Hasta La Gadget!

Back in 2013, there was a report on how Snapchat had turned down an offer by Facebook worth $3 billion to be acquired by the social media giant. Many were shocked because let’s face it, $3 billion is a lot of money, not to mention having it possibly integrated with Facebook could take Snapchat to ever greater heights. Back then it was not mentioned officially, but many speculated that the reason behind the turn down was because Snapchat thought that they were worth a lot more, and now according to an interview with Forbes, Snapchat’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, revealed why the company decided to turn down Facebook’s offer. (more…)

Snapchat CEO Reveals Why They Turned Down Facebook’s $3b Offer original content from Ubergizmo.

One of the perks of Snapchat is how the media you send over gets deleted after a short period of time, meaning that you can rest assured that anything private you send will not be permanent. Unfortunately it seems that it was recently that Snapchat has experienced a security breach whereby they have managed to get ahold of Snapchat’s 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers and have posted it as a downloadable database a few days ago, although at this time of posting the website appears to have been suspended. Ironically enough Snapchat was alerted to several exploits by a security group called Gibson Security, but released a statement in which they claimed to have safeguards in place.

As it stands the hackers have blurred out the last two digits of each user’s phone number and have indicated that they might be willing to turn the data over to the right party, although it seems that their motives were just to let raise public awareness. According to the anonymous group of hackers, “Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue, and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed. It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal. Security matters as much as user experience does. The company was too reluctant at patching the exploit until they knew it was too late and companies that we trust with our information should be more careful when dealing with it.”

Snapchat Hacked: 4.6 Million User Names And Phone Numbers Stolen original content from Ubergizmo.

Snapchat is a very popular product. It gained immense popularity soon after it launched, the idea was to let people share Snaps that self-destruct after a few seconds, time limit was decided by the sender. Snapchat is still very much like that, and it thrives more than ever on the goofy and raunchy antics of its users who know that the Snaps will not be saved by the app on the recipient’s device, unless they take a screenshot or a picture with a secondary camera. However, the latest update adds a new feature called “Replay” which gives recipients a second chance to view a video or photo sent through the service provided that the app hasn’t been closed and another Snap hasn’t been received.

Through Replay, users have the ability to view the last Snap that they received for a second time. While the feature doesn’t completely erode Snapchat’s model of self-destructing Snaps, it does contradict the very foundation of this service. This isn’t the first time that the company has gone down this road though, back in October it launched a new feature called Stories which lets users share Snaps publicly or with their friends that can be viewed for unlimited times in 24 hours, after which they are automatically deleted. Right now the Replay feature is buried inside the additional services menu and the app descriptions don’t exactly offer much detail about it. The updated Snapchat apps, which come with additional new features as well, are available now from App Store and Google Play Store.

Latest Snapchat Update Is All About Second Chances original content from Ubergizmo.

We have heard the rumors of how Facebook (and Google) had at one point in time attempted to acquire Snapchat, only to be turned down as Snapchat thought that they were worth more than what Facebook and Google were offering. We then heard the rumors that Instagram, owned by Facebook, was looking to introduce a private messaging feature to its services in a bid to compete with Snapchat. Kind of like if we can’t have you, we’ll compete with you. Now we’re not sure if this is a coincidence, but it seems that Emily White, a Facebook executive who was in charge of luring advertisers to Instagram, has left her position and will be taking up a new post at Snapchat as its COO.

Instagram did not seem too upset that she was leaving for what seemed like a potential rival, with Instagram’s CEO and co-founder, Kevin Systrom, saying, “I cannot thank Emily enough for her contributions to Instagram. She was tasked with getting the first ads.” White herself was quoted as saying, “It happened really quickly, but to have an actual COO role in one of many companies that is disrupting the communications arena is one I could not pass up.” Given that all these companies recently made the headlines, it’s hard to think of this as a mere coincidence.

Facebook Exec In Charge Of Instagram Advertising Leaves For Snapchat 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.