Over the past few years, a lot has been made of “crowdsourcing” trends. It seem like everything — from graphic design and logos to funding — can be made better, faster, or cheaper thanks to crowd. But can crowdsourcing work for creative content? Read More »
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With the rise of user-generated content, brands have faced challenges. People are talking about brands on social media sites in ways that brand managers can’t control and often can’t even detect. With 50 million reviews and counting, TripAdvisor is shaking the travel industry to its core. Read More »
Amid the political fighting over LightSquared and whether or not it will interfere with GPS, there’s a far larger issue: Can the nascent carrier really build a business as a wholesale carrier? History offers some perspective that maybe it can’t. Read More »
How Goodreads can monetize its business
By Michael Wolf
Sep. 16, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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While social reading is only beginning to get off the ground, with nearly 6 million users and over 20 million data points based on users’ book ratings, Goodreads is as close as it gets to a Facebook for books. But the company isn’t content with just being …
Groupon has made its business off selling deals that sound too good to be true: restaurant meals for half off, dirt-cheap massages and manicures, trips to the dentist for 75 percent off the regular price. This has been a boon to consumers, especially during difficult economic … Read More »
How Yahoo can regain its lost relevance in mobile
By Colin Gibbs
Sep. 14, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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The ouster of CEO Carol Bartz last week punctuated a disappointing couple of years for Yahoo, and nowhere is that disappointment more glaring than in mobile. Yahoo’s presence has waned as the iPhone and Android have fueled a surge in mobile data consumption. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s traffic on …
It’s time to go beyond PUE in the data center
By Adam Lesser
Sep. 13, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Last week Google disclosed the details of its energy consumption, and its data center engineers argued that the leading figure cited to assess how energy-efficient a data center is, power usage effectiveness (PUE), must be continuously measured and averaged over a twelve-month period. This was a …
More Must Reads
There has been much debate lately about where Yahoo has gone wrong and what it needs to do to right itself. Salim Ismail, formerly of Yahoo’s in-house incubator Brickhouse, believes that the company’s problems lie in its very structure. Read More »
By David Card
Sep. 12, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Last week, Viadeo, “the LinkedIn of France” and a GigaOM Euro 20 company, introduced an API via a developer contest. Comparing Viadeo’s and LinkedIn’s strategies and outlook will help marketers and potential partners prioritize their ... Read More »
A decade ago, tech executives had no concept of the magnitude of attacks that could take place on our own soil. In the aftermath of 9/11, we became more aware of our vulnerabilities — at our homes, in our country and within our IT infrastructure. Read More »
Imagine buying your SIM-free mobile phone from a local electronics store, logging in as soon as you turn the phone on for the first time and having the phone ready to use immediately. In the future, even the phone number itself will disappear. Read More »
Lately, we’re read a lot about the end of the computer age. It isn’t over. The computer is simply hiding in the clouds behind commonplace devices. As it should – and should have long ago, had we been able to figure how sooner. Read More »
We can now check emails on the move, hold video conferences, proof documents and log in to check their bank balance when sitting on the train or working from a cafe. Our obsession has been fueled by just the right apps to help us accomplish these … Read More »
Paul Graham started Y Combinator, his unique blend of start-up school and incubator in 2005 and since then has spawned quite a quite a few well known names such as Dropbox, Justin.tv and Airbnb. Here is a video that looks at YC and its impact. Read More »
By Michael Wolf
Sep. 9, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Forget Spotify, Amazon’s cloud drive or Pandora. For a short period this spring and early summer, none of these proved as addictive as Turntable.fm for the technology in crowd. But Turntable.fm so far is about immersion and the deep experience, which requires too much commitment and …
By Paul Sweeting
Sep. 9, 2011, 11:00am PT
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Free, digital content has shattered long-established ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry, and publishers must now find new ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly. That includes everything from more-flexible paywalls to borrowing the business models of industries like online gaming and music. Read More »
By Derrick Harris
Sep. 9, 2011, 8:30am PT
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Thanks to Facebook and other social networks, if we can accurately put a name to a face, there’s a lot of personal information available online to tell us about that person. And recent experiments unveiled at this year’s Black Hat conference showed that soon all it …
By Colin Gibbs
Sep. 7, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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The Justice Department’s effort to block AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile USA has sparked a flurry of stories claiming the smaller carrier will be living on borrowed time if the deal isn’t approved. CNNMoney claims that T-Mobile without AT&T “is a wireless white elephant,” StreetInsider.com says failure to …
Incumbent wireless service providers and a chorus of experts have warned of a looming spectrum crisis, which could threaten the success of cloud-based and other high-bandwidth offerings. A silver lining is on the horizon, however, in the form of policy and technological innovations. Read More »
By Adam Lesser
Sep. 6, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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When all was said and done, solar panel maker Solyndra raised over a billion dollars, making it No. 2 on the list of companies that have raised the most equity, according to a 2010 list from Dow Jones VentureWire. But unlike Facebook or MetroPCS, two other names on …
By David Card
Sep. 5, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Social media is playing an increasing role in enterprise IT, with companies like Jive Software and Telligent jockeying with IBM, Microsoft and Cisco to tap into corporate IT spending. Today, they build social platforms customers use for both employee collaboration and consumer marketing objectives. Vendors need …
Retailers ignore social channels at their own risk, and a number of recent market trends have coalesced to make social commerce top of mind. These four approaches can help you leverage social commerce tools on your own site. Read More »
To find out how these two services measure up in the real world, Craig Knighton of LiquidSpace and Zach Richardson of Ravel Data lay out the cases for their clouds of choice to see how the services compared in real-world use at living, breathing companies. Read More »
Facebook’s explosive growth has led many to question whether it will become the de facto hub of commerce for retailers. Here are three ways to leverage Facebook and social commerce on your site to grow conversions and sales. Read More »
By Ucilia Wang
Sep. 2, 2011, 6:48pm PT
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Solar technology startup Solyndra, which has raised more than $1.5 billion in private and government funds, has suspended manufacturing and laid off 1,100 full-time and temporary employees. We conducted a survey and asked GigaOM readers for their views on the fallout of Solyndra’s decision to file …
By Paul Sweeting
Sep. 2, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Somewhat lost amid last week’s bombshell that Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple were signs of potentially major developments around Apple TV, the business Jobs has long described as a “hobby.” The immediate news was that Apple is ending its experiment with 99-cent …
By Colin Gibbs
Aug. 31, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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After months of getting its teeth kicked in by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, things appear to be looking up for Research In Motion. All Things D claimed this week that RIM is “on the rebound,” thanks to a new pair of handsets running BlackBerry 7. …
By Adam Lesser
Aug. 30, 2011, 3:06pm PT
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In late 2007, Evergreen Solar hit an all-time high with a $9.8 billion market cap. Less than four years later, it has filed for bankruptcy, with its secured debtors trying to recoup $165 million in notes from an asset fire sale. Its unsecured debtors, meanwhile, pray …
By Paul Sweeting
Aug. 30, 2011, 7:01am PT
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The impact of digital technology has shattered long-established monopolies and ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry. Today, publishers must find ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly, and this report examines a few different approaches, from more flexible paywalls to charging users directly for …
By David Card
Aug. 29, 2011, 5:38pm PT
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One of the things social media marketing will need if it’s going to live up to its aggressive $5 billion spending forecast is more differentiation between marketing and collaboration platforms. Companies like Jive Software, Lithium, Mzinga and Telligent offer social network platforms aimed at both employees …
The open source movement has the potential to empower developing countries to use IT to communicate to its citizenry, expand its educational platform and address national disasters. But for many nations, software is not enough, and Silicon Valley companies need to pitch in. Read More »
Consider this: managers spend between 30 to 80 percent of their time in meetings and more than 50 percent of them consider many meetings to be a “waste of time.” oDesk CEO Gary Swart shares his proven techniques for running a successful company meeting. Read More »
Skype’s acquisition of GroupMe and Facebook’s Beluga-based Messenger are part of something much bigger than group text messaging: The landscape of personal online communication is changing. In the next generation of social media interaction, users will communicate in ways that mirror their real-life interactions. Read More »
By Michael Wolf
Aug. 26, 2011, 10:43pm PT
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We witnessed the end of an era this week. Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple’s charismatic leader has had, and will continue to have, an incredible impact on Apple’s image. But will this shift in power drastically alter the company, or will Apple continue its fiery trailblazing …
By David Card
Aug. 24, 2011, 3:39pm PT
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With the stock market in flux, do tech startups stand a chance when it comes to luring investors? To find out, we polled GigaOM readers on what’s hot, what’s not, which sectors might favor buyouts versus IPOs and how it all will change in the near …
By Colin Gibbs
Aug. 24, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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We’ve seen a storm of speculation about webOS in the wake of Hewlett-Packard’s decision to discontinue its line of smartphones and tablets running the platform. Some suggest that players like HTC, Samsung or even Amazon could license the technology, while others believe HP is looking to sell the …
By Adam Lesser
Aug. 23, 2011, 11:00am PT
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With power accounting for between 30 and 50 percent of functional operating costs in a data center, power consumption is on everyone’s mind. So much so that at semiconductor conference Hotchips on Friday, Intel and AMD, two companies that have long competed around processor performance, spent hours discussing …
By David Card
Aug. 22, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Social games and app developers got a bit of a shock when Facebook snuck out some Platform Policy changes. So what can an app developer do to get the most out of Facebook and insulate itself as much as possible from Facebook changes? Build its own …
By Michael Wolf
Aug. 19, 2011, 3:35pm PT
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This week’s news that Roku has expanded its casual game efforts may not have caused Microsoft or Nintendo to lose sleep just yet, but they should note that the connected-TV-device landscape is growing wider. In particular, as the market for net tops and connected TV devices matures, …
By Colin Gibbs
Aug. 17, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Google’s acquisition of Motorola was largely a defensive move to protect itself from the patent-litigation feeding frenzy. But it also provides an opportunity for Google to increase Android’s presence in a tablet market that is currently dominated by ... Read More »
By Colin Gibbs
Aug. 16, 2011, 6:04pm PT
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Google rocked the mobile world on Monday, August 15, with the news that it will buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, marking a 63-percent premium for the handset manufacturer. It’s a move that ushers Google into the exclusive club of companies that control both the hardware …
By David Card
Aug. 15, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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Feed-based UIs are powerful because they encourage frequent usage and participation. They’re becoming one of the most important ways to present information, and are critical areas of competition in social networking and ... Read More »
Not too long ago, Om Malik blogged “the social Web mimics the way we are in the real world … in this new kind of social web, the defining characteristic is us.” A great observation, but how true is it? What do the following have in common? People … Read More »
By Michael Wolf
Aug. 13, 2011, 1:00pm PT
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As evidenced by the news this week of the new HTML5-based Kindle Cloud Reader, much of the news about HTML5’s rapid ascent has centered on mobile devices. But the fast-growing technology won’t just be a one-screen phenomenon. In fact, HTML5 is set to completely invade the …
Marketers have long believed that some customers have a disproportionate influence on others when it comes to purchase decisions. The real challenge is identifying and targeting the “micro influencers,” or those who are particularly trusted on certain topics. Read More »
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