Techmeme: 3 Months To The First Million Users, Just 6 Weeks To The Second Million For Instagram (MG Siegler/TechCrunch)

10:50 AM ET, February 15, 2011

Top Items:

Apple Launches Subscriptions on the App Store — Apple® today announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store℠, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. This is the same innovative digital subscription billing service …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Apple Rolls Out Long-Awaited/Feared Subscription Plan — Apple has finally announced its subscription plan for its apps sold through its iTunes store: As previous reports have indicated, it both allows app developers to set up recurring payment plans for iPad/iPhone/iPod apps …

DigiTimes:

Apple to expand iPhone screen size to 4-inches — Apple reportedly will change the screen size of iPhone to 4-inch for its fifth generation iPhone to compete with the Google Android platform in the 4- to 7-inch smartphone market, according to upstream component suppliers.

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:

Apple rumored to be evaluating 3 new iPhone prototypes, one with slideout keyboard — A Taiwanese website that has been the source of numerous Apple hardware leaks now claims that Apple has built three hardware prototypes for its next-generation iPhone, including one model with a slide-out physical keyboard.

Discussion: PC World, CNET News, I4U News, TUAW, tw.apple.pro, Mashable!, Newlaunches.com, IntoMobile, Faster Forward, AppAdvice, TiPb, MobileWhack.com, Electronista, Redmond Pie, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, iPhone Download Blog, RazorianFly and MacStories

Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:

iPhone 5 to pack 4-inch display, A5 processor? — Although the last few days have been packed with rumors pointing to a smaller iPhone with a smaller display, Digitimes is now reporting that Apple's fifth-generation iPhone, due in June, will pack a 4-inch display to go toe-to-toe with Android device's larger displays.

Discussion: DigiTimes, Apple Bitch, MacStories and TechEye

Vlad Savov / Engadget:

HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!) — Boy oh boy, HTC is entering the tablet arena with quite a bang. The company has just taken the wraps off its brand new 7-inch Flyer Android tablet, which touts a 1.5GHz single-core CPU …

Vlad Savov / Engadget:

HTC refreshes Android lineup with Incredible S, Desire S and Wildfire S (update: hands-on) — The buttonless wonder we once knew only as “HTC's upcoming flagship device” has today been revealed to be the Incredible S. It's a new 4-incher that emulates the Droid Incredible's successful industrial design …

Discussion: PC World, MobileCrunch, eWeek, Inquirer, PC World, The Next Web, DailyTech, Gadget Lab, Electronista, CrunchGear, Smartphones …, BGR, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, The Next Web and Telegraph

Vlad Savov / Engadget:
HTC Salsa and Chacha bring the dedicated Facebook button to Android (update: eyes-on)

Discussion: Electricpig.co.uk, SlashGear, Crave, PR Newswire, Switched, Neowin.net, Electronista, everwas, IntoMobile and MobileCrunch

Matt Cutts / The Official Google Blog:

New Chrome extension: block sites from Google's web search results — We've been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users.

Geoffrey A. Fowler / Wall Street Journal:

Facebook's Web of Frenemies — Facebook Inc.'s growing ambitions are redrawing battle lines in Silicon Valley. — As the seven-year-old company ramps up its hiring and adds new features to its social network, it is disrupting the businesses of established companies like Yahoo Inc …

Discussion: Search Engine Land

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal: Yahoo Opts to Friend Facebook

Nokia Plan B:

An open letter to Nokia shareholders and institutional investors — We are a group of nine young Nokia shareholders. All of us have worked with Nokia in different capacities in the past. We plan to challenge the company's strategy and partnership with Microsoft in the next Annual General Meeting scheduled for May 3, 2011.

Discussion: Internet2Go, SuperSite for Windows, Mobilized, The Register, InfoWorld, Neowin.net and WinRumors

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider: Can Microsoft And Nokia Make Windows Phone 7 The Most “Operator Friendly” Without Ruining It For Consumers?

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Apple Now The Most Valuable Tech Company By $100 Billion; Google Closing In On Microsoft — It's hard to believe that it wasn't even a year ago when I wrote the following post: What Happens When Apple Passes Microsoft In Value? Yes, When. It's even harder to believe just how many people thought …

Discussion: Post Tech, MacStories and NBC Bay Area

AppleInsider:

Apple customer survey sparks hope for brawnier MacBook Airs with built-in 3G — Apple, a company notorious for relying on its own in-house research rather than the feedback of its customers, began reaching out to select MacBook Air owners this week in a new survey that could help define future versions …

Discussion: Softpedia News, O'Grady's PowerPage, SlashGear, MacNN and Electricpig.co.uk

Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:

IBM “Jeopardy” Challenge Day One Ends in a Tie — Day one of the three-day battle between the human brain and silicon on the game show “Jeopardy” ended in a tie. — The IBM supercomputer and human player, Brad Rutter, each had $5,000 on the scoreboard, while Ken Jennings …

Ethan Bauley / Data Central:

HP research shows mainstream media drive Twitter ‘trends’ to a surprising degree — Who gets to determine the big topics of conversation on social media? And how do they do it? Looking to find out, HP researchers recently examined how popular subjects get to be listed among the top ‘trending’ topics on Twitter.

Discussion: Mashable!, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, MarketingVOX, VentureBeat, SAI, Neowin.net and ReadWriteWeb, more at Mediagazer »

Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:

Court confirms: IP addresses aren't people (and P2P lawyers know it) — Wrapping up the last of the United Kingdom's notorious copyright infringement “pay up” letter cases, a UK patent and copyright judge has had a major revelation. Just because some lawyer cites an Internet Protocol (IP) …

Donald Melanson / Engadget:

HTC Revolver: a flagship ‘Honeycomb’ phone for AT&T? — Well, this is certainly curious. If the tipster who sent us the image above is to be believed, you're looking at HTC's new flagship smartphone, the Revolver, which is supposedly headed to AT&T in the third quarter of this year.

Discussion: The Toybox Blog, t-break and PhoneArena

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

3 Months To The First Million Users, Just 6 Weeks To The Second Million For Instagram — Back in late December of last year, we noted a huge milestone for photo-sharing app Instagram: a million users. As we noted at the time, remarkably, it took them only three months to hit the mark.

Discussion: Fast Company and AppAdvice

Matthew Lynley / VentureBeat:

How Zendesk's iPad app makes customer support child's play — Zendesk operates a Web-based help desk service that lets companies track customer complaints across most of the web. It's one of a number of startups that are trying to bring the ideas behind consumer-facing technology like Twitter and Facebook to the enterprise space.

Discussion: Datamation and ReadWriteWeb

Chris Ziegler / Engadget:

Deutsche Telekom rolling out NFC payments with T-Mobile USA, other markets this year; NFC iPhone along for the ride? — At its press conference at Mobile World Congress today, Deutsche Telekom — the German parent of T-Mobile subsidiaries around the world — mentioned that it'll start launching …

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, AppleInsider, Phone Scoop, iLounge, IntoMobile, TUAW, RazorianFly, BGR, MacDailyNews, TmoNews and PhoneArena

Jessica Guynn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong buys $10 million in company stock — AOL Inc. Chief Executive Tim Armstrong is putting his money where his mouth is. — He has invested more than $10 million in 477,000 shares of his company's stock, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Discussion: paidContent, more at Mediagazer »

Telegraph:

Smartphone boom hogs networks — Smartphone owners are having problems accessing the internet because they use much more data capacity than normal phones and networks have been caught off guard by their popularity, the International Telecommunication Union has warned.

Discussion: Inquirer and paidContent:UK

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Netflix Finally Arrives On the Boxee Box — Can you hear that? That's the sound of relief coming from Boxee's offices in New York, as the startup is finally able to add a Netflix app to its Boxee Box today. Owners of the device can access the app by manually initiating a firmware update …

Discussion: Geek News Central, Macworld and Appletell

Avner Ronen / Boxee Blog:
Happy Valentine's Day: Netflix on the Boxee Box

Discussion: Digital Trends, PC Magazine, Gadgetell, TechSpot, The Digital Home, The Toybox Blog, SlashGear, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat and Engadget, Thanks:richdemuro

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CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs? — Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series! After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …

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