New York-based startup Ganxy, which is officially launching today at the Frankfurt Book Fair, gives authors and publishers a straightforward set of tools to let them sell ebooks and control marketing and promotions online. Read more at paidContent »
A startup called Entelo is trying to make résumés a thing of the past by aggregating profiles of tech workers from their public data, and then feeding those results to recruiters. The secret sauce is an algorithm for spotting when someone might be looking for work. Read more »
In an interview with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, PBS journalist Charlie Rose asked about the state of tech IPOs, Facebook advertising and the keys to successful tech companies. Read more »
Prismatic founder Bradford Cross doesn’t come from a traditional media background — he is a data scientist who specializes in machine learning — but what he is doing with content recommendations says a lot about how the media business is evolving and what the future might look like. Read more »
New research from the Pew Center into news consumption habits shows that the impact of mobile and social continues to grow. Almost twice as many users got news from a mobile device compared with 2010, and almost three times as many got news from a social network. Read more »
Welcome to the fast-growing world of work media, a class of social tools oriented toward the needs of enterprises. Their emergence is due to the shifting expectations of an increasingly social workforce and the sense that older approaches to work like email are arguably approaching obsolescence. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
News-filtering service Prismatic has just launched a new “friend following” feature. Although this may look like a social-networking copycat move, founder Brad Cross says it is all about increasing the amount of data the service has about its users so that it can make relevant recommendations. Read more »
If you think fake online reviews are bad now, just wait a few years. Gartner predicts that in two to three years, 10 to 15 percent of all online reviews will be bought and paid for by businesses. Read more »
Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams has launched a news-filtering service called Nuzzel that is powered by social-networking activity. But while his previous ventures have been early to the market, his new offering suffers from the opposite problem — the market is already saturated with similar services. Read more »
There are a few apps out there catering to those who want limits on their social networking experience, but this one focuses entirely on the collaborative photo album angle. Read more »
Reddit has grown to become one of the most high-profile online communities, one that has even played a journalistic role in some recent cases. Among the things that newspapers and other media entities could learn from Reddit are the benefits of a strong and engaged community. Read more »
Combining two products into one doesn’t always make for one that’s better, but Nikon is onto something here by adding Android 2.3, Wi-Fi and a touchscreen to its latest digital point-and-shoot. Instead of using Nikon’s imaging software, you can download the app of your choice. Read more »
After a summer that has seen increased activity in social media marketing, media giant Gannett Co. today announced that it has purchased BLiNQ Media, which helps companies execute and manage ad campaigns on Facebook and other social networks. Read more »
Twitter seems to be at a crossroads, and according to a recent GigaOM survey, its prospects for the next five years are promising. Key challenges in the near future will be establishing a revenue model and survive the backlash from developers. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The reaction to Twitter’s restrictions on its API has focused mostly on whether the moves are unfair to third-party developers and apps. But what about the impact they will have on users? Twitter seems to care more about monetizing its network than what users want. Read more »
Twitter is at a crossroads: It’s inarguably a mainstream communications technology at this point, but it’s also generating controversy around its developer and user policies as it expands. Join us in sharing thoughts on Twitter’s role in the industry — both now and in the future. Read more »
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 »
Smartphones can enable an amazing level of connectivity, but they can also allow that activity to be monitored and used in controversial ways. But for mobile marketing to realize its full potential, consumers may need to sacrifice their privacy to one degree or another. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Users upset about Quora showing which posts had been read by which readers can rest easy — the site has backtracked on its decision to show that information after receiving complaints from users, who were generally unhappy with the feature. Read more »
Pinterest, Fancy and plenty of other websites help shoppers find deals and inspiration for clothing they can buy online, but some early startups are developing mobile apps that encourage shoppers to make their fashion purchases in stores. Read more »
This week marks the 21st anniversary of the world’s first website, and as new social-web platforms like Twitter and Facebook spend more and more of their energy trying to control and monetize their networks, it’s worth remembering some of the choices that the web’s creator made. Read more »
The purchase of the sports-blogging site Bleacher Report by Turner Broadcasting unit fills a content hole for the Time Warner unit, but it is also a validation of the user-generated-content model behind the sports-blogging network, and a sign of the disruptive effects that model can have. Read more »
The way Facebook and Twitter have been controlling and/or closing down their platforms to outsiders may have parallels to the way other technology leaders have behaved in the past, but both companies need to be careful that they don’t ruin their platforms in the process. Read more »
Digg, the social-news community that New York-based incubator Betaworks acquired part of last month, has been relaunched with a new look and new plumbing, but it doesn’t have anything like the kind of community Digg had — something that is hugely valuable and difficult to build. Read more »
As Twitter tries to evolve from being a real-time information network into a multibillion-dollar commercial media entity, it is having to face the inherent conflict between those two goals, and many critics see the suspension of journalist Gary Adams’ account as a symptom of that conflict. Read more »
San Francisco startup NextDoor launched nine months ago with its Facebook for neighborhoods idea. And now the startup is getting a big endorsement in the form of $18.6 million in new funding to pursue this market, which is turning out to be a promising opportunity. Read more »
Organizations are coping with the challenge of processing unprecedented volumes of data. However, the processes involved with using a large cluster to run applications like Hadoop are error-prone. So IT managers are turning to cluster-management solutions to automate tasks associated with cluster creation, management and maintenance. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The debate continues over which model is better for social networks: free and ad-supported or paid for by users? Dalton Caldwell says the latter and is building a paid alternative to Twitter, but VC Fred Wilson argues that free is the only model that works. Read more »
New York-based 33Across, an ad tech startup that uses vast amounts of social data to target audiences, has raised an additional $13.1 million from Pelion Ventures, Flybridge Capital, Greycroft Partners, First Round Capital and others. Read more »
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 »
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 »
Dalton Caldwell, the man behind failed startups Imeem and PicPlz, recently ruminated on what Twitter could have been. Now, he’s moving ahead with his own paid alternative called App.net that promises to shun advertising and focus on customer trust. Read more »
Not that long ago, Digg was seen as one of the kingpins of the social web — BusinessWeek put founder Kevin Rose on the cover and said he was worth $60 million. Now, what’s left of Digg has been acquired by Betaworks for a reported $500,000. Read more »
Margaret Atwood may be a literary legend, but she isn’t resting on her laurels — instead, she is working with the online writing community at Wattpad to encourage new writers, and crowdfunding a new platform for artists called Fanado. Read more »
One of the biggest risks for Facebook, as it tries to justify its multibillion-dollar market valuation, is that its attempt to monetize attention through advertising will fail — in part because the nature of the social network simply isn’t conducive to commercial messages. Read more »
As Twitter clamps down on what third-party developers can do with the network, some have proposed creating an open-source alternative — but would enough users switch to a new network? Others who have tried such a move have largely failed to gain much traction. Read more »
Minor updates to Instagram’s website today come as the originally mobile-centric site begins to move further toward desktop interactivity. Users will now be able to like and comment on Instagram photos through the Instagram website, and they’ll be able to follow new users as well. Instagram […] Read more »
Facebook announced Thursday that mobile developers using the company’s API will now be able to cleanly integrate Facebook’s iconic like button into their design, allowing users to perform the equivalent of a “like” within another app and then cross-posting that action to Facebook. Read more »
UK politician Louise Mensch has got a ton of publicity for her new startup, Menshn — a Twitter-like messaging service that has pre-determined topics for people to talk about. But here’s the thing: it’s an idea that’s rotten from top to bottom. Read more »
According to Parse.ly CEO Sachin Kamdar, the problem with shares data is solvable. And as accurate social data becomes increasingly important, the first publisher to fully take advantage of this information will reap massive benefits and potentially reinvent how editorial decisions are made. Read more »
