PayPal Not Planning to Acquire Image-Sharing App Pinterest

Financial tech company PayPal clarified that it is not currently pursuing a deal to acquire image-sharing social platform Pinterest, shelving reports that surfaced last week, at least for the time being. PayPal stock rose approximately 3 percent while Pinterest shares fell 12 percent on news that the digital pinboard site was not being wooed to the tune of $70 per share, largely in stock, for a deal valued at roughly $45 billion. Assuming discussions were taking place, it’s hard to know if PayPal got cold feet, caving to a mostly negative market response, or decided now may not be the time to grow. Continue reading PayPal Not Planning to Acquire Image-Sharing App Pinterest

Facebook Reaches New Milestone of 2 Billion Monthly Users

Social media giant Facebook announced it now has 2 billion monthly active users. The new milestone comes five years after reaching 1 billion users, and 13 years after Mark Zuckerberg first launched the platform. According to TechCrunch, Facebook leads social apps based on number of logged-in users, “above YouTube’s 1.5 billion, WeChat’s 889 million, Twitter’s 328 million and Snapchat’s estimated 255 million.” Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger each have 1.2 billion users, while its Instagram photo-sharing app recently exceeded 700 million. Continue reading Facebook Reaches New Milestone of 2 Billion Monthly Users

Hyperlapse: Produce Time-Lapse Videos with Instagram App

A new app from Instagram makes it possible for users to create high-quality time-lapse videos from their iPhones. Amateur photographers simply click a button to start and stop recording, and then use a single slider to adjust the speed of the frames. The new app relies on data from the smartphone’s built-in gyroscope to perform the image processing, making the videos appear less shaky. Hyperlapse is currently available on iOS, while an Android version is being planned. Continue reading Hyperlapse: Produce Time-Lapse Videos with Instagram App

Twitter Launches User Galleries for Browsing Tweeted Photos

  • Twitter is introducing user galleries that integrate with third-party services such as TwitPic, Instagram and yFrog to display a user’s 100 most recent photo tweets.
  • This is the first feature Twitter has built upon its recently-launched native image sharing, launched earlier this summer.
  • “We think the user galleries feature will be good for advertisers, who now have greater incentive to include cool pictures in their tweets,” explains Matt Graves, Twitter’s director of communications.
  • ReadWriteWeb reports: “…considering Twitter’s need to monetize, bringing multimedia in-house and attracting more users to the website, rather than third-party clients, could be key to Twitter’s future business plans.”