Subscription version of Snapchat makes its debut

US tech firm Snap on Wednesday launched a subscription version of Snapchat as it looks to generate more money from the image-centric, ephemeral messaging app.

Snapchat+ is priced at $4 a month and will provide access to exclusive features, the California-based company said in a blog post. It said that these would include priority tech support and early access to experimental features.

The subscription version of the service is making its debut in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, Snap said.

Snap in February reported its first quarterly profit, but two months later warned that it saw the economic outlook as having darkened considerably.

The company said that more than 332 million people around the world use Snapchat daily.

"This subscription will allow us to deliver new Snapchat features to some of the most passionate members of our community," Snap said in the blog post.

Agence France-Presse

Snapchat claims 500 million monthly active users

Snapchat, the social network popular with young smartphone users, said Thursday it has 500 million monthly active users amid surging growth in many parts of the world.

The platform, which has expanded its offerings beyond its original disappearing messages, had not previously announced a figure for monthly active users, but had said last month it had 280 million daily active users.

"We now reach over 500 million monthly active users, and nearly one of every two smartphone users in the United States is on Snapchat," chief executive Evan Spiegel said in opening parent firm Snap's partner summit.

"In the US, France, UK, Australia, and the Netherlands, Snapchat is becoming an indispensable part of people's lives, reaching 90 percent of 13- to 24-year-olds, and 75 percent of 13- to 34-year-olds."

Spiegel said Snapchat has seen sizzling growth over the past year with many consumers locked down due to the coronavirus pandemic, with a doubling of daily active users in India over the past five quarters.

"Our community outside of North America and Europe is growing rapidly," he said.

"In fact, roughly 40 percent of our community is now located outside of North America and Europe."

Known for its disappearing messages, Snapchat has expanded partnerships with a range of media companies including games, news, entertainment and sports snippets.

It is also known for its augmented reality features allowing users to share their own content and shop while virtually trying on items.

The company on Thursday unveiled a number of new partnerships including with the dating app Bumble, allowing users to share their content with Snapchat augmented reality technology.

Agence France-Presse

Snapchat outage shuts out sheltering consumers for hours

SAN FRANCISCO - The Snapchat application popular with young smartphone users went offline Wednesday for undetermined reasons, the company said.

The outage, the cause of which was not explained by the company, lasted several hours, making unavailable the service known for its disappearing messages and other content.

"We're aware many Snapchatters are having trouble using the app. Hang tight - we're looking into it," said a tweet from Snapchat Support.

The first reports of the outage came around 1330 GMT, according to the monitoring website Downdetector.

Around 2030 GMT, a new message said the service was restored.

"We've patched things up," the updated post said. "If you're still having trouble, please let us know!"

Parent firm Snap Inc. did not respond to a query about the outage.

It came as people worldwide were turning to social media for information and entertainment as they sheltered at home from the coronavirus pandemic.

Snapchat said last week it saw huge jumps in engagement with the app as a result of the crisis, with real-time communication up 50 percent in March.

To support the global COVID-19 relief efforts, Snapchat has launched a new augmented reality donation effort allowing users to donate to relief efforts through its "Snapchat Lenses," glasses designed for the app.

An image and video sharing tool especially popular among teens, Snapchat claims the app is regularly used by 75 percent of all 13- to 34-year-olds in the United States.

It has 190 million daily users -- about 60 million more than Twitter -- but is still operating at a loss.

rl/ft

Agence France-Presse

Pinterest pops past Snapchat in US

SAN FRANCISCO — Shares in Pinterest popped on Tuesday after a market tracker reported that the online bulletin board surpassed Snapchat to become the third most used social media platform in the US.

Pinterest's user base grew slightly more than 9 percent to 82.4 million US users last year, topping Snapchat's 80.2 million users, according to the research firm eMarketer.

The growth spurt would make Pinterest the number 3 US social platform behind Facebook and its Instagram unit.

"While Snapchat has a young core audience that it caters to, Pinterest has a more universal appeal, and it's made significant gains in a wide range of age groups," said eMarketer analyst Nazmul Islam.

Shares in San Francisco-based Pinterest ended the formal trading day up about 10 percent.

The market tracking firm expected Pinterest to be more popular among US users in the years ahead, with the online bulletin board's lead on the image-centric messaging service widening through the end of 2023.

With its share offering, Pinterest got off to a flying start on Wall Street early last year in the market debut for the visual discovery service.

Pinterest, launched in 2010, is a virtual bulletin board platform, with users decorating their boards with pictures showcasing interests including food, fashion, travel and lifestyle.

It also enables users to link to online shopping and other services to find items they have "pinned."

Agence France-Presse 

Google tightens political ads policy to thwart abuse

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google on Wednesday updated how it handles political ads as online platforms remain under pressure to avoid being used to spread misleading information intended to influence voters.

The internet company said its rules already ban any advertiser, including those with political messages, from lying in ads. But it is making its policy more clear and adding examples of how that prohibits content such as doctored or manipulated images or video.

"It's against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim -- whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died," Google ads product management vice president Scott Spencer said in an online post.

Examples of banned ad material included ads or links to information making demonstrably false claims that could undermine voter trust or participation in elections.

"Of course, we recognize that robust political dialogue is an important part of democracy, and no one can sensibly adjudicate every political claim, counterclaim, and insinuation," Spencer said.

"So we expect that the number of political ads on which we take action will be very limited - but we will continue to do so for clear violations."

Google's main formats for political advertising are ads posted along with search query results, those shown at video viewing service YouTube, and display ads that appear on websites.

Google will also limit targeting of political ads to general categories such as age, gender, or postal code level location.

"Political advertisers can, of course, continue to do contextual targeting, such as serving ads to people reading or watching a story about, say, the economy," Spencer said.

"This will align our approach to election ads with long-established practices in media such as TV, radio, and print, and result in election ads being more widely seen and available for public discussion."

Google will begin enforcing the changes in Britain within a week and throughout the EU by the end of the year, then in the rest of the world starting January 6, according to Spencer.

SPEECH VS TRUTH

Snap this week confirmed that it checks political ads at Snapchat to make sure they are not deceptive or misleading and thus enforce its ban on such material.

The strategy seems to be a middle ground between Facebook's controversial tolerance of proven lies in political ads and Twitter's decision to ban them all together.

Snap policies prohibit political ads that are deceptive or misleading, with an in-house team reviewing such paid messages to make sure they don't break the rules.

Twitter last week said its ban on political ads will exempt "cause-based" messages on topics related to social or environmental issues.

The San Francisco-based messaging platform plans to bar all paid political messages starting Friday, while addressing concerns expressed by activists for social causes.

"Ads that educate, raise awareness, and/or call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity causes are allowed," Twitter said in its new policy.

"However, they may not reference prohibited political advertisers or political content."

Twitter said the move was aimed at countering the spread of misinformation by politicians.

The political ban has drawn mixed reactions: some argue it puts pressure on Facebook to follow suit or take other steps to curb the spread of misinformation from politicians; others say a ban will be difficult to enforce.

Social media platforms have been challenged by President Donald Trump's campaign and its use of ads that contain claims which critics say have been debunked by independent fact-checkers.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said political advertising is not a major source of revenue but adds that he believes it is important to allow everyone a "voice," and that banning political ads would favor incumbents.

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Facebook's Instagram launches Snapchat-like 'Threads' app

Facebook Inc said on Thursday it was launching a separate camera-first messaging app, "Threads", for its photo-sharing platform Instagram, stepping up the company's social media war with smaller rival Snapchat.

The launch of the app, which like Snapchat and Instagram is centered around photos but is more focused on keeping users connected with small groups of friends, knocked 5% off Snap Inc's shares in afternoon trading.

Through Threads, users can upload status, share location and battery status with their close friends on Instagram, the social media company said in a blog post.

Facebook has been focusing on Instagram, its fastest-growing revenue generator, as its core platform has been under scrutiny from regulators regarding privacy and spread of misinformation or fake news.

Users can also enable "auto status" feature, which would automatically update their battery life and status based on current location, the company said, adding that the feature is an opt-in.

Precise location information collected for auto status will be specific to Threads and will not be used for ads, Facebook said.

"The way we use data from other parts of Facebook and Instagram to deliver relevant ads to you remains the same," the company said.

Instagram launched "Close Friends" feature in November last year, allowing users to share their stories with a smaller group of people.

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Privacy group says tech giants not delivering on political ads pledges

Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet's Google have failed to provide adequate transparency for global users around political advertising on their services, a privacy advocacy group said on Tuesday.

A report from London-based charity Privacy International said that many users around the world lack meaningful insight into how ads are targeted on social media services.

The group called Google "especially deficient" in disclosure of information about targeting, which enables advertisers to deliver tailored messages to different groups of users.

Google spokeswoman Alex Krasov said "we know there is more work to be done and we’re looking at ways to bring more political ads transparency to more regions and more types of elections."

Big internet companies have been sharing more information around political advertising following scrutiny after US intelligence agencies found that Russia had targeted American voters with social media content, including ads, to try and influence the 2016 election. Russia has denied the allegations.

A Facebook spokesman said that the company had tightened its rules on political advertising in recent years and improved transparency on both Facebook and Instagram.

Twitter did not reply to Reuters requests for comment on the new report.

Privacy International's criticisms come ahead of the European Commission's own report, due by the end of the year, on the tech companies' commitments to its self-regulatory Code of Practice on Disinformation.

The companies and trade bodies for the advertising industry signed up to the European Commission's voluntary measures in October 2018 to ward off more heavy-handed legislation.

As part of recent transparency efforts, Facebook, Twitter and Google have all launched searchable online libraries of political ads on their platforms, but these have been criticized by researchers for being poorly maintained and failing to provide useful ad targeting information.

"Companies that rely on people's data to establish their market dominance should give all users heightened ad transparency, and transparency into the targeting and funding of ads should be meaningful," said Sara Nelson, a spokeswoman for Privacy International.

The new report singled out Google for not having defined what it considers to be "political issues," saying this rendered transparency into ads on such issues on the site less meaningful.

It also argued that as Twitter, outside of the United States, does not give the same level of transparency to "promoted tweets" as it does to political ads, these paid-for tweets run without the heightened transparency they warrant.

In the United States, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner have been pushing for the introduction of the Honest Ads Act, which would require platforms to disclose the purchasers of ads, applying the same rules that exist for TV and radio.

"A patchwork of voluntary measures from tech companies isn’t sufficient — we need to pass the Honest Ads Act," Klobuchar said in a statement last month when tech company Snap, which owns disappearing messaging app Snapchat, released its own political ad spending data last month.

Some platforms, such as Chinese company ByteDance's TikTok and photo-sharing site Pinterest, do not allow political ads on their platforms.

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Pinay, boyfriend plead guilty after taunting 91-year-old patient on Snapchat

A Filipina nursing worker and her boyfriend have pleaded guilty on misdemeanor charges in relation to a Snapchat video showing them taunting a 91-year old patient.

Bryan Cortez pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. He received a sentence of 18 months supervision with 100 hours of community service.

His girlfriend Jamie Montesa pleaded guilty to attempted unauthorized recording and was sentenced to one year supervision with 50 hours of community service.

Along with the sentence, both were fired from the nursing home and ordered to stay away from the patient who has since transferred to another facility.

Read more on Balitang America:

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Google server trouble snarls YouTube, Snapchat

WASHINGTON -- Congested Google servers in the eastern United States caused problems for users of Snapchat and YouTube on Sunday, with complaints on social media that the popular apps weren't accessible.

Google acknowledged the issue, writing in a statement on its Cloud Platform status page that it was dealing with "high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple services in Google Cloud, G Suite and YouTube."

"Users may see slow performance or intermittent errors," it said, adding that engineers had completed the first of two steps to restore normal operations.

Earlier in the day, social media users complained of trouble loading a slew of popular websites and apps.

"Google, YouTube, Snapchat, Shopify, all currently down. Is the internet melting?" asked one Twitter post.

Snapchat and Google-owned YouTube both acknowledged the server issue on their Twitter accounts.

Cloud computing is one of Google's most lucrative services, but faces stiff competition from other technology companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

In March, the world's largest social network, Facebook, blamed a "server configuration change" for a massive outage affecting its applications around the world.

The outage affected users for at least 12 hours in most areas of the world, with the biggest impact in North America and Europe, a tracking website said at the time.

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French police arrest 4 suspects in gang rape online videos

French police have arrested four people over a filmed gang-rape of a woman outside a nightclub in southern France which was later posted on social media, a source close to the inquiry said Tuesday.

Their identities were not disclosed, but police had said they were looking for four men seen raping the 19-year-old woman in videos posted on Snapchat and Twitter last month.

The footage taken in a club's parking lot in Balma, a suburb of Toulouse, sparked a wave of outrage, with many people claiming to know the identities of the attackers. 

Local police were alerted to the attack after the videos were flagged to France's national digital surveillance cell, and the victim herself came forward after learning the videos were circulating on social media.

The videos were deleted by the interior ministry's Pharos program for tracking and removing graphic and violent internet content, and police urged people not to share the images.

Videos of rapes have become an increasingly common problem online due to the spread of mobile phones and social media usage, with cases in the United States, Brazil and India causing disgust in recent years.

People who shared the videos could face up to five years in prison if they are apprehended, while the bystanders who filmed the rape could also face lengthy terms for complicity in the attack.

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US teens prefer remote chats to face-to-face meeting: study

NEW YORK - American teenagers are starting to prefer communicating via text instead of meeting face-to-face, according to a study published Monday by the independent organization Common Sense Media.

Some 35 percent of kids aged 13 to 17 years old said they would rather send a text than meet up with people, which received 32 percent.

The last time the media and technology-focused nonprofit conducted such a survey in 2012, meeting face-to-face hit 49 percent, far ahead of texting's 33 percent.

More than two-thirds of American teens choose remote communication -- including texting, social media, video conversation and phone conversation -- when they can, according to the study.

In 2012 less than half of them marked a similar preference.

Notably, in the six-year span between the two studies the proportion of 13 to 17-year-olds with their own smartphone increased from 41 to 89 percent.

As for social networks, 81 percent of respondents said online exchange is part of their lives, with 32 percent calling it "extremely" or "very" important.

The most-used platform for this age group is Snapchat (63 percent), followed by Instagram (61 percent) and Facebook (43 percent).

Some 54 percent of the teens who use social networks said it steals attention away from those in their physical presence.

Two-fifths of them said time spent on social media prevents them from spending more time with friends in person.

The study was conducted online with a sample of 1,141 young people ages 13 to 17, from March 22 to April 10.

tu/mdo/mdl

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Less-cool Facebook losing youth at fast pace: survey

WASHINGTON - With mom, dad and grandma signing up in increasing numbers, Facebook is losing younger users in the United States at a faster pace than previously estimated, researchers said Monday.

A report by eMarketer said Snapchat is drawing youths away from Facebook at a quicker clip than Facebook-owned Instagram.

Facebook is still growing in the US market, according to research firm, mainly due to increases in usage by older age groups.

The report is the latest to highlight Facebook's problem with attracting and keeping young people, who have long been a core user base for the world's biggest social network.

The research firm said it expected the first-ever decline in the 18-24 age group in the US, a drop of 5.8 percent this year.

It also said that for the first time since its research began, less than half of the 12-17 age group in the United States would be on Facebook, with a 5.6 percent drop in that segment. 

The under-12 age group meanwhile will see a decline of 9.3 percent this year, eMarketer said.

The same trend is expected to continue into 2019 and 2020, with declines in all segments of US users under 25, the report added.

Facebook will lose an estimated two million users under 25 this year, with Snapchat and Instagram the main beneficiaries.

The report said Snapchat will add 1.9 million users under 25 in 2018 and Instagram will add 1.6 million.

Snapchat, which is known for its disappearing messages, will continue to have more users aged 12 to 24 than Instagram, the researchers said.

But Snapchat could end up facing a similar problem as it seeks to increase its user base and reach all ages.

"Snapchat could eventually experience more growth in older age groups, since it's redesigning its platform to be easier to use," eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said. 

"The question will be whether younger users will still find Snapchat cool if more of their parents and grandparents are on it. That's the predicament Facebook is in."

Facebook remains the most popular social network in the US market with an estimated 169.5 million users this year, according to eMarketer.

But faster-growing Instagram will be used by 104.7 million Americans and Snapchat will reach 86.5 million users, according to the forecast.

Last year, eMarketer predicted Facebook would see declines among some youths for the first time in its history.

A report last year by investment firm Piper Jaffray showed Snapchat is the preferred social network for US teens, with 47 percent using the platform.

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Snapchat redesign keeps it personal

SAN FRANCISCO - Snapchat on Wednesday unveiled a redesign intended to rev up use of the image-sharing smartphone application by focusing on personal interests instead of what friends post.

Parent company Snap has promised the redesign in a bid to make Snapchat more user-friendly in the face of competition from rival messaging apps, especially those fielded by leading social networking Facebook.

Snap changes included separate streams for posts or messages from close friends versus digital content from publishers.

Snap co-founder and chief Evan Spiegel outlined the service's approach in an online post, arguing that social medial "fueled fake news" because content designed to spread was not necessarily accurate.

"The personalized newsfeed revolutionized the way people share and consume content," Spiegel said.

"But let's be honest: this came at a huge cost to facts, our minds and the entire media industry."

Snapchat's approach is to rely on computer algorithms based on individual users' interests, not what is buzzing at the service, according to Spiegel.

"We believe that the best path forward is disentangling the two by providing a personalized content feed based on what you want to watch, not what your friends post," Spiegel said.

"We think this helps guard against fake news and mindless scrambles for friends or unworthy distractions."

The change is also intended to help publishers make money from their stories, according to Snap.

Early this month, Snap reporting a widening loss and user numbers that fell short of market expectations.

Revenue at the California-based company rose but its loss more than tripled in the quarter that ended September 30, according to an earnings release.

The number of people using Snapchat daily rose to 178 million in a 17 percent increase from the same quarter last year, according to the company.

Snapchat became popular among young smartphone users for its disappearing messages, often photos or video, but analysts say it needs to show strong growth to keep pace in the rapidly evolving social media sector dominated by Facebook.

Although Snapchat is best known for its smartphone messaging, it has also developed partnerships with numerous media outlets eager to reach its audience with news, video and other content.

Snap said during an earnings call that priorities in the year ahead will include increasing the number of users along with the kinds of content on the platform, as well as investing in augmented reality and machine learning.

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Snapchat blocks Al Jazeera in Saudi Arabia

Snapchat has blocked Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera from its app in Saudi Arabia at the request of Saudi authorities, the image sharing service said Monday, as tensions simmer between the Gulf states.

Saudi authorities have accused Al Jazeera of acting as a mouthpiece for extremist groups, a charge it denies.

Alongside the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia imposed a blockade on Qatar in June, in the worst diplomatic crisis to roil the Gulf in years.


"We make an effort to comply with local laws in the countries where we operate," said a spokesman for parent company Snap Inc.

Al Jazeera condemned the blocking as an assault on freedom of expression.

"We find Snapchat's action to be alarming and worrying," the broadcaster's acting director general Mostefa Souag said in a statement.

"This sends a message that regimes and countries can silence any voice or platform they don't agree with by exerting pressure on the owners of social media platforms."

Snap Inc. said Saudi authorities had asked it to block Al Jazeera's account in the kingdom before the weekend, arguing that the broadcaster's Discover channel violated local laws.

The broadcaster's website has been blocked in Saudi Arabia for months and authorities shut down its office in the Kingdom when the crisis broke out in June.

So far, Al Jazeera's Snapchat channel can still be viewed in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt.

The Saudi-led alliance has issued a list of 13 demands to Qatar, accusing it of backing extremism and fostering ties with Riyadh's Shiite rival Tehran.

Doha denies the charges, claiming the blockade is an attack on its sovereignty.

The crisis has entered its fourth month and is showing no sign of ending, analysts say.

Saudi Arabia, with its bulging youth population, is among the world's top per capita users of social media.

The internet represents a limited space for freedom of expression in the conservative kingdom.

atm-ac/par

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Facebook shares hit record high as mobile ad sales soar

Facebook Inc's mobile advertising business grew by more than 50 percent in the second quarter, the company said in its earnings report on Wednesday, as the social network continued to establish itself as the venue of choice for an ever-growing array of online advertisers.

Shares in Facebook, owner of four of the most popular mobile services in the world, rose more than 4 percent to about $173 in after-hours trading. Through Wednesday's close, the stock price had climbed nearly 44 percent this year.

Facebook, which now has more than 2 billion regular users, has been squeezing more ads into its Facebook News Feed while adding more ads to its photo-sharing app Instagram, which has more than 700 million users.

With money cascading from those two services, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company was turning attention to monetizing its two messaging services, Messenger and WhatsApp, which have more than 1 billion users each.

"I want to see us move a little faster here but I'm confident that we're going to get this right over the long term," Zuckerberg said in a conference call with analysts.

The company also is accelerating its push into video, an effort aimed at taking advertising dollars from the television industry and increasing the time people spend on Facebook.

Within weeks, Facebook is expected to start a video service that will include scripted shows, a sharp change for a business built on user-generated content.

Zuckerberg said video would be a significant driver of Facebook's business in the next two to three years.

With those possibilities still on the horizon, Facebook said total revenue rose 44.8 percent to $9.32 billion in the second quarter of the year. That beat the average forecast of $9.20 billion among analysts tracked by Thomson Reuters.

Growth was even steeper in mobile advertising, which increased to nearly $8 billion.

"In mobile we're continuing to see great strengths," Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said in a phone interview with Reuters. "We're seeing more and more ad dollars getting allocated to mobile, and we think that trend will continue."

"KILLING IT ON MOBILE"

Mobile ad revenue accounted for 87 percent of the company's total advertising revenue of $9.16 billion in the latest quarter, up from 84 percent a year earlier.

"They're killing it on mobile," Needham & Co analyst Laura Martin said, referring to Facebook's suite of apps. "They are the de facto mobile advertising monopolies and that's a really big deal."

Martin said she sees no weaknesses in Facebook's business.

Facebook and Alphabet Inc own half of the online advertising market worldwide, and Facebook's revenue growth this quarter outshone Alphabet, the owner of YouTube and Google.

Alphabet on Monday reported a 21 percent increase in quarterly revenue, although it started the quarter from a larger base than Facebook did.

Facebook has not said how much of its revenue is attributable to its Instagram unit, although the photo-sharing app has become a greater focus of its business.

"Clearly, the biggest driver of growth is, overall, Facebook News Feed," Wehner said. "Instagram is making a contribution and an increasing contribution."

But investors want Facebook to find additional revenue streams because the company has warned it is hitting maximum ad load in the News Feed, potentially slowing its overall growth.

So far that has not happened.

"They kept warning about ad load, but the ad load continues to be strong," said Ivan Feinseth, research director at Tigress Financial Partners. "I still think ad revenue will grow, because more advertisers are adapting to this platform because there are so many people out there."

The popularity of Instagram also has put pressure on Snapchat, the app owned by Snap Inc. Instagram has added features similar to Snapchat's and Snap's stock on Wednesday closed at an all-time low of $13.40.

Facebook said about 2.01 billion people were using its service monthly as of June 30, up 17 percent from a year earlier.

For the second quarter, net income attributable to shareholders rose to $3.89 billion, or $1.32 per share, from $2.28 billion, or 78 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected earnings of $1.13 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

(Reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco and Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Bill Trott)

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NBC News launches new broadcast on Snapchat

NEW YORK - NBC News launched a news show Wednesday on Snapchat, a first-of-its- kind broadcast aimed at wooing a younger audience.

The program "Stay Tuned," produced by a 30-person team, resembles a regular news broadcast in that it is presented by a journalist seen on-screen. But it lasts just three minutes and consists of a rapid-fire series of video clips, none lasting even 10 seconds.


Like other news organizations that broadcast content on social media, mainly Facebook, NBC News uses subtitles on "Stay Tuned" so people can watch videos without sound.

NBC News will run the program live twice daily during the week and once a day on weekends. Recorded versions can be seen on Snapchat's Discover platform.

NBC will sell ad space for the program and share the revenue with Snapchat, CNBC reported. NBC News did not respond to an AFP request for confirmation of this.

NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC and a unit of cable operator Comcast, invested $500 million in Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, when it went public in March.

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Facebook adds Snapchat-like camera filters to Instagram

Facebook Inc's Instagram has souped up its camera with quirky face-tracking filters, adding another feature similar to that offered by social media rival Snap Inc's Snapchat.

Instagram users will now be able to choose from a range of filters including koala ears that move and twitch as well as math equations that spin to create humorous effects.

Other new features include a rewind mode for videos, which will allow users to play video in reverse, and hashtag stickers to visit hashtag pages.

Facebook has been amping up its camera tool to take on Snapchat's features such as disappearing messages and face-tracking filters, which are hugely popular among its teenage and millennial users.

The world's largest social media network has already added several Snapchat-like features such as Stories, which allows users to upload pictures and video slideshows that disappear after 24 hours.

Instagram said in April over 200 million people used Stories daily.

Snap, in its first earnings report as a listed company, said it had 166 million daily active users as of March 31.

Snap's shares have been on a roller-coaster ride since their market debut on March 1. The stock plunged about 23 percent last week after the company posted disappointing quarterly results.

However, it recouped some of those losses after several institutional investors including George Soros and Daniel Loeb disclosed stakes in the company.

Snapchat's shares fell 1.5 percent to $20.42 in early trading on Tuesday, while Facebook's shares were little changed.

(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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Facebook rolls out Snapchat-style camera, expiring posts

MANILA - Facebook on Wednesday introduced a new feature on its mobile app that allows users to post images that disappear in 24 hours, pioneered by rival Snapchat.

It was the fourth time California-based Facebook adopted such a feature on its properties. Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp also allow users to post photos and video that expire after a day.

Like Snapchat, the new camera on Facebook's app allows users to add masks, frames and filters.

Use the new #Minions mask on the Facebook app and share with us your favorite Minion expressions to be featured on our pages. pic.twitter.com/Q6fRgwiCO8 

— #Minions (@Minions) March 28, 2017

Masks currently available include those from the movies Alien: Covenant, Despicable Me 3, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Power Rangers, Smurfs: The Lost Village and Wonder Woman.

The company said the move put the camera at the heart of the Facebook experience.

"Over the coming months, we plan to introduce new ways for the Facebook community to create their own frames and effects that can be used on any photo or video created with the new Facebook camera," it said.

"Our goal is for the camera to be a home to hundreds of dynamic and fun effects that give you new ways to connect with friends, family, and your community," it said.

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Why Fil-Am Snapchat millionaire kept working after $54-M jackpot

MANILA - Technology entrepreneur Garrett Gee was $54 million richer when he decided to start fresh as an "adventure travel journalist," exploring the world with his wife and two young kids.

The flip flop-wearing Filipino American recalled how he was at a crossroads after having sold his scanning app to US-based social networking giant Snapchat.

Gee said he was ready to go on a "never ending vacation and be done with it," living off instant fortune.

But together with his wife, Gee hatched a plan to document their adventures on "The Bucket List Family" and encourage people to travel.

"Don't get comfortable. Comfort never was happiness. You can get comfortable for a little bit, that's when life stops," Gee told TFCU.

Gee said the sale of Scan to Snapchat was a turning point that could have turned bad, had he chosen an easy life, free from money problems.

"None of this is gonna matter of I can't take this situation and make something special of it," he said.

Gee, who is in his mid-20s, is in the Philippines for the first time, working on a television and website project with ABS-CBN International.

He said his new work is as enlightening as it is financially rewarding.

"You learn a lot of lessons everyday, one thing you learn when you're traveling is (there are) good people all around the world," he said.

"Maybe the world is a scary place. When you travel, you learn the opposite: The world is safe, the world is beautiful, the world is kind," he added.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

WhatsApp adds Snapchat-like disappearing status

MANILA - Messaging platform WhatsApp has rolled out in the Philippines its "status" feature, allowing users to share photos and videos that expire in 24 hours.

The disappearing posts were pioneered by Snapchat and has since been adopted by properties of social media giant Facebook.

Before WhatsApp, Facebook added a "stories" feature to its Instagram photo-sharing feature and "My Day" to Facebook messenger.

WhatsApp allows users to limit the audience of status posts. A camera icon was also added to the upper left side of the interface for easier posting.

source: news.abs-cbn.com