Facebook and Instagram still reign supreme among top apps, even as Messenger and Snapchat are losing steam with young users in the US, a recent study says. Wayup, a startup that connects college students with local job opportunities, queried 1,000 US college students about their favourite apps and found that Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, free digital wallet Venmo were the top three apps on decline, VentureBeat reported. The survey was sent out five times throughout 2015 in an effort to suss out larger mobile app trends. The study found that Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and Venmo were mentioned less and less over…
Author: Richard
Twitter users in India may soon be able to pay their bills though the micro-blogging site, the media reported. The company has announced a partnership with India-based startup Lookup to enable users send a direct message to @lookuplite in order to book appointments, inquire about services and make transactions with businesses, Techcrunch reported. Lookup lets retailers and consumers chat with each other through direct messaging. It boasts of 1.2 million registered users despite listing merchants from Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. Currently, users can buy directly within the social network thorough Twitter’s ‘Buy’ button. In the new arrangement, orders and payments…
A pig that escaped from a Swedish abbatoir to avoid ending up on a Christmas dinner plate won a stay on execution from its owner after an outpouring of solidarity on social media. Determined to save its skin the 110-kilogramme sow took to its trotters on Monday in Mjallby, a village in Sweden’s southern farming heartland. On Friday, the farmer caught up with the fugitive, who was in fine fettle after her romp through the countryside. “She’s in great form, she must have stuffed herself with rotten fruit and other good things,” the farmer, whose name was withheld, told SVT…
Facebook on Thursday announced that it has expanded its Music Stories feature and has also added new functionality dubbed ‘Listen & Scroll’ in its app. The feature, which debuted last month, now supports 30-second music previews streamed from Deezer, Napster, Rhapsody, and KKBOX, a Taiwan-based streaming service. Also included is audio steaming from National Public Radio (NPR). Furthermore, Facebook has introduced ‘Listen & Scroll’ functionality that lets users listen to audio feeds from these services while browsing through content in the app. The function is available for iOS and is scheduled to reach Android by next month. The Web interface…
Facebook has been working on packing new features and integrations into its standalone messaging app, Messenger. Following the launch of Uber integration earlier this week, Facebook has begun the wider rollout of the Photo Magic feature it had introduced last month to Australia and then the US. Photo Magic, which makes the process of sharing photos from users’ camera rolls easier, is now available to more regions across the world. As mentioned by Peter Martinazzi, Director of Product Management, and Lexy Franklin, Product Manager at Facebook, Photo Magic had been in testing, and had received positive feedback from testers. “So…
Baljeet Singh, Twitter’s product lead in charge of video, will quit the company early next month, a media report said quoting a Twitter spokesperson. Singh, who works as a senior product director, joined Twitter two years ago after working with video sharing platform YouTube for more than five years, Re/code tech website reported on Wednesday. Singh will be the latest product leader to leave Twitter after Glenn Brown, an ad executive who was handling Twitter’s video ad push and left the company in October. Twitter has recently been jolted by the departure of several top executives over the past six…
Facebook has released 2015’s Year in Review, allowing users to take a look at the most memorable things they shared on the social network this year and giving them an option to share it with their friends. Unlike last year, however, the social juggernaut is weeding out bad memories from the options it shows users. The company started to roll out the ‘Your Year In Review’ feature on Wednesday. In 2014, the company’s algorithm failed to distinguish between good and bad memories, and picked up depressing photos from a user’s timeline as well. The company said that it has taken…
Facebook said Wednesday it had signed up 350 global media partners for its “Instant Articles” service as it expanded the program to Android devices. The service launched this year for Apple devices allows users to quickly view news articles which are hosted on the fast network of the world’s biggest social network. “We’ve been beta testing Instant Articles for Android with a small group of people on Facebook for several weeks, and as we saw on iPhone, the faster, richer reading experience inspires people on Android to share Instant Articles with their friends more often than they do with standard…
A Thai military court has jailed a woman for over nine years for royal defamation, an official said Wednesday, the latest in a series of harsh sentences to raise concern about the draconian law. The most recent high-profile cases include a probe into the US ambassador for comments he made about jail terms under the lese majeste law, and charges against a man for allegedly insulting the king’s dog. The woman, Chayapa Shokpornbudsri, was found guilty Tuesday of defaming the monarchy onFacebook at a hearing held without her lawyer’s presence, a court official told AFP. The 49-year-old was handed a…
Facebook has quietly debuted a feature on its social networking site that helps users find local businesses based on customer reviews, bringing it in direct competition with similar services from Yelp and Angie’s List. The feature was first spotted by a tech blog. Facebook has not made a public announcement of the feature. The webpage for the new feature, which reads “Find local businesses with the best Facebook reviews and ratings”, can be accessed through the URL,www.facebook.com/services . Facebook, which allows businesses to create pages on its site, has a section on such pages that enables users to post and…