Just 8 days into this month the Karma app jumped to version 1.80, and with it brought bug fixes that has made the experience better, which has been pointed out by a few comments on the official iTunes page with statements like “working again“. We had a little play with Karma on our iPhone and found it pretty easy to use, and it was great to not have to know the address of the person you want to send a gift to (never been that good with keeping track of addresses).

We’d have to agree with the new iPhone Rumors blog, when they state the app has a “very niche catalog“, which is thanks to what seems to be a selective partnership by those behind Karma. It will be interesting to see how the gifting app changes now it has been acquired by Facebook, and we hope they expand the gift catalog dramatically to provide a better service.

What do you think about the Karma gift-giving app for iPhone? Do you think the best gift is your time rather than spending it on Facebook, or is this a good solution for your busy lifestyle? We’ve embedded a video below that features the Karma co-founder talking about the app, and why it was created in the first place. The key success for this app comes from everyone sharing everything on Facebook, and with that connection you’re able to reach out and send a gift with Karma via email, SMS, and Facebook.

More About: apple, apple iphone, facebook, gifts

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First up it’s well known that the Facebook app is lacking in a number of ways, and our readers continue to point out that it needs massive improvements, which considering Zuckerberg points to the “talented team” behind Instagram and that they can now “work closely” with this team shouts a lot to us about the benefits Facebook can gain from this buyout, although $1 billion is a lot for Instagram talent.

Confusion over Facebook buying Instagram – we’ve seen a number of articles asking why would Facebook want to buy Instagram, although most of these ask questions and also offer counter answers, but could this buyout be much more simple than most of us would like to believe? Some people point to tax reasons but we say it could simply be about “competition“, and Facebook not wanting the likes of Google to purchase Instagram first.

Facebook doesn’t need Instagram for the data or users, but when it comes to the word “competition” it has every reason to buy the popular app. Facebook knows pictures share well, something that has helped Pinterest grow massively recently, and one way for Facebook to have more photo control is to buy Instagram rather than letting the competition gain that edge. With this purchase in the bag it would stop the competition having more control of conversations around pictures – could it all really be this simple?

We’ve embedded a video below that looks at the $500 million valuation for Instagram, which is half of what Facebook paid, and looks at reasons behind the deal. You can also read about the Android Instagram app needing an update to help make it better than iOS, and how the app is a little distasteful for some pros.

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It seems that Facebook went down today within the last hour, and a social networking heading towards a billion people is sure to get noticed when its users cannot connect. Normally these problems only last a little while, so we’ll update you when things are back to normal.

We’ve tried to connect to Facebook by computer and phone, and it seems the service is down globally, which is seen thanks to forums showing posts from all around the world including Scotland, Switzerland, Romania and more. Feel free to share a comment with what country you’re from and if you can access Facebook. We’ll post an update soon about the outage, and while we’ve heard about certain hackers saying they’ll take Facebook down it isn’t expected to be the case today.

Update: We’ve just had a message from one of our editors in Hong Kong who stated they can access Facebook, although a number of our readers and contacts in Europe cannot get access, so it might not be global after all. We’ve also heard from someone in Egypt, and they said Facebook gives them a message “No DNS entry found” and have also seen reports that there is a “Service Disruption” throughout the UK and Europe.

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You can find out everything you need to know about this new application and download it here, we just installed it on a medium-spec Windows 7 64-bit laptop and on the whole we’re impressed, that said it did crash for us on one occasion and we spotted another couple of bugs and imperfections.

Installation is pretty painless and once installed you should find the program in your computer’s start menu, once you’ve ran the app it will also show up in the notification area of your Windows UI (see below). If you right click on the notification icon you can enable / disable chat sounds, dock the application to the right hand side of the screen, open the app, exit the app, log off or access help. On widescreen resolutions the dock to the right feature is particularly impressive.

As you’d expect, to use the app you will have to sign-in with your Facebook log-in credentials, once signed in you’ll see a list of contacts to chat with (just like you see in Facebook chat when you log into the website) – also there’s a notification area which update’s just like Facebook’s ticker. Below you can see the main user interface, if you chat with someone it opens in a new window, chat with somebody else and the conversation will show in a new tab within this window.

If you minimize the application the notification icon shows a message which tells you that you’ll still see messages and notification while the app runs in the background.

Sadly there are some problems and imperfections, firstly the app once crashed for us (see below), secondly group chat doesn’t work. Other things which didn’t impress us include the fact that there’s no option to remember your log-in credentials and the fact that selecting the ‘Log in’ option from the notification icon’s context menu doesn’t work for us, it just opens a tab in our default web browser telling us that we’re trying to navigate to a website which cannot be found.

All in all we are happy with the Facebook Messenger application, however there is room for improvement which we’re sure will arrive in the near future. If you installed the app and didn’t like it you can uninstall it by following these simple instructions, there’s lots of answers to other common frequent asked questions here.

Have you tried out the new Facebook Messenger application for Windows? If so, have you experienced any problems? Are there any additional features you’d like to see? Let us know below.

More About: facebook, Facebook Chat, Facebook Messenger

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If you’re a die hard fan, you may have already taken advantage of this over the weekend when the promotion first kicked off, but for those that were busy or just unaware, there’s still time for an early sneak peek 24 hours early.

To participate, all you have to do is head to the Facebook page here, install the app and input some personal details such as your date of birth and Xbox 360 gamertag. Once you’ve done that you can now try to solve a puzzle, with the prize being a code which you can take straight to the Xbox Live Marketplace to download your demo.

Solving the puzzle isn’t that straight forward though and you’ll want to take your time with it as well. If you fail at the first attempt, you’ll be locked out for two hours and will have to try again later. This process will repeat if you keep failing, so if you’re having problems solving the code then you may want to head to Twitter to see if there’s any clues from other users – and there is since we’ve seen some.

The code definitely works though, so it’s a good bit of fun if you have nothing to do and want to check out the demo early. As for the full game, a date has already been set in place for March 6, on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC platforms. Unfortunately, this little Facebook giveaway only appears to be valid for Xbox 360 users, so no love for those of you on PS3 or PC we’re afraid. PS3 users will be able to check out the demo on Tuesday though, so at least there isn’t long to wait at all.

Have you managed to complete this little puzzle on the social networking site? For those of you that have already obtained a code, what are your thoughts on the demo itself? Is the game looking better already than ME2, or are you going to purchase the game to take a closer look?

More About: EA, facebook, Mass Effect 3

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The new feature has caused some outrage among many users that comes as part of a major rework of the social networking site. It creates a virtual life story of the user’s time on the site that can go back as far as 2004 if they were on it then. If users have forgotten to delete any embarrassing comments or photos they will be more easily accessed now.

Before Timeline users could only find older content by searching through pages and pages of old content. A report on The Telegraph is stating that many critics feel the change erodes user’s privacy, but Facebook’s argument is that the content is already available.

Security firm Sophos has recently surveyed 4,000 users of the website and found that only 8% like the new feature. While 51% of those asked said they were “worried” by Timeline, but 8% did say they would “get used to it” given time.

Over the next few weeks users will receive a notification that they have seven days to update their profiles and delete content not wanted to be visible. According to Facebook the new feature doesn’t change any of the existing privacy settings, and an activity log will allow users to add extra settings to each entry.

This means that users can decide if all or some of their Facebook friends can see a certain image or message. Some also feel these changes will make users think what they now post to the site. Have you been using Timeline? What do you think of it?

More About: facebook, Facebook Timeline

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It has been revealed that Spotify has now now reached 3 million paying subscribers, this has jumped massively since March 2011 when it hit the 1 million milestone and should help out massively in the long run. When you think each paying customer pays $4.99 per month for Unlimited (no ads and unlimited streaming) or $9.99 per month for Spotify Premium (no ads, unlimited streaming, offline mode and mobile capabilities) it’s fair to presume that the future is looking bright, not to mention the revenue brought in through advertising.

Spotify’s 3 million paying customers are said to represent 20% of Spotify’s active user base, there are many things which have helped out, but many believe the Facebook integration and free premium trials have helped out massively. Personally the 10 hour cap for Spotify free was what convinced me subscribe to Unlimited, now that this cap has been lifted I still pay $4.99 per month as I’m used to an ad-free service and think that it’s a small price to pay considering the amount of hours I use the service for a month.

Below we have added a statement from Ken Parks, Spotify’s US managing director:

“We have an enormous internal effort to drive conversion and engagement with the service. We are very focused on growing in our existing 12 markets as well as expanding in other markets.”

As you can see it looks like there’s new plans on the horizon, so what would you like to see in 2012 from Spotify? Why not release a Spotify-branded car stereo? Bring Spotify to consoles via apps? Add better social features to Spotfy to more seamlessly connect with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Google Plus – feel free to share your ideas.

Do you pay for Spotify?

More About: facebook, spotify

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Developers Rovio have just confirmed that Angry Birds will finally be available on Facebook next month, and will become available for installation on February 14. The game was originally meant to land last Summer, but Facebook lovers won’t particularly care seeing as a date has now been set for the Angry Birds’ Facebook debut.

The good news is that the Facebook version of Angry Birds will come with one or two interesting additions as well that you may not have seen on your iOS or Android version. For starters, you’ll have Facebook leaderboards so you can annoy the living daylights out of your friends by constantly beating their score and the Facebook version will also come with power-ups as well.

One such power-up will be an instant earthquake that players will be able to bring up at their discretion, although you’ll have to pay to have this pleasure. Other power-ups such as different variety of birds including the mighty eagle can be unlocked during gameplay. According to a report from Joystiq, paid-for power-ups will cost you $0.99 a piece.

We’re glad that Rovio has kept this game a free one for all Facebook users. The option of microtransactions is a good one we feel as Rovio will not run the risk of angering their fanbase by making it a paid-for game from the start which they are well entitled to do.

Will you be trying out Angry Birds on Valentine’s Day and risk taking your frustrations out on your loved one afterwards, or are you getting a bit bored of the franchise now?

More About: Angry Birds, facebook

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The new layout was first announced by Founder and Chief Executive of the social network, Mark Zuckerberg back in September 2011 at the annual Facebook developers’ conference F8. When the option is selected, users’ profile layout becomes a literal timeline of their life, allowing Facebook friends to see the events that have happened to them year by year. The updated profiles also become arguably better presented, with a background image combining with the profile picture.

Zuckerberg describes Timeline as being ‘the story of your life and completely new way to express yourself.’ He said the aim of the new layout is to allow users to share their entire lives while retaining complete control over how it is presented. As with every new change that comes about on the social network, it has been met with some criticism and today’s news is set to cause more controversy.

According to The Telegraph one user had this to say about the forced change ‘I’m sorry but this is rubbish. I’m surprised Facebook hasn’t included a compulsory DNA profile section (default to public obviously).’ Earlier this month we mentioned that for the moment there is a ‘hide from timeline’ option available to those who have already elected the new layout but no longer want it. Our feeling is that if Facebook is to please everyone they should keep this option.

Do you agree? What do you think of Facebook Timeline?

More About: facebook, Facebook Timeline

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The company estimates the it benefits the UK by the huge amount, and as a The Guardian are reporting this includes £500 million from the app economy that has been created around the service. Facebook asked Deloitte to carry out a study, which found that the site supports 35,200 jobs in the UK, adding £2.2bn to the UK GDP each year.

The study looked at the direct economic impact of Facebook with the likes of paying tax, profits, and wages. This coincides with the bigger impact that businesses managed to reach out to customers by making sales, creating and monetize apps, and even increased demand for products such as smartphones and broadband services.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer said that the findings showed “that Facebook is about a lot more than sharing pictures or keeping up with friends”. Sandberg added that the site was great for small and medium sized companies, which made up “the backbone of the European economy”.

Facebook is estimating that the figures reflect that it has a £1.14bn annual impact on “business participation effects”, which is thought to be the value of the benefit for small businesses that use the Facebook pages to advertise their services.

Deloitte mentioned the massive app economy that has sprung up as games and applications connect with users of the site. This is believed to have generated around 7,500 in the UK alone. Are surprised at these figures?

More About: facebook

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