Social Networks
The BBC has issued a new directive to its journalists telling them they must post updates to editors first rather than breaking news on Twitter, another example of how traditional media entities are struggling with their relationship to Twitter in an era of real-time, distributed news. Read More »
The Nowbox iPad app takes a unique approach to discovering new videos on the iPad. It lets viewers surf through channels of web video on the iPad in the same way they would click through channels on their TVs. Read More »
Path and Pinterest are getting some significant backlash because of recent decisions that appeared to put their interests ahead of their users and a lack of disclosure about that behavior. It’s a welcome reminder that the trust of users is not something to be taken lightly. Read More »
iLike was once the most popular music application of Facebook, with close to 10 million active users generating 1.5 billion page views per month. On Tuesday, it finally shut down. Its demise proves once again that online music is a tough business to be in. Read More »
A new policy from Sky News bars reporters from posting anything other than work-related content on Twitter, and even forbids them from retweeting anything that doesn’t come from a Sky account. As with so many other similar policies, this completely misses the point of social media. Read More »
Mobile World Congress is still three weeks and an ocean away, but Samsung is already threatening to steal the show. Analytics blog Anlytk has compiled Twitter data on the most referenced terms surrounding MWC and found that Samsung is already generating an enormous amount of buzz. Read More »
Klout, the San Francisco-based startup that measures people’s “influence” across a variety of social networks, has made its first acquisition with the purchase of Blockboard, a Twitter-like mobile app that functions as a community bulletin board for posting messages viewable to your neighbors. Read More »
Open-web advocates may long for a revolt against walled gardens, but in the end the success of a social network is determined by the willingness of users to put up with its restrictions. For Facebook, that is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. 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.
Twitter is fast becoming the focus group of the 21st century, a status solidified yet again during Sunday night’s Super Bowl. The platform saw 453 times the maximum tweets per second it saw during 2008′s game, and sentiment analysis of tweets might have predicted the upset. Read More »
It looks like Facebook wants to address the big weaknesses in its mobile business model before it has to deal with nagging questions of its investors. According to FT, Facebook plans in March to include sponsored posts in its mobile news feeds. Read More »
Italian computer scientist Massimo Marchiori became famous after inspiring the code that underpins Google. But is his new search engine Volunia — the ‘innovative’ new service he launched today — solving a problem that anybody has? Read More »
On average, 100 million people watch the Super Bowl. With connected devices everywhere, we’ll be tweeting about it and sharing thoughts on social networks. So will fans at the game. Here are some staggering numbers showing how Super Bowl 46 is ready for such mobility. Read More »
The solar industry has begun 2012 with some trepidation, with many on the warpath to cut costs and reduce output. These moves give the market a chance to reduce inventories and get production more in sync with demand. But recovery will likely come slowly.
There is a lot riding on Facebook Credits. But for established media companies, the mandatory use of the in-app Payments system could be less than appealing. Will the company be able to become a major distributor of paid premium content? It depends if it wants ... …
Facebook is in the process of converting all user profiles to the Timeline design. But according to a poll, the majority of people aren’t so keen on the new look. Seventy percent of all respondents disapproved of Timeline, as did 90 percent of people over 65. Read More »
At just 2.5 years old, Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, has become a tech industry institution with holdings in Facebook, Twitter, and more. GigaOM talked with Andreessen to get his thoughts on Silicon Valley and the larger tech landscape. Read More »
In addition to some eye-popping figures for page views and unique visitors, the latest Huffington Post statistics show that if there’s one thing the site knows how to do, it’s how to get reader engagement that other news sites and publishers can only dream of. Read More »
Zynga has been trying its very best to diversify its business away from Facebook and it doesn’t have much of a choice. Ben Schachter, Internet analyst with Macquarie Securities went through the Facebook S-1. His take: Zynga’s fourth quarter 2011 isn’t going to be pretty. Read More »
In its IPO filing Facebook mentions the word “mobile” 123 times but didn’t use the term in positive ways. In fact, Facebook’s S-1 filing is one big warning to investors: Its growth is being driven by user behavior that it has so far failed to monetize. Read More »
Even after it goes public, Facebook will still be controlled single-handedly by CEO Mark Zuckerberg through a special class of stock and voting agreements. In other words, while you may own stock in the company, you will have virtually no say in what happens to it. Read More »
Facebook’s S-1 filing shows the company is all about infrastructure. The ad revenue and user experience it relies on to exist mean Facebook can’t afford to take it easy on IT, which means shareholders and users will both find plenty of reasons to get upset. Read More »
It took the whole day, but Facebook finally — as many expected — filed its S-1 with the Securities Exchange Commission for its long-awaite… Read More »
Beneath all the Zynga games, likes, personal timelines and pokes, Facebook’s business relies on fast, reliable infrastructure. And concerns about that underlying figure heavily in the risks it faces as it goes public, according to its S-1 filing. Read More »
According to Edward Aten, founder of Swift.fm, Facebook is recreating and competing with nearly every significant Internet product of the last few years. It’s an unprecedented pivot that threatens Facebook’s core products and may eventually benefit the very same startups Facebook is trying to crush. Read More »
In the letter to shareholders included in Facebook’s IPO filing, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes it clear his vision goes beyond just a social network. He wants to fundamentally rewire the way the world works, from interpersonal interactions to commerce to even government. Read More »
In Facebook’s IPO document filed Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg dedicated a significant portion of his letter to something a bit out of the ordinary: Teaching potential investors about “the Hacker Way” and dispelling the negative connotation the word “hacker” has gotten in the mainstream media. Read More »
The most highly anticipated initial public offering in today’s tech world is officially happening. Facebook filed S-1 documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday afternoon to raise a maximum of $5 billion. According to the filing, Facebook made $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011. Read More »
Twitter on Wednesday switched on enhanced brand pages for accounts owned by National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, and others. This is the first batch of premium Twitter pages from companies other than the handful of launch partners who unveiled enhanced brand pages in December. Read More »
As everyone awaits the $100-billion Facebook IPO, the biggest question hanging over the offering is whether it marks the beginning of a new era for Facebook — or if it’s just a massive cashing-out exercise, a sign that this generation’s version of AOL has peaked? Read More »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions.
Mobile video startup Klip will now let its users share their videos with just a select group of friends and family. The app maker has enabled this with the rollout of “Circles,” which is what it calls the private groups that users can set up. Read More »
It’s clear that Pinterest is really hot, but a new study shows just how powerful the virtual pinboard company has become. Pinterest is now driving more referral traffic on the web than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined, according to Shareaholic’s January 2012 Referral Traffic Report. Read More »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said on Monday that the company is not a media entity, but in most of the ways that matter, it clearly is — and that’s why its recent decision to selectively censor content that flows through its network is so important. Read More »
SocialFolders, a freemium application that launched last month to let you store and manage any file created on the social web, rolled out an integration with Evernote on Tuesday that lets users drag-and-drop content such as Tweets, Facebook updates, Instagram photos into their Evernote accounts. Read More »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said Google has all the data it needs to present Twitter in its search results right alongside Google+. That’s the latest public word from Twitter after Google began pushing its own social network in search results while keeping out Facebook and Twitter. Read More »
New York Times media writer Brian Stelter says the ability for sources to “go direct,” as Rupert Murdoch has done with Twitter, is a generational shift in the media industry. But is it a good thing or a bad thing for journalism and news consumers? Read More »
Almost a year after it angered users with its ‘quick bar’ advertising, and several months into its new Promoted Tweet service, Twitter’s ad platform seems as shaky as ever. Is targeted advertising a myth, or can Dick Costolo and team turn it around? Read More »
Facebook’s users have shared more than five billion songs through the site ever since it opened its social graph up to music services like Spotify, MOG and Rdio four months ago at its f8 developer conference. Sharing has also led to more concert ticket sales. Read More »
Pixable, a photo viewing aggregation service, said its mobile iOS app recently eclipsed the 1 million download mark on iOS. But more importantly, it’s doing 100 million photo views a month and 60 percent of users are still active, most of them on a daily basis. … Read More »
When Apple announced blockbuster earnings earlier this month, we were all shocked. A few days later, when comScore announced that little-known startup Pinterest had cracked the social network top ten, we were surprised. We shouldn’t be: This is the new normal for our technology-driven society. Read More »
Why does Twitter get involved in so many interesting lawsuits? In its short life, the company has kicked up legal hornet nests involving eve… Read More »
Rightly or wrongly, Facebook catches a lot of flak for impeding on privacy by selling user information to advertisers and generally enabling too much sharing. But would users care so much if Facebook gave them a cut of the profits it generates by selling their data? … Read More »
The news that Twitter will be censoring tweets has reinforced for many the fact that our freedoms exist at the mercy of the companies whose networks we are using — and being used by. How much trust should we have in these new information gatekeepers? Read More »
Personalized algorithms and social recommendations are great for a lot of things. But when it comes to getting news, these technologies can create an echo chamber, where our existing beliefs are reflected back to us. Uberpaper, a new site from Dmitry Shapiro, wants to combat that. Read More »
