Facebook’s Status Box Gets More Personal, Asks You “What’s Going On?” By Name

Yahoo Unveils ‘Awesome’ New Look for Flickr

on May 20, 2013

Yahoo has announced a brand new Flickr experience for the desktop and its Android users. Unveiled at a press event in New York City Monday, the new look aims to breathe new life into the once struggling brand. It's move is so big, in fact, a terabyte of storage is coming to Flickr. This is enough room for each person take 537,731 photos and more than 2,000 in each country. "You can take all the pictures ever taken and upload them to Flickr... and there would [still be room]," Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said. Mayer emphasized event had nothing to do with the Tumblr acquisition announced Monday morning Read more.. Read more »

Last Call For Pitch Applications To The Austin Meetup + Pitch-Off. Also, Get Tickets Here!

on May 20, 2013

10 days, people! TechCrunch invades Austin in just ten days from now, with our legendary Meetup + Pitch-off series. The magic started in New York this year, with a hugely successful pitch-off, an amazing turn-out and lots of fun memories. So we’re heading out on the open road with the event, which includes a networking meetup as well as a 60-second pitch-off competition with awesome prizes. Over the course of the year, we’ll be hitting up Boston, San Diego, and Seattle, but the first stop on our journey is in the great state of Texas. Austin, are you ready? The Austin Meetup + Pitch-Off will be held at The Stage On Sixth promptly at 6pm on May 30, and will come to a close around 10pm Read more »

Twitter Pushes Android App Update To Fix The “Me” Tab Bug

on April 8, 2013

Over the weekend, we told you about an issue with Twitter’s Android update from last Wednesday. The issue centered around the “Me” tab not loading properly, just giving you a spinning wheel on a white screen. Users took to Twitter to complain about the bug, saying that they couldn’t access important features on the screen, like reading DMs and switching accounts. You could search for yourself and tap on your avatar to find your way to your profile, but that was a hack more than anything else. Most users just thought they had a bad connection and waited for the screen to load…forever. Today, the company released an update to the app that fixes the bug: v4.0.1 - Fixes “Me” tab loading issues - Improved UI on Honeycomb devices I’ve confirmed with multiple people who were having the problem that this update does indeed fix the issue, and the “Me” tab is now loading quickly. It didn’t seem to affect every Android device, but the folks it did affect have been pretty loud about it since last Wednesday. Here’s a tweet from just a few hours ago: https://twitter.com/Sumz__ox/status/321342582221328384 Consider the bug squashed. Read more »

Iterations: Much Ado About Yahoo!

on March 2, 2013

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch . You can follow him on Twitter at @semil . Over the past few weeks, I’ve been genuinely surprised by the depth and reach of the reaction to any moves made by Yahoo! As someone who hasn’t been around the this place for too long, my sense is Yahoo!, despite its recent history of countless missteps, is still vitally important to the cultural memory of Silicon Valley. And, as a result, the moves its new CEO makes becomes the subject of ridiculously intense, global scrutiny, armchair speculation and analysis, and a deafening level of peanut gallery twitter blabber devoid of any reason or context. Let’s *briefly* recap the multiple serious issues facing Yahoo up to mid-2012. There were years of board mismanagement. Musical chairs in the CEO’s office Read more »

CEO Tim Cook Confirms First Store In Turkey Amidst Big International Retail Push

on February 12, 2013

Toward the end of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s keynote appearance today at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, he dedicated a good-sized monologue to the state of Apple’s retail operation, where he confirmed a new store in Turkey and more international growth; he noted that stores have become so important in their communities that you can’t really call them stores anymore; and (joked?) that walking into one is akin to taking a Prozac. Apple retail stores, he said, have gone beyond being sales hubs. A store “acts as a gathering place, which has an important role in the community” for youth groups, musicians and more. “I’m not even sure if ‘store’ is the right word any more,” he said. “They have taken on a much bigger role. They are the face of Apple Read more »

Gmail’s New Compose View Now Gives You The Ability To Add Labels And Stars

on January 9, 2013

If you haven’t jumped ship on using Gmail’s desktop app, you might be happy to know that its recently released compose view has gotten a few new handy features. Today, the team announced that you can now add labels and stars while you’re composing a message, rather than waiting until you actually send it. This isn’t really all that earth-shattering, but it’s extremely handy, much like the compose screen itself. By clicking the “More options” menu in the bottom right, you can hover over label and add the appropriate one. Why is this handy? Well, when you’re writing emails, you should be able to do everything you need to do before you click send. That way, you can go on your merry way and get to the next…email Read more »

Instagram Sees Drop Of 4M Daily Facebook Connected Users Over Christmas, But TOS Kerfuffle May Not Be To Blame

on December 28, 2012

Sure, it’s not unlike the New York Post to be sensationalist . But in this case it misinterpreted data to suggest Instagram was hit harder by backlash to its terms of service changes than it actually was. Combined with it being a quiet-ish holiday news week, I am taking a story it published today on a 25 percent drop in Instagram users with a little more than a grain of salt. Basically, it notes that figures from AppData demonstrate that Instagram lost 4 million daily active users — nearly a 25 percent drop to 12.4 million from 16.4 million — between December 19 and December 26. And as the NYP terms it, people are walking away in a “rage against rules.” The Post blames the decline on Instagram’s new, more commercially-minded terms of service — which it rolled back on December 21, i.e., in the middle of its DAU plummet, in response to public outcry. Now, I should point out that I personally really like Instagram, both as a way to post my own pictures, but also as a way of viewing those posted by others. But I’m no apologist, either. That being said, here are some further observations that give a slightly bigger picture about what is going on: – Yes, AppData notes that Instagram lost 4 million DAUs over the holiday period, as based on Facebook logins via the app. But it’s also seen some gains (according to the same data): weekly active users in that period are up by 1 million (currently at 28.5 million), and monthly active users are up by 1.1 million (currently at 43 million). DAUs also seem to be up a bit since Christmas, and they are now down by only 3.5 million over the last seven days. Read more »

Facebook’s Status Box Gets More Personal, Asks You “What’s Going On?” By Name

on December 21, 2012

Here’s something quite interesting coming from Facebook on a day when it launched its SnapChat competitor, “Poke.” It seems like the company is testing out a design that is a bit more…personal. We’re familiar with the prompts within the status box when we log into Facebook and sit on our news feed. Today, I noticed something different. It asked me, by name, what was going on. We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment, but these are the types of design and user experience tests that we see in the wild all of the time. Read more »