You can finally post full-size landscape and portrait photos on Instagram!

Instagram is updating its Android and iOS apps to enable native support for full-size landscape and portrait photos and video inside the app. They’ll run alongside the traditional square photos, which will remain the default for photos shared on Instagram.

When you access your photo gallery from within the updated app, you’ll now see a format button above the camera roll. You can use this button to toggle between square and full-size images. From there, you can zoom in and out to choose the best crop for your photos.

Initially, Instagram adopted square photos as a way of distinguishing itself from other photo-sharing apps. But they were also a practical choice. They helped provide a more consistent look as you scrolled down the feed, and they also looked better on smaller phone screens.

But as screen sizes have increased, and the platform has evolved to host more serious photography, the restrictive format has left many of the app’s 300 million monthly usersfrustrated. According to Instagram’s own research, 20 percent of uploaded photos have been modified to fit into the square frame, often using a third-party app that adds a “letterbox” effect to enable the sharing of landscape pictures. “For the average person, one in every five stories in their feed looks like it’s natively supported in our app,” says Ashley Yuki, an Instagram product manager. “Which is not great.”

Even as third-party apps like Square Sized and Squaready have gained popularity, they leave dead space on the edges of photos, making them smaller and harder to see. It can also be annoying and time-consuming to have to use a separate app to prep your photos beforehand.

Members of Instagram’s large fashion community will likely be among those celebrating the freedom this update brings, as will anyone who has experienced the trauma of having to choose whether to crop out either their new haircut or their new shoes. But square photos, as the signature of Instagram, will remain the default mode.

The update also unifies Instagram’s photo and video filters, so now any filter can be applied to your post regardless of its format. It will be available to both iOS and Android users today.

Source

Here’s why Celebrities Pictures are turning Blue on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram!

A new high-fidelity streaming music service by Jay Z launches Monday. TIDAL was acquired by the rapper last month as part of a $56 million dollar deal with the Scandinavian platform Aspiro.

Full details of the service will be announced during a press conference on Monday. However, according to TIDAL’s website, it’s “the first music streaming service that combines the best High Fidelity sound quality, High Definition music videos and expertly Curated Editorial.”

There are two paid subscription options: $19.99 a month for high-fidelity audio, and $9.99 for standard quality audio. TIDAL can be streamed on the web, and downloaded for iOS and Android devices.

Several artists have already thrown their support behind TIDAL, changing their Twitter icons and Facebook Profiles to light blue and tweeting the hashtag #TIDALForAll. Among them, Rihanna, Calvin Haris, Kanye West and Jack White’s Third Man Records.

Source

Every Month 1.39 Billion People connect on Facebook, 700M on WhatsApp and 300M on Instagram!

Facebook’s efforts on smaller screens are paying off big.

More than half a billion Facebook users access the site only from mobile devices, Facebook revealed as part of an earnings presentation Wednesday. The social network has 1.19 billion total mobile monthly active users, as of the end of 2014, up 26% year-over-year.

All that mobile traffic has meant a big advertising windfall for Facebook. The company made $3.59 billion from advertising overall in the fourth quarter of 2014, and 69% of that came from mobile ads rather than their desktop cousins. That means Facebook made nearly $2.5 billion on mobile ads in three months—a 53% improvement year-over-year. It was also the first quarter Facebook’s mobile ad revenue beat the $2 billion mark.

Strong mobile numbers like these are vital for Facebook and other companies with ad-based business models. Internet users are increasingly flocking from browsing on PCs, where banner ads have long reigned, to using mobile browsers and apps, where traditional online ads haven’t worked as well.

Facebook and companies like it have been working hard to figure out how to adjust and make mobile ads that will actually click. The latest of Facebook’s mobile experiments is a platform launched in October that lets brands tap into the social giant’s vast troves of user data to advertise to Facebook users while they’re in other apps.

As an example, a Facebook user playing Candy Crush might get served up an in-game ad for toothpaste based on the user’s Facebook activity. Advertisers benefit from getting access to Facebook’s data, while Facebook increases its ad revenue without putting more ads on its own products. While Facebook’s fourth-quarter numbers are clearly evidence the company’s own mobile app is doing just fine, they’re also a sign this new network is off to a speedy start.

Rihanna’s Almost-Nude Cover Shoot For ‘Esquire UK’ Will Make Your Jaw Drop!

When Rihanna arrived back on Instagram this weekend, I was actually astounded time didn’t stop or a parade wasn’t immediately held in her honor (#rude). Despite this super disrespectful lack of public fanfare, badgalriri has been uploading photos left and right, from birthday parties, to her sick Halloween costume, to a sneak peak at her upcoming December cover for Elle magazine, which the mag described as “boldly stripped down.”

Well, it seems she’s also stripping down (way, way down) for the December cover of UKEsquire‘s ‘Food & Drink’ themed issue, and to say the spread is amazing would pretty much be the understatement of the century.

No, seriously. Look.

She uploaded a few other pictures from the spread, which was shot by famed fashion photog Ellen von Unwerth, and full disclosure—you might need a super strong fan or some ice water to get through the rest of it. Rihanna SLAYS.

 

BOOM!

Black and white pictures + a shower hose – clothing = Rihanna’s best spread eva, IMHO. If she was looking for a way to truly ring in the return of her reign over Instagram, these pictures straight up nailed it. Bless you, Rih-Rih, BLESS YOU.

Source

 

Instagram: 5 million videos uploaded in first 24 hours

As anyone within 5 miles of a computer can tell you, popular photo sharing serviceInstagram unveiled a new video capture and upload feature yesterday. The Facebook-owned app can now shoot and post 15-second, Vine-like videos.

And apparently people love it. Today, Facebook flexed its muscles in the direction of Twitter’s Vine team, announcing that Instagram users uploaded a staggering 5 million video clips in the first 24 hours of the feature’s existence…

CNET reports:

“Instagram users have embraced the application’s just-released video feature by uploading 5 million videos in the first 24 hours of the feature’s availability, a company representative told CNET.

At peak, Instagram users uploaded 40 hours of video per minute. The climactic moment came Thursday night as the Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs during the NBA Finals, the representative said.”

Of course, the numbers aren’t that surprising as they highlight Instagram’s biggest strength: a big loyal following. The social network touts over 130 million active users, which it says uploaded a year’s worth of video in the first 8 hours.

With that kind of power, you really have to wonder where Vine goes from here. The Twitter-owned video sharing network boasts a user base of just 13 million, though its app has maintained a top position in the App Store since it launched.

For what it’s worth, Vine is making some moves of its own. Earlier this week, the team announced that it will be introducing “some exciting new parts of Vine” in the near future. And yesterday, it teased a major upcoming update for its app.