Techmeme: Instagram launches Bolt, its one-touch photo and video messaging app, in Singapore, South Africa, and New Zealand (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

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July 29, 2014, 10:45 PM

Top News

Twitter:

Twitter reports Q2 2014 results: revenue $312M, up 124% year-over-year, net loss of $145M — Twitter Reports Second Quarter 2014 Results — SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - July 29, 2014 - Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2014.

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Stock Soars 30 Percent as Twitter Beats Street on Q2 User Growth, Revenue and Even Turns in a Profit — Twitter did not completely fix its growth problem in its second-quarter earnings today, and it didn't release a new set of metrics to tell its reach and scale story better to Wall Street.

More: PandoDaily, Ars Technica, ABC News, Guardian, Variety, CBC News, New York Times, Forbes, Business Insider and AdExchanger. Tweets: @obrien

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Twitter Q2 user growth: average of 271M MAUs, up 24% year-over-year; 211M mobile MAUs, making up 78% of all active users — Twitter Picked Up 16M Active Users In Q2 — In its most recent quarter, Twitter didn't just report stronger-than-expected financials.

More: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, GeekWire, internetretailer.com and Engadget. See also Mediagazer

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Instagram launches Bolt, its one-touch photo and video messaging app, in Singapore, South Africa, and New Zealand — Instagram Launches One-Touch Photo And Video Messaging App Bolt Outside The US — Instagram is taking on Snapchat by turning your best friends' faces into the shutter button …

More: The Verge, VentureBeat, CNET, Gigaom, AppleInsider, TechHive, The Next Web, MacRumors, Ubergizmo, iPhone in Canada Blog, iMore, TIME, Business Insider, Phandroid, Cult of Mac, Lifehacker, 9to5Mac, Pocketnow, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Yahoo Tech, App Advice, Electronista and Engadget

Tweets: @markgurman, @mg, @mattlynley, @hamburger, @joshconstine, @caseynewton and @joshelman

Andy Fixmer / Mashable:

Netflix Signs Peering Deal With AT&T to Reduce Buffering — This story has been updated to include a statement from AT&T confirming the peering deal. — Netflix has reached an agreement with AT&T to give its streaming service direct access to AT&T's network, with the goal of reducing buffering …

More: The Register, CNET, Gizmodo, Washington Post, Ars Technica, DSLreports, Gigaom, Engadget, The Verge, Electronista and Re/code. Thanks:@toddwasserman. See also Mediagazer

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft is about to launch a selfie phone and a new ‘high-end’ Windows Phone — Microsoft is planning to launch two new Windows Phone 8.1 devices shortly. Sources familiar with the company's plans tell The Verge that Microsoft devices chief Stephen Elop revealed both handsets during an internal company meeting this week.

More: NPU, Engadget, Softpedia News, PC World, ITProPortal, VentureBeat, Neowin, TechCrunch, GadgeTell, Electronista, TechnoBuffalo, LiveSide.net, WinBeta, Techie News, Pocketnow, Gigaom and Windows Phone Central

Jason Del Rey / Re/code:

Former Diapers.com CEO Marc Lore gets $55 million investment for e-commerce startup Jet — CEO Who Sold Diapers.com to Amazon Raises $55 Million to Challenge Amazon Again — If you can't beat 'em, try, try again. — That's the playbook being followed by Marc Lore …

More: Marc Lore, GeekWire, Business Insider and VentureBeat. Tweets: @delrey. Thanks:@delrey

Marco Arment / Marco.org:

Ubiquitous competition in the app market is hurting the quality and sustainability of iOS apps — App Rot — Look around your iPad for a minute. How are its third-party apps doing? — Are they all being actively updated? Are they all built for iOS 7 yet?

More: Jared Sinclair, DIGITS to DOLLARS and ReadWrite

Tweets: @markgurman, @chrispirillo and @chrismessina

Jared Sinclair:

“Unread” app sales show how hard it is for indie developers to earn a living from paid-up-front apps

More: txt.jazzychad.net, SmoothSpan Blog, PadGadget, dailywireless.org and iMore

Tweets: @cdixon and @cdixon

Doina Chiacu / Reuters:

U.S. Senate bill proposes sweeping curbs on NSA surveillance — (Reuters) - Senator Patrick Leahy will introduce legislation on Tuesday to ban the U.S. government's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records and Internet data and narrow how much information it can seek in any particular search.

More: Wired, Bloomberg, Patrick Leahy, NationalJournal.com, US News and SiliconBeat

Tweets: @binarybits, @binarybits, @rj_gallagher and @normative

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Certificate verification flaw in Android since 2.1 granted malicious apps special access to resources, potentially exposing sensitive user data — Android crypto blunder exposes users to highly privileged malware — A slide from next week's Black Hat talk titled Android Fake ID vulnerability.

More: AppleInsider, BBC, Guardian, Gizmodo, PadGadget, Phandroid, Pocketnow, PC World, BGR, eWeek, Electronista, Financial Times and Gigaom. Thanks:@accretivegrowth

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Is Shutting Down Gifts To Focus On Its Buy Button And Commerce Platform — Facebook wants to help other businesses sell things, so it's done selling its own. Facebook Gifts will shut down on August 12th and stop selling gift cards for businesses like Starbucks and iTunes.

More: Re/code, Engadget and Bloomberg. Tweets: @joshconstine

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Palantir Acquires Social Polling Startup Poptip — Poptip, a startup that helps companies conduct social media surveys and analyze online conversations, just announced that its team will be joining Palantir Technologies starting on August 1. — A Palantir spokesperson confirmed the acquisition but declined to comment further.

More: Poptip Blog. Tweets: @jimandelman and @kfalter

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Apple's Smartphone Market Share Slips as Huawei, Lenovo Make Gains — Apple's growth in the overall worldwide smartphone market continues to slow as it loses ground to smaller Chinese vendors releasing more affordable devices, even as the smartphone market itself grows substantially.

More: IDC, ABC News, Tech Trader Daily, ZDNet, MobileBurn.com, 9to5Mac and AppleInsider

Bloomberg:

Ford switching 3,300 workers from BlackBerry to iPhone this year — Ford Switching Employees to IPhones From BlackBerries — Ford Motor Co. (F) is deploying iPhones for corporate use to employees worldwide, scoring a win for Apple Inc. (AAPL) as it seeks to lure more corporate customers.

More: The Mac Observer, iPhone in Canada Blog, MacRumors, Cult of Mac, DailyTech, Electronista, Tech Trader Daily, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, Financial Post, AppleInsider and ZDNet

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

Open Whisper Systems releases Signal iOS app for free encrypted voice calls; encrypted texts coming soon — Free, Encrypted Calling Finally Comes To The iPhone — The encrypted calling app Signal. The two seemingly random words beneath the contact's name are meant to be read …

More: Open Whisper Systems Blog, TechCrunch, Forbes, MacRumors and The Verge. Tweets: @lorenzofb

Sebastian Anthony / ExtremeTech:

Nvidia quadruples display resolution by stacking two cheap LCD panels on top of each other — Nvidia researchers have used a fantastically straightforward approach to quadruple the effective resolution and double the refresh rate of cheap, off-the-shelf LCD panels: Stacking them on top of each other.

More: Engadget, SlashGear, High-Def Digest and Electronista

Shane Harris / Foreign Policy:

Ex-NSA head Keith Alexander says his new company invented unique technology to detect hackers — The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate — Here's why Keith Alexander thinks he's worth a million dollars a month. — GOOGLE +

More: Ars Technica, The Verge and VICE

Tweets: @csoghoian, @dbgrady, @ashk4n and @dangillmor

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Amazon willing to retain its current 30% of digital revenue if Hachette lowers e-book prices to $9.99 — Amazon Calls for Hachette to Cut E-Book Prices — Online Retailer Also Suggests Hachette Should Boost Proportion of Digital Book Sales It Pays to Its Authors

More: The Verge and Amazon.com. See also Mediagazer

Alex Hern / Guardian:

US government increases funding for Tor, giving $1.8m in 2013 — Despite attempts by the National Security Agency to crack the anonymous browser, the US increased state funding through third parties — Tor, the internet anonymiser, received more than $1.8m in funding from the US government in 2013 …

More: The Verge. Tweets: @anonyops

Kif Leswing / Gigaom:

StumbleUpon rolls out a UI redesign for Android with an emphasis on social notifications — Stumbleupon's new Android redesign introduces an activity center to the venerable link discovery service — now new followers or shared links will trigger a notification.

More: TechCrunch, PR Newswire, MediaPost, TechnoBuffalo, WebProNews, Android Police and Android Authority

Richard Padilla / MacRumors:

Apple Launches Retina MacBook Pros with Faster Haswell Processors, More RAM Standard — As indicated over the weekend and yesterday, Apple today launched refreshed 13-inch and 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros.The new notebooks feature faster versions of Intel's Haswell processors …

More: Apple, BGR, AppleInsider, AnandTech, Wired, Geek Beat, The Register, InvestorPlace, iMore, Apple Bitch, PC Magazine, Digital Trends, TechnoBuffalo, Gigaom and MacStories. Tweets: @joannastern

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