Hasta La Gadget!

The Internet grows in leaps and bounds, something various statistics have shown in a variety of ways. Percentages are one way to show this, as very large numbers can be hard to digest, but something being called an “Internet Minute” has provided an interesting perspective on the growth, comparing numbers taken from a single minute […]

It was reported recently that Facebook use amongst teens was starting to decline. Quite a lot was written about this as people speculated that perhaps the world’s biggest social network was no longer “cool” enough for most teens to use. During Facebook’s last earnings call, CFO David Ebersman said that the company “did see a decrease in daily users partly among younger teens.” These few words sparked hundreds of articles about how Facebook might be becoming irrelevant for younger teens. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says that the reaction to Ebersman’s comment “has been blown out of proportion” and that the overall teen usage of Facebook in the U.S. “remains stable.” To be fair to Ebersman, he did say prior to making the comment about declining teen usage that “youth usage among U.S. teens was stable overall from Q2 to Q3.”

Sandberg reiterates that the “majority of U.S. teens use Facebook almost every day,” and that the vast majority of them are on the social network. She made these comments in an interview with AllThingsD, where she added that Facebook’s challenge is not to be the newest, which it obviously can’t be seeing as how its almost a decade old. She says that “we’re not trying to be the coolest. And we’re not trying to be the newest.” Facebook is trying to be the most useful, and that’s something that CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg stands behind. When quizzed about a possible acquisition of Snapchat, for which it reportedly offered $3 billion in cash, Sandberg neither confirms that an offer was put on the table nor denies that one might be made in the future.

Facebook Isn’t Losing Teen Users, Says COO Sheryl Sandberg original content from Ubergizmo.

Dave Eggers’ new book The Circle is a creepy tale about a tech company—which is proving to be annoying to people who actually work in tech. It’s also overhyped and may have even ripped off another Silicon Valley story. But there’s one thing Eggers gets the most wrong in The Circle, according to design critic Alexandra Lange.

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When we tweet, update our status, or post a photo onto Instagram, we don’t really think too much about it. In fact it seems that despite all outcries of invasion of privacy from the government, we are all too willing to share where we are, what we are doing, what we are thinking, and how we look like with complete strangers on the internet. It seems innocent enough, at least until Jack Vale decided to pull a prank on strangers by acting like he knew them, such as their names, how they look like, and when their birthdays are simply based on tweets and Instagram posts that are the closest around him.

The result was a little creepy and highlights how much of ourselves we put out there without thinking twice about it. Not to mention anyone could pull our information at any given time, and yet we don’t seem too fussed about it. I personally am not sure how I would react if someone came up to me and started telling me things about myself, but for the most part the people in the video seem to have taken it in good stride. What do you guys think? Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Social Media Experiment Proves How Easy It Is To Find Out Things About A Total Stranger original content from Ubergizmo.

Snapchat has been in the news recently, apparently because it has a few potential suitors who’re willing to put up billions of dollars. Now why would these companies want to pay so much for a service that’s not generating any revenue at all right now? Perhaps because it has the potential to generate revenue by leveraging its immense growth. Snapchat has now passed Facebook in photo uploads, users are uploading more than 400 million snaps and video messages every single day as opposed to Facebook’s 350 million photo uploads.

Even though the comparison isn’t exactly spot on, given that the 400 million figure includes both photos as well as videos and Snapchat hasn’t given exact figures for both, it is possible that the service may have an edge on Facebook when it comes to just photo uploads. Another thing to consider is the fact that Facebook has over 1 billion users, Snapchat doesn’t have that many, but its few hundred million users are almost equalling the photo upload activity on the world’s largest social network. Perhaps that’s why Facebook was willing to offer as much as $3 billion in cash for Snapchat, which it turned down. Google is said to have outbid Facebook by offering $4 billion, but Snapchat turned Mountain View down as well apparently. They’re in no mood to sell, because if these figures are legit, then the folks at Snapchat are certainly of the view that they’re worth more than $4 billion.

Snapchat Overtakes Facebook In Photo Uploads original content from Ubergizmo.