Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, November 3

• Snapchat’s new Terms of Service freaked people out because no one reads them: Snapchat updated its Terms of Service last week, and the Internet freaked out a little bit. Some users interpreted changes to mean the company could now hang on to users' private messages, broadcast them publicly and sell them to third parties. The pushback grew so loud that Snapchat took to its blog Sunday to explain itself, saying that private Snaps and Chats are still automatically deleted from its servers once viewed or expired. But, Snapchat said, its new Terms of Service granted the company "broad license" to user content. The company said those clauses are meant to apply to images and videos users share publicly for its "Live Stories" feature, which may be syndicated across other platforms. The new policy was also expanded to account for its Replay feature, which charges users who want to rewatch videos more than once, the blog post said.

• Instagram is jumping into the curation business, too: Over the weekend, Instagram took a page from the playbook of social media competitors and made a curated stream, based around Halloween videos, that pulled together clips submitted by its users. As Twitter and Snapchat have done before it, Instagram used the stream to highlight unique content on its network that users may not catch if they were just scrolling through their own apps. The trend toward curation makes quite a bit of sense. Sure, part of the fun of being on a real-time social network is being able to jump into the stream at any time and get plugged in to whatever's happening at that moment. But that can be overwhelming for new users, and even more experienced ones who want to zero in on a particular topic. On days such as Halloween — where everyone is posting similar videos for comparison — it seems like a smart thing to do to briefly bring the whole network together.

• Dell eyes $10 billion asset sales ahead of EMC merger: Dell Inc is preparing to sell around $10 billion in non-core assets, including software and services, to reduce the heavy debt load it will be taking on to buy EMC Corp (EMC.N), according to people familiar with the matter. Dell, which will assume $49.5 billion of debt once the merger with EMC is completed, has communicated the plan to credit rating agencies in recent days, the people said on Monday. Assets Dell could sell include Quest Software, which helps with information technology (IT) management; SonicWall, an e-mail encryption and data security provider; back-up solutions unit AppAssure; as well as IT services provider Perot Systems, the people said. The divestitures will not include Dell's hardware assets such as servers, which are crucial in its quest to dominate the large enterprise market through its merger with EMC, as well as compete more effectively with the likes of Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) and International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N), the people added.

• Fitbit Crushes Expectations In Q3, But A Follow-On Equity Offering Drags Its Shares Down: Following the bell, Fitbit announced its third-quarter financial performance, including revenue of $409.3 million, and earnings per share using normal accounting methods of $0.19. The company’s adjusted profit totaled $0.24 per share. The results are notably strong. Investors had expected the company to report a far-slimmer $0.10 adjusted per-share profit off of revenue of just $350.97. Shares in the company, however, are sharply lower in after-hours trading, off nearly 9 percent as of the time of writing. What is going on? Despite a smashing quarter, Fitbit’s equity is getting whacked by what, so far as TechCrunch can tell at current tip, is planned liquidity for current shareholders, a newly announced follow-on offering, and legal friction. Starting with the legal point, Jawbone and Fitbit have a legal back and forth going, with the latest news being a counterclaim filed by the former. Fitbit has a pending patent infringement case on the books, but Jawbone has denied all allegations…using the fun word “frivolous.”

• Google Says Chromebooks and Chrome Operating Systems Aren’t Going Away: Rumors of the demise of the Chrome operating system have not just been exaggerated but are simply untrue, Google said on Monday in a rare public response to an earlier report. A report on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal claimed Google is preparing to merge its Chrome OS, which powers the Web-centric Chromebook laptops, with its mobile OS Android. After the story landed, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s SVP who runs both Android and Chrome, pushed back on it, tweeting that the company is “very committed” to the desktop operating system.