GadgeTell » Web 2.0 / Social Networking

Facebook Postings Led to Veteran’s Detainment in Psychiatric Hospital

Sue Walsh — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:46:48 +0000

Civil liberties organization The Rutherford Institute filed a lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of Brandon Raub, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who was detained in a psychiatric facility due to posts he made on Facebook. He was taken into custody last August after being questioned by the FBI over the more »

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Yahoo/Tumblr Deal Confirmed, Will Users be Concerned?

Christina Jones — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:47:20 +0000

The deal has been sealed for Yahoo to acquire the ultra popular blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer has promised there won’t be any significant changes to the platform, and will provide ads that are “seamless and enhance user experience.” However, with the way the Internet giant has capitalized on both display and text advertising, should Tumblr users be…

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Yahoo Buys Tumblr for $1.1 Billion, Exodus of Users to WordPress Begins

Arnold Zafra — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:01:36 +0000

And just like that, after being the subject of tech talks last weekend, Yahoo made it official and announced that they’ve reached an agreement with Tumblr. Yahoo buys Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. None other than Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer wrote via the company’s official Tumblr, announcing the acquisition deal.

In the said Tumblr post, Ms. Mayer assures Tumblr users that Yahoo will not screw things up by way of this acquisition. As such, Tumblr will continue to operate independently from Yahoo. Tumblr’s current CEO David Karp will retain his post. And everything else that Tumblr has laid down will push through as planned, includnig roadmap, team, wite and irrevereance. What Yahoo will do is simply to help Tumblr get even better and faster, according to Ms. Mayer.

To do this, the Yahoo Chief said that Tumblr can use Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help users in discovering creators, bloggers and content. For its part, Tumblr is bringing along 50 billion blog post to Yahoo’s media network and search experiences. Some say, this is by way of advertising revenues…

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Rumor: Yahoo Allegedly Acquiring Tumblr

Christina Jones — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:33:12 +0000

Rumors are swirling that Yahoo is in talks to acquire Tumblr. Apparently Ken Goldman, Yahoo’s CFO explained the Internet giant’s concern for its aging users. In an attempt to appeal to the 18-24 year-old-demographic, they’re seriously considering bring Tumblr on board. “One of our challenges is we have an aging demographic,” explained Goldman at JP more »

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Google Hangouts Plans to Include SMS Messaging and Outgoing Calls ‘Soon’

Matthew Marchesano — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:41:16 +0000

With Google rebranding all of it’s communications services into one crossplatform system, Hangouts, announced yesterday, some users were criticizing the new functionality and it’s lack of including some of the most common ways that people communicate: SMS text messaging and voice calls. Although these services will not be rolling out with the new ‘umbrella’ service, more »

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Twitter Focuses on Data, Acquires Lucky Sort

Christina Jones — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:35:01 +0000

Twitter seems to be finally working on a branded analytics product. On Monday, the brand acquired data analytics startup Lucky Sort. “Two years ago I started Lucky Sort with several friends,” said Noah Pepper, CEO of Lucky Sort.” Our goal was to make huge document sets easier to analyze, summarize and visualize by building elegant more »

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Google Introduces Unified Cross-Platform Messaging Service, Hangouts

Matthew Marchesano — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:05:58 +0000

Although we had thought it would be called “Babel,” Google did do something about its various chat platforms and their lacking synergies. On Wednesday during the company’s annual I/O developer’s conference, they (among many other things) introduced Google “Hangouts.” Made available for iOS and Android mobile operating systems and on the web via a special more »

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Babblr Raising Money to Get Back Up and Running

Christina Jones — Wed, 15 May 2013 01:21:39 +0000

Since Babblr recently launched, the chat client for Tumblr received an overwhelming response. Unfortunately, they weren’t expecting such a high volume of users in a short period of time, as they received 34,000 downloads within 3 hours. The traffic it received fried the servers, and temporarily shut it down. They are now accepting donations to more »

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Facebook for iOS gets a new icon and photo options

Jeremy Hill — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:23:06 +0000

The iOS version of the Facebook app received an update today bringing it to version 6.1. When you download it, the first thing you may notice is the new app icon. The font of the Facebook “f” is the same, but the icon now has grid lines and a silver trim around its borders. It’s more »

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Facebook for Android Rolls Out New Pages Layout

Sue Walsh — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:11:27 +0000

Facebook pushed out an update to its Android app Friday, introducing a new layout for Pages, new stickers for messages, and an update to Facebook Home. The new Pages layout presents the Directions, Check-In and Like buttons in a more accessible location, and messages sent through the app can now use the stickers already available through Messenger.

The stickers, which are really just huge emoticons, are available in several packs, all free of charge. They range from cute (a fat fluffy cat)…

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