The tech circuit

CEBU, Philippines – Google recently announced that it is shutting down "Songza" by the end of January next year.

The service, which Google acquired more than a year ago, has been operational alongside "Google Music." The shutdown comes as an integration of "Songza" and "Google Play's" features, and the accounts and records of "Songza" users (favorites, playlists and the like) will be migrated to "Google Play."

More information on the shutdown is available on "Google Play" and "Songza's" official update channels.

New "Yahoo Messenger"

Last week, Yahoo! rolled out an updated version of its instant messaging suite for mobile, with new features added to the erstwhile industry-leader "Yahoo! Messenger."

The new version has features like support for GIF uploading, mass photo sharing (via integration with Yahoo!'s "Flickr" image gallery service), an "unsending" feature, and support for "liking" messages, among others.

Now on version 2.0, the update is the biggest for the app since 2010. More information on the updated app is available on the suite's App Store and Google Play pages.

"Profile Videos" in Facebook for Android

Announcements of Facebook's "Profile Videos" began showing up in the Android variant of the Facebook app early this month, following after the company's announcement of the feature a couple of months back.

Based on the announcement, "Profile Videos" are not GIFs (short for "graphics interchange format," a compressed animated file format), but are 7-second long videos that loop back and forth with audio.

The announcement does not exactly indicate when the feature will be ready, but it does indicate that Facebook will inform its users when it becomes available.

Google's official Android Dialer and Contacts app

Last week, Google finally published its official Android Dialer and Contacts app on Google Play. The move is in line with the company's recent string of Google-branded app releases.

The dialer app comes with support for call blocking, a feature that's backed by the Google Caller ID system. The new Contacts app is integrated with Google Contacts on the web, merging the user interface, functions and features of the service across the web and mobile.

More information on the new app releases are available on their respective Google Play pages.

Multiple account access via Instagram's Android app?

Word of Instagram's Android app showing support for multiple account access has recently cropped up, following various reports that Instagram for Android version 7.12.0 has an "Add Account" option filed under the app's "Clear Search History" tab.

The feature supposedly allows an Instagram user to switch between different accounts on-the-fly while using the social network's Android application.

As of last week, the "Add Account" option has yet to show up in local releases of the app, which is still on version 7.11.1. No reports of the "Add Account" option on Instagram for iOS has cropped up so far.