Facebook Releases Camera App | Obama Answers Tweets | Groupon Testing Payments Device

Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Facebook Camera App Launches for iOS (TechCrunch) Facebook began rolling out a standalone photos app Thursday with which users can shoot, filter and share single or sets of photos and scroll through a feed of photos uploaded to Facebook by your friends. Facebook Camera for iOS lets users rapidly pick one or more photos, apply filters, tag friends and locations, add a description and post. Gizmodo iOS users are used to pulling down at the top of apps to refresh a stream, but this action reveals your iPhone's photo album, instead. This takes getting used to, as does the process of selecting multiple photos to upload or changing your mind and removing one. Wired The product highlights the company’s commitment to its mobile business. But considering Facebook’s recent purchase of the photo-sharing app Instagram, it’s hard not to compare the two. Silicon Valley Mercury News Facebook agreed to acquire Instagram on April 9 for cash and stock then valued at $1 billion, but the value of the stock has widely varied after the Menlo Park, Calif.-headquartered social network went public last week and has experienced volatility on Wall Street. The deal has not closed, and Facebook recently changed wording in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings that indicated it did not expect the acquisition to be complete in the current quarter. Reuters Less than a week after its IPO, Facebook is already facing multiple lawsuits by disgruntled shareholders who claim that the company and its underwriters told only select institutional investors about the social media company's weakened growth forecast. This is not the first time investors in a hot tech company's initial public offering have alleged that underwriters favored their regular clients at the expense of the little guys. Groupon is Testing a Payments Offering to Compete with Square and PayPal (VentureBeat) Groupon is testing out an offering of its own in the increasingly crowded payments space, according to an email I was forwarded by a business that was solicited for the service. The pricing is extremely aggressive, with a 1.8 percent transaction fee and a 15 cent per transaction charge for transactions processed through the terminal. Bloomberg Businessweek The reader, manufactured by Infinite Peripherals, is designed for businesses that rely on Groupon to market their wares, said the person, who requested anonymity because the test hasn’t been made public. The device plugs into the headphone jack of a smartphone, and it’s being tested by dozens of merchants in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, this person said. Obama Holds Twitter Q&A … Sort of (Yahoo! News) President Barack Obama on Thursday invited Americans to a Twitter press conference of sorts, taking seven questions on topics like how he aims to curb oil imports, boost job growth or help homeowners struggling with their mortgages. Leaving little to chance, the White House advertised the #WHchat hashtag for the online event several times throughout the day but only revealed that the president himself would answer the questions shortly before he got online. Mount Everest Climbers Share Journey on Instagram (CNET) Climbers on Mount Everest have been documenting the harrowing journey to the peak using their iPhones and Instagram. Over the last month, the climbers on National Geographic's commemorative climb to the top of the of the world's tallest peak have captured moments filled with steep terrain and friendly locals, according to the Instagram blog. In Social Data, a Fight Between Science and Privacy (GigaOM) There is a fight brewing between academics and industry over the use of your Facebook activity or search history. Academics are upset that companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook have the keys to the underlying data, but they won’t share. The New Yorker Tweeting Entire Short Story (10,000 Words) The New Yorker is tweeting the entirety of Jennifer Egan’s latest short story, "Black Box." @NYerFiction began tweeting the story Thursday at 8 p.m. every minute for an hour. This hour of story-tweeting will last 10 days, SpaceX Tweets Historic Flight to International Space Station [PICS] (Mashable) It’s been two days since private spaceflight company SpaceX launched its Dragon capsule on its mission to dock with the International Space Station -- and though the mission isn’t complete, the company has already tweeted plenty of dramatic photos of its flight. SpaceX and NASA have tweeted a series of photos taken by the unmanned Dragon, which could become today the first ever privately built spacecraft to dock at the habitable artificial satellite. Create a Twitter Contest to Generate Buzz for Your Brand With Binkd (AllTwitter) Twitter lets you connect to your potential customers, but it’s up to you to engage them and generate interest in your brand. Binkd Promotion is a Twitter contest app that can help you get your brand’s message to go viral by creating unique contests to get people voting on, retweeting, mentioning and sharing your content. Summify Going Offline June 22 (The Verge) When Twitter bought social news aggregator Summify in January, both parties acknowledged the service would eventually be shut down, and now we have a date: June 22. According to an email sent to Summify users, the team is shuttering the service since it is now focusing its efforts and resources on Twitter projects.

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Facebook Releases Camera App | Obama Answers Tweets | Groupon Testing Payments Device

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