On Instagram, a thriving bazaar taps a big market

Instagram, the picture-sharing application that Facebook bought earlier this year, has not yet figured out a way to make money. But some of its users have.

Confirmed: Twitter had agreed to buy Instagram before Facebook swooped in

Weeks before he accepted a $1 billion buyout offer from Facebook Inc, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom had verbally agreed to a $525 million offer from Twitter, according to a report in The New York Times citing unnamed sources close to Twitter and Facebook.

Yahoo revamps Flickr iPhone app to make it more Instagram-like

Yahoo! joined the fray over smartphone photo-sharing Wednesday by making it more enticing for iPhone users to use its Flickr service amid a rift between Twitter and the popular photo app Instagram.

Facebook ends democracy experiment after voters fail to show up

Facebook closed the polls Monday on letting democracy rule when it comes to policy changes.

A referendum to strip Facebook users of the power to endorse or reject policy changes through popular vote was opposed by a majority of voters, but not enough people cast ballots to make the results binding.

Twitter introduces photo filters to take on Instagram, Facebook

Twitter on Monday introduced the ability to add colour filters to user-uploaded photos, a step that sharpened its budding rivalry with Facebook Inc.

See, what employers look for on Facebook, Twitter

Employers turn to social media sites like Facebook when deciding whether to even call a job candidate for an interview, according to a new study.

Research from a global security software company discovered that more than 90 percent of human resources professionals search for unprotected social media profiles in order to assess a candidate's suitability.

Instagram shuts off Twitter feature

Facebook Inc's recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web's dominant social media companies.Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter "cards" in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram's own website. Twitter "cards" are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.
The move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world's no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $715 million, reflecting Facebook's recent stock drop.
The companies' ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.
Beginning earlier this week, Twitter's users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter's website.
Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided its users should view photos on Instagram's own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.
"We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives," Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram's website.
"A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal Web presence," Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and "like" photos directly on Instagram's website.
The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users.
"They're both competing for slices of the same pie, the pie being users' attention," said Ray Valdes, an analyst with research firm Gartner.
If Facebook decides to offer advertising on Instagram, it's important that the users visit Instagram's own website, said Valdes. "If the eyeballs are elsewhere, you have less to work with in terms of monetization," he said.
Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram's meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.
Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter's executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, was an early investor in Instagram and had hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a successful bid.
When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he highlighted Instagram's inter-connectivity with other social networks.
"We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience," Zuckerberg wrote. "We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks."
A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter's website confirmed that users are "experiencing issues," such as "cropped images" when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

Facebook invites users to vote on Instagram data-sharing, email privacy

Facebook Inc opened the polls on Monday for its roughly 1 billion users to vote on a variety of changes to the social network's policies, including a proposal to scrap the user voting system that Facebook introduced in 2009.
Facebook also said it had "clarified" some of the proposed changes, specifying that a new policy allowing it to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram will be carried out in compliance with applicable laws and that Facebook will seek user consent when necessary.
The proposed changes, which Facebook announced on November 21, generated roughly 89,000 user comments as well as concerns from some privacy-advocacy groups and a request for more information from the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Facebook's European business has its headquarters.
"Based on your feedback and after consultation with our regulators, including the Irish Data Protection Commissioner's Office, we've further clarified some of our proposals," said Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing in a post on Facebook's company blog on Monday.
Facebook is proposing to eliminate the 4-year-old system that allows users to vote on changes to its governance policies. The company says the voting system hasn't functioned as intended and is no longer suited to its current situation as a large publicly traded company subject to oversight by various regulatory agencies.
Facebook said on Monday that it would incorporate user suggestions for creating new tools to "enhance communication" on privacy and governance matters.
Another proposal would loosen the restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system. The company said it planned to replace the "Who can send you Facebook messages" setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.
Facebook's potential information sharing with Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that it bought in October, flows from proposed changes that would allow the company to share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates it owns.
The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people's personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc.
Facebook said on Monday that the proposed change was "standard in the industry" and "promotes the efficient and effective use of the services Facebook and its affiliates," such as allowing users in the U.S. to interact with users in Europe.
"This provision covers Instagram and allows us to store Instagram's server logs and administrative records in a way that is more efficient than maintaining totally separate storage systems," the company wrote in a separate post on its website Monday titled "explanation of changes".
"Where additional consent of our users is required, we will obtain it," Facebook said.
Facebook users have until December 10 to vote on the policies using a special third-party application provided by Facebook and Facebook said the results will be certified by an independent auditor.
The vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.