Media issues like advertising and discovery along with commerce dominated the activity in social and real-time Web technologies during the first quarter. Google raised some hackles, Facebook responded to demands from traditional advertisers, and Yahoo got a new chief executive. Read more in the full report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Every week the media seems to offer a new account of some dumb crook who is off to the slammer because he posted about his caper on Facebook. It turns out this phenomenon may be even more widespread than we think. Read more at paidContent »
In the first quarter of 2012 all eyes were on the screen, both big and small. Apple’s new Retina display pushed video streaming, and broadcast-TV streaming service Aereo’s launch was quickly followed with litigation. These events and more are discussed in a new quarterly report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The recruiting ecosystem is changing, led by professional social networks like LinkedIn and Viadeo and companies like Jobvite and BranchOut, which are building Facebook apps for hiring and career development. The bottom line is that technology enables the recruiting process to be more streamlined, scientific and democratic. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
With $32m in the bank, French professional networking site Viadeo is expanding internationally — and the head of its Chinese operation says that the company is expecting to go head to head with Reid Hoffman and LinkedIn. Read more »
Ever find LinkedIn too noisy to be useful? Siblings Jonathan and Susanna Gebauer say their ExploreB2B — launching in English for the first time — offers a service tailored to establishing category experts, solving problems and making new business leads. Read more »
Pinterest’s recent changes to get on the right side of copyright law highlight how the legal system continues to lag behind what the Internet makes possible. Until that issue is resolved, virtually every Internet-powered content-sharing service is at risk. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing, mobile computing and the consumerization of IT combine to create another force that overwhelms IT departments: complexity, including complexity of devices and applications, physical and virtual computing environments, and related challenges for IT staff. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Digital influence is one of the hottest trends in social media and it is also one of the least understood. Like some relationships on Facebo… Read more at paidContent »
Big data now touches everything from enterprises to smart-meter startups, while Hadoop is fast becoming the leading tool to analyze that data, and debates around privacy abound. GigaOM Pro analysts offer insights on what to consider when it comes to big data decisions for your business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing, mobile computing and the consumerization of IT are changing the game for IT departments. Section one of our three-part report describes and quantifies each of these trends, demonstrating that they are real now, growing rapidly and perilous to ignore. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A sprawling lawsuit filed in Texas this week targets Path, Instagram, Facebook and others for instructing their apps to suck up user address… Read more at paidContent »
Growth phases at Web startups are invariably accompanied by attacks, as we’ve seen with sites like Facebook, Twitter and many other web-based companies. Here we look at which are the most brutal attacks and how companies and developers can guard against them in the future. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Today, Yelp had a spectacular initial public offering and is worth almost a billion dollars. There is more talk of a Twitter IPO and that too would be spectacular. But one thing in common between these two companies – a propensity for airbrushing the past. Read more »
Contacts startup Rapportive has officially been acquired by LinkedIn, the company announced on its blog Wednesday. The deal follows weeks of speculation after rumors surfaced earlier this month. Rapportive will continue to support its popular Gmail plugin, but its acquisition could lead to greater integration with LinkedIn. Read more »
Yelp announced pricing of its planned IPO, with plans to sell 7.15 million shares at $12 to $14 a share. But the important thing is that Yelp has shown there is a real business to be made out of building and growing a community of users. Read more »
Engagio, which launched on Wednesday backed by seed funding from Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and other angel investors, pulls in comments and replies from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and a number of other social services and sites to create a one-stop social dashboard. Read more »
Will Pinterest be a fad that flashes and burns, as Turntable.fm shows signs of doing, or will it end up a midsize link sharer like Digg or Reddit? It is worth examining Pinterest’s growth, usage, influence and money-making potential for startup lessons and marketing ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mobile usage is the fastest-growing part of LinkedIn’s business, but it’s not a big revenue driver — yet. That could soon change, as LinkedIn plans to test out advertising across mobile devices, now that it has gotten the product and user experience right on those platforms. Read more »
This report outlines the myriad issues at play in Facebook’s move, from examining how CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to rewire the world to understanding the company’s infrastructure dependency. But from every angle, it’s clear the effects will ripple throughout the startup and tech communities. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
It remains to be seen whether all social networks can be profitable on advertising alone — and crucially what formats will work best alongs… Read more at paidContent »
Work boundaries have blurred and so has our understanding of who knows what in a given company. WikiOrgCharts uses the power of crowdsourcing to bring that information into focus. Having a clear picture of roles within an organization makes it easier for partnering companies to collaborate. Read more »
Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC), as it winds up as a troubled joint venture to become fully part of Sony, is spinning out some talent… Read more at paidContent »
From SOPA to Microsoft’s expanded Xbox live platform to cloud-based content storage from Apple and Google, the fourth quarter in consumer electronics and media was all about the continued battle for digital living room dominance. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Beepl opened its social Q&A site to the public, with the hopes of challenging Quora and others by finding specialists to answer user questions. It does that with technology that matches users with the queries that they are most interested in and most qualified to answer. Read more »
Don’t expect the pace of change in web technologies to slow down in 2012. The web is far from dead. Social media may have anointed one huge player in Facebook, but even if there is little room for a start-from-scratch general-purpose social network, there are several companies creating useful alternative social graphs. Companies can leverage key technologies and trends in 2012 to earn revenue and gain share, whether that’s by leveraging HTML5 for rich cross-platform experiences, doing heavy data analysis or integrating collaboration tools across businesses.Companies mentioned in this report include Dropbox, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The world of work has slowly but steadily changed over the past two decades, to the point where the word “work” itself has shifted from a noun denoting the place we went to do our job to a verb that describes the act of performing tasks. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
LinkedIn has announced that the technology behind IndexTank, the search engine startup it acquired back in October, has been released as open source software. It was pretty clear that IndexTank was bought largely for its talent, so it’s good news that its technology will live on. Read more »
The long-awaited IPO of social games giant Zynga has finally arrived, but those hoping for quick, early flips of the stock may end up having… Read more at paidContent »
Thanks to global connectivity and networking sites like LinkedIn, workers now have more ability to take charge of their professional lives than ever before. At GigaOM’s Net:Work conference, LinkedIn SVP Deep Nishar highlighted how it’s trying to provide tools to make users more productive and successful. Read more »
Online games powerhouse Zynga is shooting to reap $1billion in its IPO, according to an amended prospectus filed on Friday. The company behind Farmville, Mafia Wars and other games expects to offer 100 million shares of common stock at $8.50 to $10.00 per share. Read more »
Bessemer Venture Partners’ Byron Deeter shares his firm’s Cloudscape, a visualization of the leading companies in the cloud computing revolution, which Bessemer presented at its annual CEO Conference on cloud computing. Read more »
What if a product could sort through all the messy chatter and lunch invitations that fill a company’s inboxes to pinpoint exactly who has expertise in what, and then automatically created a searchable directory of profiles? That’s what start-up Whodini is aiming for. Read more »
Back in January 2011, LinkedIn acquired a startup called CardMunch, a very handy iPhone app which scanned, transcribed and organized business card information. On Tuesday, the company is announcing a relaunch of the CardMunch iPhone app with a new look and feel. Read more »
A California man claimed that LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) “humiliated” him by sharing his Internet browsing history with marketers. In a big win f… Read more at paidContent »
When Tim Berners-Lee invited newsgroup users to the World Wide Web with the invitation “collaborators welcome,” he never could have expected how completely that concept would fundamentally transform work. Here, Huddle’s Andy McLoughlin shows the timeline of that transformation. Read more »
LinkedIn has made its second small acquisition in as many weeks with the purchase of IndexTank, a San Francisco-based startup that makes a real-time, hosted search engine service. LinkedIn has thus far opted to spend the $352 million it pulled in from its IPO very slowly. Read more »
Last quarter’s big headline in social media and real-time technologies came from Google, which launched Google+, its first social tech product that seems legit. In the third quarter, things were back to normal. Google+ is still growing, but Facebook’s platform update dominated the news. And as Google+ passed 25 million users and won some raves from the digerati, its competition with Facebook intensified. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Zynga, Salesforce, BranchOut and Foursquare. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
LinkedIn has finally started spending some of that cash it raised in its May 9 stock market debut. But given the company’s $7.3 billion market cap, its first post-IPO acquisition — of husband-and-wife startup “Connected” — is not quite as splashy as some might have expected. Read more »
