Tech — GigaOM

Tech

We collect a lot of stuff online — photos, check-ins, likes, tweets. But a lot of time those things are scattered all over several sites or social networks. The guys behind Kullect have a cool idea about how to keep it all in one place. Read More »

The appointment of Ross Levinsohn as CEO is a sign Yahoo wants to focus on media as the core of its rebirth, but does the company have what it takes to succeed as a new-media entity? There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Read More »

 
 

Just in time for its second birthday, food-finding app Foodspotting is rolling out some major design changes. Starting Wednesday, regular users of the app will notice a redesigned interface and a new logo, meant to emphasize new personalization and social features. Read More »

While Google’s new Currents app for mobile news-reading is seen by some as a competitor to Flipboard and Zite, there are some crucial differences between them that make me wonder whether Google really understands how media is changing and how they can take advantage of that. Read More »

Mixel, a new iPad app, invites people to make really simple photo collages that can be shared easily among friends and remixed into new creations that form a sort of visual conversation. The free app tries to make art fun and casual. Read More »

Facebook made some pretty huge privacy changes last month. This month the social network is revealing more tools that help users automatically categorize friends, control who views content they post and allow users to decide whose status updates and photos they see the most and least. Read More »

Google has bought restaurant ratings publisher Zagat, in a deal whose value hasn’t been disclosed. The deal helps Google bring in a source of recommendations and user generated content that meshes well with its engineering-centric culture and could boost Zagat’s profile among the digerati. Read More »

Google+ is the company’s latest attempt to get access to the kind of data users generate when they post status updates, share photos and post comments. These social “signals” are becoming a crucial part of our online lives, and that is affecting the entire search industry. Read More »

Google just announced it is ending its Labs program in an effort to focus more on its existing products, and a collective gasp went up around the Internet. My first thought was, “Oh my God, what will happen to my multiple inboxes and Auto-advance features?” Read More »

Postagram pokes Facebook, friends Android

A Postagram postcard

Postagram is a product with a huge potential for mass appeal. While the product launched on Instagram, which is popular with an influential set of early adopters, with Postagram for Android, the company’s product is now accessible to a much wider audience. Read More »

Steve Rubel, a VP of digital strategy at Edelman, recently moved his blog to Tumblr and deleted all of his old posts. He says Google is paying more attention to social signals now, and so a social platform is more important than just having a blog. Read More »

Google’s acquisition of social analytics technology startup PostRank indicates the company is also looking beyond its own walls to get its social efforts off the ground. Scouting for fresh talent externally is a smart move for Google, an aging player in an increasingly cutthroat industry. Read More »

More Must Reads

Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt took the stage at the All Things Digital conference and talked about a number of Google issues including privacy and failing to understand online identity soon enough — here’s a translation of what he said, and what he really … Read More »

Randy Shoup, the architectural guru credited with scaling eBay, tweeted Monday evening that he has left the online auction giant to co-found a new consumer-focused e-commerce startup, Shopilly.com. He and another former eBay exec are keeping their plans under wraps for now. Read More »

Large companies hiring PR firms to plant negative stories about their competitors isn’t a new phenomenon, but Facebook’s attempt to do this about Google and privacy isn’t just ironic, it’s a sign of how scared the social network really is about competition from the web giant. Read More »

The pressure is on for Google to develop a social strategy. It should leverage the combination of +1 and its users’ Google identities to come from behind on the social graph. With the concept of identity, Google starts it’s social play from a much stronger position. Read More »

Hashable has a fun interface but is all business under the hood, according to founder and CEO Mike Yavonditte. With its ability to track and index your professional relationships and connections in real time, with social awareness and even geo-tagging, it is everything that LinkedIn isn’t. Read More »

In a memo to Google staff, new CEO and co-founder Larry Page says employee bonuses are effectively on the line if the company’s efforts to add more social features don’t succeed. But the Google co-founder may find that you can’t threaten people into being social. Read More »

Google’s launch of its new +1 feature is an attempt to add social signals to search, but it’s also an attempt to jump-start the company’s social-networking efforts, and that seems to have less likelihood of success. Why? Because people don’t go to Google to be social. Read More »

Although younger users of social networks are often criticized for engaging in “slacktivism” without any real engagement, a new study from the University of California found that younger Internet users become more socially engaged in the real world as a result of their online activities. Read More »

A study from the Pew Research Center found that Internet users are much more likely to be socially active offline as well as online, and that those who use social media and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are even more likely to be so. … Read More »

As website owners try to boost the amount of time their users spend online, the all-in-one site toolbar is becoming more popular. Wibiya, which makes a toolbar that allows users to chat and share links on Facebook and Twitter, is launching a developers platform and API. Read More »

As social networks become more popular, the challenge of finding relevance amid all the noise becomes exponentially harder. Klout, which is trying to build a comprehensive database of social influence online, says it is now integrating activity from Facebook into its service as well as Twitter. Read More »

Google is reportedly testing the integration of Twitter within Google News, which would allow users to login and see news stories shared by people they follow. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said the web giant would be adding “a social layer” to all its services. Read More »

LinkedIn has agreed to acquire ChoiceVendor, a startup that allows companies to rate and review business-to-business service providers. The acquisition appears to be designed to improve LinkedIn’s ability to offer recommendations and other social features to its members and the companies that use the social network. Read More »

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made some comments last week about the company’s plans to get more social, and they showed how little the web giant understands what it is up against. Schmidt said the company intends to “add a social component” to its existing products. Read More »

Vic Gundotra, who as Google VP of engineering was been responsible for areas of the company’s mobile and developer relations, has been charged with leading the company’s efforts on social, TechCrunch reports this morning and I’ve heard as well independently. Read More »

According to a tweet from Digg co-founder Kevin Rose, Google is working on a Facebook competitor to be called Google Me. But while the search giant has every reason to want to do such a thing, the odds of it actually succeeding are extremely small. Read More »

Yahoo is doubling down on its bets on social networking, but is doing so by effectively outsourcing its social efforts to Facebook. The web portal is launching enhanced Facebook integration, along with a revamped personal profile feature called Yahoo Pulse, and new Google Buzz-style email features. Read More »

Google says it’s willing to accept its shortcomings on social and bring in a “Head of Social” to set the right course. The company has hired an executive recruiter to fill the position, and is currently in the process of casting its net widely. Read More »

eBay CEO John Donahoe says the company wants to make its PayPal unit the de facto payment system for Facebook games, Twitter money-sharing and every other kind of social game or service. But PayPal has some work to do before it deserves that position. Read More »

Yahoo, like Microsoft and Google before it, has struck a deal to get access to Twitter’s real-time firehose of tweets. It’s also announcing plans to integrate Twitter across all its sites, as part of Yahoo’s big strategy to be an aggregator for the social web. Read More »

Google reportedly plans to add a stream of recent status messages and media from users’ contacts to Gmail. It’s a good idea, following Google’s stated goal of combining social features across its products, but one that will have to be executed well. Read More »

Though Google’s social strategy has been catch-up at best to date, the company does have a master plan — at least according to engineering director David Glazer. He said across a variety of products, Google wants to make it valuable and easy to harness social information. Read More »

Aardvark today expanded its answer service beyond its iPhone and instant messenger application offerings with the launch of Vark.com, a social search web site. Unlike Yelp and Yahoo Answers, Aardvark’s service lets you tap into your social graph to get answers to your … Read More »

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