Instagram Adds Bios, Gr...

If you’re like me  Instagram has become a service you check the first thing you wake up in the morning, alongside Twitter and Facebook. My Instagram addiction has seriously gotten to the point where I anticipate the app’s bi-monthly updates ( Tilt Shift is the best thing to happen to photo sharing addicts since sliced bread, or something). So what’s new in Version 1.7 ?  The most obvious change is that when you click on someone’s photo history, the app now shows you a grid view instead of a laborious feed view, but lets you toggle between them both. Users also now have the option to add a bio to their profiles by going to Account > Edit profile > Bio, upload a profile picture from Twitter and Facebook (Account > Change profile picture) and drill down into which profile notifications they actually want to receive based on their Instagram follow graph. The update also makes it more clear when your photos are being geo-tagged and includes bug fixes and speed improvements. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom delved deeper into the motivation behind each new feature : Grid View One of the biggest requests we’ve had was an easier way to browse feeds. Now, you can view user, location, and hash-tag feeds more quickly by browsing a grid view of the photos. Bio One of the strongest assets Instagram has is its community. People have been making friends from around the world, and users have always wanted to know more about the people behind the photos. With the simple addition of a bio, we allow you to tell your story in text as well. Finer-grained push notifications Before today, you either had to choose to get all push notifications from Instagram or none at all. Today that all changes with fine-grained push notifications control. Now for new likes and comments you can choose to receive pushes from everyone, just the people you’re following or no one at all. Choose profile picture from Twitter and Facebook Most people don’t have a picture of themselves lying around in their camera roll — so now we allow people to import their profile photos from other services. Systrom tells me that the company is maintaining a quick release schedule while simultaneously working on some bigger picture stuff. Hopefully some of that bigger picture stuff includes an Android app. CrunchBase Information Instagram Information provided by CrunchBase

@J_Pinet Tweets IMF Chi...

"a friend in the US just told me that #DSK was arrested by the police in a NYC hotel one hour ago." It was the middle of the night in Paris when the news broke that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Chief of the IMF, had been pulled off an Air France flight and arrested for sexual assault. Coincidentally, he was also set to announce his candidacy for the 2012 French presidential elections next month - and could therefore become one of the strongest opponents of President Sarkozy. But now it looks like the Parti Socialiste may have to nominate someone else...

Blekko Bans 1.1 Million...

Search engine Blekko says they’ve banned some 1.1 million spammy domain names from their search results. The banned domains are the result of a new algorithm the company has developed that looks at both poor quality content as well as the types of ads that the domains include along with the content. It’s part of their ongoing war, they say, against content farm and other very low quality content. It follows an action earlier this year where they banned twenty content farms from their results. They’re calling the new algorithm “AdSpam.” “One of the strongest signals that a page is spam is aggressive participation in self-service online advertising networks,” says the company. When they compare low quality sites (based on existing signals) and see lots of keyword based ads alongside that content, it’s very likely to be blocked. “Domains with low quality content plus keyword ads are “machines that print money,” says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta . “Machines that print money will be exploited.” Blekko is processing around 1 million search queries per day and has 500,000 unique monthly visitors, he says. CrunchBase Information Blekko Information provided by CrunchBase

Mobile Ad Spending Up 8...

New data from eMarketer shows mobile ad spending in 2010 is up nearly 80%, with estimates suggesting the market will surpass $1B in 2011 and over $2.5B by 2014. The research shows video, display and search-ad spending on mobile will more than double this year, while growth in messaging advertising will “lag behind other more sophisticated mobile formats.”  Still, SMS remains the largest format overall, with spending of $327 million estimated for 2010. Mobile video advertising is showing the strongest growth, estimated at 124% for 2010 alone.  Over the next four years, eMarketer estimates video will remain the strongest in terms of growth, outpacing other formats in 2014 with 50% growth.  Messaging, on the other hand, will slow in the same time period, estimated to grow only 14% in 2014. “The expansion of the smartphone market and the attractive usage and demographic profile of smartphone owners have forced more marketers to pay closer attention to mobile,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the forthcoming report “Mobile Advertising and Marketing: Moving Past the Tipping Point.”  eMarketer had previously under-estimated the growth of mobile advertising for 2010, originally pegging overall spending at just $593M. “It is safe to say that many marketers who had not previously considered mobile advertising are now eager to tap into its potential, thanks to the stamp of legitimacy applied to the medium by the high-profile entrance of companies such as Apple and Google,” Elkin said.

Bing Boosts its Market ...

According to three major reports, Microsoft's Bing was the search engine that had the strongest January, while Google and Yahoo! struggled.