YC-backed Basement is a social network for close friends only
The past few years have been a bit of a dark age for budding social media startups. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snap and messenger apps took up all the time of… Read more »
Category: Instagram
Is Facebook down? Huge Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage CONFIRMED
FACEBOOK, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are down for millions of users around the world in a major outage that is causing panic on the web. Users have said they… Read more »
Instagram founders say losing autonomy at Facebook meant “winning”
Rather than be sore about losing independence within Facebook, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told me it was an inevitable sign of his app’s triumph. Today at South By South West,… Read more »
New laws to protect kids could see Facebook and Instagram face criminal prosecution
FACEBOOK and Instagram could face criminal prosecution under new government plans if they fail to protect users online, it emerged last night. New duty of care proposals would see social… Read more »
Instagram prototypes video co-watching
The next phase of social media is about hanging out together while apart. Rather than performing on a live stream or engaging with a video chat, Instagram may allow you… Read more »
Facebook will downrank anti-vax content on News Feed and hide it on Instagram
After indicating that it was exploring its options for fighting the potentially deadly rise of anti-vaccination content on its platform last month, Facebook is making a plan of attack. Facebook’s… Read more »
Zuckerberg wants messages to auto-expire to make Facebook a ‘living room’
On feed-based “broader social networks, where people can accumulate friends or followers until the services feel more public . . . it feels more like a town square than a… Read more »
Glossier launches its first spin-off brand, a line of Instagram-friendly ‘dialed-up’ beauty extras
Glossier, known for its line of understated makeup products and a cult-following of millennial Instagrammers, is getting colorful with the launch of its first spin-off brand, Glossier Play. The company… Read more »
Come to TechCrunch’s SXSW panels and party
Meet TechCrunch’s writers at our annual Crunch By Crunch Fest party in Austin, Texas. RSVP here to join us on Sunday March 10th from 1pm to 4pm at the Swan… Read more »
It’s a new era for fertility tech
Women’s health has long been devoid of technological innovation, but when it comes to fertility options, that’s starting to change. Startups in the space are securing hundreds of millions in… Read more »
Pinstagram? Instagram code reveals Public Collections feature
Instagram is threatening to attack Pinterest just as it files to go public the same way the Facebook-owned app did to Snapchat. Code buried in Instagram for Android shows the… Read more »
Instagram’s fundraiser stickers could lure credit card numbers
Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that commerce is a huge part of the 2019 road map for Facebook’s family of apps. But before people can easily buy things from Instagram etc., Facebook… Read more »
E-commerce startup Zilingo raises $226M to digitize Asia’s fashion supply chain
If you’re looking for the next unicorn in Southeast Asia, Zilingo might just be it. The 3.5-year-old e-commerce company announced today that it has raised a Series D round worth… Read more »
Is Europe closing in on an antitrust fix for surveillance technologists?
The German Federal Cartel Office’s decision to order Facebook to change how it processes users’ personal data this week is a sign the antitrust tide could at last be turning against… Read more »
Instagram thinks you want IGTV previews in your home feed
If you can’t beat or join them… force feed ’em? That appears to be Instagram’s latest strategy for IGTV, which is now being shoved right into Instagram’s main feed, the… Read more »
Account linking could make Instagram the heir to Facebook Login
Teens’ aversion to Facebook jeopardizes not only the company’s feed ad revenue, but its dominance as an identity provider. The Facebook Login platform keeps people tied to the social network… Read more »
Social media giants face new laws that force them to protect young users
SOCIAL media firms face new laws to force them to protect vulnerable users, the Digital Minister will declare today. Margot James will tear into tech giants for behaving as if… Read more »
Facebook warned over privacy risks of merging messaging platforms
Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe has asked the company for an “urgent briefing” regarding plans to integrate the underlying infrastructure of its three social messaging platforms. In a… Read more »
Facebook removes hundreds of accounts linked to fake news group in Indonesia
Facebook said today it has removed hundreds of Facebook and Instagram counts with links to an organization that peddled fake news. The world’s fourth largest country with a population of… Read more »
Apple has blocked Google from running internal iOS apps after certificate misuse
Apple has blocked Google from distributing its internal-only iOS apps on its corporate network after a TechCrunch investigation found the search giant abusing the certificates. “We’re working with Apple to… Read more »
Dadi brings in $2M to democratize sperm storage
The founders of Dadi — pronounced daddy — think men are in need of a wake-up call. “Men [have] a biological clock just like women, which is something that people… Read more »
Instagram outage forces millions to look directly at the world for nearly half an hour
Photo-sharing app and social network Instagram was briefly taken offline on Monday afternoon, causing nothing of consequence to occur other than a brief respite from one source of the constant… Read more »
Former Munchery employees sue company, blame CEO for shutdown
The Munchery saga continues. In a new class-action lawsuit, former Munchery facilities worker Joshua Philips is claiming the startup owes him and 250 other employees 60 days’ wages, citing The Worker… Read more »
Our kids must realise influencers don’t see them as friends — but as their cash cows
THERE is nothing wrong with people being paid to promote products on social media. Weirdly, for those of us who grew up before the internet took off, that’s an actual… Read more »
Facebook to encrypt Instagram messages ahead of integration with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger
Facebook is planning to roll out end-to-end encryption for Instagram messages, as part of a broader integration effort across company’s messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. First reported by The New York… Read more »
Netflix now lets you share a favorite title directly to Instagram Stories
Having reached critical mass, Netflix shows are now influencing culture — whether that’s prompting everyone to “tidy up” or causing chaos with “Bird Box”-inspired challenges. For good or bad, what… Read more »
Shodan Safari, where hackers heckle the worst devices put on the internet
If you leave something on the internet long enough, someone will hack it. The reality is that many device manufacturers make it far too easy by using default passwords that… Read more »
Facebook finds and kills another 512 Kremlin-linked fake accounts
Two years on from the U.S. presidential election, Facebook continues to have a major problem with Russian disinformation being megaphoned via its social tools. In a blog post today the company reveals… Read more »
Instagram caught selling ads to follower-buying services it banned
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or… Read more »
A photo of an egg has toppled reality star Kylie Jenner as Instagram’s most-liked post
Instagram has found something it likes more than a Kardashian-Jenner family baby, and it’s an egg. This weekend, a photo of a plain egg became the most-liked photo on Instagram,… Read more »