Tag Archives: Facebook

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 Billion

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 Billion

Now we’ve some got some big news as Facebook acquires the famous mobile photo sharing platform Instagram for $1 Billion. The buzz was shared via Facebook Founder and CEO ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ on Monday by a post on his timeline. The company acquisition comprises of a mix of cash and Facebook Shares. It is one of the biggest achievements at Facebook’s end, as Instagram holds a strong threshold for both Apple iOS devices and the Android platform, with millions of users already a part of it.

“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.” – Mark Zuckerberg (Founder and CEO, Facebook)

Zuckerberg expressed his views on evolving Instagram as an individual application rather than integrating everything to 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.”

The existing set of features to the app that include photo sharing on multiple social networks and the ability to build following while being able follow others would still be in place. It would not be constrained or restricted only towards a ‘Facebook Only Platform’.

The team at Facebook and Instagram would be working together to provide rich experience to its existing set of users, while building Instagram alike features for Facebook services and projects.  Lets hope for the best and see what happens.

What are your views on this new acquisition? Please share your views by dropping by a comment.

via Facebook

 

Adobe Flash, Google Maps, and Facebook for Android Updated

Adobe Flash, Google Maps, and Facebook for Android Updated

Today, we look into three recent updates that have been rolled out for Android apps that include Adobe Flash Player, Google Maps and Facebook.

Adobe Flash

The Adobe Flash update takes care of a security vulnerability that may cause the app to crash and gain access to the device. The update is important and we would suggest users to install this update whenever they have time.

Download from Android Market: Adobe Flash Player 11

Google Maps

The latest update for Google Maps is targeted for users who use Latitude as well as Location History as it fixes and improves issues pertaining to battery life. Besides the battery fix it also address some bug fixes that would make the overall experience enjoyable and fast.

Download from Android Market: Google Maps

Facebook

The Facebook app has been updated to version 1.83 that still has an older changelog attached to the update. We expect the update to address bug fixes and other performance issues with app. The update size is nice, so hopefully you all should update it. If we come to know any other info we would surely keep you posted on the same.

Download from Android Market: Facebook

Social Messaging Apps! An end to Text Messaging (SMS) ?

Social Messaging Apps ! An end to Text Messaging(SMS)Social Messaging Apps ! An end to Text Messaging(SMS)Social Messaging Apps ! An end to Text Messaging(SMS)Social Messaging Apps ! An end to Text Messaging(SMS)

Today we are in a world where for every single buzz in that corner their is something that is ringing the bell and providing us information at the push of a button. A question that arises in my mind “ Are Social Messaging Services an end to SMS or Text Messaging?

To elaborate let us consider an example. If you need to greet your friends for Christmas would you like to send a paid SMS that might get delayed due to network overload or you would prefer Social Messaging Platforms like BBM, Whatsapp etc. I even tend to get more digging into the facts by analyzing that BBM is the most expensive service that one opts for with the only big benefit that it works globally and a limitation to work only on smartphones made by RIM (Research in Motion).

Lets have a simple mathematical calculation. Each of us pay close may spend close to 3$-10$ on messaging packs for getting unlimited texts. A limited text messaging pack may limit you to send texts to certain number say between 400-500. If we say that your carrier gives you 10K texts at the same price, it still remains expensive as your still need to pay standard text messaging rates on  festive or special occasions.

Whatsapp (a popular free messaging application) comes initially free with one complete year of free subscription and subsequently just 1.99$ an yr.  This is so far the best-known platform to evolve, as this application is a cross platform application that works across Android, Blackberry, Symbian, iOS and Windows Phone as well.

Now another query that might buzz you is that all of these applications need packet data or 3G/4G Internet packages via carriers and these come at a cost. The answer is right as even the most basic of you’re prepaid or postpaid plan accommodates 50MB-300MB of free usage.  If you are using an all unlimited plan on any carrier you get ample download limit in GB’s (Gigabytes). A Social Messaging application would not even use 50MB if you just do plain texts, incase you opt in to send photos, videos, and files, the usage would vary depending on the file size.

Some cool perks if you are on Social Messengers or Social Messaging Apps:

  • Geo Location Services (Send your location to your mates)
  • Photo and Video Sharing
  • Unlimited Texts without any charge with the advantage of free texts during festive occasions including international messaging as well.
  • The ability to build your strong network or niche.
  • Group Messaging
  • Group Video Chat (Some Applications)
  • Smiley’s 🙂
  • Works on Wi-Fi

Some free applications that I would like to suggest:

Blackberry users may use the Blackberry Messenger (BBM) for Social Messaging within their own network. For chatting with friends on other platforms you may choose from any of the aforesaid applications.

If you just want be social on prime social networks like Facebook,  Google+, Twitter, Yahoo! etc. you may download applications like ebuddy, Facebook Mobile App, Nimbuzz, Google+, Skype, Yahoo! and Fring .

Its time to get social ! Enjoy !

Please do share your valuable comments with us. If you like my stuff please suggest it to your friends.

Thanks for reading.

Integrating Facebook Social Plugins to your WordPress Blog [How-to]

WordPress is among the worlds best blogging tools, allowing users with a fully customizable environment and an easeful backend interface for content administration and management.

While building a blog or a website on WordPress the user has many options to integrate social features into one’s site which might include leading platforms like Google +, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

We discuss integration of Facebook Social Plugins, which will allow the site to indulge more with its users allowing them to comment, discuss and share what they like in a user-friendly manner. One can come across various plugins available across wordpress.org plugin directory or one can even directly integrate the WordPress Theme as well.  Depending on what you find easy you can implement the same.

Facebook Social Plugins

Social Plugins can allow your site users to comment on posts, like and share them on Facebook. The ones that are majorly used include:

  • Comments
  • Like Box
  • Like Button

Facebook Application Creation

To use these plugins we will first require the creating of a Facebook application that would allow cross platform communication between Facebook and our website. To create an application we go to: https://developers.facebook.com/apps. Choose the option on right corner “Create New App”, upon pressing the button a pop-up window appears that allows the creating on a new application.

As shown in the image above we choose a Display Name for the application this can be your Website Name. App Namespace defines how the application would be known internally within Facebook, once done with the creation of the application you will have to adjust some application settings. The user is automatically directed to a summary page for the application. The summary page has various sections out on which will be currently just two of them.

Under basic info section change we change the App Domain value to www.Your-Website.com, going further we tell Facebook as how our application works with Facebook. We do so by highlighting the Option Website and then again entering our website address, once all done we press save changes.

Social Plugin Implementation

From the above plugins lets consider the Comments Plugin to be integrated as a part of your themes code.  Go to: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/

When the page opens you will see a box which would be identical to the image above, fill in the required fields include your website address, posts to display and color type you would like and click on Get Code. This generates a code that can be implemented within various pages of your site.

Now we are close to the implementation of the plugin, to finalize the implementation we need to follow a two-step process and we are done.

First we need to implement JavaScript SDK into the theme body tags, body tags can be found both in header.php and footer.php file of your WordPress Themes. The ideal placement area lies just after opening body tag. The JavaScript SDK Code is as below:

<div id=”fb-root”></div>

<script>

window.fbAsyncInit = function() {

FB.init({

appId      : ‘YOUR_APP_ID’, // App ID

channelURL : ‘//WWW.YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/channel.html’, // Channel File

status     : true, // check login status

cookie     : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session

oauth      : true, // enable OAuth 2.0

xfbml      : true  // parse XFBML

});

// Additional initialization code here

};

// Load the SDK Asynchronously

(function(d){

var js, id = ‘facebook-jssdk’; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}

js = d.createElement(‘script’); js.id = id; js.async = true;

js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js”;

d.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(js);

}(document));

</script>

In the above-mentioned code we will replace YOUR_APP_ID with the App ID generated in the comments code, for those of you who not aware of what App ID, check the highlighted part in the code below.

<div id=”fb-root”></div>

<script>(function(d, s, id) {

var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];

if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}

js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;

js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=119352884837162“;

fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);

}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));</script>

The second element to be changed from the JavaScript SDK is WWW.YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/channel.html, here we create an html file named as channel.html, and the purpose of creation of this file is to resolve cross-domain communication issue with certain browsers. The code that goes into the file is just one single line, which is described below.

<script src=”//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js”></script>

One the file is created upload to the root directory of your webhosting and change the value in the JavaScript SDK.

The Last step to complete the implementation is to edit the comments.php file of your WordPress theme and paste the code mentioned below.

<div class=”fb-comments” data-href=”YOUR-WEBSITE.COM” data-num-posts=”2″ data-width=”500″></div>

Just replace “YOUR-WEBSITE.COM” by your Website URL and you are done.

Alternatively if you are a newbie and don’t want to code or get confused with the same you can try popular WordPress Plugins Like DISQUS, Intense Debate Etc.