Tag Archives: Instagram

Instagram is Embracing NFTs, You Can Show Your NFTs on Instagram Soon!

May 10, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

Love it or hate it, NFT is here to stay for a while. If you are not familiar yet, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) really took off in the past year. It started out as something of a trading alternative for artists in the digital space. It also stems from cryptocurrency, which is another completely different and large topic on its own.

The rise of NFTs does pave plenty of ways for artists and content creators to make millions in a matter of minutes, faster than ever before. There are always two sides of the coin though. Some may like the idea of NFT, some opposed it and thinks that NFT is just a fad. Then again, cryptocurrency is not everyone’s cup of tea either.

Instagram seems to be one that hopes that the NFT trend could boost their own popularity though. To be fair, this should not be something new. Instagram has been contemplating on allowing the sharing of NFTs on their platform for a while now. Recently, the thoughts have been put to action as announced by Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri via Twitter and Instagram Reels.

This does not mean that Instagram is going to be a marketplace for NFTs though. It is a mere platform to showcase owned NFTs. According to Adam, there will be additional information provided with NFT postings. Information like who owns the NFT, for example, will be essential and shared with the posts. He also added that NFTs can be posted and shared across the platform without additional fees or costs.

NFTs on Instagram 🎉

This week we’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of US creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram. There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on IG.

See you next week! ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/VuJbMVSBDr

Still, you do want to take Instagram’s stance on NFTs with a pinch of salt though. Adam Mosseri’s post says that they are just beginning the tests with a handful of creators and NFT owners. That also means that not all users might get to share their NFT contents just yet. It could pave a way for Instagram to become one of the NFT marketplaces in the future, depending on how its users receive the feature. For now, it will act like a gallery for NFT placements. If you wish to buy NFTs, you still should head to the appropriate marketplaces to make your purchases or bids.

What do you think about NFTs? Is this the right move for Instagram? Would you share your digital collectible on Instagram? Would you even buy NFTs off Instagram? Comment below!

News

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram & Oculus Went Down for Hours – Here’s What We Know

October 6, 2021 Nur Jeevan 1 Comment

If you were awake in the wee hours of yesterday looking to Instagram or Facebook for memes before calling it a night, you would have been sorely disappointed. Facebook’s platforms faced a major outage which lasted most of last night. Even WhatsApp wasn’t spared from the outage as messages failed to go through – which might have been a welcome reprieve for many of us.

It seems like connectivity and social media isn’t the only thing that experienced the outage. Reports have surfaced that the outage also affected Facebook’s staff emails and even office badges. So what actually happened?

Essentially Facebook and all its properties disappeared from the internet. How? Well, the cause is a change in the settings of the internet infrastructure between Facebook’s data centres. These changes essentially made it so Facebook and its properties couldn’t be found when browsers and apps looked up anything address that led to the company’s servers. Facebook’s official explanation for this is an error in the updated settings which had a cascading effect.

Source: Facebook

“Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.“

Facebook Official Statement

However, many cyber security companies have come forward and suggested that there may be more to the outage than meets the eye. Some have suggested the underlying cause of the outage may, in fact, be a hack or breach in Facebook’s data servers. According to Acronis, DNS and BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) are popular targets for malicious players to mount cyber-attacks. There is a myriad of ways that they can do this from social engineering to hijack through the registrar or simply by affecting the settings themselves. Facebook tries to downplay this saying that there is no evidence of data being compromised.

“There are various potential attacks against DNS infrastructure – from DDoS attacks to local DNS rebinding or hijacking a DNS with social engineering against the registrar. Looking at overall attack statistics, they are a lot less popular than common malware and ransomware attacks, but they can be extremely devastating if successful in a sophisticated attack. It’s like pulling the electric cable to your server room – whole enterprise suddenly goes dark.“

Candid Wuest, Acronis VP of Cyber Protection Research

Cloudflare corroborates both Facebook’s official statement and also Acronis’ in their own blog post. The company states that they saw a peak of routing changes from Facebook at 15:40 UTC (10:40 PM in Malaysia). It was only after this that the outages followed.

Was Facebook Trying to Silence Whistleblowing?

While that may be the case, it seems like there is a growing theory that Facebook’s outage was not an accident. The company has been under fire in recent months after inklings of potentially damning accusations came to light. The data showed that Facebook had been ignoring and hiding its own internal data that Instagram could be potentially harmful to teens. This was also one of the reasons why Instagram Kids was put on ice. It was also revealed that the company had a separate set of standards for public figures.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen is a data scientist from Iowa with a computer engineering degree and a Harvard MBA. She told us the only job she wanted at Facebook was to work against misinformation because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories. https://t.co/csgaRe6k5h pic.twitter.com/tSNav057As
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 3, 2021

The information has since been linked to Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee. Why is this being linked to the outage? Well, it seems that the outage occurred following a very damning interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes. While the timing maybe a little bit suspicious, there hasn’t been any data to support the theory.

Be that as it may, the outage did more than just inconvenience users of Facebook’s many apps, it also affected the net worth of CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg saw billions in losses as the company’s stocks tanked in light of the outage. It’s not been a very quiet 2021 for the company and, hopefully, this isn’t an indication of things to come.

News, Social Media

Instagram Kids On Ice After Severe Backlash

September 28, 2021 Nur Jeevan Leave a comment

Instagram has come under fire after a recently published report by The Wall Street Journal hinted that the company maybe ignoring internal research. The research suggests that the social media platform could actually have a negative impact on teenage girls. According to the report, the company has been well aware of the damning effect that Instagram has on their users. However, the company and its representatives have actively downplayed them. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, has publicly lauded the research and called for the platform to embrace its wider responsibility.

alexander shatov 71Qk8ODIBko unsplash — Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

That said, it looks like that isn’t enough. Just today, Mosseri posted a public announcement regarding the status of Instagram Kids. The new platform, which has been in development for a while now, but was brought to light only earlier in March. With his post, Adam Mosseri announced that development for the platform has been put on ice. That said, he still stood by the decision to develop Instagram Kids.

“I still strongly believe that it is the right thing to do. It has to be better to give parents the option to give their tweens a version of Instagram that was designed with them in mind. That was designed to be safe for those between 10 and 12. One where there are no ads; where there are parental controls; where there is age appropriate content; where they can supervise and shape the experience in meaningful ways…”

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram

The company is taking the pause in development to better communicate and discuss the platform with stakeholders. Adam Mosseri highlighted that they will use the time to speak to experts, parents and researchers in an effort to better gear Instagram Kids to protect children. In fact, he mentions that some of the features and enhancements that were being developed for kids may find their way to the Instagram app to better allow parents to curate their teenager’s Instagram experience. The company has also issued an official statement addressing the issue.

That said, since their announcement, Facebook has come under fire from U.S. lawmakers. These lawmakers are calling for them to drop the matter entirely. In their statement, they are asseting that “Facebook has completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to protecting young people online and it must completely abandon this project.”

That said, the company’s woes with Instagram Kids is only the latest in Facebook’s encounters with leglislation. Facebook has recently come under fire for data privacy issues and even anticompetitive behaviours as world governments struggle to leglislate Big Tech.

Android, iOS, Lifestyle, Mobile, News

#MYReels Simplifies Content Creation on Facebook and Instagram in Malaysia

March 23, 2021 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

Instagram today just introduced a brand-new feature for content creators. They call it ‘Reels’ to help content creators make even more variety of contents on Instagram stories at least. Of course, short form contents on Instagram Stories can be shared across to Facebook as well.

Reels for Instagram will bring the long-awaited Instagram Music feature that has been available in other regions for a while now. But Reels is not just about taking the Music feature into Instagram Stories for Malaysia. It is also about helping content creators to create more varieties of contents on Instagram.

There are a few tools that comes with Reels too to make it a speedy content creator tool of choice for the many content creators on Instagram and Facebook. You can control your video speed for one, to make seamless and great looking slow-motion videos. You can record your videos now without even touching your smartphones too with a timer and countdown function now. You can add timed texts and stickers on selected parts of your video too now, instead of guessing and just hoping for the best. You can even align yourself up from previous videos to create a smooth, seamless transition in videos. Most of the time as well, on your smartphone, you are shooting free-handed so Instagram Reels can touch-up the videos to add extra stability and control over your short form videos.

Obviously, bringing Music feature into Instagram and Facebook in Malaysia is huge too. Creators in Malaysia now have access to an expanded licensed music library for their own contents on Facebook and Instagram. Users can also use music stickers on their Instagram and Facebook Stories and even easily add lyrics on their contents. It does not stop there too, you can now have music on your Facebook Profile.

If you think that Reels adds some ‘TikTok like’ functions and features to Instagram and Facebook, you may not be completely wrong. The rise of TikTok has empowered plenty of content creators to quickly make compelling short form contents that you can easily follow on their platform. TikTok has also appealed to plenty of Instagram and Facebook content creators thanks to the innovative tools that TitTok has provided for quick and seamless content creation. The introduction of Reels and its suite of content creation tool should bring some content creators back to Instagram and Facebook.

Reels is now available for Instagram and Facebook users in 50 regions. Malaysia is a part of those 50 countries with Reels introduced in Instagram and Facebook. Music is available in 90 countries so far and Malaysia is now part of those countries to have Music features available. Instagram and Facebook are two free apps available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

News, Social Media

Facebook Makes Instagram More Accessible with Instagram Lite

March 12, 2021 Nur Jeevan Leave a comment

First came Facebook Lite, now the Lite comes to Instagram. Instagram is getting a new app targeted at emerging markets. Similar to its sister app, Facebook Lite, Instagram Lite brings the platform’s core features in a package that is less than 2MB in size; a far cry from the 30MB of the original Instagram app.

The new Lite version of Instagram was developed by Facebook’s development team based in Tel Aviv – the same team that worked on Facebook Lite. The team studied and honed into what users wanted as their core Instagram experience even with limited data. For Instagram users, these were mainly their messaging and video features.

Of course, this doesn’t steer away from the image-centric features of Instagram. The team built the app keeping in mind that the core experience on the platform still relies on images. Hence, when you go into the Lite application, you will notice that animation and data rich features such as filters may be missing. That said, features such as stickers and GIFs still make it into the new Lite App. The app also sees a simplification of icons like the trash icon being replaced by an “X”.

The new Instagram Lite app is available in 170 countries as of now. Most of the countries in the list are emerging markets where people have limited access to data.

Auto Captions Arrive While Reels Crosses Over to Facebook

In addition to the rollout of Instagram Lite, a select group of people have also gotten access to new features in the regular app. Notably, a new Auto Captions sticker called “CC Captions” has been appearing for a small number of users. The sticker transcribes spoken audio when added to an Instastory. The feature was first reported by Matt Navarra, a Social media consultant on Twitter. In a statement to Engadget, Instagram has clarified that the feature is not yet publicly available.

NEW! @Instagram has added a ‘Captions’ sticker for Stories

You can now auto-caption videos in stories with a range of different styles… pic.twitter.com/cijk7nWGC3
— Matt Navarra (I quit X. Follow me on Threads) (@MattNavarra) March 9, 2021

Facebook also seems to be testing the waters with Reels. The company has been experimenting with allowing select creators in India to share their Instagram Reels over to Facebook. Creators who opt-in to the feature are able to share Reels directly to Facebook. One caveat is that their content appears to be appearing with their Instagram handles. Reels itself seems to be making its way to Facebook as the is getting updated to allow users to create and post Reels from the app.

Android, iOS, Mobile, News, Social Media

Instagram Live Rooms – Experience video broadcasting with more users on Instagram Now

March 2, 2021 Shireen Lee Leave a comment

Attention Instagrammers! Instagram has rolled out a new feature that allows more people to go live at once. The new feature called “Live Rooms”allows up to 4 users to participate and act as ‘hosts’ in a video chat room. Instagram hopes that the introduction of Live Rooms will encourage users to start their first podcast on Instagram. Also, going live with more than two people ups the fun factor. It also allows creators to share their audiences which can help increase reach and follows among the collaborators.

On the other hand, Instragram is trying to one up apps like Clubhouse, Pong Pong and Partying by creating a more interactive session with the video experience. This allows the audience and friends to actually see the expressions and reactions of the hosts on camera. Instagram claims that its limit of up to 4 hosts helps prevent participants talking over each other. That said, the audience can still freely interact with hosts through the chat function. Instagram is encouraging a plethora of content formats including livestream shopping and fundraising using Live Rooms.

Going live with Live Rooms isn’t just about interactions. Instagram Live Rooms is also helping creators monetise by offering “Live Badges”.The audience can purchase “Live Badges” from the host. The hope is that, like other platforms, these badges will help connect creators to their audiences better. It also allows audiences to directly support creators.

However, Live Rooms isn’t going live on Instagram willy nilly. Instagram has put in place terms and conditions to help protect creators and the community. People who have been blocked by any of the participants in the Live Room will not able to join the room. In addtion, those who have lost their privileges to go Live on Instagram due to violations of Community Guidelines will not be able to partake in Live Rooms.

Both Android and iOS users have access to Live Rooms and the feature is now available on Instagram. Instagram app is available for free on from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Of course, as mentioned, terms and conditions to Live Rooms apply.

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#MYReels Simplifies Content Creation on Facebook and Instagram in Malaysia

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