Hasta La Gadget!

This week there’s been more than one claim against the growing state of Facebook and its most powerful purchased ecosystem: Instagram. What we’re seeing for the latter is a chart from AppStats that cuts their active user numbers in half, while Facebook is facing claims that they’ve lost 600,000 users in a month. That’s not a whole lot compared to the number of people who use Facebook every day, but you’ll find that Facebook isn’t about to see claims against its popularity go unchecked.

The Instagram numbers we’re talking about here have its 40 million active users near the middle of December, 2012, cut down now here in the middle of January to somewhere closer to 17 million. You’ll see the holiday claim we spoke about just a couple of weeks ago in the same chart from AppStats here, but even after the rapid resurgence after the Privacy Policy incidence, the app is being shown to have a rather clear slide downward.

This slide could also very well have to do with the Twitter de-integration that happened over the past couple of weeks, this cutting off a massive tie with one of the most popular social networking systems on the planet. It’s not clear at the moment whether or not Instagram will recover from this downturn. Meanwhile Facebook is battling against the Guardian’s post with Socialbakers analytics information on a 600,000 user decline in the UK.

This decline represents part of a 1.86% slide for Facebook overall, the time period being the month of December and not seeming all that odd to the analytics group due to the holiday season. Though Facebook has more than 33 million unique users according to the same firm through the month of December, Facebook has made it clear in an emailed statement that they don’t trust the methods used by Socialbakers:

“From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook – more than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.” – Facebook Representative

The folks at Socialbakers have also responded to the whole situation, CEO Jan Rezab making it clear that several factors should be considered when thinking about the power of Facebook in the UK.

“• Over 50% of UK’s entire population is on Facebook – which is amazing!
• About 15% of people in UK are under 13 years old therefore “not allowed” on Facebook
• 16.5% of people in UK are older than 65 and typically not on Facebook (only 4% of 65+ year olds out of the 33M are on Facebook in UK)”
– Socialbakers

Rezab also mentions that the ad interface for Facebook, the interface they’ve been working with to find the numbers they’ve presented this week, has a slight delay – slight as in typically by several weeks. Because of this, the changes in Monthly Active Users they’ve found cannot be accounted for by any of Facebook or Instagram’s Privacy Policy changes, and such conclusions should not be drawn from the numbers they’ve posted.

Instagram’s active users cut in half while Facebook fights loss claims is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Social networking is great and all, but you can’t really fault anyone for not buying into it. Unless, of course, you’re talking about Facebook. Everybody has a Facebook, except for the people who don’t, and they tend to be few and far between. More »

We know there are people out there who have no issues at all sharing every aspect of their life online. Those people take photos of their meals, what they’re wearing and publish status updates any time they get off their couch. Soon, it’ll be much easier to publish what videos you’ve watched online through sites like Netflix now that President Obama has signed bill H.R. 6671.

The “Netflix Bill” was created as a way to update a previous law that made it illegal to share what you’ve been watching. Now that the bill has been signed by President Obama, users of online video services like Netflix can opt-in to share what they’ve watched through their social networks.

It’s unknown at this time when exactly these video services will make it possible to automatically publish what they’ve watched through social networks like Facebook, but something tells me these companies have been working on the feature for quite some time and are just waiting to get the final A-OK before they can start rolling it out.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung NX300 Camera With f1.8 2D/3D Lens [Video], YouTube Capture for iOS Has Users Sharing Life’s Moments With Ease,

Facebook is at it again, folks. The social network giant is testing out yet another new feature, and this time it’s almost too ridiculous to believe. Facebook is testing a new service that charges you $100 to send a message to a stranger. So, instead of having the message land in their “Other” inbox, it will go straight to their main inbox.

Some Facebook users have been reporting an interesting popup when they attempt to send messages to people outside of their friend network. The popup notes that the message will be filtered to the “Other” inbox of the recipient, but offers to deliver it to the top of the recipient’s inbox for a staggering $100.

Facebook first began experimenting with this kind of option last month when it first introduced filters, including the “Other” folder. In initial tests, the fee was just $1. However, according to Mashable, Facebook confirms the $100 option is part of that test, and they say they’re testing “some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam.”

Mashable reported seeing $100 as the fee to send a message to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but sending messages to other strangers result in the same price, which means that the fee isn’t based on the popularity of the user. However, unless you’re part of the test group, you still can’t send a message to strangers, and there’s no word on when or if the feature will be rolling out. It’s also entirely possible that if the service eventually launched, the fee might change.

[via Mashable]

Facebook testing $100 charge to message strangers is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you have something you feel you desperately need to tell Mark Zuckerberg, now might be a real good time. For the handsome sum of $100, you can send a message to Mark’s Facebook inbox, without being automatically sent to spam. How nice. More »