Techmeme: Instagram Says First Ad Results Are “Promising” With Recall Up 32%, Shows It Wants TV Brand Dollars (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

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December 19, 2013, 1:50 PM

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Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: Foursquare Raises a $35 Million Round and Adds DFJ's Schuler to the Board — Foursquare, the iconic social location service, has raised $35 million in a Series D round, led by DFJ Growth and the Capital Group's Smallcap World Fund. — The company confirmed the raise to me and later …

More: The Foursquare Blog, VentureBeat, The Verge, Business Insider, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Valleywag, Mashable and Skift

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Target confirms breach: 40 million accounts affected — Summary: Customer name, credit or debit card number, and the card's expiration date and CVV (the three-digit security code) were breached, the retailer said. — Target on Thursday confirmed that its payment card data was compromised …

More: Target Corporate, NBCNews, Gizmodo, eWeek, Examiner, BetaNews, Washington Post, Business Insider, Inquirer, Wall Street Journal, Geeky Gadgets, CNET, Reuters, Yahoo! News, Softpedia News, MacDailyNews, SlashGear, AllThingsD and Gotta Be Mobile. Tweets: @asymco

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Sources: Target Investigating Data Breach

Reuters:

Exclusive: Dish eyes 2014 bid for T-Mobile - sources — (Reuters) - Dish (DISH.O) is considering making a bid for T-Mobile (TMUS.N) next year, according to people close to the matter, in what would be the satellite TV provider's second attempt in as many years at acquiring a major wireless operator …

More: GeekWire, ZDNet, Gigaom, Ars Technica, The Verge and TheStreet.com. Tweets: @reckless. See also Mediagazer

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

WhatsApp announces 400M active users, aims to “steer the conversation” away from registered users — WhatsApp Does a Passive-Aggressive Stats Release to Call Out Others for Bulls**t Metrics — There's a big difference between someone signing up for a service, and someone using it on a regular basis.

More: WhatsApp Blog, iPhone in Canada Blog, The Next Web, Digits and Forbes

Tweets: @papadimitriou, @benedictevans, @scottmaustin, @jwherrman and @sarahfrier

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg Sell Shares, Facebook Stock Price Drops — After a nice run on the Nasdaq, Facebook and its CEO are selling a big block of shares. Wall Street's reaction: We're selling, too. — Facebook says it is planning a secondary sale of 70 million shares …

More: PR Newswire, SiliconBeat, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, Guardian, CNBC, Digits, CNET, Softpedia News, The Next Web, Gigaom, Wall Street Journal and PE Hub Blog

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Hot mod: Cyanogen raises another $23 million to become the next big version of Android — The effort to turn CyanogenMod into the next big mobile operating system just got a big new vote of confidence. The company announced today that it has raised an additional $23 million …

More: CyanogenMod, Engadget, Peter Levine, Gigaom, VentureBeat, GeekWire, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, AllThingsD, Business Insider, SlashGear and Android Community. Tweets: @caseynewton

Andrew Zajac / Bloomberg:

Secret Spy Court Won't Reconsider Phone Data Collection — The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected a request by a civil liberties watchdog group to re-examine an order authorizing the U.S. to collect call data from phone companies. — The Center for National Security Studies …

More: The Star Online. Tweets: @gabrielmalor

New York Times:

Obama Panel Recommends New Limits on N.S.A. Spying

San Francisco Chronicle:

Obama won't give tech firms assurances on snooping

More: Mercury News

Mike Deri Smith / BBC:

Porn filters block sex education websites — The new filters are designed to block sites unsuitable for children — Pornography filters used by major internet service providers are blocking websites offering sex education and advice on sexual health and porn addiction, the BBC has learned.

More: Inquirer, DSLreports, Motherboard, Electronista, Yahoo! News and Gigaom

Tweets: @refugecharity, @jackschofield and @hvklav

See also Mediagazer

Alex Payne:

Bitcoin, Magical Thinking, and Political Ideology — Last week, investor Chris Dixon posed a provocative dichotomy when introducing his employer's USD $25M investment in Bitcoin service Coinbase: … Now working at vogue venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Dixon is in a fine position to speak for Silicon Valley.

More: Charlie's Diary, Business Insider and CoinDesk

Tweets: @jeffjohnroberts, @hunterwalk, @fdestin, @konklone and @buzz

eMarketer:

Mobile Growth Pushes Facebook to Become No. 2 US Digital Ad Seller — Mobile now accounts for more than 22% of all US digital ad spending, compared with less than 3% in 2010 — US mobile ad spending is expected to near $9.6 billion in 2013 and account for a whopping 22.5% of all digital ad investments …

More: Forbes, VentureBeat, Marketing Land, VatorNews, AdAge, Inc.com, Business Insider and The Drum

Donna Tam / CNET:

DA to Apple: Make iPhone's Activation Lock the rule — San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón released survey results Wednesday that he says makes an argument for Apple to enable its Activation Lock security feature on every phone. — When enabled, Activation Lock …

More: 9to5Mac, IntoMobile, iDownloadBlog.com, Gotta Be Mobile, Cult of Mac, Macworld, San Francisco Examiner …, MacDailyNews and TodaysiPhone.com

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Instagram Says First Ad Results Are “Promising” With Recall Up 32%, Shows It Wants TV Brand Dollars — Instagram may prove a valuable platform for advertisers. Instagram released its first results on ads since they began appearing November 1st. Brands saw average ad recall up 3X …

More: Instagram for Business, The Next Web and Gigaom

Rachel King / ZDNet:

Google: Gov't removal requests rise sharply, especially in Turkey, Russia — Summary: A Google legal director pointed to a more “worrying trend,” which she specified was the number of removal requests related to political content. — Google is one of the few tech companies discovered …

More: The Verge, Guardian, Gigaom, CNET and The Official Google Blog

Paul Thurrott / SuperSite for Windows:

Windows Phone Turned the Corner in 2013 — We're number three. And no, that doesn't suck — 2013 was nothing less than a blockbuster success for Windows Phone, which went from industry also-ran to the undisputed third mobile ecosystem, and is poised to challenge iPhone for the number two spot.

More: TechCrunch, PhoneArena, BGR and PhoneArena. Tweets: @greenskull

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Apple's Redesigned Mac Pro Now Available for Online Orders — In line with yesterday's announcement, Apple's redesigned Mac Pro is now available for order through the company's online stores. The Mac Pro currently ships by December 30, though upgraded versions list a non-specific “January” shipping estimate.

More: The Verge, MacRumors, Apple, Ars Technica, Fortune, Gigaom, iMore, Macworld, TUAW, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, everythingiCafe, Engadget, Inquirer, 9to5Mac, MacDailyNews and The Next Web. Tweets: @tim_cook

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Prismatic wants to build a social network around all of your interests, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds — There are social networks all around us these days, from Facebook and Twitter to more targeted networks like Instagram and Path — and new ones seem to be launching every week.

More: TechCrunch and CNET. Thanks:@mathewi. See also Mediagazer

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

No One Buys Music on the Web Anymore. Except When They Buy a Million Beyonce Albums in Five Days. — Sales of music downloads, which were supposed to rescue the music business from the decline of the CD, have been flattening for a few years. Then things got worse: This year, digital sales were down 4 percent through Thanksgiving.

More: 9to5Mac and iDownloadBlog.com

Mat Smith / Engadget:

British Airways is first European airline to allow electronics use during takeoff and landing — Following the wave of US airlines that changed policy after the FAA reassessed the rules, British Airways is letting passengers keep their electronic devices switched on for the entirety of their flight.

More: Guardian, PhoneArena, Gizmodo, Softpedia News and Inquirer

ACLU:

Senate Report Opens a Window Into Hidden World of Data Aggregators — Today, the powerful Senate Commerce Committee issued a damning report on the invasive practices of the online data broker industry. The Committee's report is the result of a year-long investigation targeting nine …

More: Business Insider, Motherboard, Adweek, TheHill, TheHill, Gawker, Broadcasting & Cable and Digits

Tweets: @dustinslaughter, @nicoleozer and @crcalabrese

Barbara Lewis / Reuters:

Europe reaches deal on common mobile phone battery charger — (Reuters) - Mobile phone makers will have to provide a standard battery charger that can fit any device, including smart phones, under a provisional deal on a new EU law reached on Thursday. — Provided the outline agreement …

More: European Parliament News, Gigaom and The Next Web

Ron / WinBeta:

Microsoft pulls Dec 2013 firmware update for Surface Pro 2 as troubles become widespread — On December 10th, Microsoft rolled out a firmware update for the Surface Pro 2. Immediately upon downloading that firmware update, numerous users began experiencing an error code (80070490) when attempting to install the update.

More: GeekWire, Gigaom, The Verge, answers.microsoft.com, Inquirer, Computerworld, SlashGear, TechRadar.com, BGR, PC Pro and PC World. Thanks:@winbetadotorg

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