As Britain ponders a crackdown on social media and uses facial recognition to try and identify looters, it reinforces the fact that spending more of our time on public networks such as Twitter and Facebook gives police and governments even more ability to observe our behavior. Read more »
Thanks to a new product from Nielsen and Facebook, the Internet could be on the cusp of become a first-class citizen in the advertising world for good. But there’s just one problem: Do Facebook users want to be part of a Nielsen family? Read more »
Can we find clues about the future of news and journalism in the way a link-sharing site like Reddit operates? We just might be able to — and it’s a good reminder that the replacement for mainstream news media may look very different from what we expect. Read more »
The shift in networking and the hype around the OpenFlow protocol has led to a a lot of confusion and overinflation of what OpenFlow can do. To get a bit more grounded in reality, I spoke with NEC about what its customers are doing. Read more »
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 at GigaOM Pro »
A Wall Street Journal columnist says that blocking access to social media during emergencies isn’t a big deal, and that “techno-utopians” are over-reacting. But are they? Or are these kinds of moves a step on a slippery slope that leads to Chinese-style control over information networks? 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 […] Read more »
As Google+ tries to compete with Facebook and Twitter, the prospect of social-media fatigue becomes a real possibility — and some argue that we are spending so much time amusing ourselves on these services we don’t have time for the real world. But is that true? Read more »
If Facebook had its own movie, then Google has its own song. Based on The Queen’s another one bites the dust, the song talks about Google’s new social network, Google+. Is the ditty yet another sign that the Google+ thing is for real and getting traction? Read more »
Plenty of web entrepreneurs share the same dream: build a great company and then cash in by selling it to Google, Facebook or another technology giant. But being successful is complicated affair, according to those who have seen those deals from the inside. Read more »
Google is cautiously optimistic about its roll out of games on Google+, calling it the first steps in an ambitious plan to turn the social network into a powerful platform. Google is content to move slowly as it builds for a bigger future for Google+. Read more »
Google is upping the competition with Facebook by turning on games for its Google+ social network, the company announced today. The first titles include Angry Birds from Rovio, Bejeweled Blitz from PopCap and most notably Zynga Poker from longtime Facebook game developer Zynga. Read more »
It seems totalitarian states like Egypt aren’t the only ones struggling with the impact of social media and the desire to muzzle services like Twitter and Facebook. Britain says it’s considering a ban on social media in the wake of the riots in London. Read more »
Google+ is the company’s latest attempt to get access to the kind of data users generate when they post status updates, share photos and post comments. These social “signals” are becoming a crucial part of our online lives, and that is affecting the entire search industry. Read more »
Mobile payments — payments initiated by a phone for a transaction at a physical point of sale or online — will total over $750 billion worldwide by 2015, and many predict they will soon begin to replace a typical credit card transaction. This report analyzes and forecasts the mobile payments industry, from its current technologies to the companies implementing them and the trends we can expect in the coming months. Much of the near-term growth of mobile payments will be driven by near-field communication (NFC) technology, but QR and 2D bar codes, mobile POS systems and SMS transactions are also important platforms for companies to consider when creating business models and strategies. Meanwhile, services from the likes of MasterCard, Nokia, Amazon and Google offer examples for others to follow and clues into the future of the industry. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Research in Motion, T-Mobile, Zong and Groupon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The recently rolled out Google+ is Google’s latest effort to get a handle on something that so far has eluded the company: gaining access to the data users generate when they post status updates, share photos and comment on friends’ activities. More and more, these social ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Does the launch of Facebook Messenger, led by the founding team of Beluga, mean the end of Beluga as its own standalone app? Beluga is still available on its own for the time being — but from the looks of it, that may not last for long. Read more »
Facebook has already started to supplant traditional email providers as a dominant way that people communicate online. With a new standalone mobile app called Facebook Messenger with SMS-like functionality, the social networking giant is poised to delve even deeper into users’ mobile messaging activity. Read more »
Four out of five people are aware of the terms “personal cloud” or “digital locker” according to a new survey. But consumers want such services to be secure, convenient and they don’t want to pay a lot for them. Surprised? Read more »
It’s become clear in recent years that smartphones are going to be increasingly ubiquitous for the foreseeable future. And a recent study indicates that many people are using those devices to access Facebook more often than for, really, anything else. Read more »
Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas has worked for the company for three decades and has seen the car become an electronics powerhouse, packed with chips that control everything from fuel injection to the chassis alignment. And that is only the beginning, he says in this video interview. Read more »
A recent batch of product and funding announcements points to a real trend: the infrastructure and business ecosystem for social media advertising is developing rapidly. That’s good news for marketers – and even for Facebook competitors – as it is critical for growing the market beyond ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud-computing insurance has long been posed as a solution to the problem of cloud users assuming too much risk of failure in the wake of things such as lengthy outages, data breaches and Lulzsec attacks. But it seems the idea of off-loading some of that risk ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Millennials — workers between the ages of 20 and 29 who grew up with ubiquitous cell phone and Internet availability — are now a dominant force in today’s enterprise. Is your company ready for them? This report, the second in a two-part series, examines the tensions ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
I had such high hopes for Push Pop Press and I thought they could redefine the idea of publishing. Instead they got bought out by Facebook, Pulling a Patzer, a move where a very promising company sells too early to a bigger, cash-rich suitor. Read more »
Facebook has acquired Push Pop Press, a San Francisco-based digital publishing platform startup in a move likely aimed at building out its forthcoming iPad app and strengthening its HTML5 development team. Read more »
A report examining the success rate of European venture capital compared to the U.S. sparked heated discussion. But some argue that even the best statistics ignore the real problems that face entrepreneurs and investors — no matter which side of the Atlantic they are on. Read more »
The big news lately in local deals is around public offerings by Groupon and LivingSocial and the rising competition from web players like Google and Facebook. But a much older player, American Express, is also activating local deals through social channels. With 90 million card members ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Microsoft can’t give up on search. Though it’s been losing money forever, Microsoft needs search to defend its core platforms, compete with Google and solidify its ad business while opening emerging revenue ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Zynga is bringing its popular Scrabble-esque mobile game Words With Friends to Facebook, the company announced Monday. This represents the first time that Zynga has extended a mobile-only game to Facebook — showing that despite its diversification efforts, Zynga’s dependence on the social network remains strong. Read more »
Microsoft’s online business lost $2.6 billion for its fiscal year, mainly due to its investment in search. Yet even with Yahoo’s outsourced search business, Microsoft barely cracks 30 percent in market share, according to comScore. Last week, a Reuters Breakingviews piece that was picked up by […] Read more »
For anyone who didn’t know, Facebook is a huge Hadoop user, and it does some very cool things to stretch the open source big data platform to meet Facebook’s unique needs. Today, it detailed how it migrated its 30-petabyte cluster from one data center to another. Read more »
Most mainstream news websites still look like newspapers because most of them still approach the journalism they do in a traditional way — and until they embrace the idea of real-time and “news as a process,” the way that their websites look is unlikely to change. Read more »
IT managers now face a new challenge in the enterprise: the significant presence of a new generation, the Millennials, in today’s digital workplace. These young employees were born in the 1980s or later; they were raised with ever-present mobile phones and ubiquitous online access and social media, and they often demand access to those services and devices while at work. This report, the first in a two-part series, surveys Millennials about their use of technology at work, with a particular focus on how they communicate and learn and what they expect in regard to technology support. We aim to assist IT and tech-support management by pointing out the opportunities Millennials present and also the potential pitfalls. Companies mentioned in this report include Facebook, Google and Twitter. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook has launched Facebook for Business, a step-by-step online guide aimed at helping small businesses use the social networking site. The timing is interesting, as it comes just a week after Google began shutting off all company profiles on its Google+ social network. Read more »
The second quarter of 2011 was a fast-paced one for the connected consumer segment, with every sector of the digital media landscape — music, e-books, online video and gaming — experiencing significant events and changes. Media consumption, purchase and management continued its shift towards the cloud, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google+ is the talk of the town. It is on everyone’s lips, even though not everyone has access to Google+ just yet. Epipheo Studios has created this awesome tongue-in-cheek video to explain what is Google+ and why eventually we will all end up using it. Enjoy! Read more »
A young woman held against her will, a mysterious Chinese takeout receipt, a laptop that offers access to YouTube and Facebook but not Google Earth: Those are some of the puzzle pieces of a new interactive movie called The Inside Experience, unveiled by Intel Monday. Read more »
Netflix had planned to launch a deep integration with Facebook, but the company said on Tuesday that it won’t be able to launch the feature in the U.S. anytime soon. The reason: A video rental privacy law is too ambiguous about opt-ins for information sharing. Read more »
Yahoo is still the biggest online property in the U.S., with fairly sturdy content and communications assets, but its options for restoring growth are getting fewer. Yahoo must re-energize its business around video, a social advertising network and/or syndication, or sell itself to Microsoft or AOL, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
