Instagram just got a new, colorful logo!

 

Instagram and its suite of apps have gotten an icon refresh. Instead of the blue square we’ve all come to know, the Instagram logo is now bright, colorful, and embraces the flat design trend.

The same look applies to its Hyperlapse, Boomerang, and Layout apps as well, tying all four apps together.

Inside the Instagram app, things are the total opposite: There are small UI changes, such as a white top bar and black selected icons instead of blue. The company says it’s designed to make the layout more simple, so you can focus primarily on the images being shared.

The rainbow-themed icons are supposed to represent Instagram’s diverse community, which it says brings all sorts of life and color to the platform.

This is the first logo redesign since Instagram first emerged five years ago. The blue also separates it from its parent company Facebook, which bought Instagram back in 2012 for $1 billion.

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WhatsApp is now free and promises to stay ad-free

WhatsApp is dropping its subscription fees to access the popular messaging service. WhatsApp introduced the fees a few years ago, forcing new users to pay an annual 99 cents subscription after the first year. “As we’ve grown, we’ve found that this approach hasn’t worked well,” admits WhatsApp in a company blog post today.

“Many WhatsApp users don’t have a debit or credit card number and they worried they’d lose access to their friends and family after their first year. So over the next several weeks, we’ll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service.”

If you’ve been using WhatsApp for the six years it has been available then you’ve probably never experienced the subscription fees. Most original users were granted a free lifetime service, but in recent years the company introduced its subscription to new users. Recode reports that if you’ve already paid the 99 cents for the year then there won’t be a refund, but subscription fees will cease immediately.

WhatsApp now has nearly 1 billion users, so the free timing removes the barrier for millions more to join the messaging service. The Facebook-owned service plans appears to be planning to generate revenue through services to businesses. “We will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from.” That means you might be able to send WhatsApp messages to your bank or airlines in the future. WhatsApp isn’t planning to enable third-party ads within the service, and it’s sticking to its original principles. The founders of WhatsApp were strongly opposed to ads, noting back in 2012 that “when advertising is involved you the user are the product.”

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Google+ gets a makeover, focuses on Collections and Communities!

Google is rolling out an updated design for the web and mobile versions of Google+. Starting today, users on the web will be prompted to switch to the new design if they wish.

The new design focuses more on the Collections and Communities features of the service. Collections is, well, a collection of posts matching a certain interest, such as photography. Community is where people can form a community based around an interest for like minded people to share and communicate in.

No new features have been added, but with the new design Google is putting more focus on these features by giving them a prime location in the new side menu.

Google is also redesigning its G+ app across platforms. Following the website redesign roll-out, Google will also be updating the Android and iOS apps with the same design.

The web redesign is now rolling out. Look out for the option to switch to the new UI. You will be able to go back to the older design if you wish as the new site doesn’t have all the existing features at the moment.

WOW, Facebook is actually making a Dislike Button!

Now, Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is finally building a Dislike button. The world has waited nearly a decade to show their disdain on Facebook with a single click.

“I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years. Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we’re working on it and shipping it,” Zuck said at a town hall meeting. He explained that the social network didn’t want to create a Reddit-style system of upvoting and downvoting. But then he basically said they were going do the same thing with Like and Dislike buttons — except framed very differently.

“What [users] really want is the ability to express empathy,” said the 31-year-old CEO. “Not every moment is a good moment.”

So no more of those awkward moments clicking Like or even the media-friendly “Recommend” when a terrible thing happens. Soon, you’ll finally be able to call bad things bad on Facebook.

I guess buying Dislikes will be common very soon, so may the Dislikes war begin!

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.

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