News

 Reddit never let you upload images, until now. That could dismantle Reddit’s informal alliance with image-sharing community Imgur. That’s where Redditors would typically post their images or GIFs and then share the links on Reddit.
The image uploading feature begins rolling out today with 50 Reddit communities, including Art, Aww, Food, Funny, Gifs and EarthPorn (pretty nature pics). Read More

 Critical to this major effort is Marty Weiner. Weiner joined the Reddit team this past summer as the company’s first-ever CTO, and he’s spent the past 10 months building out areas for improvement on a site infrastructure that is increasingly less MacGyver’d together.
Reddit is the 9th most-visited website in the United States, but when Weiner was hired last August, the… Read More

 Facebook plans to shut down FBX, the ad exchange that allows advertisers to buy retargeted desktop ads using third-party tools like Criteo and AppNexus. The news was first reported in The Wall Street Journal and we’ve confirmed it with Facebook. In an emailed statement, Vice President of Monetization Product Marketing Matt Idema suggested that this is part of Facebook’s shift to… Read More

 As Instagram continues to make moves to strengthen its platform with more features to keep users visiting it and staying longer, Instagram’s decision to kill off its feed API on June 1 has claimed another victim: Flipboard today confirmed that it will not be able to provide Instagram integration for the majority of its users after May 31. While Instagram has claimed that feed API… Read More

 Andrew Bachelor (better known as King Bach on Vine, where he has more than 15 million followers) has just launched Bachify, his own iOS-based photo-editing app. The genesis of the app was an issue anyone who is a heavy social media user faces — there isn’t one app that provides a comprehensive photo-editing experience. Bach explained that he “always had to go to… Read More

 Today Twitter redefined its laws of physics. But while it’s posed as a simplification of the 140-character rule, the change will reshape information density, conversation style and self-promotion in the app. If you want to know what’s happening and why, read TechCrunch’s detailed breakdown of the changes scooped by Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier. Here, we’re going… Read More

 Partially confirming earlier reports, Twitter announced this morning plans that will begin to distance it from its strict adherence to the rule that tweets can only contain 140 characters. The company says that, among other changes designed to welcome new users to its service, it will no longer count media attachments and @names in replies toward your 140 allowed characters. However, links… Read More

 Snapchat may have first made its name in the crowded world of mobile apps with an ephemeral messaging service, but the startup and its wildly popular app are not disappearing anywhere soon. TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources that Snapchat is raising yet more financing at around a $20 billion valuation. Sources with knowledge of the deal say the social media giant is in the… Read More

 Facebook responded today to official queries regarding its Trending Topics feature, specifically allegations made over the last few weeks that the team responsible for it was deliberately suppressing conservative views and arbitrarily elevating stories with little oversight. It denied the accusations, but nevertheless announced changes it would make to the process. Read More