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Rumors have been flying this morning about everyone’s favorite mobile photo sharing app, Instagram. According to a source from TechCrunch, the popular app is expected to introduce a new video sharing feature later this week during a Facebook press event.

If the rumors are true, the new Instagram feature will allow users to film and edit short videos that are between 5 and 10 seconds long. There’s been no word on any other details, like whether or not the video feature will come as a standalone app or if it will include Instagram filters for videos.

• 7 top video sharing sites and mobile apps

The idea of video for Instagram is not new, and with so many other popular short video-sharing apps like Vine, Viddy, Keek, Socialcam, Cinemagram, Snapchat and others, it’s a smart move for an app already as big and successful as Instagram to join the competition. Vine is barely six months old and has already attracted over 13 million users.

Three more days until we hear the big news. Facebook is scheduled to announce “something new” this coming Thursday, June 20th.

Photo © Getty Images

Here we go again. Myspace is not ready to give up on the Internet. Not now, not yet.

• The struggle to revive Myspace

The Justin Timberlake-endorsed, fully redesigned social networking site for music enthusiasts just exited private beta and officially released a brand new iOS app, so users can take all their Myspace activities with them on the go. Along with some tweaked features on the now fully public web-based version and a new app, the once dominant social network has also forked out $20 million in multimedia ad campaigning to hopefully reinvent its tired brand.

Myspace’s persistent effort is somewhat admirable, and it clearly has the cash to try to move forward (for now), but its place on the web ultimately comes down to music consumers and social networking users that decide to choose it over competing services. The reality is not many people are likely to spend less time using Spotify or Rdio subscriptions to make time for using Myspace instead, and the wide ranging variety of trendy streaming services like SoundCloud, Pandora, Songza, Twitter #Music and the coming iTunes Radio make it all that much harder for Myspace to justify its multimillion-dollar attempt at making a worthwhile comeback.

• 10 popular streaming apps

Sorry Myspace, but a fabulous new design and millions spent in ad campaigns won’t necessarily make you better than the rest of the choices available to us nowadays.

Photo © Myspace

Facebook has officially introduced the hashtag.

Announced yesterday, the social network officially started rolling out clickable hashtags in shared posts that take users to a separate public feed. Like Twitter, Facebook hashtags offer a useful way to explore trending topics and join in public discussions.

Twitter may have made the hashtag trend, but Facebook’s got the mammoth userbase to make it work. Facebook users will be able to search for hashtags in the top search bar, click on them in their personal feeds or from other sources like Instagram, and add to the discussion directly from the hashtag feed.

Photo © Facebook

Sharing one Netflix account between several people in one household who all have very different viewing interests doesn’t exactly return the best recommended shows or movies for each individual person. Netflix hopes to fix this problem by introducing new user profiles later this summer to help make sharing one account easier.

• 10 sites to watch free TV

The new multiple profiles feature will allow users to sign in to their own and see a much more personalized list of recommendations tailored to their individual viewing habits. No longer will you need to worry about sifting through dad’s weird sci-fi movies or the kids’ wacky cartoon shows you have absolutely no interest in watching.

User profiles are currently being tested out and are expected to be introduced publicly by the end of August. Each Netflix account will likely be able support up to five or six separate profiles.

Photo © Getty Images

Apple might be a little late in joining the music streaming market, but the newly announced iTunes Radio will at least have one little extra feature that the rest of the competition doesn’t: a dedicated “Trending on Twitter” station part of Twitter #Music that will come built right into the iOS Music app.

• What is Twitter #Music?

Twitter launched its new music discovery app back in April, but the excitement was short-lived as the free iOS app continued to drop down the list in the App Store’s top 100 free apps over the weeks following its launch. If iRadio catches on as well as hoped, Apple’s partnership with Twitter will give users the chance to discovery and listen directly to tracks that are currently trending on Twitter (in addition to other curated stations), without needing to access the official Twitter #Music app.

• 10 popular music streaming services

iTunes Radio is scheduled to launch in the fall for U.S. users to start, offering both free and paid subscription plans. You can find out more about it on the Apple website.

Photo © Apple, Inc.

A lot of new and exciting things are on the way for Apple users, and they were all revealed to us earlier today during the company’s massive annual WWDC keynote.

Tech enthusiasts were somewhat skeptical about what would be announced at today’s event, considering Google did so well at its annual I/O conference just a few weeks ago.

“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass,” said Apple Senior Vice President Phill Schiller during today’s keynote, in response to the critics.

Here are some the main web-based features announced today that will change and improve the way you access and interact on the Internet (using Apple products, of course).

Safari Browser Improvements

• Safari has fallen behind the user-preferred Google Chrome browser, but Apple is stepping up its game with a refreshed Safari interface, social browsing via shared links, a brand new sidebar featuring a reading list and a redesign for Top Sites.
• Apple users who eventually decide to upgrade to the coming OS X Mavericks will also get a new feature called App Naps — a nifty tool for helping you conserve power.

iOS 7 Revamp

• iWork for iCloud will let users work with any files for Pages. Numbers or Keynote right in the desktop or iOS browsers, as a way to take on Google Docs and Microsoft Office Web Apps.
• You’ll soon be able to swipe between any camera app when accessing the camera, like Instagram, Snapseed, the native camera app or anything else.
• AirDrop, Apple’s P2P file-sharing feature, will allow you to see a sharing sheet whenever you need to send a video, photo or other file with one or multiple friends nearby.
• Microsoft’s Bing search has been integrated into Siri, and users will be able to use it to control a range of things like Bluetooth, brightness, Twitter, Wikipedia, your car and much more.
• Apps that require updates will update automatically in iOS 7 without asking you for permission first.
• iOS 7 will be out later this fall.

iTunes Radio (iRadio)

• Apple is launching its very own music streaming service, called iTunes Radio, which will compete with services like Pandora/Spotify/Rdio and will come built directly into iTunes on both mobile and the desktop.
• It’s only launching in the U.S. to start and will be free for all users.
• A premium subscription option will be available to users who don’t want to see ads.
• With iRadio, users will be able to create their own playlists, share music on social media and have it all synched up across all Apple devices.

Other Cool Hardware and OS Stuff

If you want to know anything about the new Mac Pros or Macbook Airs or the new OS X Mavericks, I recommend checking out our Apple experts’ columns for Macs, iPods/iPhones and iPads.

I also really enjoyed the live coverage done by The Verge today. Their team is extraordinary, and they’ve got a whole bunch of in-depth articles and first looks at what was announced today all over their homepage.

Photo © Bloomberg via Getty Images

If you use Facebook regularly, chances are you’ve seen those sneaky ads that pop up in the middle of your news feed saying “friend name likes page name” along with a related brand or product photo disguised as a shared a post and the word Sponsored displayed beneath it. They’re pretty awful, and Facebook is getting rid of them. Thank goodness.

The worst part about Sponsored Stories was that you couldn’t shut them off, and more often than not, they weren’t tailored to any of your personal interests. If a friend liked a specific page for whatever reason and if that page was paying Facebook to show ads all over the place, that meant it could show up as a Sponsored Story in your feed — no matter how irrelevant it was to you.

• A brief history of Facebook

I recently had a friend ask me in real life why I kept posting about a fishing product on Facebook. Confused, I told him that I remembered liking a fishing company’s Facebook page over a year ago, but I hadn’t posted anything about it since then. Turns out those posts were Sponsored Stories constantly being displayed in my friends’ news feeds. I had no idea.

Facebook is cutting down its current 27 ad formats by about half. Advertisers sure won’t be happy about it, but Facebook users can at least breathe a sigh of relief knowing that certain news feed stories will no longer be disguised as ads.

Photo © Facebook

Everyone’s favorite self-destructing picture/video messaging app — Snapchat — just got a massive iOS design update. Version 5.0 offers users a noticeably faster and smoother interface, including a new swipe navigation feature for accessing your camera, checking your inbox, and finding friends more easily.

• What is Snapchat?

The new in-app profiles that were just added are pretty basic to start, simply allowing users to get a glimpse at anyone’s best friends and high score. You can also now send Snapchat messages to friends directly through your address book, and you can instantly reply to any messages by double tapping the screen to activate the camera.

Snapchat has experienced wild success in the mobile app world since it first launched in September of 2011, particularly among the younger crowd, like teens and 20-somethings. Today, Snapchat sees over 500 million messages shared daily — an incredible increase from 150 million daily message shares just less than a year ago.

You can download v5.0 for iOS from the App Store, or you can the waiting-to-be-updated version on Android from Google Play.

Photo © Snapchat, Inc.

Twitter pushed out a pretty significant TweetDeck design update today, now available on the Chrome extension and web version. Overall, the changes make TweetDeck look a lot cleaner and simpler to navigate.

• TweetDeck vs. HootSuite

There’s a brand new vertical sidebar menu located to the left, which now features the blue tweet box and icons representing each one of your personal columns. Everything you previously saw at the top of the screen has essentially been moved to the left sidebar, and you can directly drag and drop any of your column icons from that menu anywhere you like to arrange the order of how they appear.

You can read more about all these cool new features here. And while you’re at it, why not check out this hilarious post by Gizmodo about how the update and TweetDeck announcement was posted too early. Everything seems to be resolved now, but it sure sounded like Team TweetDeck didn’t have enough coffee this morning.

Photo © Twitter, Inc.

Remember that trendy mobile gaming app, Draw Something? You know, the one that exploded in popularity out of nowhere and required you to draw MS Paint-style pictures with your finger so your friends could guess what you drew? Yeah, it’s been a while…

Zynga forked over $200 million to acquire Draw Something studio OMGPOP last year, basically right after the app had peaked. By the time Zynga announced the acquisition, user interest in Draw Something was already on its way down. And boy oh boy, did it ever fall fast.

Zynga just recently announced it would lay off 18 percent of its workers (520 employees), shutting down several offices throughout the U.S., including OMGPOP. There’s been no information about what the gaming giant might do with OMGPOP’s current products now that OMGPOP no longer exists, but a loss of nearly $528,000 per day on OMGPOP is a clear sign that Zynga really messed this one up.

Acquisition blunders like this serve as a good reminder that the web moves crazy fast, and companies that are unable to reinvigorate a sluggish trend almost immediately will pay the price.

For Zynga, more challenges lie ahead. Feel free to check out the Zynga blog to see what’s in store for the future.

Photo © Zynga / OMGPOP