(Reuters) – Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, as the world’s largest social network looks for ways to boost its popularity, especially among a younger crowd.
The acquisition of the hot messaging service with more than 450 million users around the world stunned many Silicon Valley observers with its lofty price tag.
But it underscores Facebook’s determination to win the market for messaging, an indispensable utility in a mobile era.
Combining text messaging and social networking, messaging apps provide a quick way for smartphone users to trade everything from brief texts to flirtatious pictures to YouTube clips — bypassing the need to pay wireless carriers for messaging services.
And it helps Facebook tap teens who will eschew the mainstream social networks and prefer WhatsApp and rivals such as Line and WeChat, which have exploded in size as mobile messaging takes off.
Facebook has a bounty program where it pays people to report bugs instead of using them or selling them on the black market. In this case, instead of fixing the bug and paying the researcher the $500+ fee, Facebook told him “this was not a bug,” according to an email that Shreateh shared.
Shreateh says he tried a second time to warn Facebook and when that didn’t work, he used the bug to post a message to Mark Zuckerberg’s Wall.
The message said, “Sorry for breaking your privacy … but a couple of days ago, I found a serious Facebook exploit” and explained that Facebook’s security team wasn’t taking him seriously.
In a post on Hacker News, Matt Jones from Facebook’s security team said that once the team understood the bug they acted quickly, “We fixed this bug on Thursday.”
They also temporarily suspended Shreateh’s account and said they wouldn’t pay him the bounty fee because, by posting to Zuck’s account, he violated Facebook’s terms of service.
So, you haven’t bought into the Candy Crush Saga craze yet, have you? Well, maybe you should because this match-3 game is seriously addictive, just like candy!
It is unlike any other match-3 game I have ever played and surpasses the likes of Bejeweled and others of its kind. The king.com creators of this game has made a unique twist out of a simple concept that leaves your sweet tooth wanting more.
Yes, you do have to match-3, but it doesn’t end there. You have to match 4 and up to get special booster candies and then you can combine those booster candies to make big happenings in order to beat the game levels and move on up the candy ladder.
But of course, it can never just be so easy. As you get higher up in the ranks, the challenges become more involved with layers of jellies, gates, and blobs of chocolates getting in the way. I swear those chocolates drive me crazy. Some levels you have to fill out orders, recipes, combos, clear the board of jellies, and/or achieve a target score.
This game can be really difficult and challenging to the point where there will be times when you just want to pull your hair out and give up, but you won’t because no way you’re going to let some sweet treats beat you down like that.
There’s also a social aspect to the game where you can connect your Candy Crush to Facebook. I highly recommend doing this because Facebook saves your progress which is helpful in case you ever have to reinstall your game or need to play the game on somewhere other than your original device. You also need your Facebook friends to send you extra lives and tickets. Tickets are needed to move forward to the next episodes.
The one big negative about this game though is they want you to pay for extra features such as more lives, moves, boosters, etc.
I paid $0.99 one time for extra lives. Never again.
Now, I know how to get unlimited lives and the Facebook integration comes in handy for that tip. So, you can definitely beat the game without buying any extras if you keep at it and learn the ins and outs of making a successful Sugar Crush level completion.
Right now, I’m on Level 169 and it’s kicking my butt hard-core. I’ve been stuck on this level for 2 weeks and it’s driving me crazy, but I will not give up. I most beat those chocolates!!
You can download and play Candy Crush Saga on any Android or iPhone device by use of Google Play or the Apple App Store or you can play it on Facebook.
Candy Crush is a deliciously sweet addictive game that you must give a try.
Moments after Republicans succeeded in thwarting the will of 90% of Americans by defeating background checks, Republican leader Mitch McConnell and his team couldn’t contain themselves. As Democratic leader Harry Reid and fellow Democrats consoled members of Newtown families that lost a loved one in Sandy Hook, this caption and picture appeared on McConnell’s Facebook page.
We love the memes you send us! Keep them coming!
Disgusting behavior indeed. A United States Senator is mocking the wishes of a majority of Americans, celebrating the defeat of a bill 90% of us wanted. And some of these Americans used McConnell’s Facebook post to express their displeasure in the Republican’s taste.
Below are some of the first responses to McConnell’s sick humor.
At least 20,000 Facebook users found a child porn video in their news feeds this week, with one copy of the clip possibly originating from Oak Cliff, authorities said.
The FBI says the video is at least 7 years old and has been spread around the Internet off and on for years. The viral video has been posted on social media sites before this week, but the latest resurfacing led to new local law enforcement investigations across the world, including in Dallas, according to authorities.
The clip of an older man sexually abusing a young girl received at least 4,000 Facebook likes. Federal authorities have been searching for the abuser’s identity for years.
“This is a global issue,” said Michelle Collins with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “We’re getting inquiries from this all over the world.”
Sgt. Byron Fassett of the Dallas police child exploitation unit said they opened their investigation Wednesday morning when they received a call from Nevada. Someone in Las Vegas logged into Facebook and saw the video in the news feed. They reported it to Dallas police because the post’s location was listed as Oak Cliff, Texas, Fassett said.
The child exploitation unit found that the video was not documentation of recent abuse, but a “known video or image,” Fassett said, something police have seen before.
“It took the crisis out of the situation,” he said. “Our concern then was that people are trading child pornography. But we got calls overnight of more people seeing it on their news feeds.”
It seemed that each time a social media user commented on the clip, the video appeared in more places.
Authorities said they have received several complaints from social media users, asking what they can do to help.
“Don’t comment on it,” Fassett said. “That’s like adding gasoline to the fire.”
And don’t watch the video, Collins said. Instead, view the FBI’s Endangered Child Alert Program wanted list, where this particular video perpetrator’s description is listed.
What a whirlwind! The Social Media craze has turned this world (and me) into a gotta-get-it now circus. Whether you’re using social media for your job or your own personal entertainment, it has gotten crazy ridiculous.
Personally, I use it for news, sports and entertainment, and that’s just on my phone! (SideNote: remember the T.V. show “Mayberry, RFD” or “Green Acres” when the townspeople had to climb a Telephone Pole to call others? Ok, I’m not that old but I grew up watching those shows.)
It seems like yesterday when the internet was just starting up. Well, in a flash, (1978 to be precise) the “Bulletin Board System” was formalized. Later in the same year, Jim Ellis and Tom Truscott created the “Usenet” which allowed users to post news articles on the computer. Remember Dial-Up? Remember AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail?” That was founded in 1997 and the Birth of Instant Messaging had begun. Who knew that this was the beginning of something huge, something tremendous, something extremely LUCRATIVE!
Friendster became the Pioneer of social networking and soon after, MySpace took on the mantle as the newest sensation. Since then, we’ve grown into LinkedIn and Tribe.net but the GrandDaddy of them all is the multi-billion dollar operation called “Facebook”. Ch-Ching Mr. Zuckerburg whose net worth is over $14 BILLION! Not bad for a 28-year old Harvard dropout.
I have to admit, I’m not on Facebook. Heck, I just started using Twitter – yet another huge social networking conglomerate – this January. Funny thing about that is I just posted my 1,000th Tweet. ( Notice I just started THIS January). And I LOVE IT! OMG, I’m on this Twitter thing Tweeting like a Canary!
I’m like my daughter on here and by the way, she asked me once why I was joining Twitter. She said, “Twitter is for Young people”. No, I wasn’t offended. I actually laughed it off because she doesn’t understand that we adults use these forums, whether Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Instagram, etc. for more purposes than the youngsters will ever understand. Businesses are using all of these entities daily. You can post your resumes’, conduct business meetings, collect data and Share with co-workers and your company. This thing has become a multi-faceted Norm.
Technology is some kind of amazing isn’t it? I enjoy getting information from all across this great country of ours from people that I don’t even know, sources I had never considered pulling from and opinions I’ve never considered. The forum that I use, Twitter, has become a wonderful outlet. But, disclaimer to All who use these social networking outlets: Be careful. Think Before You Hit “Send” and above All…Have FUN!
It’s User Friendly but could become User Hazardous if in the Wrong Hands.
Here is another example of what the Republicans would prefer – allow a certain group to make as much money as possible, while making all provisions for those people to game the system and get even more. Such is the story of Facebook and their 2012 taxes.
According to Citizens For Tax Justice, Facebook made $1 billion in profits in 2012, paid zero in taxes and received a $429 million tax refund.
Republicans must be happy!
Facebook is reporting a $429 million net tax refund from the federal and state treasuries. And it’s not because they weren’t profitable. Indeed, Mark Zuckerburg’s little company earned nearly $1.1 billion in profits.
Want to make Republicans even more happy? Take grandma’s social security and send it to Mark Zuckerburg. They wouldn’t be able to contain themselves!
Facebook Graph Search — a new tool that brings an Ask Jeeves-like function to the social-networking giant’s search bar — offers tantalizing possibilities. Want to find friends who like both Pulp Fiction and The Sound of Music? Type the question into the search bar and see the photos of your friends, as results, on the left-side of your profile.
What’s their favorite Mexican restaurant in nearby Palo Alto? Results are listed by restaurant, with the “Likes” of friends listed. (The new search might enliven Likes, as friends decide to share everything with everybody, a recurring theme of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.)
Such a panacea of data isn’t just salivating to advertisers and marketers who want to target their ads on Facebook, but a potential broadside to Google, Yelp, Foursquare and Match.com. Even LinkedIn faces competition: Graph Search is a good way, as Facebook demonstrated, to job recruit.
Zuckerberg insists the new feature, which is being slowly rolled out over the next few months, is not a Web search. But as Graph Search develops, it may more closely resemble Google.com, assuming Google integrates Google+ into its search service.
My wife has given me permission to gloat a bit after I said this about Facebook, and Wal-Mart, by-the-by, yesterday on this very same blog. The reason? Wall Street had a nice day today, but the ‘book fell on its Face, dropping to $34.03, almost $4 from its opening last week. Meanwhile, a real company that makes real products that are really, really popular and, by-the-by, expensive relative to their competition, Apple, climbed 5.8% (%!) to $561.28.
This spells short-term trouble for Facebook and other social networking sites considering going public. Perhaps it’s just the leftover blahs from the past few weeks. Perhaps it’s the lingering blah form the remnants of Recession George. Perhaps this is a blip and the stock will rise commensurate with the hype as the economy improves.
Perhaps, but I don’t think so.
Facebook will never be like Apple or Google until they actually have something to sell that doesn’t involve people checking the box on a privacy policy that prints out at Moby Dick-like length and, by-the-by doesn’t really protect your privacy. They have loads of information, but now have to find a way to sell it in a responsible, green, diversity-friendly way.
The unfortunate part of this whole Weiner episode is that now, he will forever be remembered as the man who sent a picture of his covered weener on Twitter, instead of being remembered as the great Democratic voice in Congress.
Will Anthony Weiner survive this? No. We expect another press conference where Weiner will announce his resignation.
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