The power that corporations like Google and Facebook have to influence the digital content you consume means that you shouldn't necessarily depend on them to surface the things you need to know.…
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Is this data scientist a consumer’s best friend?
In Oren Etzioni's world, telling you where to buy a product is so 20 years ago. Today, Etzioni wants to tell you when to buy. Tomorrow, well, maybe he can let you know when you're in the vicinity of a great deal.…
Read MoreWunderbar! Why millions are flocking to Wunderlist
Om has called 6wunderkinder “one of his favorite new companies”, and there’s good reason. The startup is one of the leading lights…
Read MoreWhen is the social curation bubble going to burst?
French startup Pearltrees just scored another $6 million to help scale up its social curation service that helps people save, sort and share what they find on the web. But with dozens of services in play, is this a bubble waiting to pop?…
Read MoreGoogle proves ‘loooool’ is funnier than boring old ‘lol’
More news from the Google-data-scientists-conduct-the-coolest-research desk: YouTube has created an algorithm for determining what videos are funniest based on the intensity of viewer comments. It sounds fairly unimportant, but YouTube's work actually speaks volumes about the potential of social-media sentiment analysis.…
Read MoreGlam Media launches Foodie.com, a culinary site with a social network baked in
Glam Media on Thursday is launching a new website called Foodie.com, its first foray into the culinary space. It also serves as the first Glam site that fully incorporates the social networking features Glam acquired when it bought Ning in late 2011.…
Read MoreTo the BBC and others: Twitter is not your competition
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 MoreSuper Bowl XLVI by the (Twitter) numbers
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 More3 popular ways to screw up enterprise social
Enterprise social networking may be a hot buzzword but it's still in its infancy when it comes to adoption, which adds up to a frenzy of rushed roll outs by the inexperienced. What usually goes wrong? David Lavenda of harmon.ie has a few ideas.…
Read MoreInvestors and users beware: Facebook is all about IT
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 MoreFacebook has nothing to fear, except itself
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 MoreIt’s here: Facebook files for $5 billion IPO
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 MoreTwitter begins larger rollout of enhanced brand pages
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 MoreStudy: Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, nearly on par with Twitter
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 MoreSocialFolders plugs into Evernote to be your social media diary
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 MoreTwitter CEO: Google has all the data they need
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 MoreThe trouble with Twitter? Bad, bad advertising
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 MoreWould you cut Facebook a privacy pass if it paid you?
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 MoreHey ladies, does Google think you’re a guy?
Thanks to Google trumpeting its new privacy policy and inviting users to explore their profiles with the search giant, there have been a few giggles as my female friends check their Google ad preference manager to discover that Google thinks they are male.…
Read MoreUberpaper aims to kill the echo chamber of social news
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 MoreForget the EU: How to really empower users on privacy
In the fight to determine who dictates web privacy, web users are like a a chew toy at risk of being torn asunder by two competing dogs -- played this week by Google and the European Union. But the best option is empower consumers themselves.…
Read More1000memories integrates with Facebook to fill Timeline with old photos
San Francisco startup 1000memories has integrated its ShoeBox app for scanning and sharing old physical photos online with Facebook's Timeline user interface. This means that people will be able to easily fill in the gaps on their Timeline between their birthdates and when they joined Facebook.…
Read More5 music-focused iTunes alternatives for Mac
iTunes may be great for syncing your iOS devices, or buying songs, movies, apps and books, but it's not exactly the most nimble music player anymore. Here are five great Mac-compatible alternatives that focus on the music, without the bloat that iTunes brings.…
Read MoreFacebook data: Thousands of journalists now have a Subscribe button
According to Facebook, reporters have been especially receptive to the Subscribe button feature launched in Sept. 2011. The number of journalists who have enabled the subscribe button is now in the thousands, and the average journalist has seen a 320-percent boost in subscribers since November.…
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