Instagram will start rolling out advertisements in U.S. users’ feeds in the next couple of months. The company says it will focus on “beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands” at first. Read more at GigaOM »
Remember the huge fuss surrounding Instagram’s decision to change its terms of service? The last chapter of the controversy ended quietly. Read more at GigaOM »
Vine videos appear to be more popular than ever, according to a survey that looks how frequently they appear on Twitter. Read more »
Instagram has launched a new feature that allows users to share short video clips — but photos and video are very different animals, and the audience for the latter may not be as large as Instagram thinks. It definitely doesn’t include me. Read more at GigaOM »
Fans of the social-blogging network might not like the idea much, but a $1-billion acquisition of Tumblr would arguably solve a number of problems for Yahoo — and do the same for Tumblr CEO David Karp. Read more at GigaOM »
Content creators no longer need to brandish a Flattr button in order to receive micropayments through the service. All that’s needed is for a Flattr user to ‘like’ their video, tune or tweet. Read more at GigaOM »
Do you remember the huge controversy when people claimed Instagram wanted to sell your photos? In a court filing, Instagram reiterated a familiar refrain by social media companies that users can take or leave it when it comes to their policies. Read more at GigaOM »
A law firm is trying to capitalize on recent outrage over Instagram’s changes to its terms of services. Despite media hype, the lawsuit has been described as “frivolous” and “flimsy” by social media law experts. Read more at GigaOM »
Instagram says it is removing the ability for Twitter to embed photos because it wants users to go to its own website instead of Twitter’s to see that content. Other media companies should probably also be asking themselves similar questions about their relationship with Twitter. Read more at GigaOM »
In the past, information flow during a military campaign was mostly controlled by the armies involved, but now that everyone has the ability to publish and distribute data including photos and videos, it changes the nature of attacks like the latest Israeli campaign against Hamas. Read more at GigaOM »
Israel is waging war on Hamas, but it is also waging an information war using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other tools. How firmly do these networks support the principle of free speech, and how do they decide what content to permit and what to remove? Read more at GigaOM »
The popularity of image sites like Instagram and Pinterest means more photo sharing — but also more copyright infringement. If we’re to avoid the bitter experience of the music industry, image owners should look to Dreamstime’s example of turning infringers into customers. Read more »
Announcing our initial speaker lineup for our 2nd RoadMap conference! Our focus this year: design in the age of connectedness. It is scheduled for Nov. 5th in SF. Some of our speakers include Kevin Systrom, Evan Williams, David Karp, Tony Fadell, Yves Behar and more. Read more at GigaOM »
Twitter’s ongoing moves to control more of its network — in order to monetize it — is an attempt to turn back the clock and undo some of the openness it started out with. But will it also rob the service of what made it so powerful? Read more at GigaOM »
The same kind of criticism levelled at the photo-sharing service Instagram — that it ruins photography, or makes it cheap and shallow — has been made about other forms of media, including blogging, citizen journalism and Twitter. And in each case the critics have been wrong. Read more at GigaOM »
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz likes his coffee black and his politics nonpartisan. Last year, in a move to break gridlock in Washington, he launched a campaign urging CEOs to boycott political donations. Now he’s leading “Indivisible,” an initiative focused on job creation. Read more »
A former Justice lawyer and antitrust expert says Facebook’s purchase of photo-sharing site Instagram will take between 4 months and one year to clear regulatory hurdles. In the meantime, the deal is effectively on hold. Read more at GigaOM »
Luxury brand Burberry is in legal trouble for using an iconic image from the film Casablanca in a social media campaign to promote its trenchcoats. Read more »
With deals like Facebook’s $1-billion acquisition of the relatively tiny startup Instagram, some argue we are in another tech-stock bubble. But others in the venture industry say that while there is some froth in parts of the startup ecosystem, there are few signs of 1990s-style mania. Read more at GigaOM »
Rolling Stone’s new social networking hub, #RSFans, aims to be a “two-way conversation” between Rolling Stone editors and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram users. Read more »
Past one month has been interesting, to put it mildly. Facebook snapped up Instagram for $1 billion and Zynga lookout OMGPop for $200 million However, here are three key lessons (and takeaways) between these two deals and what they say about both these companies. Read more »
Being a cynical optimist by nature, whenever I fall head over heels in love (no, not in the romantic sense) with a product, and the startup and the founder(s), I know that startup/product is going to be a winner. The Instagram-Facebook deal is decent testimony. Read more »
What is about Instagram that has made Facebook open up its checkbook and spend nearly a billion dollars in stock and cash to buy up a company only in its third year. There are many reasons, and the biggest one is fear. Read more at GigaOM »
Fail whale no more. Some big inroads for Twitter today in its bid to make its own basic services more appealing to users than using third-pa… Read more »
A look at some of the big stories in mobile today: Nokia (NYSE: NOK) moves to have its Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) case reopened while Samsung pushes… Read more »
A look at some of the big stories in mobile today: Cox drops 3G; UK gears up for first LTE trial; Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and ZTE scramble to put… Read more »
Are you spotting a trend here? Hot on the heels of mobile photo sharing site Path picking up nearly $9 million in funding, Instagram, anothe… Read more »
Mixed Media Labs, which is behind picplz, an online and mobile app that lets users add special effects to photos, has raised $5 million from… Read more »
