Nokia’s problems have been well-documented in recent years — but a new report suggests that its difficulties stretch back much further, starting with an incident when executives secretly splashed out $200 million to keep 45 top staff who wanted to defect to a rival startup. Read more »
A Wall Street Journal article argues that the proliferation of “like” buttons, retweets and other online voting encourages conformity in online behavior, and that we don’t reveal our “true selves” online because we are afraid of being voted down by the crowd. But is this true? Read more »
Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko is the latest dictator to try and quash unrest by banning social networking sites. But whether or not his fears are accurate, the truth is simple: many countries now think the success of the Internet is indistinguishable from America’s political ambitions. Read more »
We are the connected generation. As the opportunities to share information have become more ubiquitous, there has been an increasingly hyped-up debate and concern around the topic of privacy. But is privacy really the issue? Read more »
It looks like that “awesome” announcement next week by Facebook won’t be about an iPad app or an HTML5 platform. TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook will announce next week that it will be partnering with Skype to bring video chat to its users. Read more »
Hulu’s Facebook Connect integration apparently isn’t going as well as planned. The feature has been pulled offline after people reported having issues with the sign-in process earlier today, with some being exposed to other users’ account data in the process. Read more »
Zynga on Friday filed its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $1 billion. The IPO filing comes just one day later than many people expected — reports have been bubbling for weeks that Zynga was planning to file its S-1 sometime in June. Read more »
While some mainstream media outlets are trying to take advantage of social tools to engage with their readers, others still seem stuck in the Dark Ages. The latest example of a misguided policy comes from E.W. Scripps, which owns a chain of newspapers and TV affiliates. Read more »
Hulu is getting a lot more social with new features based on Facebook Connect. Users will now be able to log into the service with their Facebook account, comment on specific moments in a show they are watching, interact with friends and discover new content. Read more »
Is Facebook’s long-awaited iPad application finally set to launch? Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly said the company plans to “launch something awesome” next week. The new product was developed entirely at Facebook’s Seattle office, the company’s only engineering outfit outside of its Silicon Valley headquarters. Read more »
Flipboard, one of the first iPad applications to really take advantage of the new device’s touch interface to create a kind of digital magazine, today released a series of updates and new features that turn the app into even more of a tablet-based newsstand. Read more »
This week’s news from Google was the most exciting thing I’ve heard from the company in years. After languishing with social and its utter failures with both Google Wave and Google Buzz, the company is putting an intriguing product to market: a social network. Read more »
Google’s new social network offers a nice collection of features and a great design, but none of these things is enough to create a social network that people want to keep using — that requires a critical mass of users, and Facebook is leading that particular race. Read more »
There has been an explosion of content over the past five years — a trend that shows no signs of abating. In the land of a million channels, the filter will be king. Value will accrue to those that aggregate and filter programming. Read more »
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is stepping away from the site’s day-to-day operations. While many folks in the industry have seen this coming for months, the news has still raised eyebrows. But Stone is not the first person to step away from a company he helped start. Read more »
A month after its debut as a public company, LinkedIn isn’t resting on its laurels, and Wall Street is reacting positively. Several new initiatives unveiled this month suggest the professional social network might have the steam to compete with the Googles and Facebooks of the world. Read more »
Could Twitter have saved everyone’s favorite canceled show, Arrested Development? That’s one of the questions raised by a report released today that looks at the social engagement on TV viewers online. Turns out, viewers tweet because they want to help keep shows on the air. Read more »
Skype quietly added some XMPP support to its most recentbeta last week. Adopting the open protocol helps Sype to integrate with Facebook, but it could also be used for interoperability with other IM platforms. Just don’t expect to call your Gtalk friends any time soon. Read more »
After launching an open server and data center design in April, Facebook is prepping for version 2.0 of its hardware, and huge server buyers are playing along. From Rackspace to major financial services companies, big hardware buyers are getting into Open Compute. Read more »
Google launched its much awaited and highly anticipated social networking platform today. Dubbed Google+, the service may take its cue from social networking giant Facebook, but in reality it is about the harsh reality of Google saving and enhancing its core franchise — Google Search. Read more »
Tumblr, the combination blogging platform and social network, continues to grow at a phenomenal rate — racking up more than 8.4 billion pageviews a month, which puts it in the top 25 sites in the world. But will it ever figure out how to make money? Read more »
Facebook has come under fire for implementing an anti-spam system that mistakenly shut off a number of legitimate third-party applications. For all the impressive growth Facebook has displayed, it looks like the company still has a ways to go when it comes to managing public perception. Read more »
Last week Om broke a big story on Facebook’s plans for music. But is music Facebook’s next billion-dollar business? It will be hard for the company to cash in big on music. Here are three reasons why. Read more »
Using Twitter as a tool for journalism has become more and more mainstream over the past year, and the company’s launch of a media resource center and toolbox for reporters is clearly designed to stake Twitter’s claim as a journalist and media company’s best friend. Read more »
There’s been a lot of talk about “branding” and media lately, sparked in part by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten’s recent anti-branding rant, in which he said it was “ruining journalism.” But like it or not, branding is now an inescapable part of new media. Read more »
Twitter’s data center plans are reportedly in disarray according to sources. A few people shared that the microblogging service, which announced plans to build a Utah data center back in April 2010, had plans to abandon the site and move to a data center in Sacramento. Read more »
Facebook announced Thursday it has added Reed Hastings, the chairman and CEO of Netflix, to its board of directors. The addition of Hastings to Facebook’s boardroom is the latest signal of the Palo Alto, California-based social networking giant’s growing focus on the entertainment industry. Read more »
The old days of securing information with virtual barbed-wire fences are over. Today, security aspects have to be incorporated into software applications from the ground floor to ensure safety. And whether an application is hosted in the cloud or on a native server is almost moot. Read more »
PARC is working on a new networking technology that would make it possible for end users to connect with each other through “a Facebook without Facebook.com.” With Content-Centric Networking, data would self-organize, benefiting both end users and enterprises. First commercial applications could emerge within 18 months. Read more »
While open standards give customers options, execs from Dell, VMware and Facebook said the availability of free computing options isn’t necessarily the death of innovation. However, businesses that wish to survive will need to provide value over and above the commoditized aspects of open computing platforms. Read more »
The Internet has been called many things over the years, but even its most vocal supporters and critics might have been surprised by the characterization put forward today by U.S. State Department official Alec Ross. Speaking at the Activate Summit in London, Ross — senior adviser […] Read more »
LinkedIn is enjoying a banner year, but unlike Twitter and Facebook the social network doesn’t enjoy much mobile traffic. It has a chance to be a major player in the booming mobile industry, though, if it pursues a few ambitious goals. Read more »
Cloud computing has grown from a pie-in-the-sky vision to a major IT movement over the past few years. As its promise has grown, though, so too has its scope. This report covers six key sectors in cloud computing: commodity Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), enterprise IaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud storage and private clouds. We highlight the current state of each and provide informed insights into where they — and cloud computing in general — are headed. Much like any market in a still-evolving state, the infrastructure of the cloud-computing transition is still being built by startups, practitioners and even a big-name company or two. Companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Amazon, Nasuni, Terremark and Heroku. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
More than 80 percent of venture capitalists surveyed for the 2011 Global Venture Capital Survey said current IPO activity levels in their home countries are still too low to support the health of the market. Read more »
The removal of the Facebook page belonging to film critic Roger Ebert and blocking of content from a protest group in Britain has raised questions about the site’s censorship of content. We treat Facebook as a semi-public space, but it is controlled by a private company. Read more »
Flixlab wants to help you to produce videos with the clips and photos you record on your iPhone, and it now lets you access your friends’ footage as well. A new location-based feature makes it possible to collaborate on video production around an event. Read more »
Wildfire Interactive has had solid success with its flagship product, CEO Victoria Ransom tells me. Since the company’s public launch two years ago, Wildfire has attracted big name clients, grown its staff, and become profitable. But the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup isn’t resting on its laurels. Read more »
It looks like rumors of display advertising’s death were greatly exaggerated. Nearly all the tech industry’s largest players are expected to report growth in their display ad businesses for 2011, with Facebook leading the pack. Why are display and banner ads on the upswing? Read more »
Online anonymity has been taking a beating recently, with the Gay Girl in Damascus affair and a recent piece by the former ombudsman at NPR criticizing anonymous comments. But allowing people to be anonymous has real value for society that shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly. Read more »
Skype added deeper Facebook integration to its latest software for Windows, bringing instant messaging, the ability to “like” a Facebook status from Skype and improved contact integration. This is just the start for a stronger partnership between the two and it doesn’t end on the desktop. Read more »
