The future of coupons is moving toward digital and mobile, something that startup SavingStar is taking full advantage of. The company told me it has hit half a million users since it launched its ecoupon product in April, putting it on a faster pace than Groupon’s. Read more »
Yahoo reported another disappointing quarter, with core revenues down 5 percent to just over $1 billion. Its display advertising business was up 5 percent, but it appears to be losing share to companies like Google and Facebook. Yahoo is still one of the biggest online properties […] Read more »
Facebook’s iPad app is no longer mere rumor and speculation, since a Twitter user found the full version hiding in the latest Facebook for iPhone update. It took them awhile, but it looks like Facebook will soon set things right for its iPad-toting users. Read more »
Facebook engineers have tested a 64-core chip from Tilera and found it ideal for grabbing data quickly from key value stores. This may galvanize the creation of new benchmarks as the debate of which architecture works best for webscale and cloud computing rages. Read more »
The tech industry’s movers and shakers have been saying for months now that the HTML5 mark-up language is very important. New research data released Friday indicates that HTML5 is not just going to be big, it’s going to be huge — and it’s coming fast. Read more »
There’s been a lot of sound and fury about Google and its handling of Google+ branded pages, but there is a serious issue underneath the griping, namely that Google can make or break a company’s presence online by virtue of its control over the web-search market. Read more »
Fresh off its $50 million in funding, note-taking and memory service Evernote is preparing for its first-ever developer conference next month, where it will outline its broader strategy and how it plans on becoming a 100-year company by building a productivity platform. Read more »
Two weeks ago, a post quoting Michael Stonebraker, who questioned the relevance of MySQL and Facebook’s use of it, sparked an overwhelmingly negative response. The true state of the database market appears to be that while SQL has its place, ideal uses are fading fast. Read more »
When most people think about Google and Facebook, they think about California’s Silicon Valley. But according to newly filed disclosure documents, the tech industry’s titans are spending increasing amounts of time and money making their voices heard in Washington, D.C. Are they crossing the line? Read more »
San Francisco–based VidCaster is taking the beta tag off its online video distribution platform, opening for anyone to sign up. For example, companies that want to use video for marketing but don’t have the resources to build and maintain a whole site themselves. Read more »
American Express, a 162-year-old financial services company, is marshaling its vast resources in pretty impressive ways to create what could be one of the strongest offerings in the local commerce space. The company said it’s just getting started with partnerships with Facebook, Foursquare and SCVNGR. Read more »
Russian social network VKontakte has built a billion dollar business by cloning almost every aspect of Facebook for the local market. It seems a little rich, then, that founder Pavel Durov says his long-term ambition is to prove that Russian products can be global leaders. Read more »
The turmoil created by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has pulled back the curtain on the cosy relationship between politicians, police and the media. But those who are angriest seem reduced to stunts — hacking websites and throwing pies. Is this really the best we can do? Read more »
Using social-media tools has become almost a necessity for musicians and artists of all kinds, as a way of promoting their work and connecting with fans. But can doing all this get in the way of the creativity that makes them artists in the first place? Read more »
American Express is showing it has designs on being a big player in the daily deal market. The company is introducing a new social platform called Link, Like, Love, that will bring American Express deals to Facebook users through their social graph. Read more »
Big data and Platform-as-a-Service offerings highlighted the second quarter, suggesting that we can expect to see a shift in enterprise IT practices around application development and analytics very soon. On the PaaS front, we saw new projects like DotCloud and Cloud Foundry gain incredible momentum in just a few short months. The big-data activity ranged from major new Hadoop vendors to heavy investment in flash storage that will speed the serving of data to processing engines. In other areas, we saw an uptick in cloud-computing plans from large vendors, OpenStack continued to mature and pick up both contributors and users, and Facebook caught our eye by launching an open-source project around the designs for its specialized servers and data centers. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Salesforce.com, IBM, Heroku and Calxeda. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
At nearly ten years old, web discovery engine company StumbleUpon is certainly well past the point where websites can attract users by being a new and hot trend. But the San Francisco-based company has proven that slow and steady growth can still lead to success. Read more »
Google had a great quarter and finally has a hot social media offering. But it can’t relax on its laurels. Google faces key challenges to the growth of its search and advertising businesses that it could address with better product ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
More employees toting mobile devices don’t have to cause harm to large enterprises with strict IT compliance rules. In fact, those employees armed with tablets and smartphones can be trained to become brand ambassadors on social media sites and to help the company’s image. Read more »
Consumers waiting for a Facebook phone will see one tomorrow, July 17, but it won’t come from Facebook. The HTC Status, for AT&T’s network, has a dedicated Facebook button for sharing. T-Mobile’s myTouch 4G Slide camera has impressed so far. Could it replace your point-and-shoot? Read more »
When it comes to the social networking crowd, sex apparently sells. Victoria’s Secret ended June as the top retailer on Facebook with more than 14.3 million fans, according to the latest data from e-commerce software provider ChannelAdvisor. Walmart, the world’s top corporation by revenue, ranks fourth. Read more »
Spigit is a leading enterprise social innovation platform. Paul Pluschkell, CEO and co-founder of the company, talked to me about the product and Spigit’s perspective on innovation management, which supports the “edge to the core” philosophy that is top of mind in many high-impact organizational settings Read more »
Google spent $917 million on infrastructure during the second quarter, continuing an upward trend that helps ensure new services like Google+ keep running. It’s the eight consecutive quarter of increased capital expenditures for Google, which is now spending at near-record levels. Read more »
Google+ has gained 10 million users in the few weeks since its launch, but it has a long way to go to catch up with Facebook. So why is Google CEO Larry Page convinced Google+ will be a major competitor in the social space? Read more »
Its fans say Google+ improves on Facebook in terms of privacy protections, because it allows you to filter people into groups or “Circles.” But is this really a big improvement? Not everyone is convinced it is — some argue that it actually makes things worse. Read more »
Spotify, one of the most popular music streaming services in Europe and other regions, today launched in the U.S., as expected. But mobile users will have to pay for the Premium plan, a $9.99 monthly subscription. What features do you get and is it worth it? Read more »
We all have our secret Lady Gaga songs tucked away in our playlist or the 80s’ Monster Ballads that are loved rather than laughed at, so now as Spotify comes to the U.S., here’s how to avoid sharing the skeletons in your musical closet. Read more »
The latest mobile app to enter the social-video-sharing fray is Vibop, which makes it drop-dead simple to polish your videos and add effects before sharing them with friends. The app is free to download and plans to make money by selling effects in-app. Read more »
Thanks to the rating systems in place on such popular websites as Yelp, Amazon and eBay, many people are comfortable evaluating things in absolute terms: a two-star restaurant, a B movie and so on. But new MIT research says this approach is fundamentally flawed. Read more »
Comments from some prominent ex-Googlers seem to show the company still sees social networking as an engineering problem. While it’s nice the web giant is paying attention to social behavior at all, can it ever understand social networks if it just sees them as data-producing engines? Read more »
The second quarter of 2011 in mobile was all about smartphones, thanks to Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and mobile data consumption ramping up. In the tablet space, the iPad lacked any real competition, though that dominance will surely fade as more and more alternatives — from Cisco, HP and others — emerge. Elsewhere, location-based marketing finally made some headlines, and the groundwork for near-field communications looks to be finally falling into place. Additional companies in this report include Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Research In Motion. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Conan O’Brien may not have the best ratings on late night television, but his followers are tweeting and updating their Facebook statuses more than the audience of any other late night talker. Team CoCo even has four times as much online engagement as Jay Leno. Read more »
UPDATED: Last week, Facebook and Skype launched a new video calling application, hosted at facebook.com/videocalling. But Samuday Web Technologies says it was at that domain first. Samuday now says its video chat app was unceremoniously kicked off of Facebook to make way for the new Skype feature. Read more »
Location-based social network Foursquare has been trying to move beyond the “check in” for some time, and new partnerships with daily-deal operators like LivingSocial could be a major step forward. Now all it has to do is land Groupon, and fight off Google and Facebook. Read more »
Hulu has once again rolled out its Facebook Connect capability, enabling users to easily share what they’re viewing on the online video site with their friends on Facebook. But after the botched initial launch, will users be willing to merge their accounts? Read more »
The profile of Sheryl Sandberg in the New Yorker this week purports to be about women in technology, but it’s also a glimpses into the evolving state of the workplace in an entrepreneurial and highly connected world -– the future of work for the professional class. Read more »
For once, the biggest news in social media and real-time technologies didn’t come from Facebook. Rather, it was Google that, at the end of the second quarter, introduced an innovative collection of technologies, under the Google+ label. Another big headline was the return of digital music: Pandora filed a successful IPO, and Google and Apple unrolled cloud-based music offerings. Meanwhile, other social networks generated valuable lessons about technology and business strategies. LinkedIn went public, while Myspace was sold. And Apple essentially appointed Twitter its mobile social network infrastructure supplier. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Skype, Groupon, Turntable.fm and Amazon. 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 shut down a service from Open-Xchange that allowed users to export the email addresses of their contacts, which makes the Germany company the latest to run afoul of the social network’s ongoing attempts to maintain control over the information of its users. Read more »
The first handset with a dedicated Facebook button, aptly named the HTC Status arrives on AT&T’s network July 17. At $49 you won’t get a high-end handset with a peppy processor, but if simple Facebook sharing is your thing, the Status hits the right buttons. Read more »
The 2011 MLB Home Run Derby begins at 8:00 p.m. EDT/5:00 p.m. PDT this evening, and will be available on ESPN, ESPN3, Facebook, and a variety of mobile apps. MLB players will also be live tweeting during the contest, adding a social element to the Derby. Read more »
