Hasta La Gadget!

This week if you happen to be perusing some photos on Facebook, you’ll find that the developers behind the layout section of Facebook’s pages have done a bang-up job of making them look all the nicer. What you’ll find is a grid of photos that’s variable in both size and shape, with squares being the dominant figure in the Facebook photo gallery. You’ll integration with this lovely view on your Timeline as well as behind the scenes, and much larger photos are included in the upgrade as well.

Facebook’s photo gallery view upgrade has been revealed to the world today and will be rolled out gradually across the entirety of the world’s Facebook population. You’ll be able to showcase the photos that you like especially, with those photos showing up largest. You can also still, of course, get rid of photos that you’re not so proud of or have recently become less fond of now that you’re in full timeline mode.

This roll-out comes as some of the last Facebook citizens are experiencing the change-over from the previous look of Facebook to Timeline. As this update with photos rolls out gradually, we cant help but wonder if this too will take months, not weeks, to come to everyone on the planet.

For those of you just starting with Facebook, you’ll have both Timeline and this “more beautiful” view of photos right from the start. If you have a problem with this view, be sure to head to the bottom of your Facebook feed to find the Help link to report any malfunctions. Otherwise enjoy, and head to our own timeline right here in this post to catch up with everything Timeline related. Facebook is ever changing, that’s for certain!

[via Facebook]

Facebook photos get massive overhaul is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple has been on a social networking kick lately, what with Twitter’s footings in iOS 5 and OS X Mountain Lion as well as Facebook’s upcoming presence in iOS 6. From what the New York Times hears, that fascination could become more of a fixation. The company has reportedly chatted with Twitter in past months about the possibility of investing money on the scale you’d normally expect from a later-stage venture capitalist: the newspaper is talking “hundreds of millions” of dollars based on Twitter being valued at more than $10 billion. Any such deal would be less about funding (Twitter purportedly has $600 million-plus in the bank) and more about getting cozy in a social world where Apple still has some learning to do. Apple might equally want to dissuade competitors from getting any ideas, we’d add. Neither side will comment, and the negotiations aren’t even supposed to be active at present. Regardless, that Apple might have even toyed with a social networking investment could represent a major change in tack for a company that’s not always known for playing well with others.

Filed under: Internet

NYT claims Apple has dallied with investing ‘hundreds of millions’ in Twitter originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 23:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook’s Recommendations Box sits passively on many websites, allowing us to engage or ignore as we see fit. But too much of the latter option has led to something slightly different: the new Recommendations Bar — a pop-up variant which, when integrated by your favorite page, plugs site-specific links based on your friends’ thumbs and shares. The Bar is similar to the in-house recommendation pop-ups we’re all familiar with, but adds a like button for posting the current page to your timeline. It shouts much louder than the Box, so it’s no surprise that in early tests the new plug-in produced a three-fold increase in click-throughs. In this case, privacy wasn’t an afterthought — Bar integration, like the Box, is at the site’s discretion and sharing pages is very much on your terms. Just try not to accidently hit that like button during your daily scan of Bieber’s homepage.

Filed under: Internet

Facebook’s new Recommendations Bar pops up, just wants to be liked originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Facebook let loose their financial second quarter of the year, earnings that is, with no less than $1.18 billion USD in revenue. Facebook’s advertisement revenue accounted for 84% of its total revenue, with ad revenue racking up to be $992 million for the quarter. This quarter has been a surprisingly positive one for the social network it seems despite the less than thrilling time they’ve had in the infancy of their public offering.

This quarter’s earnings call has Facebook beating the common analysis for the company which had them slightly lower than they actually appear to have come in at for revenue and share price. As Thompson Reuters poll of analysts notes, a predicted earnings of 12 cents a share on revenue of $1.1 billion was the common answer for this quarter – in the end, Facebook did indeed report a profit of 12 cents a share but on an adjusted basis with $1.18 billion in revenue.

“Our goal is to help every person stay connected and every product they use be a great social experience. That’s why we’re so focused on investing in our priorities of mobile, platform and social ads to help people have these experiences with their friends.” – Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg was indeed present on the earnings call that had shares jumping at the prospect, while the price of the social network was down on the market by 29% from the $38 USD price it started at in its IPO this May.

Facebook Q2 earnings beat the talk and shares rise in wake is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This morning you may very well have been experiencing some issues with Twitter, including a total cut of access starting at around 11 AM CST. This issue is known to Twitter and they have made it clear that the do have engineers working on the problem. For now, it might be best to give your fingers a rest and do some scrolling and some reading, because you’re not going to be able to Tweet for the time being.

This issue started up just about a half hour before this post was issued and Twitter users across the USA have experienced issues. We’ve had reports from users in the UK having down time as well, and we’re expecting more updates on the situation as Twitter’s back-end people fix up whatever’s currently amiss. This is not the only downed site of note this morning, with Google’s own Google Talk servers experiencing some mis-fires as well.

Check out our Twitter timeline below to track the project’s recent development and let us know if you, too, are experiencing problems in the comments section of this post!

The last time Twitter was “officially” down was approximately one month ago, then two days before that they had an issue with email as well.

Twitter down for the count – engineers at work on fix is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.