Facebook to implement "Satire" tags feature

Coming soon: Native shopping platform on Twitter?

PokerStars launches first regulated online poker room in Bulgaria

Professional Players on Full Tilt can now file petition for reimbursement with GCG

It has been several months now since Garden City Group (GCG) began reimbursing Full Tilt Poker player. Multiple rounds of repayment process have taken place. But now an announcement has been made by GCG that they are now accepting petitions for reimbursement from “professional players” from US.

PokerStars 7 on the verge of official launch

With their acquisition by Amaya Gaming finally complete, online poker giant PokerStars is preparing to launch their new poker client. The development work is in its final stages and we may be only a few days away from the big official launch.

The new poker client is being rolled out slowly and for now it is being called PokerStars 7. The past weekend witnessed the launch of an integrated” beta on PokerStars’ dot-Eu client.

People who are members of popular online poker forums will know that the beta version was already available. But the integrated” beta version was initially tested by PokerStars Spain in July. It is this version that boasts of major upgrades in the menu, advertisements in pop-ups and an automatic upgrade to PokerStars 7 for users who are downloading the software for the first time.

Licensed in Malta, PokerStars.Eu has of poker players from numerous European countries. A similar rollout is planned for the main PokerStars dot-com website as well. This has been touted as the most significant upgrade in the history of PokerStars.

Those that have been part of the testing process have reported that the new lobby is aesthetically designed along with options for quick-seat systems, new sign-up flow and revamped favorites. New features include live events calendar, tournament chip count graphs and new default table theme.

Reddit compiles reddit_101 to help users

Reddit’s interface and long conversation threads can be tough to comprehend for a first-timer. Hence, several subreddits (in excess of 200) joined hands to curate an official guide for news and information aggregation on Reddit this week. Their goal is to help users enjoy the site and also understand the guidelines of the site.

Despite the company being around 10 years old, several new users keep discovering the site and want to read and make sense of it. A section called "reddiquette" comprises of FAQ’s, rules and etiquette tips.  It is available on the bottom of the Reddit homepage.

However, most users requested that all rules should be available at a singular location. Hence the site took up this measure to offer a better experience for their users. But Reddit has not developed this guide on its own and it is more of collaboration.

As per mashable, the representative of Reddit said:

"The community ... came together to build this guide and are featuring it as a stickied thread. We think it's great that our community is working together to help educate new users on best practices for the site, and it's something we are supporting on our end as well."

Some of the main features of this one-stop-guide include all basic Reddit website definitions and terms, reporting bugs and rules for posting comments and content.

This is a great new initiative by the company and is bound to make the website more enjoyable for existing as well as new users.

Facebook releases first update to Slingshot

Facebook updated its photo-messaging app Slingshot on last week. It is the first time the social media giant has added new features to this app since it was launched. The new feature enables users to react to reaction messages.

Before this addition, users could view a message only with a single reaction and did not have to send their own reaction first. The app retains the original feature of unlocking new slings with replies. But now users can exchange reaction messages without any specific limit.

This does not seem to be a big addition to the app, which has not gained popularity among users. But it may prove to be significant especially because several users were skeptical about the Sling’s shot-for-shot dynamic. So sending a reaction to a reaction may be a game-changer for this app.

The new update has improved the procedure of adding friends with a tab called “My People”. This new tab display you entire friend list from Facebook as well the contacts on your phone as one list.

Users are also able to send texts to contacts that don’t have this app.

Facebook has been making a conscious effort to develop mobile-products. They have been trying to launch their own version of Snapchat. As we reported on this blog before, Instagram’s Bolt (a photo-messaging app) was launched in three countries.

Password-sharing startup Mitro acquired by Twitter

Mitro, the password-sharing startup, founded in 2012 by Adam Hilss has managed to raise a funding of $2.4million. Mitro is an extension to the web browser that enables people to save and share passwords. Google Ventures and Matrix Partners have supported Mitro.

The acquisition of Micro by Twitter was announced by the startup via a blog post on Thursday.

"We’re excited to announce that the Mitro team is joining Twitter’s location team in New York, focusing on a variety of geo-related projects! As we transition to Twitter, we want to provide you with some updates on our product”.

However, the blog post did not reveal the financial details of the acquisition. Another interesting bit of news that was announced by Mirco was its release of "server and client code" on Github, which will allow others to build on it.

After Facebook’s acquisition spree, Twitter too has continued adding new companies to their fold. After Mitro, they went ahead to buy out image search company Madbits as well.

New install-app ad “Bolt” appears on Instagram

In an interesting development this week, an ad or a new app called “Bot” appeared on picture sharing site Instagram. This was first reported by technology website techcrunch as some Android users confirmed seeing the new ad on Instagram.

The content on the ad was similar to any ad that shows how to install apps on Facebook’s news feed.

But the link to install was dead and Facebook withdrew the ads soon. A spokesperson of Instagram told mashable that the company does not have anything for public information.

There is no consensus from within the social media and tech industry as to what could explain appearance of Bolt.

One explanation points to the fact Instagram may be testing ads for Facebook. However, advertising on Instagram commenced only during the fall and it is definitely very early for he company to experiment with banner style adverts.

Another explanation highlights the fact Facebook may be developing a new app and it was a technical fault that led to sharing it on the site. A similar incident happened when they were planning to release Slingshot into the app store.

The second theory also gains weightage as the firm has repeatedly expressed their desire to build more apps in 2014.

If it indeed is an app, it remains to be seen what kind of app the company would be interested in building. Facebook already has several messaging apps.

Or may be we can put conspiracy theories to rest as it could have been just a feature Facebook and Instagram may want to have tested.