Facebook experiences global outage of key services

Something is rotten in the state of Facebook – posting a new status, writing on someone’s wall or using Facebook’s payment system have been out of order since earlier today. And what are people to do about it other than complain on Twitter?

Facebook’s developers page confirms that the payment system is down, has been since 4:50AM PDT. And it’s not the first time this month either, the same thing happened on October 5 and again on October 12.

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Facebook releases official app for Windows 8.1

Although Windows 8 has always had Facebook integrated in the OS Facebook has now released a proper app for those who are into that sort of thing. The app is being released on the same day as Windows 8.1 and is only compatible with the new version of Microsoft’s desktop operating system.

As you can see from the screenshot, the app looks similar to the web version of Facebook, but has a flat look to blend with the general UI design of Windows 8.1

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Instagram to start featuring photo and video ads

The Instagram service has been free of cost to users ever since it launched three years ago on the iPhone. After it became immensely popular, the service was acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars last year, which signalled that there might be a change in the way the company made money. In this case, by starting to make money.

So Instagram has now announced how they will be making money. In the next couple of months, Instagram users in the US will start seeing promoted photos and videos from top brands on their timeline. These photos will appear on your timeline as if you were following that account. If you don’t like a particular photo or video, you can choose to hide it and report it.

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Facebook improves Graph Search with status and post support

Facebook’s personalized Graph Search has been updated to include statuses and posts by people sharing with you.

Once the feature rolls out to you, you’d be able to search for posts, status updates, photo captions, comments, check-ins, etc. which have been shared with you by friends or publicly shared by people you follow.

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