This week, tech insiders and observers are abuzz with estimates of how much Facebook is really worth. What set off the latest round of chatter was a Sunday morning Wall Street Journal report that Facebook could have a valuation of $100 billion after an IPO. Read more »
For Silicon Valley startups, good timing can be just as crucial as good technology. Just ask Bunchball, the six-year-old, San Jose, Calif.-based, social gaming, software startup. In 2005, when the company debuted its software platform, the current industry buzzword “gamification” hadn’t even been coined yet. Read more »
The news of Osama bin Laden’s death that broke late Sunday evening has proved to be a cause for jubilant celebration, somber reflection, detailed analysis … and thousands of jokes on Twitter. Most of the bon mots fall into a few categories, which we’ve rounded up here. Read more »
It’s not exactly news that the Millennial Generation (loosely defined as people born between 1980 and 2000) spend a lot of time on websites like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. But according to recent research findings, the constant social networking isn’t all fun and games. Read more »
The Yahoo Mail blackout was the source of a lot of headaches Thursday, with some 1.2 million users said to be affected. We’ve scoured the web for the best information on backing up your email or switching your mail provider. Read more »
Yahoo Mail is down for a sizable chunk of users and the company is working to fix the outage. This is another black mark against the company, which has seen its revenue slide, is selling off beloved web properties and is generally struggling to remain relevant. Read more »
Keepsy, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup, has launched its first product, “Instant Album,” a way to order physical scrapbooks made from Instagram photo albums. Keepsy’s just the latest in a spate of new startups focused on preserving what people publish online in a more tangible format. Read more »
ZangZing, a photo-sharing startup founded by an all-star group of Silicon Valley veterans, launches today in private beta. ZangZing is entering a crowded space, but CEO Joseph Ansanelli hopes the company’s slick design aesthetic and streamlined user interface to attract a dedicated, discerning user base. Read more »
Skype, the web’s telephone and video chat pioneer, has seen a lot since its inception eight years ago. But it’s real legacy is its people. The well-connected network of alums reads like a Silicon Valley who’s who. Read more »
Facebook has rolled out several updates to its Groups feature today, heeding users’ requests for more control over what they share with whom. More than 50 million groups have been created in the past six months, making Groups one of Facebook’s fastest-growing products ever. Read more »
The electric car has encountered a number of hurdles in its ongoing path to the mainstream, and they haven’t all been technical. More human challenges, like range anxiety, have served as hindrances in the wide-scale consumer adoption of electric vehicles (EVs.) As big carmakers move more […] Read more »
As kids, we were all taught to share our favorite toys. At Green:Net Shelby Clark from RelayRides and Joe Gebbia from Airbnb talked about how their companies are leveraging the power of social media to take sharing into the grown-up world. Read more »
RockMelt is set to launch a mobile version of its browser, which integrates social media tools. RockMelt’s move into mobile this week comes just one month after the public debut of its desktop browser. Read more »
In this video, Halle Tecco, co-founder of non-profit seed accelerator RockHealth, gives her elevator pitch about the company’s vision to shake up the world of healthcare. RockHealth is aimed at lowering the barriers for startups developing apps for the healthcare industry. Read more »
Viddy, an iPhone app for editing and sharing mobile videos, is set to close on $1.5 million in first round financing according to Co-founder Brett O’Brien. Viddy does for video what Instagram does for photos and it’s growing at a similar clip. Read more »
Memolane, the social media aggregation startup, has launched an embeddable version of its social web activity timelines. Memolane, which pools together a user’s various social web identities from sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Blogger into one searchable timeline, launched in public beta last month. Read more »
Xobni co-founder Matt Brezina is back in the startup game with the launch of Sincerely, aimed at making it easy to print photos taken with mobile phones. Postagram, Sincerely’s first product, prints and sends postcards made from Instagram photos for 99 cents. Read more »
With the launch of its first iPhone app today, 8tracks users can now listen to the company’s personally curated mixtape-style playlists on the go, but the company is also growing up. It’s raising capital, moving headquarters and hiring a full time staff. Read more »
GitHub, the popular code repository, is bringing developers together for CodeConf today in San Francisco. GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath said that the event was designed to be collaborative, not unlike the site itself. Read more »
Kno Inc. scrapped its plans to make a signature tablet device and announced a new, singular focus as an educational software company. Although Kno CEO Osman Rashid told me he’s “extremely excited” about the new direction, he was pretty mum on the details. Read more »
