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'Twas a very mobile Christmas (week in review)

Android and iOS devices were apparently popular gifts this Christmas -- more popular than ever before.

Device activations soared from their daily December average of 4 million to 17.4 million on Christmas Day, a 332 percent increase, according to analytics firm Flurry. That's more than double the 6.8 million devices activated on Christmas last year, the previous single-day record holder. And in a first, more tablets were activated on Christmas this year than phones. Apple tablets dominated the category, but the Kindle Fire HD 7-inch made its strongest showing ever.

iPhone and iPad app downloads jumped 87 percent … Read more

Instagram said to lose millions of daily users -- but did it?

The number of people using Instagram daily reportedly declined sharply over Christmas, just a week after a flap over the Facebook-owned company's revised terms of service led to widespread user outrage.

As first reported by the New York Post, analytics firm AppData recorded a nearly 25 percent drop in the number of daily active Instagram users in the wake of the controversy. Instagram had 16.4 million daily active users before it announced new plans to introduce advertising into the service; seven days later, that figure had fallen to 12.4 million users by AppData's reckoning.

AppData records … Read more

Twitter: Five predictions for 2013

If there was one thing you could say about Twitter's 2012, it was that it wasn't boring. Over the course of the year, the service became bigger than ever, hosted major events like a Q&A with President Obama and another with Pope Benedict XVI, and became an essential tool for those looking for information about everything from Hurricane Sandy to the civil war in Syria.

But 2012 was also contentious for Twitter. The microblogging service put new restrictions on what it would allow third-party developers to do, and then had to deal with a rebellion by … Read more

Social media: Five predictions for 2013

When you think of social media these days, you probably think primarily of Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps Instagram. But while those services have massive -- and growing -- user bases, they're of course not the only games in town.

The world of social media is filled with other services, and millions of people get a daily fix without ever going near Facebook or Twitter. There are big general networks like Tagged, and plenty of smaller, purpose-built ones like Path or celebrity-focused ones like Lady Gaga's Little Monsters. There's even a revamped MySpace.

So what does 2013 … Read more

Meet the year's most-Instagrammed locations

The No. 1 place for posting photos to Instagram in 2012 has been revealed -- and somehow, it isn't a coffeeshop known for its creative latte-foam art.

The most-photographed location this year was Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, with more 100,000 photos taken there in the last year, Instagram said in a blog post.

Rounding out the top 10:

Siam Paragon shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California Times Square in New York City AT&T Park in San Francisco Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles Eiffel Tower in Paris Staples … Read more

Instagram hit with proposed class-action lawsuit

Instagram's attempt to change its terms of service has inspired not only a user backlash but also-- now -- a class-action lawsuit.

The proposed terms of service were introduced last week, though Instagram has since backpedaled. The lawsuit -- filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Friday and first reported by Reuters -- argues that the proposed changes would "transfer valuable property rights to Instagram while simultaneously relieving Instagram from any liability for commercially exploiting customers' photographs and artistic content, while shielding Instagram from legal liability."

Instagram is making a "grab for customer … Read more

Policy and privacy: Five reasons why 2012 mattered

This was the year of Internet activism with a sharp political point to it: Protests drove a stake through the heart of a Hollywood-backed digital copyright bill, helped derail a United Nations summit, and contributed to the demise of a proposed data-sharing law.

In 2012, when Internet users and companies flexed their political muscles, they realized they were stronger than they had thought. It amounted to a show of force not seen since the political wrangling over implanting copy-protection technology in PCs a decade ago, or perhaps since those blue ribbons that appeared on Web sites in the mid-1990s in … Read more

Flickr offers three months of Pro service for free

Filckr is offering three months of its Pro service for free as a "holiday gift" to new and existing members.

It's not a hugely expensive gift on an individual basis: the Pro service costs just about $25 per year, or a bit less than $2.10 a month (or about $45/year and about $1.88/month). But it gives users a nothing-to-lose chance to try Pro, which offers among other things unlimited uploads (of up to 50MB per photo), unlimited viewing of one's entire uploaded library, the ability to download one's original high-rez photos, and ad-free viewing of Flickr.… Read more

Friday Poll: Are you sticking with Instagram?

Instagram and its owner Facebook really stepped into it this week. A new terms of service update set to go into effect on January 16 would have given Instagram the right to sell users' photos or use them in ads.

As you might expect, the prospect of Instagram running rampant with photos didn't sit well with its 100 million users. The interest in escaping Instagram grew, with nearly 6,000 readers sharing over Facebook CNET's instructions for backing up and deleting their Instagram accounts.

It took a little while, but Instagram finally coughed out an apology and backtracked … Read more