• Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

    // Gradly // Acquisition, blog, Facebook, News, Photography, Social Networks 1 Response

    Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

    Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

    Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that the giant social network, Facebook, has acquired the popular photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion. Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom has also confirmed the deal. The 13 full-time employees who will each receive part of a $100 million will move to the social network as a result. Not to mention Instagram has 30 million active users and recently debuted a hot new Android app.

    Facebook’s official press release is here:

    I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

    For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

    We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

    That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

    We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

    These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

    This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

    We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

  • How To Enable Facebook Timeline Right Now

    // Gradly // blog, Facebook, Hack, How To, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks, Tutorials No Responses

    This morning Facebook announced Timeline, a look at everything that has ever happened in your Facebook lifespan. It’s like a story book of your life. Although the feature has been announced, it is not yet available to the public – only developers can get access.

    Things to consider:

    • You probably don’t want to do this unless you’re actually a developer. Expect bugs.
    • Only you will see your timeline at first (unless you decide otherwise), but it will automatically go public after a few days. My timeline was automatically hard-set to go public on September 29th.
    • It seems that if you login into Facebook on another machine, Timeline gets disabled automatically on all of your machines. With that said, it seems you can get back to your timeline (but ONLY after following the steps below) by navigating to http://www.facebook.com/YOURUSERNAMEHERE?sk=timeline
    • You’ll need to have a “verified” account for one of the steps, which means you need a credit card or phone number attached to the account.

    How to enable it:

    Step 1: Log in to Facebook.

    Step 2: You will need to enable developer mode if you haven’t already. Simply type “Developer” in the search box and click on the top result.

    Step 3: Go to the developer app, which can be found here should Facebook not automatically redirect you.

    Step 4: Create a new app (don’t fret, nobody will be able to see it), and give it a name and namespace (no CAPS allowed with the namespace).

    Step 5: Once that’s done, click on the “Get Started using open graph” under the “Open Graph” header.

    Step 6: You will then be asked to create a test action for your app, like “read” a “book”.

    Step 7: Next, you’ll be met with a config page of your selected action. Navigate through that page and the next three pages of settings.

    Step 8: Once you have gone through the last page and hit “Save and Finish”, after a couple of minutes, an invite to try Timeline should appear at the top of your homescreen.

    Click it, and you will be met with a page which seemingly covers every story of your Facebook life since the day you joined. Enjoy!

    [via TechCrunch]

  • Hacker Group Anonymous Vows to Destroy Facebook on November 5

    // Gradly // blog, Cyper Crimes, Facebook, Featured, Hack, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks, Sony 1 Response

    Hacker group Anonymous, which has been responsible for cyber-attacks on the Pentagon, Sony, News Corp, hacked into Iran‘s government emails, possibly the IMF, Anders Breivik’s Twitter account, and much more, has a new target in its crosshairs: Facebook. The hackers have set the date for Facebook’s demise as November 5, 2011. The reason? Ironically, they’re worried about privacy.

    Citing privacy concerns and the difficulty involved in deleting a Facebook account, Anonymous hopes to “kill Facebook,”. Anonymous leadership disowned Operation Facebook on Twitter.


    So, only some Anonymous members are involved. This isn’t the first time Anonymous has spoken out against social networks. After Google removed Anonymous’ Gmail and Google+ accounts, Anonymous pledged to create its own social network, called AnonPlus.

    The full text of the announcement, made on YouTube and reported by Village Voice, is below:

    DATE: November 5, 2011.TARGET: https://facebook.com

    Press:
    Twitter : https://twitter.com/OP_Facebook
    http://piratepad.net/YCPcpwrl09
    Irc.Anonops.Li #OpFaceBook
    Message:

    Attention citizens of the world,

    We wish to get your attention, hoping you heed the warnings as follows:
    Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook for the sake of your own privacy.

    Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world. Some of these so-called whitehat infosec firms are working for authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria.

    Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your “privacy” settings, and deleting your account is impossible, even if you “delete” your account, all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more “private” is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family. http://www.physorg.com/news170614271.html
    http://itgrunts.com/2010/10/07/facebook-steals-numbers-and-data-from-your-iph….

    You cannot hide from the reality in which you, the people of the internet, live in. Facebook is the opposite of the Antisec cause. You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realise what we have done here is right, you will thank the rulers of the internet, we are not harming you but saving you.

    The riots are underway. It is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It is a battle for choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being raped, tickled, molested, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely false. It gives users the illusion of and hides the details away from them “for their own good” while they then make millions off of you. When a service is “free,” it really means they’re making money off of you and your information.

    Think for a while and prepare for a day that will go down in history. November 5 2011, #opfacebook . Engaged.

    This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled, not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.

    We are anonymous
    We are legion
    We do not forgive
    We do not forget
    Expect us

    “Kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy” — doesn’t that sound strange, coming from people who routinely steal private information as they please? But this echoes the manifesto of a related group, LulzSec, whose nihilistic perspective on the state of the Internet kind of made sense. An excerpt:

    Do you think every hacker announces everything they’ve hacked? We certainly haven’t, and we’re damn sure others are playing the silent game. Do you feel safe with your Facebook accounts, your Google Mail accounts, your Skype accounts? What makes you think a hacker isn’t silently sitting inside all of these right now, sniping out individual people, or perhaps selling them off? You are a peon to these people. A toy. A string of characters with a value.This is what you should be fearful of, not us releasing things publicly, but the fact that someone hasn’t released something publicly.

    Will Anonymous be able to successfully lay waste to Mark Zuckerberg‘s fortress? This is set to be the Internet showdown of the year.

    What is expected actually, is that Facebook would not be “destroyed,” per se. What’s more likely to happen is a DDoS (denial of service) attack on Facebook which could, if successful, prevent users from reaching the site for anywhere from minutes to hours.

  • Facebook Acquires Interactive iPad Book Maker: Push Pop Press

    // Gradly // Acquisition, Apple, blog, Design, Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Social Networks No Responses

    Facebook has acquired Push Pop Press, the company behind iPad app “Our Choice,” based on a book by Al Gore. The company was co-founded by former Apple designer Mike Matas who was a lead designer of both the original iPhone and iPad interfaces. Facebook does not plan to sell interactive iPad books, but the technology and design talent will be used in Facebook’s future.

    Mike Matas demoed “Our Choice” at the TED conference this year to rave reviews.

    Statement from Facebook:

    We’re thrilled to confirm that we’ve acquired Push Pop Press, a startup whose groundbreaking software changes the way people publish and consume digital content. We can’t wait for co-founders Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris to get started, and for some of the technology, ideas and inspiration behind Push Pop Press to become part of how millions of people connect and share with each other on Facebook.


    [via allthingsd]