News

 Instant Articles, meet Instant Ads. Facebook wants to give advertisers an immersive way to reach people without making them leave the social network. So today it officially launched its ad Canvas for all advertisers. When users click a Facebook News Feed ad connected to Canvas, it opens a full-screen, rich media page inside of Facebook rather than forcing users to wait for a mobile website… Read More

 Okay, be honest. How many of you dreamed of becoming an astronaut when you were a kid? I certainly did — and in my heart of hearts, I still kind of regret that it didn’t happen. Well, that might not be as unrealistic as you might think, at least according to a new ad from LinkedIn. The company says this is actually its very first TV ad, and it will air during the Academy Awards.… Read More

 Instagram announced today that it has 200,000 monthly active advertisers. To compare, Facebook said a year go that it had more than 2 million active advertisers, while Twitter says it has 140,000. Probably the most impressive thing about the Instagram number is the fact that the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service only had a few hundred advertisers back in June. Much of that growth has… Read More

 Humanity has been boiled down to six emotions. Today after tests in a few countries, Facebook is rolling out its augmented Like button “Reactions” to all users. This article has been boiled down to six emotions too. Like – Facebook designed Reactions so Liking is still as easy ever. You’ll see the Like button on every post, but now if you tap and hold on it (or hover… Read More

 Branded.me* isn’t just a website builder anymore — it’s adding tools allowing users to connect with other users and publish their own content. CEO Nick Macario said the site’s goal is to be “the creative platform for professionals” — in other words, it’s where professionals can take full control of how they present themselves to the online world.… Read More

 But these aren’t the crappy click-bait you see below lots of blog posts. “We’re being very choosy” Pocket founder Nate Weiner tells me. “We don’t want this to become the bottom of the barrel content.” If Pocket can convince users that these articles would be worthy of appearing in its app even if it wasn’t sponsored, it could become the home for… Read More

 Yesterday Snapchat opened up a new revenue stream in the form of on-demand geofilters. The new on-demand geofilters let anyone pay Snapchat to create and distribute a custom filter in a specific area for a set time. We wanted to see how quick and easy it was to launch a custom filter, so we decided to create one at TechCrunch HQ in San Francisco. Here’s what the process was like. Read More

 Twitter is launching a new mobile application for developers that use Fabric, its development platform, that enables them to track the health of their apps.
Tracking the health of an app can be particularly tricky when away from a computer. Developers often need to rely on dashboards and other tools to ensure that things are running smoothly, which don’t lend themselves well to mobile… Read More