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Instagram has become more prevalent on the web than Twitter, according to an analysis by website tool provider  SimilarTech  of the top 1 million sites based on their global traffic, including publishers, brands and e-commerce sites. At the start of 2016, Instagram trailed Twitter in the number of sites that embedded its users’ posts or featured its social widgets, like follow buttons. But from January through December, Instagram’s footprint expanded by 308 percent to overtake Twitter, whose footprint expanded by 36 percent over the same period. It’s unclear what pushed so many sites to begin embedding Instagram posts and widgets on their pages in 2016. Instagram introduced the ability to  embed people’s posts on sites back in July 2013  and rolled out  follow buttons, or “badges,” in November 2012 . Instagram’s monthly user base growing from  400 million people in September 2015  to  600 million people in December 2016  likely helped. But it doesn’t explain what spurred the adopti

Despite slumping sales, Sony says they're still on target for an operating profit. 2016 was not a good year for Sony's smartphone division. The company  closed out the third quarter of its financial year by shipping 5.1 million Xperia smartphones — down from 7.6 million in 2015 over the same quarter. Sony CFO Kenichiro Yoshida explained this 35% decrease in year-on-year sales was due to weaker sales in Europe, which is typically one of the more popular markets for Sony smartphones. In response, the company has downwardly revised its annual smartphone unit sales forecast by 2 million units. Image credit: Xperiablog Sony ended the quarter generating 249 billion yen (US$2.1 billion) in sales — down from 385 billion (US$3.4 billion) in 2015. But while sales and revenue income were down, the impact was partially offset by cost reductions in unprofitable markets such as Latin America and the Middle East, along with a positive impact from foreign exchange rates. As such, Yoshida