Facebook has bought messaging service WhatsApp for $16 billion, with an additional $3bn given to WhatsApp’s founders and employees.
Facebook testing ‘Pay to Promote’
Facebook is currently testing a ‘pay to promote’ system in New Zealand, allowing users to make the posts they make on the social network more conspicuous to their friends on the site.
Facebook to buy Instagram
Facebook has announced it is to buy Instagram, the popular photo-sharing smartphone app, for $1bn in cash and stock.
Loads more Facebook apps
Facebook is adding more than sixty new applications to let users share such things as photos, travel or fashion via their profiles, or Timeline as it is now known. Users can already share such things as the music they are listening to or news articles they are reading.
Facebook under attack
Facebook has taken measures to stop the spread of a new variety of malicious software that has so far managed to steal the login details from 45,000 users, most of them located in the UK and France.
End of Gowalla is nigh
Facebook has announced it is hiring the co-founders and other developers of Gowalla, one of the location-based “check-in” social networks. As a result, it is expected that Gowalla will close in 2012. Facebook is also opening a software engineering centre in New York as part of its strategy, its first away from the West Coast of the US.
Pet profiles
A new study has revealed that one in ten of all UK pets have their own Facebook page, Twitter profile or YouTube channel, and more than half of UK pet owners are sharing photos of their pets online. The latter, of course, is quite normal and natural.
Interesting Facebook facts
What we post online can say a lot about us. 10 fascinating Facebook facts — and what they say about us
Winklevoss brothers fail again
The Winklevoss brothers, Cameron and Tyler, have failed in their latest bid to re-open their case against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whom they accuse of stealing their original idea of hugely popular Facebook.
Mayor of Vélez-Málaga gets hacked
A hacker managed to access the Facebook page of the Mayor of Vélez-Málaga and PSOE candidate for re-election, María Salomé Arroyo, replacing her profile photo with that of PP leader Mariano Rajoy. The hacker also posted several messages and a video on the site.