Snapchat's Discover already hosts a wide range of publishers from both traditional and digital media, including NBC, CNN, Buzzfeed, and Mashable, but its latest expansion will introduce more local content with an interesting twist. The social media giant will soon be adding college newspapers, however their content will only be viewable if you're on a particular school's campus.
Popular dating app Tinder rolled out a new optional, paid subscription feature this week dubbed Tinder Gold, allowing users to find out who has liked them without the need to do the same by swiping to the right. This certainly isn't the first paid option Tinder has debuted, but what's interesting is that the app shot to the number one spot on the top-grossing list in the iOS App Store only a day after Tinder Gold launched.
Earlier this week, hackers took advantage of an Instagram bug to target the accounts of celebrities and verified users, even gaining access to Selena Gomez's, but it turns out they also managed to make off with personal information for roughly six million other users. When Instagram came forward admitting their glitch was responsible (and had subsequently been fixed), they said that the breach was limited to verified accounts; but it's become clear the attack is much more widespread than expected.
Facebook executive Andrew "Boz" Bosworth was given leadership over all of Facebook's future hardware projects as of this week. The first item up for release - so rumors suggest - is the codename Aloha device. This "Aloha" device is quite likely the Android tablet reported not too long ago - an Android tablet made specifically for video chat with Facebook Messenger.
Today the new album from Taylor Swift, "Reputation", was revealed with cover design that encapsulates the era. The era of bad graphics, the era of album covers made to be shared with social networks, the inevitable worst age. When Taylor Swift is in the Seventh House, And Kanye aligns with Kasabian, Then social media will guide the organizational hierarchy, And "anyone could do this though" typography will steer the graphics. This is the dawning of the age of memes as album art.
There's a new Facebook app in town, and it's far better than the original, more basic version. This is my own opinion of course - there's no objective way of knowing whether one way to access Facebook is better than the other. But if there were, I feel like this app would win the award real, real easy.
Instagram's Direct messaging is getting an upgrade, with the ability to reply to posts with stickers or even split-screen selfies. The new feature is billed as a way to have "visual conversations" by the company, though without them taking place publicly. It should cut down on "what photo were you talking about?" confusion in chats, too.
I just made to TINY changes to SnapChat and fixed two relatively giant issues with my phone. The app requests a bundle of permissions when it's first downloaded on a smartphone - that can be an issue. But it's not unfixable. As a couple of Reddit-based smartphone users made plain to me over the past 24 hours: SnapChat causes some seemingly-unrelated problems that I might never have guessed.
China and its strict censorship laws have banned western internet media and social platforms like Twitter, Google, and especially Facebook, but the latter has recently managed to work its way through the country's "Great Firewall." How? It seems the social media giant created an app called Colorful Balloons, which functions just like its own photo-sharing app Moments, and released it to Chinese users through a local company.
Fashionably late or just... late? Apple has finally joined Instagram, and just as the media-centric social network has become the go-to place for people to show off their glamorous lifestyles and myriad talents (even if that demands some very careful framing and a bucket-load of filters), so the Cupertino behemoth is using its account to pimp its own abilities. Namely, its iPhone cameras.
Photo manipulation tricks human eyes very easily according to a new report. Three researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick have done a number of tests to conclude that "people have poor ability to identify whether a real-world image is original or has been manipulated." In other words - humans do not have any sort of innate sense for discerning reality from computer-edited photography, AKA Photoshopping.
The new version of Snapchat allows you two record up to six Snaps in a row. With this new ability, Snapchat users will be Snapping faster than they've ever Snapped before. They'll be Snapping so much, they'll have no trouble sharing Snaps with every single person on their list of Snaps all Snappin' day long. Also note: 6 Snaps in a row is the new limit - but there's no knowing how far Snapchat will go next.
