Techmeme: Facebook Is Shutting Down Gifts To Focus On Its Buy Button And Commerce Platform (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

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July 30, 2014, 1:40 AM

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

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Twitter acquires deep learning startup Madbits — Twitter has acquired Madbits, a deep-learning-based computer vision startup founded by proteges of Facebook AI director Yann LeCun. It's the latest in a spate of deep learning and computer vision acquisitions that also includes Google, Yahoo, Dropbox and Pinterest.

More: Madbits and TechCrunch

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

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

Garett Sloane / Adweek:

Twitter Is Considering Any Change that Will Convert Visitors to Logged-In Users Even filtering tweets

Tweets: @mathewi

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

Tweets: @nattygov, @joshconstine, @markgurman, @mattlynley, @hamburger, @caseynewton, @mg, @joshconstine 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: Digital Trends, TechCrunch, The Register, Washington Post, SlashGear, DSLreports, Gigaom, Gizmodo, Reuters, Electronista, CNET, The Verge, Engadget and Ars Technica. Thanks:@toddwasserman. See also Mediagazer

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, ReadWrite, CNET, Engadget, Reuters and Bloomberg. Tweets: @joshconstine

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, CIO.com, Softpedia News, ITProPortal, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, GadgeTell, Electronista, Techie News, Pocketnow, LiveSide.net, WinBeta, TechnoBuffalo and Neowin

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

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Microsoft's OneNote for Mac and iOS apps now let you insert Office docs, reorganize notes, and more — Microsoft wants everyone to use its productivity software, regardless of the hardware or operating system they use most frequently. Today it's catering to Apple enthusiasts …

More: Office Blogs, Lifehacker, iPhone in Canada Blog, PC Magazine, Digital Trends, ZDNet, Neowin, iMore and Mashable. Tweets: @fxshaw

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, Engadget, ABC News, Bloomberg, Tech Trader Daily, Electronista, MobileBurn.com, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac and ZDNet

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: DIGITS to DOLLARS, Jared Sinclair and ReadWrite

Tweets: @markgurman and @chrispirillo

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Report estimates damages of NSA surveillance to US business, foreign policy, global security — Personal Privacy Is Only One of the Costs of NSA Surveillance — There is no doubt the integrity of our communications and the privacy of our online activities have been the biggest casualty …

More: Bloomberg, Techdirt, The Hill, Softpedia News and Boing Boing. Tweets: @wired

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, The Register, PC World, GitHub, TechCrunch, MacRumors, Forbes and The Verge. Tweets: @lorenzofb

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

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

Shane Harris / Foreign Policy:

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

More: The Verge, VICE and Ars Technica

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

Reuters:

U.S. Senate bill proposes sweeping curbs on NSA surveillance — (Reuters) - Senator Patrick Leahy introduced 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: Patrick Leahy, US News, NationalJournal.com, SiliconBeat and VentureBeat

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

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, WebProNews, Android Police, Android Authority and TechnoBuffalo

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, Electronista, High-Def Digest and SlashGear

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