The Meebo bar, the noted product from the social media publishing company founded in 2005, will be discontinued on Thursday as the team focuses its full attention on Google+ products. Meebo was acquired by Google in June 2012. Read more »
The algorithmically generated travel guides have received a major update on the iPhone and iPad, with the Android versions set to receive similar upgrades at some point down the line. Read more »
StudyBlue, a Madison, Wisc.-based education technology startup, on Friday announced that it has raised $9 million in funding from Great Oaks Venture Capital, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and other investors. Read more »
Online learning site lynda.com on Monday announced that it had hired Frits Habermann as its new CTO. The former PopCap and Adobe executive will oversee the expansion of the company’s cloud infrastructure and build out new mobile and international platforms. Read more »
Users will stop seeing Instagram photos appear in their Twitter streams at all, now that the full effect of Instagram removing Twitter support takes hold. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom announced last week that the company would stop showing photo in Twitter, heating up the photo battle. Read more »
Many factors have driven the recent high demand for IT products and services. However, relentless global economic weakness and uncertainty have resulted in a deterioration of worldwide IT spending through the third quarter and will continue to be an anchor in the fourth quarter. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Critics of Apple’s social features have argued that it should buy Twitter, but former Apple engineer Patrick Gibson says the real value in such a deal would be that Twitter might be able to help Apple build web services that actually work. Read more »
Social travel recommendation app Trover has slowly undergone a makeover the past month or so. CEO Jason Karas talked with us about how Trover’s users were the ones who turned the travel app into an aspirational, entertainment-oriented app that is only somewhat related to real-life travel. Read more »
Apple is reportedly going to integrate iTunes with iCloud, which makes sense: iCloud is said to be a core strategy. But it’s clear that Apple doesn’t really have a choice. It has to move iTunes into the cloud to more fully embrace its post-PC worldview. Read more »
What do you get when you mix the New York Times with a site best known for viral cat videos? We’ll soon find out as the Grey Lady announced today that it will be working with BuzzFeed to provide video from this summer’s political conventions. Read more at paidContent »
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 »
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten wants to plug Pinterest in to purchasing, after leading a $100 million investment in the social pinboard curator. Read more at paidContent »
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 »
Google-co-founder Sergey Brin recently said he believes the future of the “open Internet” is at risk. Then why is the company trying to build its own closed network? Because the open vs. closed debate is more complicated than it first appears when it comes to Google. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
Adding a good API to your web service can result in a 70-percent increase in traffic, according to a survey out this week from a tech research firm. The survey laid out the business and technical reasons companies use APIs and how well they work. 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 »
Social is no guarantee of effectiveness in an organization because it creates unnecessary friction as people try to figure out how to work in new ways, according to David Gutelius, the Chief Social Scientist at Jive Software, speaking at the GigaOM Net:Work event. 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 »
Foodspotting, the app for finding and rating restaurant dishes, is getting in on the daily deals action. It plans to announce Tuesday that it is hooking up with Atlanta-based local deals purveyor Scoutmob to offer 50 percent and 100 percent off coupons for nearby restaurants. 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 »
New iPhone MMORPG Please Stay Calm takes a lot of what makes freemium gaming titles successful on the App Store, and adds in a dash of zombies, and a heaping helping of location services. It’s social survival horror in your backyard — and it’s pretty awesome. Read more »
With the stock market in flux, do tech startups stand a chance when it comes to luring investors? To find out, we polled GigaOM readers on what’s hot, what’s not, which sectors might favor buyouts versus IPOs and how it all will change in the near ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Social games and app developers got a bit of a shock when Facebook snuck out some Platform Policy changes. So what can an app developer do to get the most out of Facebook and insulate itself as much as possible from Facebook changes? Build its own ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The Apple Store went down this morning, and there’s still no official explanation as to why. But one thing did change: all Mac Pro and iPod classic models now feature drop down arrows that let you share the product on either Facebook or Twitter. 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 »
The big news lately in local deals is around public offerings by Groupon and LivingSocial and the rising competition from web players like Google and Facebook. But a much older player, American Express, is also activating local deals through social channels. With 90 million card members ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Yahoo is still the biggest online property in the U.S., with fairly sturdy content and communications assets, but its options for restoring growth are getting fewer. Yahoo must re-energize its business around video, a social advertising network and/or syndication, or sell itself to Microsoft or AOL, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
For once, the biggest news in social media and real-time technologies didn’t come from Facebook. Rather, it was Google that, at the end of the second quarter, introduced an innovative collection of technologies, under the Google+ label. Another big headline was the return of digital music: Pandora filed a successful IPO, and Google and Apple unrolled cloud-based music offerings. Meanwhile, other social networks generated valuable lessons about technology and business strategies. LinkedIn went public, while Myspace was sold. And Apple essentially appointed Twitter its mobile social network infrastructure supplier. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Skype, Groupon, Turntable.fm and Amazon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Today is Social Media Day, so in honor of that, I’d like to offer a few tips about making your iPhone a more social device. You could just wait for iOS 5 and the Google+ iPhone app, but why bother when iOS offers plenty already? Read more »
Google+ has some features that may seem familiar to owners of Apple’s iOS devices, like group messaging, video chat, and automatic photo sharing. But Google’s offerings just add to existing and upcoming iOS features; they don’t threaten to replace or compete with them. Read more »
A new iPhone app released on Thursday brings a music social network to the iPhone. Not for the first time, mind you, but it does get a lot of things right that previous offerings, including Apple’s own Ping, haven’t yet been able to nail down. Read more »
Is Twitter a platform now that Apple has endorsed it with integration in iOS 5? A new app called WITH seems based on the presumption that it is, leveraging the Twitter network to create its own service that lets you check in with friends and photos. Read more »
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 »
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 meant. 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 »
