Hasta La Gadget!

Get some time in with the Twitter‘s Favorite button now, because it may not long before it goes the way of the dinosaurs. According to The Next Web, Twitter is currently testing two new buttons – “Like” and “Star” – with a small group of users. It appears that these new buttons might be planned as a replacement for the Favorite button, which has been around since 2008.

Twitter has yet to make an official announcement on these new buttons, which makes it hard to tell if this is just as simple a test or a slow roll out. It seems that Like and Star are two different words for the same action, so perhaps Twitter is testing both to see which one users prefer most? In any case, they appear to do essentially the same thing as the Favorite button, adding tweets you like to a list that you can look back at later.

The Next Web tried to get in touch with Twitter, but naturally the social network had nothing to say about the Like and Star buttons being spotted in the wild. If Twitter does decide to implement new Like or Star buttons in place of the Favorite button, you can bet there will be some blow back from users, as the Favorite button has become an integral part of the site for many users since its introduction.

It’s still difficult to say what the plan is for these new buttons, though. Perhaps they’ll be implemented alongside the Favorite button instead of in place of it? At this point, your guess is as good as ours, so we’ll just have to sit back and wait for Twitter to make a statement on the issue. Are you seeing Like or Star buttons popping up on your Twitter page?

Twitter reportedly testing new “Like” and “Star” buttons is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The bloom is slightly off the rose for Facebook. After a banner first post-IPO quarter, it’s recording a net loss in its fiscal third quarter of $59 million despite its revenue climbing to $1.26 billion — a big swing that the company is blaming on payroll tax tweaks and income taxes, which becomes clearer when you learn that the company posted a $311 million profit before factoring in standard accounting practices. Facebook hasn’t said exactly what had the biggest impact, although its closing the Instagram deal wouldn’t have helped matters. Still, the company isn’t glum about its prospects: following an earlier mention of the milestone by founder Mark Zuckerberg, the earnings report touts that there are over 1.01 billion active Facebook users who check in at least once a month, over 604 million of which were mobile. Between a reworked iOS app, a freshened Facebook Messenger and new ad-friendly SDKs, the social network is bracing for a potential bonanza ahead.

Continue reading Facebook posts $59 million net loss in fiscal Q3, touts 1.01 billion active users

Filed under: Internet, Facebook

Facebook posts $59 million net loss in fiscal Q3, touts 1.01 billion active users originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While Apple was busy introducing new devices and updating its existing ones this morning, Facebook game creator Zynga was apparently relieving itself of several studios worth of employees. Several reports on Twitter indicate that Zynga is cutting its Boston, Austin, and Chicago studios; our colleagues at Joystiq spoke with a Zynga Austin employee who confirmed at least two of his location’s teams were let go (The Ville and Zynga Bingo teams). Further reports on The Verge indicate that “more than 100” employees were let go as a result of the Austin layoffs. TechCrunch is reporting the full shut down of Zynga’s Boston studio, which was apparently working on an unannounced title before being closed. The company’s San Francisco location — its headquarters — has yet to be affected, nor have employees heard anything from upper management.

Notoriously, Austin-developed The Ville is the root of an ongoing lawsuit between game publishing giant Electronic Arts, wherein EA alleges The Ville too closely resembles its own Facebook game, The Sims Social. Beyond the lawsuit, Zynga’s faced declining stock value since its IPO, and the $200 million purchase of Draw Something developer OMGPOP remains a sticking point for investors. The company is slated to release its quarterly earnings tomorrow, which are expected to be down for another quarter. We reached out to the company for comment, but have yet to hear back as of publishing.

Update: Zynga confirmed layoffs at its Austin studio, as well as outlining closures at its Boston, Japan, and UK locations. A full letter from CEO Mark Pincus to employees was released by Zynga detailing the layoffs and closures, which we’ve added below. The company also says it’s closing 13 of its games, and “significantly reducing” its investment in The Ville.

Continue reading Zynga shutters Boston, UK and Japan studios, lays off 5% of full-time staff

Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Software

Zynga shutters Boston, UK and Japan studios, lays off 5% of full-time staff originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As polished and functional as something might be in its preview days, a piece of work isn’t done until it is done, and Microsoft’s Office Web Apps have finally reached that point. Back in July, Redmond piped out preview versions of OWA and Office 365, focusing on adding tablet-friendly touch controls. Feedback from over 750,000 users and Windows 8’s impending deadline helped shaped today’s release, readying it for Microsoft’s latest operating system, IE10 and iOS 6. A pair of posts on the Office Web Apps Blog detail the new face of Office, including an improved authoring experience, better support for multi-user collaboration, faster performance and more. Read it for yourself at the source link below, or just log into Skydrive and get to work.

Filed under: Tablets, Internet, Software, Microsoft

New Office Web Apps get finalized for SkyDrive, Outlook originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 01:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This Monday it became apparent that Amazon’s cloud services were knocked out in several sectors, this resulting in downtime for major websites and environments such as Reddit, Github, Minecraft, and Flipboard. Amazon has previously had similar events to these happen to their servers, with overheating and automatic shutdowns being blamed in those cases – now we’ve not quite got an official statement from the company even after a significant chunk of the day has passed. In other words – Reddit is down, it’s not just you.

Today’s outage appears to be centered around their EC2 operations with Amazon’s status for the area currently flipped to “performance issues.” This status does not include official word from Amazon as of yet, but the cards do not lie. The EC2 status as listed by Amazon’s own Amazon Web Services status listing have gone from “degraded performance” at 10:30 AM PDT to “new launches for EBS backed instances are failing” closer to 11:30 AM PDT.

You can watch the updates yourself at Amazon’s Web Services update page while you wait for the web giants to come back – meanwhile we’ll be following along and updating you from SlashGear here as it happens as well. The current statuses surrounding North America, especially in the Eastern region of the states, let us know that Amazon is not only seeing outages in several areas, but that re-launching said services is currently a no-go.

If you have a peek at Outage Analyzer you’ll find that they’ve made it clear that Amazon’s outages have likely affected nearly 100 domains across North America up through Canada and Alaska as well as through the UK and surrounding countries. The outage remains open through the 3PM CST hour. This list of downed sites continues to grow with Airbnb, Heroku, and Netflix being added here right before this post is published – stay tuned!

UPDATE: 3:10 PM CST – Affected sites list grows – Pinterest, FastCompany, FourSquare added. Failures appear sporadic as some sites appear to be up and running intermittently while others remain down for the count.

UPDATE: 4:19 PM CST – Several sites (including Reddit) appear to be coming back up for air now here and there – of course heavy loads are expected due to the mass amounts of cat pictures that were waiting to be uploaded and viewed.

Reddit, Netflix, Flipboard taken down in Amazon cloud failure [UPDATES] is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.