo section of the service. The team has added pan and zoom functionality to let you explore small areas of high-resolution photographs. This comes after a hot-and-heavy feature push right before the holiday season.
Google’s social feature set has attracted artists of all types, especially professional photographers. Uploading photos is super easy, and sharing with Circles has been a way to get feedback on those pics of the mountains that you just took on a hike before sharing them with the public.
Here’s what Google’s Dave Cohen had to say about the release:
Google+ is full of amazing photos, and today we’re introducing the ability to pan and zoom when viewing photos from your desktop. To give these features a try, simply open a large photo in the lightbox, then:
- use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out
- click and drag to pan right, left, up or down
Higher resolution photos will offer more to explore, so we’re excited to launch pan and zoom just weeks after launching full-size backups of your Android photos
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Facebook Removes Instagram User Counts From Developer API After Holiday Traffic Confusion
The link to the full story is here
In the aftermath of a controversial story claiming Instagram’s traffic numbers were down, the data that was the source of the story has now disappeared altogether.
Instagram was in the spotlight, and owner Facebook’s shares tumbled, when the New York Post ran a story between Christmas and New Year’s Day claiming that the popular photo app’s traffic was falling off a cliff after the controversial introduction, and then reversal, of new terms of service. We and several others cast doubt on how the NYP read those traffic numbers, which came from AppData, and Facebook eventually said they were inaccurate, too.
Now that data is no longer there. Facebook tells us that this is to bring Instagram in line with the rest of its own apps, which stopped appearing on AppData in December 2011.
“We don’t provide app usage metrics for apps owned or created by Facebook through our API,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We’ve updated our API to reflect this for Instagram, which would remove it from AppData’s rankings.” Effectively, this means that it’s not only AppData that will no longer have information on Instagram usage; anyone using the Facebook API for this data will also no longer be seeing that data.
In the aftermath of a controversial story claiming Instagram’s traffic numbers were down, the data that was the source of the story has now disappeared altogether.
Instagram was in the spotlight, and owner Facebook’s shares tumbled, when the New York Post ran a story between Christmas and New Year’s Day claiming that the popular photo app’s traffic was falling off a cliff after the controversial introduction, and then reversal, of new terms of service. We and several others cast doubt on how the NYP read those traffic numbers, which came from AppData, and Facebook eventually said they were inaccurate, too.
Now that data is no longer there. Facebook tells us that this is to bring Instagram in line with the rest of its own apps, which stopped appearing on AppData in December 2011.
“We don’t provide app usage metrics for apps owned or created by Facebook through our API,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We’ve updated our API to reflect this for Instagram, which would remove it from AppData’s rankings.” Effectively, this means that it’s not only AppData that will no longer have information on Instagram usage; anyone using the Facebook API for this data will also no longer be seeing that data.
Hackers, Start Your Engines: Facebook Opens Registration For Its Annual Hacker Cup Competition
The link to the full story is here
Facebook today announced that it has opened registration for the Hacker Cup, its annual competition for programmers with a $5,000 top prize for the best of them all. Facebook holds the Hacker Cup in rounds, starting first online and then culminating in a final onsite round at Facebook’s HQ in Menlo Park, CA for the top 25 programmers. This years preliminary rounds will be held between January 25 and February 16. Facebook will fly the top 25 for the onsite final round that takes place March 22-23.
The Hacker Cup is important for a couple of reasons. For one is shows that, although Facebook is pushing past one billion members of its social network and is now one of the world’s biggest public tech companies, it is committed to trying to staying close to its Hacker Way roots.
Facebook today announced that it has opened registration for the Hacker Cup, its annual competition for programmers with a $5,000 top prize for the best of them all. Facebook holds the Hacker Cup in rounds, starting first online and then culminating in a final onsite round at Facebook’s HQ in Menlo Park, CA for the top 25 programmers. This years preliminary rounds will be held between January 25 and February 16. Facebook will fly the top 25 for the onsite final round that takes place March 22-23.
The Hacker Cup is important for a couple of reasons. For one is shows that, although Facebook is pushing past one billion members of its social network and is now one of the world’s biggest public tech companies, it is committed to trying to staying close to its Hacker Way roots.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Library of Congress Has Now Archived 170 Billion Tweets
Link to full story is here
The dream of a library of Twitter is getting closer to reality.
The Library of Congress announced Friday that it is just weeks away from completing its archive of all public tweets from Twitter's launch in 2006 through 2010, but there are technology challenges that need to be figured out before the archive becomes usable.
So far, the national library has compiled a massive collection of about 170 billion tweets from that time period, and expects to finish with this stage of the archive by the end of January. The volume of tweets collected into the archive on a daily basis has grown exponentially from 140 million in early 2011 to 500 million as of October, 2012.
"The Library's first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006 -2010 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date," Gayle Osterberg, director of communications for the Library of Congress, wrote in a blog post. "This month, all those objectives will be completed."
The dream of a library of Twitter is getting closer to reality.
The Library of Congress announced Friday that it is just weeks away from completing its archive of all public tweets from Twitter's launch in 2006 through 2010, but there are technology challenges that need to be figured out before the archive becomes usable.
So far, the national library has compiled a massive collection of about 170 billion tweets from that time period, and expects to finish with this stage of the archive by the end of January. The volume of tweets collected into the archive on a daily basis has grown exponentially from 140 million in early 2011 to 500 million as of October, 2012.
"The Library's first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006 -2010 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date," Gayle Osterberg, director of communications for the Library of Congress, wrote in a blog post. "This month, all those objectives will be completed."
Facebook Launches Flexible Sentences For Open Graph So Apps Can Share More Descriptive Feed Stories
Link to the full story is here
A Facebook news feed story that says “Tom tracked Muse on Songkick.com” doesn’t tell you much. But with new Flexible Sentences, apps can post stories like “Tom tracked Muse to get concert alerts via Songkick.com” that attract more downloads, are less awkward, and make the Facebook news feed richer. Facebook is also launching a tool to show developers which stories are most shared and could use rewording.
The update plays into Facebook’s “one feed to rule them all” strategy. It hopes to get all types of apps sharing their activity to its news feed and Timeline. This gives it content it can show ads around, and also helps it target those ads based on what people are doing in third-party apps. For example, even if a user doesn’t like the rock band Muse, thanks to the Songkick story discussed above, Facebook knows they’re interested in the artist. It then knows to show them ads about Muse concerts or merchandise.
In exchange for this content and ad targeting data, Facebook helps third-party apps gain exposure to new users and drive intalls. That’s important considering the cluttered app stores make it hard for developers to get discovered unless they reach the top of the charts.
A Facebook news feed story that says “Tom tracked Muse on Songkick.com” doesn’t tell you much. But with new Flexible Sentences, apps can post stories like “Tom tracked Muse to get concert alerts via Songkick.com” that attract more downloads, are less awkward, and make the Facebook news feed richer. Facebook is also launching a tool to show developers which stories are most shared and could use rewording.
The update plays into Facebook’s “one feed to rule them all” strategy. It hopes to get all types of apps sharing their activity to its news feed and Timeline. This gives it content it can show ads around, and also helps it target those ads based on what people are doing in third-party apps. For example, even if a user doesn’t like the rock band Muse, thanks to the Songkick story discussed above, Facebook knows they’re interested in the artist. It then knows to show them ads about Muse concerts or merchandise.
In exchange for this content and ad targeting data, Facebook helps third-party apps gain exposure to new users and drive intalls. That’s important considering the cluttered app stores make it hard for developers to get discovered unless they reach the top of the charts.
Facebook Mobile User Counts Revealed: 192M Android, 147M iPhone, 48M iPad, 56M Messenger
Link to the full story is here
Facebook keeps user counts for its mobile apps hidden, but analyst Benedict Evans found a way to uncover them and they provide critical insight into the direction and performance of Facebook’s mobile efforts. Most interestingly, Facebook’s Android user count is growing much faster than its iPhone user base, but is found on a lower percentage of Android devices. Let’s take a closer look at the data.
A year ago, Facebook stopped reporting user counts for its own mobile apps via the Graph API. But if you searched for one that none of your friends used and hovered over the search result, you could see its monthly active user count (MAU). Evans of Enders Analysis meticulously recorded until “some time in November [2012], those disappeared and were replaced” with hover cards lacking the usage data, he tells me. He incorrectly calculated Facebook’s mobile web site stats due to overlap between native app and HTML5 site users. Facebook declined to comment but solid analytics sources and old official numbers say the rest of his stats are accurate.
Evans gave me the raw data dump from his research, which is more current than his blog post, and here’s what it shows.
Facebook keeps user counts for its mobile apps hidden, but analyst Benedict Evans found a way to uncover them and they provide critical insight into the direction and performance of Facebook’s mobile efforts. Most interestingly, Facebook’s Android user count is growing much faster than its iPhone user base, but is found on a lower percentage of Android devices. Let’s take a closer look at the data.
A year ago, Facebook stopped reporting user counts for its own mobile apps via the Graph API. But if you searched for one that none of your friends used and hovered over the search result, you could see its monthly active user count (MAU). Evans of Enders Analysis meticulously recorded until “some time in November [2012], those disappeared and were replaced” with hover cards lacking the usage data, he tells me. He incorrectly calculated Facebook’s mobile web site stats due to overlap between native app and HTML5 site users. Facebook declined to comment but solid analytics sources and old official numbers say the rest of his stats are accurate.
Evans gave me the raw data dump from his research, which is more current than his blog post, and here’s what it shows.
Facebook’s Stance On Protecting User Data Challenged In Oregon Murder Case
Link to full story is here
Facebook has been cooperating with law-enforcement officials for some time when it comes to handing over user data as evidence in court cases. But the situation is less clear when those legal requests are made by others — a predicament being highlighted right now in a murder case in Oregon, where the social network has (so far) refused to comply with requests from the defense team of a murder suspect to provide data that could prove beneficial to the defendant’s case.
The case has some potentially big consequences. If Facebook gets held in contempt of the court for not handing over the data, it could be required to pay up to one percent of its profits as a penalty. Facebook reported $1 billion in profits in 2011, and for the first three quarters of 2012 has reported profits of $811 million.
On the other hand, if Facebook does end up providing the data as requested by the defense team, it could end up setting a precedent for how it and other companies like Google and Twitter will be required to share private user data in the future in legal defense cases, with or without user consent. That could be a boost for defense teams, but a potential setback for individual users whose data may be in question.
Facebook has been cooperating with law-enforcement officials for some time when it comes to handing over user data as evidence in court cases. But the situation is less clear when those legal requests are made by others — a predicament being highlighted right now in a murder case in Oregon, where the social network has (so far) refused to comply with requests from the defense team of a murder suspect to provide data that could prove beneficial to the defendant’s case.
The case has some potentially big consequences. If Facebook gets held in contempt of the court for not handing over the data, it could be required to pay up to one percent of its profits as a penalty. Facebook reported $1 billion in profits in 2011, and for the first three quarters of 2012 has reported profits of $811 million.
On the other hand, if Facebook does end up providing the data as requested by the defense team, it could end up setting a precedent for how it and other companies like Google and Twitter will be required to share private user data in the future in legal defense cases, with or without user consent. That could be a boost for defense teams, but a potential setback for individual users whose data may be in question.
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