Smartphones can enable an amazing level of connectivity, but they can also allow that activity to be monitored and used in controversial ways. But for mobile marketing to realize its full potential, consumers may need to sacrifice their privacy to one degree or another. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Most companies in the market for a new data center deal in total secrecy with agents and data center providers under NDA. Cloud backup player Backblaze is turning that model on its head by publishing the RFP it’s using for its new data center. Read more »
Like Apple is doing in North Carolina, Facebook is adding on a smaller data center at its facility in Prineville, Oregon. The new building won’t add jobs to the region, but represents Facebook’s rapid infrastructure build out. Read more »
Federal investigators viewed the Facebook profile of an alleged gangster in the Bronx by asking his informant “friend” to show it to them. A judge ruled this was not unconstitutional because Facebook users can’t control what other people do with the information they post. Read more »
Facebook is now encouraging expectant parents to memorialize the moment by introducing a new life event for Timeline called “Expecting a baby.” The move, however, goes too far in getting people to share about things in the future out of their control. Read more »
Facebook’s App Center was launched in June as part of the social network’s attempt to be more relevant to mobile users and help them find apps they like for their smartphones. It’s also another way of attacking the mobile app discovery problem plaguing both iOS and Android. Read more »
Facebook probably has about 180,000 servers out there for its 900 million plus user base. That’s dramatic growth from an estimated 30,000 three years ago. Read more »
In the era of cloud computing and big data, chief marketing officers can either sink or swim depending on their ability to recognize the importance of the consumer information available to them and are able to capture and put it to use. Read more »
Leap Commerce, the company behind Best Decision, a mobile shopping app is working on a platform that would make shopping more easy and simpler. It wants to integrate other third party services such as Taskrabbit. Time for someone like Pinterest to snap them up. Read more »
San Francisco red-hot startup activity is not only inflating the commercial real estate market, but it is also having an impact on the residential rental market, data shows. Since January 2011 annual rents are up by $5000, but down in Peninsula, rents are up even higher. Read more »
Companies have been scrambling to throw down billions of dollars to buy up patent portfolios. One expert warns the purchases reflect a market distortion while the impending Kodak sale suggests a bubble might be bursting. Read more »
This week marks the 21st anniversary of the world’s first website, and as new social-web platforms like Twitter and Facebook spend more and more of their energy trying to control and monetize their networks, it’s worth remembering some of the choices that the web’s creator made. Read more »
Retailers are looking increasingly to social networks to bring in customers and ultimately drive more sales. But data from online marketing provider Monetate show that social still lags email and search in sales conversions and average purchase amounts. Read more »
Truly green data centers need to conserve water as well as power. Facebook just released the first water usage efficiency (WUE) number for one of its Prineville, Ore. facilities. While the figure is good, it could be better, the company said. Read more »
Facebook is turning on mobile ads for apps, allowing developers to target users in their news feed with ads about their software. This will likely generate new revenue for Facebook and help developers. But it remains to be seen how users will react. Read more »
As Twitter pushes for more control over the platform in order to monetize the content flowing through it, some prominent critics of this move argue the company is making a big mistake by focusing on the needs of advertisers rather than the needs of users. Read more »
The Financial Times and New York Times are at or close to the point where subscription revenue exceeds advertising revenue. This means their paywalls are working, but it also means advertisers are fleeing — and the implications of that for journalism could be significant. Read more »
Facebook Stories, a new original content site that will focus on a different theme each month, is intended to highlight Facebook users’ stories. But with a former Time magazine reporter overseeing an editorial team, does the company have something bigger in mind for Facebook Stories? Read more at paidContent »
Welcome to life as a public company: Facebook stock has dropped to around $20 a share, almost half its IPO price. It’s a rough time out there for social-networking stocks, including game maker Zynga, but Facebook’s slide is eye-popping. Read more »
The way Facebook and Twitter have been controlling and/or closing down their platforms to outsiders may have parallels to the way other technology leaders have behaved in the past, but both companies need to be careful that they don’t ruin their platforms in the process. Read more »
Facebook wants a court to approve a deal that will see it pay $20 million to settle the ‘sponsored stories’ controversy. But now, as groups file objections, the judge is questioning whether the settlement’s blacked out financial figures can remain secret. Read more »
Digg, the social-news community that New York-based incubator Betaworks acquired part of last month, has been relaunched with a new look and new plumbing, but it doesn’t have anything like the kind of community Digg had — something that is hugely valuable and difficult to build. Read more »
Facebook on Wednesday unveiled detailed numbers about the energy consumption, and carbon emissions, of its data center and operations in 2011. The move represents a greater push for transparency and an effort to help manage energy-related costs, not to mention some solid marketing. Read more »
Here is a new mission from Starbucks: how to make energy-efficient coffee. The retailer plans to launch tomorrow a competition that will pit 10 of its stores against one another to see who can cut electricity use the most in 30 days. Read more »
With the growth of sensors and microelectronics, the potential uses of wearable-computing technologies now reach to health and fitness, gaming, fashion, disabilities and augmented reality. Most importantly, the widespread adoption of wearables will drive the form function and market for mobiles in vital ways. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A lot of hopes were riding on Facebook having a superstar IPO, including the hopes of venture investors that it would help trigger a wave of interest in other social-web companies, which could then also go public. But now those rosy assumptions are in question. Read more »
Companies doing business on the web and in the cloud must spend a lot on infrastructure to stay running and to support new services. Here’s what Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zynga spent in the recent quarter, and what it might mean. Read more »
Facebook reported earnings that met estimates on Thursday, but that wasn’t enough for some investors — who clearly wanted to see the company outperform even the rosiest expectations. Meeting those lofty goals will be a challenge for Facebook in the future, especially as its growth rate slows. Read more »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: the problem of the Mac App Store’s stringent rules; Apple and Samsung brandish evidence that each has copied others’ designs; the case for shared iCloud accounts; and the Facebook-Mountain Lion integration mystery. Read more »
When it comes to the new generation of internet companies, VCs are from Venus and public market investors are from Mars. So the big question is who is right? Answer is in the stock prices of Zynga, Groupon and Facebook. Read more »
Facebook is working on new, more-personal methods for letting users alert members of their social networks to content they find offensive or potentially embarrassing. It’s a good start in the quest to make social media — and perhaps the people who use them — more civil. Read more »
Remember when Friendster was the hot social network, publishers doubted that ebooks would ever sell, and Netflix thought DVDs in red envelopes was the future? We do — that was that state of digital media when paidContent launched in 2002. Read more »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says the company wants to become more of a media player, and also wants to become a Facebook-style platform inside which developers build applications — but can the company find a balance between competing with third-party providers and working alongside them? Read more »
Twitter is launching a partnership with NBC Universal to create a real-time news hub around the Olympic Games — the latest step in the company’s transformation into a media entity, a move that is a double-edged sword for other media outlets. Read more »
Facebook’s social platform will increasingly be focused on sustainability, if the company’s new manager of energy efficiency and sustainability, Bill Weihl, has anything to say about it. Read more »
Organizations are coping with the challenge of processing unprecedented volumes of data. However, the processes involved with using a large cluster to run applications like Hadoop are error-prone. So IT managers are turning to cluster-management solutions to automate tasks associated with cluster creation, management and maintenance. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The debate continues over which model is better for social networks: free and ad-supported or paid for by users? Dalton Caldwell says the latter and is building a paid alternative to Twitter, but VC Fred Wilson argues that free is the only model that works. Read more »
A simple news service like Evening Edition — which a group of web designers came up with as a side project — contains a number of lessons that mainstream media outlets might want to consider, such as serving readers’ information needs instead of their own. Read more »
Trapit, an AI-based discovery engine for Web content from the group behind Siri, is releasing its iPad app Thursday after launching a Web version last November. Trapit wants to compete against news reading apps like Flipboard by offering better content. It’s planning publisher partnerships, too. Read more at paidContent »
Tablets featured prominently in the connected consumer space, both as a product category and as a component of broader platform strategies by major OS providers Microsoft, Google and Apple. Meanwhile Facebook began laying the groundwork to add payment processing to its platform. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
