Snapchat Lets You Add People Via QR Snaptags Thanks To Secret Scan.me Acquisition

Leaked emails from the Sony hack revealed Snapchat quietly acquired a QR code startup called Scan.me late last year, and now we know why. Yesterday alongside Discover, Snapchat launched a new feature called Snaptags that creates a unique QR code for every Snapchat user. When

Twitter users can soon post 30-second videos, send group messages

As part of a tiered launch of new features on the social network, Twitter announced support for group messaging between 20 of your closest friends as well as a video recording function that’s built directly into the mobile application. Detailed within a post on the official Twitter blog, the new group messaging feature is now part of the direct

YouTube defaults to HTML5 on the web

If you've been hoping for YouTube to drop the notoriously buggy Flash video format as its default player, well, good news. Nearly five years after the streaming giant started supporting the HTML5 standard for its videos, it's finally now its player of choice. That means from now on, YouTube will use the HTML5 <video> format by default in most modern

WhatsApp Comes To The Desktop

Are you one of the 600 million people on WhatsApp? Do you grow tired of having to type all of your messages through your phone? Good news!

There’s now a desktop version.

It’s a web app rather than a native client — and for now, at

Rdio Becomes The First Global Music Streaming Service To Launch In India

India has welcomed the first international music streaming service to its shores after Rdio, the San Francisco based company, launched in the country.

Rdio’s arrival in India has been expected for some time since it acquired domestic streaming company Dhingana for an undisclosed price back in early 2014. Dhingana, which had

Snapchat reportedly asking brands $750,000 for ads (which disappear)

Snapchat users have been seeing ads in the Recent Updates section of the app since last October as the startup behind the messaging software seeks to build out its platform and pull in some revenue.

Just like the hundreds of millions of messages sent via the app every day, the ads don’t stick around forever, vanishing immediately after

Facebook Acquires Wit.ai To Help Its Developers With Speech Recognition And Voice Interfaces

Facebook’s latest known acquisition involves a startup specializing in voice recognition technology.

The firm, Wit.ai, began life just 18 months ago, and exists as “an open, distributed, community-based platform that makes it easy for developers to build apps that users can talk

FTC finalizes charges against Snapchat over user privacy

The FTC has approved final charges against Snapchat after the company's lax security policies were exposed, placing user data at risk.

In an advisory posted 31 Dec, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed final charges set against the messaging app company. The Snapchat app

Your hidden Facebook photos were never really hidden. This app finds them

Hiding photos on Facebook may not actually work as well as you think it does.

Picturebook, a browser extension now available in the Chrome web store, claims to allow you to "view hidden photos of anyone on Facebook"— even if you aren't friends with them.

Sounds like a Facebook

The Enormous Implications Of Facebook Indexing 1 Trillion Of Our Posts

A whole wing of the Internet just got added to our collective conscience, like websites by Google or knowledge by Wikipedia before it.

Yet the news cruised by with analysis focused simply on what Facebook’s new keyword post search does today. Yes, any post by you or any of your friends can now be dug up with

Pinterest Will Open Promoted Pins To All Advertisers Following Success Of Beta Program

After years of questions about how it will make revenue, Pinterest’s roadmap to monetization is becoming more clear. The company announced today that its Promoted Pins program, which it made available in beta to certain brands eight months ago, has performed “just as good and sometimes better than organic

Leaked images show first look at WhatsApp calling

In February WhatsApp promised that it would be adding voice calling functionality to its hugely popular instant messaging app, and if a bunch of leaked screenshots are to be believed then the functionality is almost here. The renders have been made by Sander Tuit of AndroidWorld.nl, based on hidden code found in the latest version of the app.

Thailand’s Government Claims It Can Monitor The Country’s 30M Line Users

Government officials in Thailand last year demanded access to chat app Line so that they could monitor conversations taking place in the country, and this week a politician claimed that they can now do so.

The Nation reports that ICT Minister Pornchai Rujiprapa told a press conference that the government “can monitor all

Microsoft Removes All Third Party Snapchat Apps From The Windows Phone Store

Snapchat confirmed in November that it would crack down on all third party apps, and now the ax has fallen on the Windows Phone app store, which no longer contains any third party apps as Windows Central reports.

The U.S. company doesn’t have an official app for Windows

Uber is trying to patent surge pricing

When Uber Technologies Inc. jacked up prices in Sydney this week to meet the demand of people fleeing a hostage crisis, critics accused the ride-sharing service of price gouging.

The company, though, makes no apologies for what it calls “surge pricing” — and in fact is seeking to patent it.

Samsung won’t ChatOn in 2015, decides to shutdown its messaging service

Samsung is going to close down its ChatON mobile messaging app on February 1 next year. In a statement, the electronics manufacturer said, “ChatOn will be discontinued in all markets except the U.S.” It claims the decision is so it can focus on its “core services,” and is only remaining active in America until March, possibly due to contractual obligations with certain networks.

7 tech companies that may go public in 2015

Facebook had the blockbuster IPO of 2012. Twitter was the marquee tech public offering in 2013. And Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba raised $25 billion this year in the world's largest public offering ever.

Which tech company will be the big IPO of 2015? There's certainly no shortage of

INSTAGRAM MASS-DELETES SPAM ACCOUNTS, USERS FREAK OUT

After purging millions of fake Instagram accounts this week, this housekeeping move by the social network resulted in angering all the users that define their self worth by a follower count. Angry Instragram users have flocked to Twitter to voice their disappointment over losing hundreds, thousands or even millions of fake followers.

Words Are Dead: Facebook Sticker Search Is Here

Facebook wants you to find the perfect sticker to convey your emotions in the post-text world.

Baked into Facebook’s website and the standalone Messenger app, which recently grew to more than 500 million users, are cute and colorful “stickers” that can be pasted into a message in lieu of actual words.

Facebook Starts Auto-Enhancing Photos Because Algorithms Are Better At Filters Than You

We’re not ace photographers, but we all take photos. Most could use a little help with light and shadow. So rather than making you manually filter them, Facebook tells me it will now auto-enhance newly uploaded photos starting today on iOS and soon on Android. You’ll be able to adjust a slider to control just how enhanced you want the light, shadow, and