Hasta La Gadget!

For some people it is absolutely imperative to share very little detail of their day on various social networks, which is why one can easily find most people glued to, Facebook and Twitter chiefly, at any public place. People who constantly feel the need to share aspects of their daily life with the world need a reliable data connection, and if there’s no Wi-Fi and the data plan has run out, one can only imagine how they manage to survive such a situation. T-Mobile’s prepaid brand, GoSmart, has teamed up with the world’s largest social network to offer free unlimited Facebook access to customers even if they do not have a monthly data plan.

Free access also applies to Facebook Messenger, so all of GoSmart’s customers can even chat with their connections on Facebook even if they don’t have a data plan. The service begins from January and requires users to log-on from a browser or the Facebook app on a compatible device. Chris Daniels, vice president of partnerships at Facebook, said that the social network is “delighted” that GoSmart’s subscribers that don’t have data access can use Facebook for free. This is certainly enticing for those who don’t want to be tied up with a postpaid plan, don’t require a data plan but don’t mind being able to check up on Facebook whenever they want, without having to worry about any charges.

T-Mobile Prepaid Brand GoSmart Offers Unlimited Facebook Access Without A Data Plan original content from Ubergizmo.

It has been a little over an year since Facebook decided to go public. After its IPO last year, the company’s stock price dipped which took quite a while to recover. These things happen in the course of running a public company, and so do secondary stock offerings. Facebook has announced today that it is going to offer nearly 70 million shares, which would raise about $4 billion. Facebook will also be joining the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

The company itself is going to offer 27,004,761 shares of Class A common stock whereas “certain selling stockholders” are going to offer the rest, which include co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as well, with 41,350,000 shares. The actual price of these shares is going to be determined at the market’s close today, December 19th. Facebook will be added to S&P 500 at the close of trading tomorrow, getting on this index means that there’s now a measure to view its influence on the wider financial market. Facebook hasn’t provided any details about what its going to spend the roughly $4 billion it raises on, but it does say that the money may be used for “acquisitions of complementary business, technologies or assets.” Only recently it was rumored that Facebook was interested in acquiring Snapchat, bidding a phenomenal $3 billion for it. So even if Snapchat doesn’t sell, with that kind of money, Facebook will be in a position to pick up a number of other companies.

Facebook’s Secondary Stock Offering To Raise Nearly $4 Billion original content from Ubergizmo.

Facebook has at last answered your cries for a “Dislike” button, sort of. You will not be able to thumbs-down statuses and other types of posts in news feeds and … Continue reading

With the sheer user base it has generated, over 150 million, one might expect Instagram to finally start verifying high profile accounts so that followers are not deceived by fake accounts. Twitter has one of the few services to first implement the verified account system, it awarded a blue tick to users who had verified accounts, early on the privilege was only limited to celebrities and high profile individuals such as politicians, renowned journalists, etc. Facebook also followed suit with verified profiles. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, acknowledges that verified accounts have been a “highly requested feature,” but the company is not currently working on it.

Instagram’s comments come after hidden developer options were discovered in its Android APK, a “Verification” feature was found. This lead many to believe that perhaps Instagram might finally start verifying user accounts. The verified tags can be enabled right now by editing a line of code, but despite that enabling tags is possible, the feature itself isn’t live now meaning that merely enabling the tag doesn’t mean that the account gets officially verified by Instagram. The tag itself isn’t that appealing, a simple gray box with white lettered text inside. Instagram’s comments make it clear that verified accounts aren’t coming anytime soon, but by its own admission, we know that the community is actively pushing for that feature. When will Instagram finally give in? We’ll have to wait and see. [Image via TechCrunch]

Instagram Verified Accounts Not Coming Anytime Soon original content from Ubergizmo.

The very same pattern happens over and over again – there is a new online service which is the talk of town, and just about everyone and their aunt have signed up for it. Wait for a few more months, and the subscriber base grows to even greater proportions, and talk is rife that the company is preparing to roll out an IPO so that it can expand even more.

Well, after a while, you start to notice that things are not really the same any more in terms of the user interface. An ad starts to pop up here, and there is another ad there, and before you know it, you wish there was a new software which could remove all of the ads shown. Facebook might get on the nerves of some soon, with the introduction of video advertisements that will kick off with a series of ads for the upcoming film, Divergent.

The ads will be played automatically on select news feeds, although it will be a silent ad unless you actually click on them, and sound playback will be activated. As for ads on mobile devices, those will have been downloaded ahead of time whenever said device in question was hooked up to a local Wi-Fi network. Do you think that this change is a positive one, or will it deter folks from posting?

Facebook Introduces Video Ads original content from Ubergizmo.