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Tag: users

  • Next Generation of Google Glass Aimed at Enterprise Users

    Next Generation of Google Glass Aimed at Enterprise Users

    ​When Google announced early this year that it would halt sales Relevant Products/Services of Google Glass, many observers were quick to label the computing-enabled eyewear experiment a failure.

    However, recently discovered Google documents filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indicate the company plans a reboot of Glass.

    The work depicts Jobs in his trademark black turtleneck jumper carrying an early model of his Apple computer and with a black bin bag slung over his shoulder.

    With today’s announcement, SpaceIL is the first of the 16 Lunar X Prize teams to book a ride off the planet. If the mission succeeds, it will be the first Israeli mission — as well as the first private spaceflight mission — to soft-land a vehicle on the lunar surface. Eran Privman, CEO of SpaceIL, claimed the group isn’t focused on the competition, but they are confident they can win. “I promise you once we land on the Moon, we’ll look around and see we are the first,” he said.

    Only three nations have ever landed a spacecraft intact on the Moon: the United States, Russia, and China. Many countries have slammed lunar orbiters or probes into the Moon to study its environment, but gently landing a spacecraft is trickier. The Moon is big enough to have a gravitational pull, but it doesn’t have an atmosphere to slow incoming objects. Spacecraft in lunar orbit must fire retro-rockets, very precisely, in the opposite direction of the Moon. That way they can slowly descend without slamming into the rock. It’s a delicate procedure that usually requires a lot of time and money, which is why only government agencies have been able to do it up until now.

    A trait carried over from their debut, luckily for us listeners

    Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances.

    SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket during launch. (SpaceX)
    SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket during launch. (SpaceX)

    That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man’s delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells.

    Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge.

    Lauren Mayberry’s lyrics touches on elements of heartbreak

    God the direful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge.

    jh123But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark. I knew the Indians would soon discover that they were on the wrong trail and that the search for me would be renewed in the right direction as soon as they located my tracks. I had gone but a short distance further when what seemed to be an excellent trail opened up around the face of a high cliff. The trail was level and quite broad and led upward and in the general direction I wished to go. The cliff arose for several hundred feet on my right, and on my left was an equal and nearly perpendicular drop to the bottom of a rocky ravine.

  • Facebook’s 1.55 Billion Users Is Pretty Legit

    Facebook’s 1.55 Billion Users Is Pretty Legit

    When Facebook says it has 1.55 billion monthly active users, the first thought you may have is holy hell, that’s an insane amount of users. In which case you’d be right.

    The second thought you may have is well, what do they mean by user?

    Now, what Facebook means by “user” is anyone who logged on to Facebook (via app or desktop) or Messenger directly. This wasn’t always the case.

    Josh Constine at TechCrunch spotted a change in Facebook’s 10-Q update to its SEC filing that makes its 1.55 billion MAU number even more impressive.

    Before, Facebook could technically count people to used Facebook to log in via third-party apps as “users”, even if they were a small part of the total pie.

    But now that’s not the case.

    Previously, Facebook said:

    We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, used our Messenger app (and is also a registered Facebook user), or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website or application that is integrated with Facebook, in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement.

    And here’s what it says now:

    We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or used our Messenger app (and is also a registered Facebook user), in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement.

    Facebook is just massive. The whole Facebook empire. Facebook proper leads the way with 1.55 billion MAUs, but WhatsApp isn’t far behind with 900 million. Messenger alone has 700 million, and Instagram topped 400 million.

    If you’re reading this, it’s highly unlikely that you’re not inside Facebook’s garden.

  • Facebook Has Over a Billion Daily Active Users on Average

    Facebook Has Over a Billion Daily Active Users on Average

    Facebook has officially topped 1.5 billion monthly active users, and for the first time reported over a billion daily active users on average.

    The company reported 1.55 MAUs as of September, 2015 and 1.01 billion average DAUs.

    This is an increase of 14 and 17 percent year-over-year, respectively.

    With $4.5 billion in revenue and $0.57 earnings per share, Facebook has beat estimates ($4.37 billion and $0.52 earnings per share).

    Stock close up $1.36 today, and is around 3 percent up in after-hours trading.

    “We had a good quarter and got a lot done,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “We’re focused on innovating and investing for the long term to serve our community and connect the entire world.”

    Screen Shot 2015-11-04 at 4.09.57 PM

    The first time Facebook ever hit one billion users logged on in a single day was late August.

  • Twitter, Which Can’t Attract New Users, Is Running World Series Ads

    Twitter, a company that’s basically had the same amount of users for the past year, is looking to improve its reach with a new TV ad running during the World Series.

    It’s called “Post Season”, and the 30-second spot highlights Twitter’s new Moments feature.

    Check it out:

    What do you think? If you’re not a Twitter user, does that entice you?

    It’s keen for Twitter to advertise its new Moments tab, as that’s the feature that the company hopes will get more people involved with the social network. Everyone knows what the base Twitter experience is like, and showcasing that is unlikely to bring in droves of new users.

    But showing how Moments, Twitter’s feed of curated stories it launched earlier this month, lets you follow the World Series action is probably the smartest way to advertise the service.

    As we reported on Tuesday, Twitter’s user growth is absolutely anemic.

    In July, Twitter’s then-temporary CEO Jack Dorsey reported 304 million monthly active users (excluding SMS Fast Followers). “We are not satisfied with our growth in audience,” he said.

    Now, permanent Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is reporting only 307 million MAUs for Q3. Twitter only gained three million new monthly active users over the last few months.

  • Twitter’s User Growth Is Absolutely Anemic

    Once again, Twitter’s earnings have beat expectations. And once again, Twitter is reporting absolutely anemic user growth.

    In July, Twitter’s then-temporary CEO Jack Dorsey reported 304 million monthly active users (excluding SMS Fast Followers). “We are not satisfied with our growth in audience,” he said.

    Now, permanent Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is reporting only 307 million MAUs for Q3.

    “We continued to see strong financial performance this quarter, as well as meaningful progress across our three areas of focus: ensuring more disciplined execution, simplifying our services, and better communicating the value of our platform,” said Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter. “We’ve simplified our roadmap and organization around a few big bets across Twitter, Periscope, and Vine that we believe represent our largest opportunities for growth.”

    The good news: Q3 revenue of $569 million, up 58% year-over-year, beating the previously forecast range of $545 million to $560 million.

    Here’s the bad news – user growth is stagnant.

    “Total average Monthly Active Users (MAUs) were 320 million for the third quarter, up 11% year-over-year, and compared to 316 million in the previous quarter. Excluding SMS Fast Followers, MAUs were 307 million for the third quarter, up 8% year-over-year, and compared to 304 million in the previous quarter. Mobile MAUs represented approximately 80% of total MAUs,” says Twitter.

    Twitter only gained three million new monthly active users over the last few months.

    The report sent stock plunging in after hours trading.

    Screen Shot 2015-10-27 at 4.28.15 PM

    Twitter continues to post solid revenue, and continues to be unable to grow its user base. Over the last year, shares of Twitter have fallen over 36%.

    Image via Thierry Ehrmann, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Instagram Tops 400M Users, Leaves Twitter in the Dust

    Instagram Tops 400M Users, Leaves Twitter in the Dust

    Instagram has just hit another user milestone.

    According to the company, it now has 400 million users. It hit 300 million back in December of 2014, so the photo-oriented social network took less than a year to snag the next 100 million users.

    “Our community has evolved to be even more global, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia,” says Instagram.

    “When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a distant dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram — helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.”

    We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong and is even more global, with 75 percent of our community living outside the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia. Instagrammers continue to capture incredible photos and videos from all corners of the earth (and even the solar system). We’ve seen the first surface image of Pluto and the Champions League celebrations, as well as striking locales like the white pools of Turkey and a Namibian desert ghost town. These are just a few of the more than 80 million photos per day shared on Instagram. Also, the most followed accounts that joined in the last 100 million include David Beckham from the UK (@davidbeckham), Caitlyn Jenner (@caitlynjenner) from the US, Indonesia's Raffi and Nagita (@raffinagita1717), German soccer player Toni Kroos (@toni.kr8s) and South Korea's T.O.P (@choi_seung_hyun_tttop). When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram — helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.

    A photo posted by Instagram (@instagram) on

    “The Instagram community now has 400 million people active monthly! Congrats to Kevin, Mike and the entire Instagram community on reaching another big milestone. Kevin and I celebrated the moment by going for a walk on our roof to talk about the future of Instagram. I’m excited for the journey ahead,” said Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

    Where does 400 million monthly active users put Instagram in the rankings? Well, it’s now blazed past Twitter, which only boasts about 316 million users (but that’s not the whole story, according to Twitter).

    Other Facebook property WhatsApp just hit 900 million users – though the metrics on messaging users are somewhat open for interpretation. Facebook, of course, still leads the pack with a whopping 1.49 billion MAUs.

    Instagram isn’t just growing its user base – its user base is spending significantly more time on Instagram. A recent Pew study found that 59% of users use the service every day – up from 49% last year.

    Of course, the next frontier for Instagram is true monetization. The company has been careful as to not overwhelm the userbase with ads – but more are coming, as it’s been slowly opening advertising up to more and more. And most are pretty pleased with the performance so far.

    Image via Mark Zuckerberg

  • Twitter Still Saying It’s Bigger Than Facebook, If You Measure It Right

    Twitter Still Saying It’s Bigger Than Facebook, If You Measure It Right

    Facebook, the undisputed king of social media, has over 1.5 billion monthly active users. It reported 1.49 billion MAUs at the end of June, so let’s just go ahead and say that by now the company has crossed that incredible milestone. That’s over 20% of the world’s population. Just last month, for the first time, Facebook saw one billion users log on in the same day. If you start looking into all the ways this could be inflated, it’s not that impressive. Actually, nevermind, it’s impressive no matter what.

    That point is, Facebook is huge. We all know this.

    But is Twitter actually bigger?

    No, it’s not. But it thinks it is.

    Here’s what the company’s CFO Anthony Noto had to say at a recent conference:

    “I often get the question from friends [who] are like, ‘You know Facebook has over a billion users,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, we have an audience, depending on how you measure it, that’s pretty comparable.’ But they only have that audience, they only have the 1.4 billion they report, there’s no other number. ​We have other audience numbers that no one talks about and when you add those up it’s a big number, in fact in some scenarios you could argue that it’s bigger.”

    Twitter boasts 316 million MAUs, according to its last earnings report. This includes what the company calls “SMS Fast Followers”, or users that access the service entirely via text. Twitter didn’t even count these users toward its MAU totals until Q2. So really, that true MAU number is a bit lower.

    Anyway, how can a company with a fifth of the users of Facebook claim to be bigger than Facebook?

    This isn’t really a new argument from Twitter. Ousted CEO Dick Costolo made the same one last fall during the company’s earnings call.

    “You should think about the size of our total audience as a series of geometrically eccentric circles,” he said, clearly meaning “concentric”.

    According to Costolo, and presumably Noto, Twitter’s audience should be seen as not just its logged-in MAUs, but as a combination of those as well as its logged-out users (which total over 500 million, according to Costolo). Not only that, but Twitter’s total audience should include al the people who see tweets embedded in the articles they read online.

    Yes, tweets see a lot of eyes. But the main problem is that logged-out users and people who see tweets in random articles don’t see ads. Of Facebook’s 1.5 billion monthly active users, all of them are signed up and seeing ads.

    According to Bloomberg, “Noto said he understands that investors don’t focus on Twitter’s wider audience because the company isn’t making money off it. But with new initiatives like Project Lightning, which will make it possible for people not logged into Twitter to tune into events, Twitter could start to make those broader numbers more meaningful.”

    Wall Street has been concerned with Twitter’s anemic user growth for a long time. Last month, the company’s stock fell below its IPO price for the first time. I’m not sure this “hidden audience” argument is going to fool anybody.

    Image via Andreas Eldh, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Y’all Need to Get Off Facebook

    Y’all Need to Get Off Facebook

    Y’all need to get off Facebook.

    “We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day. On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family,” reports Mark Zuckerberg.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-27 at 4.46.43 PM

    Go make some cookies or something. No, not the pre-made store-bought ones you just tear off and put on a sheet pan. Like some real, serious cookies.

    Image via mkhmarketing, Flickr Creative Commons

  • More People Are Becoming Everyday Instagrammers

    Instagram has seen a significant jump in user engagement over the past year, according to a new study from Pew.

    In September of 2014, 49% of Instagram users reported using the site every day.

    Now, that number has climbed to 59%.

    In fact, over three-quarters of Instagram users reported checking their feeds at least once a week.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 9.55.12 AM

    As you can see, Facebook users are still the most-engaged, with 70% reporting daily use.

    But – “Facebook continues to have the most engaged users – 70% log on daily, including 43% who do so several times a day. This overall proportion of daily users, however, is unchanged from the 70% who used Facebook daily in 2014,” says Pew.

    Instagram, on the other hand, increased 10% in daily engagement over the past year.

    Instagram use in general is on the rise as well – more than doubling since Pew began tracking this in 2012. Overall use has grown 3% since last fall.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 9.56.48 AM

    If you’re a marketer, all the signs keep pointing to Instagram getting harder and harder to ignore.

  • Instagram Has a Bot Problem, Despite ‘Purge’, Say Researchers

    After looking at over 10.2 million accounts and studying the behavior of 20,000 purchased fake accounts, some Italian researchers have concluded that Instagram still has a bot problem.

    How bad is it? According to security researcher Andrea Stroppa, it’s not great. He says that up to 8 percent of Instagram’s over 300 million users are bots.

    This, despite a concerted effort on Instagram’s part to purge such accounts from the network.

    This past December, Instagram announced an effort to get rid of “fake and spammy accounts.”

    “As more people join, keeping Instagram authentic is critical—it’s a place where real people share real moments. We’re committed to doing everything possible to keep Instagram free from the fake and spammy accounts that plague much of the web, and that’s why we’re finishing up some important work that began earlier this year. We’ve been deactivating spammy accounts from Instagram on an ongoing basis to improve your experience. As part of this effort, we will be deleting these accounts forever, so they will no longer be included in follower counts. This means that some of you will see a change in your follower count,” said Instagram at the time.

    The purge hit many celebrity accounts the hardest, with popular users like Beyonce and Kim Kardashian losing up to 7% of their followers.

    “Despite that last December purge and new ‘countermeasures’ to curb this trend, there is still a lack of transparency about internal data and very few analysis on the actual presence of spam­bots, especially on Instagram. Now that ‘anybody can advertise on the platform,’ and the company is set to ‘become a real business,’ it is crucial to create a level playing field for everybody – and also to show more respect for users that flock social media platforms,” reads the report.

    Social networks with bot problems could also, unsurprisingly, face ad problems. Marketers want to know that they are paying for real eyes, not a bot’s. That’s why you’ve seen social networks like Facebook and Twitter downplay their fake account problems for some time.

    The research also found that 19.8 percent of the accounts analyzed never posted, 10% only posted once in a month, about half of the accounts had fewer than five posts.

    The report claims that 30% of users are “inactive”, meaning one or zero posts in a month. Instagram disputes this, saying “active” means logging on. Instagram has a point here, as plenty of users like looking at Instagram without actually posting themselves.

    Just like Facebook, Instagram uses automated and manual measures to curb the bot problem. But as long as it’s super easy (and it most certainly is) to buy and sell fake accounts and likes, this will continue to be a problem.

  • Spotify Hits 20M Paid Users, Defends Artist Payouts

    Spotify has a message for Apple and its new Apple Music venture – you’re starting well in the hole.

    The streaming music company has just announced it has hit 20 million paid subscribers, and 75 million total active users (meaning 55 million free tier users).

    Year-over-year, that’s a 100 percent increase in paid users. In May of 2014, Spotify reported 10 million paid subscribers and 40 million total active users. In January, those numbers were 15 million and 60 million, respectively.

    The new figures mean something significant for Spotify – it’s the first time the ratio of paid subs vs total subs has increased in about two years.

    In a blog post, Spotify also pushed back at claims that it’s bad for artists. According to the company, it paid out over $300 million in royalties in the first three months of 2015.

    “More people listening on Spotify means more payouts to the creators of the music you love. As we grow, the amount of royalties we pay out to artists, songwriters and rights holders continues to climb faster than ever. We have now paid more than $3 billion USD in royalties, including more than $300 million in the first three months of 2015 alone. That’s good for music, good for music fans … and good for music makers,” says the company.

    Some would disagree.

    Still, Spotify says that payouts will dramatically increase over the next year – given its uptick in paid subscribers.

    Spotify has also closed a new round of funding that will put $526 million into its pockets, according to the Wall Street Journal. This will surely help the company battle the newly-announced Apple Music.

    Apple Music may have already forced Spotify’s hand a bit.

    While subscriber growth – especially the paid kind – is wonderful for Spotify, it’s not all sunshine and roses. As Peter Kafka at Re/code points out, “the flip side of Spotify’s user growth is that its losses continue to increase. The company says that in 2014 it lost $197 million, up 289 percent from a $68 million loss in 2013. In the same period, Spotify’s revenue was up 45 percent, to $1.3 billion.”

    Image via Spotify, Facebook

  • Twitter Tops 300M Users as Earnings Fall Short

    Twitter Tops 300M Users as Earnings Fall Short

    Twitter has just reported its Q1 2015 earnings, and its stock price is taking a huge hit.

    The company reported $436 million in revenue, far short of the $456 million analysts projected. Despite falling short, it’s still a 74% year-over-year increase.

    “While we exceeded our EBITDA target for the first quarter, revenue growth fell slightly short of our expectations due to lower-than-expected contribution from some of our newer direct response products,” said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. “It is still early days for these products, and we have a strong pipeline that we believe will drive increased value for direct response advertisers in the future. We remain confident in our strategy and in Twitter’s long-term opportunity, and our focus remains on creating sustainable shareholder value by executing against our three priorities: strengthening the core, reducing barriers to consumption and delivering new apps and services.”

    Twitter did top a big user milestone, however. The company reported 302 million monthly active users, up 18% year-over-year and up from 288 million the previous quarter. Still, that’s pretty slow MAU growth.

    Here are some more revenue specifics:

    Advertising revenue totaled $388 million, an increase of 72% year-over-year. Excluding the impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates, advertising revenue would have increased 78%; Mobile advertising revenue was 89% of total advertising revenue; Data licensing and other revenue totaled $48 million, an increase of 95% year-over-year; International revenue totaled $147 million, an increase of 109% year-over-year; International revenue was 34% of total revenue.

    Twitter is projecting second quarter revenues of $470 million to $485 million, which according to Bloomberg is well below analysts’ projections of $538 million.

    Twitter’s stock is crashing as of a result.

    The stock began to plunge before the markets closed as the company’s disappointing earnings report leaked early. It wasn’t a hack or anything, just someone at Twitter posting the earnings a bit prematurely. The company that spilled the beans just grabbed them from Twitter’s investor relations site:

    Twitter also announced it has acquired marketing company TellApart.

    For Twitter’s full earnings, head here.

  • 936 Million Users Get on Facebook at Least Once a Day

    Facebook just reported its first quarter earnings, and the company says its daily active users are approaching a billion.

    According to Facebook, 936 million users check the site at least once every day – 798 million do so on mobile. If you want to know just how much Facebook is shifting to a mobile platform, that figure is a 31% year-over-year increase.

    Facebook’s monthly active users count grew to 1.44 billion, a 13% year-over-year increase.

    Of course, Facebook (like any social network), battles fake and duplicate users – so the count isn’t 100% accurate. But in terms of actual accounts logging on every day, Facebook is approaching a billion.

    As far as the financials go, Facebook reported first quarter 2015 revenues of $3.54 billion, a 42% year-over-year increase.

    “Revenue from advertising was $3.32 billion, a 46% increase from the same quarter last year. Excluding the impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates, revenue from advertising would have increased by 55%. Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 73% of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2015, up from approximately 59% of advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2014. Payments and other fees revenue was $226 million, a 5% decrease from the same quarter last year,” says Facebook.

    Facebook shares fell slightly on the report, as it’s the first time the company has come in light on revenue, according to CNBC. Analysts predicted revenues of $3.56 billion.

    Facebook did post earnings of $0.42 per share, topping the analysts’ guess of $0.40.

    “This was a strong start to the year,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “We continue to focus on serving our community and connecting the world.”

  • WhatsApp on Pace to Hit 1 Billion Users by Year’s End

    If WhatsApp keeps up its recent pace of user growth, the messaging app will have a billion monthly active users by the end of 2015.

    CEO Jan Koum recently announced the app has crossed the 800 million MAU mark.

    This makes WhatsApp the most popular messaging app in the world, with nearly 200 million more users than the messaging platform of its parent company, Facebook.

    WhatsApp hit 600 million MAUs back in August of 2014, and then crossed the 700 million threshold in January of this year. Keeping that pace, WhatsApp should have over a billion MAUs by year’s end.

    WhatsApp – now serving 800,000,000 monthly active users. Reminder for the press out there: active and registered users are not the same thing 🙂

    Posted by Jan Koum on Friday, April 17, 2015

    Facebook’s $22 billion acquisition of WhatsApp officially closed last October – after the Federal Trade Commission approved the deal in April and the EU commission gave it the go-ahead in late September.

    Facebook has kind of been sitting on WhatsApp, letting it grow its user base before making any major changes to it. Facebook isn’t going to put ads all over WhatsApp – yet.

    Last October, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook has no immediate plans to further monetize WhatsApp.

    I say “further” monetize WhatsApp because technically, the company does have a subscription structure. WhatsApp costs $0.99 a year, but only after the first year.

    But like another Facebook-owned company, Instagram, WhatsApp is moving slowly when it comes to Facebook meddling.

  • Twitter.com Is Now Useful to Those Who Don’t Use Twitter

    Twitter.com Is Now Useful to Those Who Don’t Use Twitter

    If you don’t “use” Twitter (and by that I mean tweet, retweet, favorite, and follow people) or had no intention of signing up, visiting Twitter.com served no purpose. Until now.

    Twitter.com is now useful for people who don’t really want to jump headfirst into the whole Twitter experience. Of course, Twitter hopes that its homepage redesign will lure new users – but even if you have no desire to join Twitter, you can still check out tweets from news outlets, comedians, athletes, musicians, actors, and more directly from the homepage. What used to simply feature a signup/sign-in box now offers categories for logged-out users to browse.

    “Every month, hundreds of millions of people come to Twitter to see what’s happening in the world. After all, it’s often the best place to turn to for information and commentary on live events and breaking news,” says Twitter. “People who log in get the full experience: they can browse the complete catalog of public Tweets, Tweet themselves or engage with Tweets they see. Today, we’re making a big change for the many millions of people who visit every month who don’t log in, but still want to know what’s happening.”

    Twitter.com now features a bunch of categories, which when clicked open curated timelines featuring popular users in said category. For instance, clicking on the “Celebrity chefs & personalities” box opens up a stream featuring tweets from the likes of Rachel Ray, Ted Allen, Emeril Lagasse, and Guy Fieri. Clicking on the “hip hop/rap artists” tab pulls up tweets from Nicki Minaj, Pharrell, Ice Cube, Pusha T, and more.

    Twitter.com currently sports 10 broad categories – news, sports, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, music, humor & novelty, arts & culture, fashion & style, and government & nonprofits. Each category has various sub-categories, for instance “celebrity news, TV shows and stars, and Video games & gamers” inside the Entertainment category.

    The new Twitter.com should be live for users in the US, and Twitter says it wants to expand it internationally over time.

  • Twitter Co-Founder Doesn’t Give a Sh-t About Instagram’s User Metrics

    Twitter co-founder and board member Evan Williams thinks it’s stupid to put so much stock in user metrics.

    Well, he put it more bluntly.

    Fortune’s Erin Griffith has the quote of the week – at least from a tech leader. No minced words to be found here.

    It’s a question of breadth versus depth. Why is users the only thing we talk about? The crazy thing: Facebook has done an amazing job of establishing that as the metric for Wall Street. No one ever talks about, ‘What is a [monthly active user]?’ I believe it’s the case that if you use Facebook Connect—if you use an app that you logged into with Facebook Connect—you’re considered a Facebook user whether or not you ever launched the Facebook app or went to Facebook.com. So what does that mean? It’s become so abstract to be meaningless. Something you did caused some data in their servers to be recorded for the month. So I think we’re on the wrong path.

    If you think about the impact Twitter has on the world versus Instagram, it’s pretty significant. It’s at least apples to oranges. Twitter is what we wanted it to be. It’s this realtime information network where everything in the world that happens on Twitter—important stuff breaks on Twitter and world leaders have conversations on Twitter. If that’s happening, I frankly don’t give a shit if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures.

    The whole reason Williams is expressing his lacks-of-shits-given opinion is that Fortune asked him about the recent news that Instagram has surpassed 300 million MAUs. Twitter, according to their last report, has just under that number.

    In a way, he’s right. There’s no way that you can say that Instagram is affecting the global dialogue as much as Twitter. But it should also be pointed out that while he doesn’t give a shit about the number of people looking at pretty pictures on Instagram, people with money do.

    What do you think?

    Image via Evan Williams, Twitter

  • Instagram Will Finally Verify Users as It Tops 300 Million

    Instagram has just announced a significant milestone – 300 million users. The company says that its user base now shares over 70 million photos and videos every day and CEO Kevin Systrom says that 70 percent is international.

    Alongside this milestone announcement, Instagram is also unveiling a few changes to the app.

    First off, the company is finally making the long-overdue move to start verifying users. The verification will come in the form of blue badges beside usernames, and will let you know that the account you’re following is the actual account of the celebrity or brand in question. Twitter, Facebook, and even Google+ have all had verification for some time now – so it’s about time Instagram jumped on board.

    And as is the deal with those other social networks, Instagram is not taking verification requests. “Right now, only some public figures, celebrities and brands have verified badges. It’s not currently possible to request a verified badge,” says the company.

    Also, as Facebook and Twitter have done in the past, Instagram is making a move to permanently delete fake and spam accounts. According to the company, your follower count may suffer because of this move – but it shouldn’t be a huge deal.

    Finally, as more people join, keeping Instagram authentic is critical—it’s a place where real people share real moments. We’re committed to doing everything possible to keep Instagram free from the fake and spammy accounts that plague much of the web, and that’s why we’re finishing up some important work that began earlier this year.

    We’ve been deactivating spammy accounts from Instagram on an ongoing basis to improve your experience. As part of this effort, we will be deleting these accounts forever, so they will no longer be included in follower counts. This means that some of you will see a change in your follower count.

    Most of you won’t see any impact. If you’re one of those who will see a correction, you will receive a notification in the app directing you to additional information.

    Instagram’s impressive user growth comes as the company is making a very serious push to become the next big advertising space.

  • Spotify Boasts 40M Users, 10M Who Pay for It

    Spotify Boasts 40M Users, 10M Who Pay for It

    Do you use Spotify? If you do, you’re now part of a 40 million member-strong community.

    As companies are wont to do, Spotify has just released new user numbers as they hit a new milestone. The streaming music leader now boasts over 40 million active users, 10 million of which are paying subscribers.

    For reference, Spotify had about 24 million active users and 6 million paying subscribers a year ago. And a year before that, it was about 20 million to 5 million. It appears that Spotify’s consistent, if nothing else, with their paying subscriber to regular old free user ratio.

    The past year has seen a period of growth for the steaming music arena. Spotify faces competition from the likes of Rdio, Deezer, and even Pandora radio. Some of those services have made big steps to grab more of the market share, for instance the former going free (ad-supported) on the web earlier this year.

    Spotify has also made some significant moves. In December of last year, they launched free mobile streaming (with some restrictions, of course). They also got rid of some of the streaming time limits that had been in place in their international markets.

    In March, the company began to offer a student discount–a half-price period for college kids to boost premium signups. They’ve also beefed up their streaming offerings by adding longtime holdouts like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

    “We’ve had an amazing year, growing from 20 markets to 56 as people from around the world embrace streaming music. 10 million subscribers is an important milestone for both Spotify and the entire music industry. We’re widening our lead in the digital music space and will continue to focus on getting everyone in the world to listen to more music,” said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

    These are some impressive user numbers, and they prove that Spotify is truly the king of the hill right now. But Spotify will need more than active user totals if and when they go public, which rumors point to as a possibility for this fall.

    Image via Björn Olsson, Flickr

  • Twitter Tests Mute Button for When You’re Just Tired of Someone’s Crap

    Sometimes, you don’t really want to unfollow someone, you just don’t want to see their bullshit in your feed for a while. If you’ve ever found yourself in that situation, you’ll be happy to learn that it appears Twitter is testing a mute function in their official app.

    Users of services like Tweetdeck have been able to mute people, hashtags, or certain phrases for a while now. It’s a popular feature. Now, it looks like Twitter is toying with the idea in their official app. Some Twitter users started seeing a mute option pop up next to their block or report options in their iOS apps a couple of days ago.

    Obviously, people are confused. If you mute a user, you won’t see tweets from them of receive notifications about them. Muted users also won’t know that they’ve been muted. It’s a more temporary (and less harsh) way to tune someone out without unfollowing or blocking them.

    Not all users currently have this option, so it’s obviously still in testing mode. But I expect this one to stick around, as it’s a pretty useful feature that the official Twitter app has lacked for too long.

    Image via Thinkstock, h/t TNW

  • Foursquare Touts 45M Users, $35M in New Funding

    It’s been a big, transformative year for location-focused app Foursquare. For the past year, Foursquare has been making both incremental and monumental shifts in the core functionality of the app, taking it from just another check-in game to a real local search and discovery platform – one that can truly compete with the likes of Yelp, Google Places, and more in the crowded field.

    And in a recent blog post from CEO Dennis Crowley, we learn two interesting numbers to close out Foursquare’s year. First, Crowley says that the service has climbed to 45 million users (up from 40 million a few months ago). Second, Foursquare has just secured $35 million in Series D funding.

    “To help us keep building our vision, we’re also happy today to announce that two new firms are investing $35 million in a Series D fundraise in Foursquare – DFJ Growth and Capital Group (via their SMALLCAP World Fund). In addition, Barry Schuler, Managing Director of DFJ Growth and former CEO of AOL, will join our board. This investment means that we can build our vision even faster. And that you guys are going to see a lot more from our team,” says Crowley.

    The company’s last round of funding came back in April when Silver Lake Waterman, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures pumped $41 million into it.

    Other numbers? Foursquare has seen 40 million tips and over 5 billion check-ins. Back at the beginning of the year, Foursquare could only tout 3 billion check-ins.

    Like I said before, there were a bunch of incremental changes that Foursquare made over the course of the year that rounded out their recommendation engine – but one of the major changes came in April when Foursquare released version 6.0, which provided the first true local search a recommendation experience that the service had ever offered.

    Another came more recently when Foursquare began pushing real-time, passive recommendations to all users with version 7.0. Crowley says he’s most proud of this.

    And it’s clear that he’s optimistic about the new year.

  • Myspace Touts Modest Gains, Up 12 Million Users from June Relaunch

    After a nearly six-month beta period, Myspace finally launched its new music-centric rebrand back in June. It launched as a decidedly new service – unlike any version of Myspace that’s ever been seen.

    And now, the company is announcing some stats about user growth post relaunch.

    According to Myspace, the site has grown from 24 million user pre-launch to 36 million users in roughly four months. And those users are trending toward the younger side – with 70% of the user base clocking in at under 35 years old.

    Myspace credits its rebound to its original programming and new partnerships with artists and content producers:

    Myspace attributes much of this early success to its decision to build out its content offering, partnering with premiere outlets, artists, and brands to develop and launch multiple franchises and a full slate of programming, including CRWN Presented by Myspace (Drake, Macklemore), Live At The Log Cabin Series (Run The Jewels, The 1975), and Music Video Collaborations With Artists We Like (TV On The Radio).

    In addition to original programming, Myspace has also invested in developing high-production-quality live streams, leveraging its platform to bring physical experiences to audiences everywhere. Spanning events, concerts, and traditional television programming, live streams, such as Bud Light 50/50/1, X-Games Music, and the Jimmy Kimmel Live Stream program, have been a key driver in engaging new audiences on Myspace.

    Despite this growth, it’s going to be a long road back for the once-dominant social network. The numbers speak for themselves. In the two weeks following New Myspace’s launch out of beta, the service grew by 7 million users. And in the past three months, that growth has slowed to just 5 million users.

    Sure, growth is growth – but those aren’t the most promising numbers. It’s true that Myspace has turned its focus to music, even more so that being a true social network – it’s kind of a hybrid. But with some many streaming music option and so many social networking options, is Myspace destined to once again get lost in the flood? Time will tell, but the company does seem happy to be at least moving in the right direction – even if that movement is a bit slow.