By Jordan Golson
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009 |
5:22 PM PT |
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A pair of slices from a massive scrape of Twitter’s API could be of great use to programmers and researchers alike — as long as users don’t mind. The company behind the mining effort, Infochimps, is trying to demonstrate and promote its data aggregation service while offering up some useful information to interested parties.
At the end of last year, Infochimps posted a heftier version of its scrape of Twitter, which was taken down at the behest of the micro-messaging site over user privacy concerns. By releasing curated, anonymized chunks of data, the company may avoid most of the user privacy concerns that arose last time around. Then again, it may not. Continue »
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By Om Malik
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009 |
8:06 PM PT |
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Twitter, the San Francisco-based micro-messaging startup, recently raised about $98 million dollars from T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners, valuing the company at a whopping $1.1 billion. NeXt Up Research, the firm founded by veteran financial analyst Michael Moe, disagrees with that post-money valuation, and instead values Twitter at about $526-$674 million. NeXt Up’s research report is offered to users of SharesPost, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based private online exchange that allows the sale of shares of private companies to willing buyers. Most of their concern is coming from the lack of revenues and worries that any diversification into money-making services could alienate the Twitter user base. According to the report, Twitter has over 70 million users. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Monday, November 9, 2009 |
3:56 PM PT |
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Social games — a subset of the gaming industry that offers simple games that run across various social networks — today received what is the equivalent of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval from Electronic Arts, the $4.2 billion-a-year gaming giant. EA today snapped up Playfish, a London-based company which is well-known for social gaming titles such as Restaurant City and Pet Society, for $400 million. Here is my take on the winners and losers in this deal, including its ramifications for the overall industry. Continue »
By Brian McConnell
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Monday, November 9, 2009 |
3:09 PM PT |
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As a longtime Skype user who never felt that the service fit with eBay, I was thrilled to hear that it’s being spun off. And now I have some thoughts on how it can quickly and easily become an equally successful social network. Continue »
By Sebastian Rupley
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Monday, November 9, 2009 |
9:42 AM PT |
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Microsoft unveiled Exchange Server 2010, which has been in beta testing since April, at its TechEd conference in Berlin today, and showed it working with Outlook 2010. Exchange 2010 is the company’s latest server technology for on-premise software deployments, but it also incorporates many features aimed at web and online services. It has a new, integrated email archive designed to help companies increase compliance and respond quickly to legal and e-discovery concerns, and there are now previews of voice mails in Microsoft Outlook. It’s also very apparent that Microsoft officials are aware of the new kinds of competition that Exchange is facing. Continue »
By Kevin Kelleher
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Saturday, November 7, 2009 |
9:00 AM PT |
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Of all the dot-com superstars that appeared in the ’90s, shone brightly and then disappeared from sight, few have been granted a second act. One exception is Priceline, which 11 years after it was founded — and 10 years after its stock price collapsed — is quietly thriving. It’s no superstar now, but it’s an interesting case study of how an online company once written off for dead can in fact age gracefully. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Thursday, November 5, 2009 |
8:57 PM PT |
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Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on a bit of a Microsoft offensive. Earlier this week, while talking to press in Boston when Schmidt was asked to comment on a statement by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, he said, “I’ve learned not to respond to quotes by Steve Ballmer.” Oh Snap!
“Hopefully we won’t repeat the same mistakes that Microsoft did 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that have been happening with them,” Schmidt zinged back today when FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto asked him about recent comparisons with Microsoft. I bet Bill Gates must have said the same about IBM.
He also talked about Twitter and Facebook, the economy, the recession, and a whole bunch of other current events during his interview. Actually, this clip is worth watching, and Cavuto is rational in his questions. So if you have time, check it out. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Thursday, November 5, 2009 |
2:24 PM PT |
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The instant messaging world should prepare for a major quake — thanks to Facebook, which seems to be all set to launch a new connection interface that would allow Facebook Chat to work with any kind of XMPP client.
The news of this development was first reported by Mickaël Rémond on the company blog of Process One, a Paris-based messaging startup. “It now seems the launch is close as the XMPP software stack has been deployed on chat.facebook.com,” writes Rémond, who is a leading expert on instant messaging and ejabberd and is an active member of the XMPP Standard Foundation. Continue »
By Sebastian Rupley
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Thursday, November 5, 2009 |
12:45 PM PT |
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We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the tech cave dweller, perusing a list of arcane Linux commands on a lonely Saturday night, no friends in sight. In the age of ubiquitous — and social — technology, though, can we conclude that the Internet, smartphones and new technologies isolate us and encourage cocooning, or the opposite?
The Pew Internet & American Life Project sought answers to such questions through phone interviews with 2,512 adults in the U.S., and there are surprises in the survey results. I do wonder, though, how the results might skew differently if people under 18 had been included. Here are just some of the findings, with more results below the fold:
Continue »
By Om Malik
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Thursday, November 5, 2009 |
7:37 AM PT |
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Google is getting ready to make its Wave technology more widely available, CEO Eric Schmidt told a gathering of reporters in its Boston offices.
“[Google's Wave team is] getting ready for a much broader distribution. Ready means very soon. Very soon is like weeks not years,” Schmidt said. “The experiment has yielded a very, very innovative model and a lot of buzz. We want to see if it will scale.”
Maybe when more people are using it, there is a good chance someone will figure it out and explain to me how it is supposed to improve my online life. (If you want a good Google Wave Primer, check out this research note over on our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro.)
Amongst other things, Schmidt commented on media, news and bloggers, reminding me of what my mother once told me: it is better to keep quiet about things you don’t know much about. Just because they can sell online ads and do search, who why do Googlers think they know everything about media and politics? Why do they think they have all the answers, when they can’t get more than half their products right?!
Photo courtesy of Charles Haynes via Flickr.
