Report: one in four online teens now use Twitter
What are teenagers up to on social media? Twitter use has grown dramatically since 2011, while Facebook stays dominant but shows flat growth. Read more »
Buying Tumblr might make Yahoo cool — but buying Pinterest might have made more sense
There are plenty of reasons why the announced Yahoo Tumblr deal makes sense for those companies. But Marissa Mayer might have seen a much greater payoff from acquiring Pinterest instead. Here’s why. Read more »
Checking out Pinterest’s new home in San Francisco with CEO Ben Silbermann
photo: Om Malik
Pinterest moved into its new offices in San Francisco on Monday, and CEO Ben Silbermann talked with us about his goal for the company and where it’s headed. Read more »
Salesforce acquires visual web clipping service Clipboard
photo: Photo courtesy Clipboard
Clipboard, a startup that launched in May 2012, has been acquired by Salesforce, the team announced Thursday. The company allowed users to “clip” material from across the web into private collections. Read more »
Social shopping app Wanelo’s redesign puts users in charge as it eyes a wider audience
photo: Corbis / Heide Benser
Wanelo has grown in popularity recently, especially among young female shoppers, but how the company can move beyond that core audience remains to be seen. Read more »
How closely knit design and engineering teams put Pinterest on a rocket ship
For companies in Silicon Valley who want to prioritize design, the real question is how to do it while also shipping engineering products to market. At Pinterest, the designers and engineers are vocal that you can, in fact, do both. Read more »
Magnetic Poetry kit for the internet: Storytelling site Storybird adds poetry app
photo: Storybird
Storytelling website Storybird has added a poetry web app designed to let users quickly create illustrated digital poems. Read more at paidContent »
Pinterest acquires local recommendation app Livestar
Pinterest has acquired Livestar, the social recommendation app that gave users ideas on the best content around them, adding the company’s engineering team to Pinterest’s talent. Read more »
Pinterest’s new look emphasizes photos with larger pins
Pinterest is launching its new design to the general public, rolling out a look that it began testing back in January. The updated design features larger photos and a smaller activity feed when viewing the homepage. Read more »
The tech industry doubles down on design in 2013
Internet giants, investors and web and mobile startups are placing even more emphasis on design and user experience in 2013. Read more »
Pinterest raises $200 million in new funding, company now valued at $2.5 billion
Pinterest has raised a new funding round of $200 million, putting the company’s valuation at $2.5 billion. The company has exploded in the last few years as users have flocked to collect images across the web and pin them to virtual boards. Read more »
Zillow adds Pinterest-like home improvement vertical with Zillow Digs
Looking for inspiration and some price estimates if you’re going to remodel your house? Real estate marketplace Zillow is adding a new vertical for home improvement estimates, calling the new section Zillow Digs. Read more »
Pinterest reportedly in funding talks that would value it at over $2 billion
Pinterest is in funding talks that would put the company’s valuation at over $2 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The company has captured the attention of users across the country through its virtual pinboards for images. Read more »
Who’s winning the race in social media? Monthly active users by the numbers [Chart]
Instagram joined the club of social media companies releasing monthly active user stats, a more helpful metric than general registered users. We broke down the metrics from some of the most popular services, taking a look at how long it’s taken each company to get there. Read more »
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How to compete with Facebook in 2013
Specialist networks cater to diverse consumer segments, but Facebook’s sheer ubiquity means 94 percent of all social networkers use it. The bottom line: If any generalist network is going to gain mass-market traction, it will be at the expense of Facebook, not in addition to it. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Revealed: the finalists for the 2012 Crunchies
photo: courtesy of TechCrunch
Five finalists have been chosen in 20 different categories for the 2012 Crunchies awards, and we’re proud to release the worthy nominees today. Voting for the winners starts today, and the winners will be announced January 31st. Read more »
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How direct-access solutions can speed up cloud adoption
Startups and enterprises alike face barriers when it comes to cloud adoption. This includes security, speed of access to cloud resources, and runaway network costs. However, multiple solutions for direct access are being provided to address this issue for companies big and small. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Rewind: My favorite posts from 2012
Twitter, Google, Apple, Facebook, iPhone, Android — what’s new — dominated my writing during 2012. But there were others such as Famo.us, Kickstarter and France’s Free. Here are some of my stories from this year that I believe will have an impact technology ecosystem in 2013. Read more »
Pinterest adds in support for Twitter cards just as Instagram removes it
Instagram’s high-profile decision to remove support for Twitter cards, and therefore take Instagram photos out of your Twitter stream, is contrasted by Pinterest adding support for cards last week, integrating two of the most popular social networks all in one place. Read more »
Pinterest, Flipboard and Yelp tell how to save big bucks in the cloud
photo: Derrick Harris
At the AWS Re: Invent conference, engineers from Pinterest, Flipboard and Yelp detailed some of the strategies their companies employ in order to keep costs low as computing demand increases. The keys are keeping an eagle eye on usage and using the right types of resources. Read more »
Pinterest courts businesses and celebs with holiday-themed boards
Pinterest is launching “30 Days of Pinspiration” on Tuesday, courting brands and media celebrities as it promotes holiday-themed boards. The move shows growth by Pinterest in areas that could turn to monetization, and the growing up of an emerging social platform. Read more »
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The state of cross-platform media measurement
Brand advertising’s focus on cross-platform media measurement has grown dramatically in the past five years. Within the next 36 months cross-platform digital video advertising will standardize, driven by the shift in media dollars to online viewing and the adoption of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Why Amazon customers might think twice about going east
photo: Flickr/Will Merydith
Why is it that Heroku, Foursquare, Pinterest, Reddit, Instagram et al are still so heavily dependent on Amazon’s aging and problematic US-East region? Very good question. Here are some potential answers. Read more »
Announcing Pinterest CEO to speak at RoadMap
photo: Pinterest Bottica
In a rare appearance, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann will be interviewed on stage at our RoadMap event on November 5th in San Francisco. Come hear the story behind one of the most disruptive web designs to emerge in years. Read more »
Scaling Pinterest and adventures in database sharding
photo: Pinterest Bottica
Pinterest has learned about scaling the way most popular sites do — the architecture works until one day it doesn’t. But in a talk at the Surge Conference two Pinterest engineers shared their wars stories. Here’s what they learned about keeping it simple and database sharding. Read more »
Why design is the key to the connected world
Intelligent and simple design is the key solution to creating meaningful experiences out of the connected world. Come hear from our speakers on this topic at RoadMap, including the CEOs of Instagram and Tumblr, designers Yves Behar and Tony Fadell, and former Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Read more »
Announcing RoadMap 2012: Speakers include Evan Williams, CEOs of Tumblr, Instagram
Announcing our initial speaker lineup for our 2nd RoadMap conference! Our focus this year: design in the age of connectedness. It is scheduled for Nov. 5th in SF. Some of our speakers include Kevin Systrom, Evan Williams, David Karp, Tony Fadell, Yves Behar and more. Read more »
Pinterest to startups: devops is hard, but do it anyway
photo: Shutterstock user/argus
The popular social network uses devops software deployment smarts to keep all those pinboards up and running in the face of explosive growth and still be able to add features, according to operations engineer (and devops pro) Ryan Park. Read more »
Pinterest fights Chinese cyber-squatter
Cyber-squatting has been around for years but one Chinese man has especially aggressive in grabbing the names of popular US start-ups like Square and Etsy. More troubling for the companies, the man is also filing for trademarks. Read more »
Zappos taps Pinterest to boost sales, but its efforts fail
In a move to boost sales through social recommendations, online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, which is owned by Amazon, has added a new feature called “PinPointing” that offers recommendations based on Pinterest accounts. Unfortunately, the feature doesn’t work very well yet. Read more »
MIT’s 35 under 35 list covers tech from Dropbox to medical devices
Some of the names on this year’s Technology Review list of 35 innovators under 35 are SUNY Buffalo materials chemist Sarbajit Banerjee, Lookout Mobile Security’s John Hering, as well as some familiar folks like Dropbox’s Drew Houston and Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann. Read more »
What happens to advertising in a world of streams?
As we consume more and more content via real-time streams that come to us through Twitter and Facebook and newer platforms, how does that affect advertising? Everyone wants their ads to look like just another form of content, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Read more »
Silicon Valley tech boom is inflating rents… by a lot
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 »
Pinterest drops invites and opens to all
Image-sharing site Pinterest, which has been invite-only since its launch in 2010, has now opened up to everybody. The site had nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors as of March 2012, according to comScore, and raised a $100 million funding round in May. Read more at paidContent »
Web discovery engine Trapit launches iPad app — but it’s not another Flipboard
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 »
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Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter
Apple and Google still dominate the smartphone space, but look out for Microsoft, which finally has some muscle behind its mobile strategy. Meanwhile mobile-browser developers went head-to-head with native apps, and Facebook continued to buy mobile expertise via acquisition. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Subscriber Content
Social-TV apps and consumer behavior
Social TV is any application, website or software that allows viewers to interact with television programming and share that interaction with others. Startups in this space hope to combine ubiquitous second-screen technology with well-established audience behavior to drive new value around shows. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
AirBnB’s new offices will cost as much as $97 million over 10 years
AirBnB, a fast growing person-to-person real-estate rental company, will soon be moving into new digs. It has snagged 170,000 square feet in office space. Its new neighbors include Zynga and Pinterest. The cost of keeping this elite company: about $97 million over 10 years. Read more »
Judy Blume’s teen classic “Forever” is an ebook for the first time
Judy Blume’s Forever, which was originally published in 1975 and tells the story of two teenagers having sex for the first time, is also now an ebook for the first time. Simon & Schuster is running a social media campaign, “Do you remember your first time?” Read more at paidContent »
The Samwers are trimming their portfolio: Here’s why
Germany’s notorious clone merchants have sold their stake in furniture operation Fashion For Home, but that still leaves them with good alternatives in the space. Whether they can produce strong players in less traditional e-commerce markets is another question. Read more »
