Kik is a cross-platform chat application that has gone from zero users to almost 2 million in three weeks. But some users aren’t happy with the way the company has achieved that viral growth, and Kik’s CEO says it is changing the way the app works. Read more »
Last week, Google changed the way it allows third-party services to pull the info from your address book automatically, in what was a clear shot at Facebook’s closed approach to such data. Now the giant social network seems to have found a way around the blockage. Read more »
SB Nation, which runs a network of almost 300 team-focused and regional sports blogs, has closed a new $10.5-million round of financing from Khosla Ventures and several other venture funds, and the company’s rapid growth contains some valuable lessons for other web-based media efforts. Read more »
Groupon, the social-buying phenomenon that has already raised more than $165 million in financing in the past year, is reportedly looking for another round that could give the company a market value as high as $3 billion, as it tries to continue its aggressive growth plan. Read more »
An offer from The Gap that was based on Facebook Places “check ins” provides a real-world example of how much work both retailers like The Gap and services like Facebook and Foursquare are going to have to do to get people comfortable with location-based offers. Read more »
Twitter makes for a great bar-style atmosphere with lots of noise and conversation, but what if you want to talk about a specific topic like the stock market? That’s when you need to find a niche social network like StockTwits, says co-founder and CEO Howard Lindzon. Read more »
In a clear shot at Facebook’s walled garden, Google has changed the terms of its contacts API – which developers use to pull information from Google services – so that anyone using it has to provide the same access. The question is, what took so long? Read more »
We all know that Google is a giant company, but every now and then we come across a tangible sign of just how enormous and widespread it really is. A list of its “developer advocates,” for example (its software evangelists) has more than 75 names. Read more »
If you use a location-based service like Foursquare, you are a member of a tiny minority, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center, which found that less than 5 percent of online adults use such services. Can Facebook make location go mainstream? Read more »
The Texas Tribune, a non-profit media startup focused on public-service and investigative journalism, turned one year old this week and co-founder and CEO Evan Smith says the company has exceeded most of its growth targets and is still seeing “hockey-stick” increases in traffic and readers. Read more »
AOL managed to beat analysts’ estimates for revenue and earnings for the latest quarter, thanks in part to some asset sales that boosted the bottom line. But the company’s advertising business continues to shrink rapidly, even as it’s spending hundreds of millions on acquisitions. Read more »
Researchers at Indiana University have set up a research project called Truthy to track and analyze what appear to be fake trends or memes on Twitter, and they have found some suspicious activity from a number of dummy accounts leading up to today’s mid-term elections. Read more »
News Corp. has finally released official figures on the effect of paywalls at two of its British newspapers, which show that the two papers have lost a huge proportion of their previous readership, and only a tiny fraction of those readers have chosen to pay. Read more »
How do you compete with an 800-pound gorilla like Groupon? If you’re Tippr, you don’t. Instead, you arm websites with the weapons to do that themselves. The Seattle-based startup today launched a white-label platform that gives companies the tools to run their own group-buying campaigns. Read more »
If badges, check-ins, tweets and other social tools are your thing, here’s a roundup of some of the services and features involved in tomorrow’s elections — including a special Foursquare badge, a Facebook “get out the vote” challenge, and a location app for tracking voter interest. Read more »
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’ decision to step down as CEO in favor of COO Dick Costolo and recent moves to try and crack down on uses of the word “tweet” are two signs the startup is trying to grow up and get serious about its business. Read more »
Despite the fact that the Internet is the most frequently measured medium in history, it’s almost impossible for publishers to get a straight answer about who’s consuming their content — and that can cause some significant problems, says a new report on digital media. Read more »
Privacy has become the “third rail” for many online services such as Facebook and Google, a topic so highly charged that even touching it can cause severe damage to their reputation. So what are some of the ways that companies can avoid getting burned? Read more »
Facebook is testing the addition of Groupon-style discount offers to its Facebook Places location feature, according to a report based on an email received by an anonymous merchant. Although unconfirmed, such a move — which would bring Facebook into direct competition with Groupon — makes sense. Read more »
A talk by Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston about how search-related keyword ads didn’t really work for his company is another worthwhile reminder that search advertising doesn’t work for every situation, and that there are good reasons why Google needs to be afraid of Facebook. Read more »
A private university called the London School of Business and Finance is offering its MBA course as a Facebook app, complete with video lectures and case studies. While the app itself is free of charge, however, students have to pay in order to get full accreditation. Read more »
The issue of online privacy has become such a highly charged topic that whenever Facebook or Google overstep the line between data collection and personal privacy, all hell breaks loose. And as that line continues to blur, social networks and online services would do well to ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Khoi Vinh, former design director for the New York Times, says he can’t stand most magazine apps created for the iPad, such as the ones from Wired and The New Yorker, because they are too big and don’t take advantage of being connected to the web. Read more »
Don Rainey of Grotech Ventures, one of the financial backers behind the number two group-buying player LivingSocial, says he sees a future in which consumers looking for a night out can bid on offers of discounts from local merchants in a real-time, stock exchange-style marketplace. Read more »
Myspace is rolling out a relaunch starting today, but will anyone care? The social network may still have millions of registered users, but it has lost a ton of momentum over the past few years, and when you are a social network, momentum is everything. Read more »
Digg, which appeared to be stumbling after an ill-fated relaunch sparked a user revolt, now looks to be under siege. Two senior executives have left, and new CEO Matt Williams has slashed the workforce by a third. Is Digg on its way to the deadpool? Read more »
A new iPhone and Android app called “Sex Offender Tracker” uses augmented reality to show you the location of any registered offenders who are in your area when you hold up your phone. What happens when this kind of app pulls up other info as well? Read more »
Digg, the social-bookmarking service that has been struggling to right itself after an ill-fated relaunch earlier this year, is laying off more than a third of its staff, CEO CEO Matt Williams announced in a blog post today. A senior executive is also leaving the company. Read more »
Mail.ru, the Russian holding company formerly known as Digital Sky Technologies, has filed for an initial stock offering on the London stock exchange, one that could give the company a market value as high as $6 billion. The company has investments in both Facebook and Zynga. Read more »
Former CNN foreign correspondent Wilf Dinnick started OpenFile last year because he wanted to reinvent community journalism in digital form. The beta site launched last month in Toronto, with plans to expand to several other cities soon. The site blends traditional journalism and user-generated content. Read more »
Can social games help encourage people to vote, and also improve democracy? One candidate is hoping they can: Clayton Trotter, who is running for Congress in Texas, has used Facebook Places to create a social-election game in which citizens get points and badges for voting. Read more »
News Corp. billionaire Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like to admit failure, but he appears to have conceded defeat in his attempts to build a competitor to Google News. Project Alesia, designed to aggregate news and distribute it via the iPad and other platforms, has reportedly been axed. Read more »
Although the iPad is still relatively new, early indications are that a majority of users are willing to pay for content — whether it’s apps or games — and that news and music are the two most popular forms of media consumed, with books a close third. Read more »
With an internal memo telling editors and reporters not to respond to readers through the newspaper’s Twitter account, the Washington Post has provided another compelling example of how traditional media — and newspapers in particular — aren’t really getting the whole “social” aspect of social media. Read more »
Lawsuits against companies such as Google and Facebook for breaching privacy rules would become even more likely under new rules being considered by the European Commission, along with criminal sanctions and fines. European regulators have been far more active on privacy concerns than U.S. authorities. Read more »
Author Malcolm Gladwell argued in a recent piece for New Yorker magazine that the influence of Twitter and other social-media tools on social activism has been over-stated, but as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone notes in an essay of his own, this argument has some serious flaws. Read more »
Unvarnished, a startup that launched earlier this year as a way of allowing users to provide anonymous feedback on co-workers and colleagues, has closed a new round of financing and come out of invite-only beta mode with a new name: the service is now called Honestly. Read more »
A study has drawn attention in media circles by suggesting that stories on “serious topics” such as the Gulf oil spill draw more revenue for media outlets than stories about celebrities like Lindsay Lohan. But the reality is a little more complicated than the study suggests. Read more »
Facebook has been caught in another privacy-related dust-up, after the Wall Street Journal reported that a number of the network’s most popular apps and games have been sending “personal information” to third parties, including advertisers. But is this a real privacy breach or an overreaction? Read more »
Some of the most popular Facebook apps — including games such as Zynga’s FarmVille, which has almost 60 million users — are transmitting information about users to third parties, including companies that are building profiles for sale to advertisers, according to a news report. Read more »
