Kiran Upadhyay

Instagram never allowed URLs to open until now. It wanted people browsing photos, not the web. But Instagram says its advertisers demanded more vivid ways to influence people who “lead to meaningful results for their businesses.” Brands want measurable impact, not to be breezed by. Meanwhile, Instagram new ads court e-commerce companies that need people to click-through and buy, and big-ticket advertisers like car companies that require more than a single image to show off their product. So for the first time, Instagram will start showing clickable links, but only in its new multi-photo carousel ads that can tell a story by letting you swipe through four branded images in sequence. The new “Learn More” button that houses these links will open a URL in an internal browser within Instagram that allows you to quickly jump back to the feed with a tap of the top bar. “It’s a great new creative canvas,” Instagram monetization lead James Quarles tells me. You can see how the clickabl

Google’s Android has gobbled up market share world wide, now accounting for over 80% of all smartphone shipped globally. But when it comes to actually making money, Apple is eating all the profits as it continues its focus on premium devices. Today Strategy Analytics said that Apple in Q4 last year accounted for 89% of all smartphone profits, equating to $18.8 billion, with Android taking only 11%, or $2.4 billion. The blow for Android is softened only slightly less so only by the fact that other platform players like Microsoft, Blackberry and Firefox seemingly made no profit at all. The figures given here relate to profits generated by handset makers, not the services ecosystem and potential profits made by app publishers and others, which, of course, includes Google itself, which adds new users of for its mobile search business, mobile ads business and other apps with each unforked Android sale. Overall, smartphone handset profits were up 31.4% compared to the same quarter a

We don’t often write about new hires, but sometimes they capture industry trends and are noteworthy in that respect. That’s the case for India’s billion dollar e-commerce firm Flipkart, which has landed a senior exec from Silicon Valley, after former Googler and Motorola VP Punit Soni agreed to become its Chief Product Officer. Soni spent eight years at Google in the U.S., the latter part of which he was VP of Product Management for Motorola before it was sold to Lenovo. He will relocate to Flipkart HQ in Bangalore, India, for his new role. With his background, Punit could have easily stayed in the U.S. but he explained that his move is triggered by the vast potential of the startup and technology scene in India. That’s a real validation for the growth and evolution that is happening in the country right now: As I explored ideas across sectors and across different life stages of companies, I flew down to India to personally see the change spreading across the country at the in

If you’ve ever dreamt of pulling a Little Rascals and riding down a massive hill on a wooden scooter, have we got a Kickstarter for you. The PlyFly Go-Kart is a flat-pack built-it-yourself go-kart that runs on a gasoline engine and can go up to 25 miles per hour. The kit is made of cut wood and assembles in about a day. It includes a 2.5 or 4 HP gas engine for maximum rev action. The kits cost $745 for the less powerful model or $845 for the more powerful one. They can both fit a normal-sized adult male and they look like they’re great fun.  There are two models available. One has a 2.5 HP engine, perfect for flat areas and lower speeds. The other has a 4 HP engine that is quicker and is better suited for hilly areas and bigger people. Both kits consist of wooden parts made by us in Newport, RI and include all the necessary hardware. Created by Flat.Works, the kits are marvel of flat-pack engineering. The parts are pushed out of a piece wood and assemble with simple tools. Th

Sometimes when a company reports in-line earnings, its stock price takes a knuckle to the temple. Other times, if a firm meets market expectations, it gets a nice pop in value. Enter Salesforce the Latter. Today after the bell, Salesforce reported $1.44 billion in fourth quarter revenue, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.14. Both were dead in-line with market expectations. The company’s shares are up more than 6 percent in after-hours trading. The company is currently trading at an all-time high. Tomorrow morning should be a watershed moment for the SaaS firm. Is strong guidance pushing Salesforce higher? To a certain extent. The company raised its guidance, but only to levels that match market demands. Salesforce expects $1.48 billion to $1.50 billion in current-quarter revenue. The market expects the company to post $1.5 billion, so, both teams are mostly in agreement. It’s the same story when it comes to the company’s fiscal 2016 (current calendar year), with the company

Google just unveiled plans for a new headquarters in Mountain View that looks like a series of canopies or even almost geodesic-dome like formations. This is the first time the company has designed and built offices from scratch, and it’s partnering with Bjarke Ingels at BIG and Thomas Heatherwick at Heatherwick Studio, which will lead to a better way of working. Instead of very permanent buildings, Ingels and Heatherwick conceived of lightweight block structures that can be moved around as Google gets into new areas as it has in the past with self-driving cars and smart contact lenses. Moreover, the company envisions a campus that more seamlessly blends into the surrounding area. Areas are open to the public as well as Google employees. “It needs to be a neighborhood in Mountain View,” the video above says. That’s a contentious point, as Google has long wanted to build north of 5,000 housing units in the area, which the city council has resisted. The inability to co-locat

Ugh — another week, another nasty widespread security bug to worry about. The twist this time: this one has apparently been around since the 90s. Dubbed “FREAK” by the researchers who discovered it, the exploit allowed researchers (and potentially hackers) to sniff traffic going to and from many otherwise encrypted websites — including some government sites — thanks to some stuff left behind from the 90s. Here’s the issue, as I understand it: Up until 1999 or so, the US government forbade companies from shipping any products overseas that contained strong encryption. “Export-grade” (that is, weak and breakable) encryption was okay, though. In the 90s, this encryption was more than enough to evade anyone who didn’t have access to a supercomputer. Nowadays, as Ed Felten points out, that’s anyone who knows their way around Amazon’s EC2. These restrictions were lifted around 1999 — but somehow these weaker “export-grade” encryption modes were left in “many Google and Apple” devi