GigaOM

MySpace this week won a ruling against Samford Wallace and Walter Rines, reinforcing the fact that there’s no love lost between big web sites and spammers. But it’s also a sign of an escalation of the war on spam.

Spammers are finding virgin territory in emerging messaging tools, including SMS and social networks. Ferris Research projects that Americans will receive 1.5 billion unsolicited text messages in 2008, double the number sent in 2006. And Nielsen calls mobile social networking the next big thing, estimating 2.8 million unique mobile MySpace users and 1.8 million mobile Facebook users in December 2007.

According to antispam firm Cloudmark, spammers are already embracing these new technologies: Between 15 percent and 30 percent of friend requests on some of the largest social networks lead to a spammy profile.

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What’s that saying? One man’s meat is another man’s poison? JANA Partners didn’t think highly of CNet’s scattershot approach to diversifying into non-tech segments (amongst many other issues). CBS, on the other hand, found the very same TV.com, Chowhound, GameSpot, UrbanBaby, MP3.com and other properties valuable enough to pony up $1.8 billion, a 45 percent premium to CNet’s closing price yesterday. That works out to about $11.50 a share. As you might remember, JANA Partners had acquired enough shares to launch a campaign to replace the management and the board. Now it might finally get its wish. Continue Reading

Comcast, the Philadelphia-based cable giant, has finally announced that it’s buying Plaxo, a Mountain View, Calif.-based social networking & connected address book company, for an undisclosed amount of money. Plaxo, whose co-founders include Sean Parker, has raised $23 million since 2002 from VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners and DAG Ventures.

This has been the worst-kept secret, with people speculating about the price of this acquisition. Plaxo and Comcast officials declined to comment on the price when I had a conference call with them earlier today. Even today the price range is being pegged between $100 million and $170 million. I have on authority that the price is $170 million including earnouts. This is yet another megamillion-dollar bet by the cable firm in its ongoing transformation into a web-based company with an eye on advertising dollars.

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Like the rotary dial, the keyboard’s role as a technological interface will soon come to an end as more information — especially visual information such as photos and videos — is stored on computers. And Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates hopes to help put the nail in the keyboard’s coffin, according to his presentation at the 12th Annual CEO Summit. In his keynote Gates focused heavily on natural user interfaces that combine touch, pens and speech to navigate computers and phones and that he expects to be available within the next decade. The keyboard, he made clear, is on notice. Continue Reading

Nimbuzz, a little-known mobile VoIP company out of the Netherlands, has released a mobile client that not only allows users to conduct VoIP calls, but to engage in IM conversations and share media such as photos, music and video. Nimbuzz, which claims to have received an undisclosed amount of funding from Skype’s original investors, Mangrove Capital Partners, seeks to utilize cellular data networks and provide users with an inclusive application for mobile IM and SMS communication.

With this service, Nimbuzz enters a market already dominated by established mobile VoIP clients Fring and TruPhone. Fring, like Nimbuzz, incorporates IM capability with multiple IM networks and VoIP calls. TruPhone allows you to make VoIP calls to TruPhone users and traditional phones, without the IM features of Fring and Nimbuzz. Back in January of 2007, we covered Nimbuzz and criticized the service for offering cumbersome (although cheap) VoIP-on-mobile minutes. With the addition of the desktop clients, social widgets and IM, however, Nimbuzz is a much more features-packed option. Continue Reading