Live Universe Picking Up Jangl’s Pieces
Mark Hendrickson
6 comments »
Just over a week ago the founders of and five engineers from VoIP services provider Jangl
left for Jajah after the company failed to find a proper suitor. Following their departure, it was unclear what would happen to Jangl’s assets and remaining staff. Now we hear from multiple sources close to the deal that Live Universe has agreed to acquire both.
This appears to conclude the Jangl saga that started late last fall. Around that time, Jangl’s board began telling the founders to pursue an acquisition strategy in lieu of raising more money. The board’s decision came even when the company had closed deals (some profitable) with several partners, including Plentyoffish and Tagged.
We hear there was a disconnect between the VCs, who had a more enterprise background, and Jangl’s executives, who were set on developing a consumer-facing brand. The founders, and Michael Cerda in particular, are said to have worked diligently to carry out the board’s marching orders. But despite many companies showing interest in Jangl, it struggled to find the right company for its exit.
An acquisition deal (apparently with WhitePages.com) came close but unraveled after the terms changed and became far less acceptable. With no apparent options left, much of the company’s staff was notified that they would probably have to find new work, and it was finally announced that Jangl’s founders were indeed jumping ship.
Just what Live Universe plans to do with everything they left behind has yet to be seen. I’m sure Jangl’s partners will be interested in hearing the fate of their agreements, if they haven’t already.
| Website: | jangl.com |
| Location: | Pleasanton, California, United States |
| Founded: | March 1, 2005 |
| Funding: | $9M |
Jangl allows consumers to exchange text messages, phone calls and voicemail without sharing their real numbers.
Jangl customers can send/receive SMS messages from their mobile device or their Jangl account online, have voice messages sent directly… Learn More
| Website: | www.liveuniverse.com |
| Location: | West Hollywood, California, United States |
Live Universe, founded in late 2005 by MySpace founder Brad Greenspan, owns a number of social network and video properties. Learn More
| Website: | jajah.com |
| Location: | Mountain View, California, United States |
| Founded: | January 1, 2005 |
| Funding: | $28M |
Jajah is a VOIP service that gives you lower long distance rates by bridging standard phone lines with a cheaper VOIP alternative. You can place Jajah calls by clicking on your contacts through their website (desktop and mobile), various browswer… Learn More
What Windows Might Look Like On The OLPC
Michael Arrington
33 comments »
Google’s Bob Lee creates a much better image to go with our post yesterday about One Laptop Per Child and Windows teaming up. More at CrunchGear.
| Website: | www.laptop.org |
| Location: | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Founded: | January 1, 2005 |
With the tagline, “It’s not a laptop project. It’s an education project,” the One Laptop per Child initiative aims to revolutionize how we educate the world’s children. In January 2005, the MIT Media Lab launched the research initiative to develop a… Learn More
Danish Mobile Social Network ZYB Acquired By Vodafone For €31.5 million
Michael Arrington
21 comments »
ZYB, a mobile social network that we gave high marks to in August 2007, has been acquired by Vodafone for €31.5 million, or about $50 million. The company had raised just €3 million in venture capital.
ZYB was smart in how they built their service. At first they were a simple address book backup-to-web service. But they realized they had a very complete social graph from the data (who’s closer to you than the people you call frequently on your mobile phone)? So they launched a mobile social network on the back of the original service.
We’ve continued to write about ZYB in comparison to competing mobile social networks (an area we’ve taken a special interest in). Last month. ZYB acquired one of those competitors, Imity.
The press release is below:
Vodafone Announces the Acquisition of ZYB
16 May 2008
Vodafone* today announces that it has agreed to acquire 100% of ZYB, a privately-owned company based in Denmark which operates a social networking and online management tool enabling mobile phone users to back-up and share their handsets’ contact and calendar information online. The acquisition will be made for a cash consideration of Eur31.5 million.
The acquisition of ZYB is a further advance in the implementation of Vodafone’s Total Communications strategy which is delivering new revenue growth around fixed broadband, mobile advertising and a rich set of internet services that integrate the mobile and PC customer experience. ZYB fits into this strategy by enhancing the range of communications services Vodafone can provide to its customers.
ZYB is unique amongst social networking sites as it is designed with the mobile device at its heart, allowing customers to share information and messages between their friends and colleagues who are held in their mobile phone’s address book.
ZYB increases communication choices for customers enabling them to send messages and images from their PC to multiple mobile devices in their mobile community, as well as taking advantage of the functionality of an instant messaging service.
Pieter Knook, Internet Services Director for Vodafone Group, said: “Vodafone understands that the core of any customer’s personal and business network is the set of contacts they hold on their mobile phone.
“Using a web portal as a link between the PC and the mobile device, ZYB provides an interactive way for people to nurture, contact and develop their relationships with their most important friends and colleagues and builds links with those contacts’ wider networks. This is Web 2.0 in action.
“This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of delivering products and services which meet our customers’ total communications needs.”
Tommy Ahlers, CEO of ZYB, added: “I am delighted that ZYB is to join Vodafone, the world’s largest international mobile community.
“Vodafone and ZYB share the same vision: to create a new mobile experience that builds on the convergence between the mobile and PC – and one which works on both platforms.
“By joining a company with Vodafone’s global reach, ZYB has more opportunities to bring to the mobile a further advance to the rich and interactive communications experience which people already recognise via the internet on their PC.”
ZYB will remain based in Denmark and upon acquisition will be incorporated into Vodafone’s Internet Services Division.
* The purchaser of ZYB is Vodafone Europe BV, a holding company of Vodafone Group, based in The Netherlands.
| Website: | https://zyb.com |
| Location: | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Acquired: | May 16, 2008 by Vodafone for $31.5M in Cash |
ZYB is a mobile phone utility and social networking site. ZYB started in 2005 as a european service to provide easy back-up services for mobile phones. Using this information, they have built a social networking platform based upon this data set…. Learn More
| Website: | vodafone.com |
| Location: | Berkshire, United Kingdom |
| Founded: | 1983 |
Vodafone Group is a mobile telecommunications company. The company has a significant presence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and the United States. In the United States the Group’s associated undertaking operates as Verizon… Learn More
Data Portability: It’s The New Walled Garden
Michael Arrington
120 comments »
The scuffle today between Facebook and Google has very little to do with user privacy and everything to do with user control. A huge battle is underway between Google, MySpace and Facebook around control of user profiles and, therefore, users themselves. And their three new products, Data Availability, Facebook Connect, and Friend Connect, are all designed to further that goal.
Internet giants know that the days of getting you to spend all of your time inside their walled gardens are over. So the next best thing is to at least maintain as much data about the user as possible, and make sure they identify with your brand while they are out there not being on your site. The most valuable information a user has is his or her identity (that’s why the big guys are so eagerly adopting the issuing side of OpenID so you log in with, say, your Yahoo account on other sites), as well as their friend list (valuable, plus users hate to keep redoing it all over the Internet) and other information.
The companies with the profiles (mostly MySpace and Facebook) know this. And they know that to keep users happy, and to stop them from entering in all that friend data into other sites, they need to make their data at least somewhat portable. Not too portable, mind you. That means they’d lose control. But just portable enough. That’s why they are launching their products, and that’s why they are being justifiably criticized by people like David Recordon, who says this is not real data portability.
Google is a little different. They don’t have a social networking presence in the U.S., so they are trying to get in the middle between the guys with the profiles (like Facebook) and the sites that want the data. Their Friend Connect product does just that, and makes them an important data middle man. That position can later be leveraged intensely. In fact, in many ways Google can become the most important social network without actually having a social network. Facebook, of course, doesn’t want this. And that’s the real reason why they blocked them today (although the rumor is that they two companies are talking tomorrow about some sort of compromise).
So when Robert Scoble wrote this evening that Google is in the wrong, I disagree. I think Facebook’s intentions aren’t to let users get data out of the network until Facebook is absolutely forced to do so, and then only on Facebook’s terms (see Facebook Connect). The fact is, this isn’t Facebook’s data. It’s my data. And if I give Google permission to do stuff with it, I’m damned well within my rights to do so. By blocking Google, Facebook has blocked ME. And that, frankly, kind of frustrates me.
Let me put this another way. How dare Facebook tell ME that I cannot give Google access to this data!
Scoble has been on the wrong side of this issue before, when he tried to scrape his friend’s contact information out of Facebook and export it to Plaxo. In that case, it wasn’t his data and he didn’t have the right to make it portable. It’s MY data, once again, and only I should be allowed to make that decision. He thinks his new position shows that he gets the importance of privacy, but once again he isn’t thinking in terms of who really owns the data and should be allowed to make decisions around it.
Ultimately I hope that I can keep my identity, friend list, photographs, videos and everything else that constitutes the (de)Centralized Me at any service provider that I trust (meaning I trust them to protect that data, but never go against my wishes and try to keep it to themselves if that isn’t what I want), and just tell sites like Facebook and everyone else where to grab it.
So far, none of the services do that or have announced plans to do that. But someone will, eventually, and in the process of freeing my data they will likely make a big boatload of money, too.
Android vs. LiMo: What’s the difference?
Greg Kumparak
3 comments »
With LiMo’s recent announcement that Verizon had hopped onto their Board of Directors, things are starting to heat up between the LiMo platform and Google’s competing product, Android. Both are open-source Linux-based platforms, and both are aiming to rock the handset market sometime in the next year or so.
LiMo is Linux-based. Android is Linux-based. But they’re far from the same. Below, I’ll try to explain some of the key differences without going too heavy on the tech jargon. (Fiiine. It gets a bit heavy for a paragraph or two. But I’ll avoid it where possible.)
May 15, 2008
Blaine Cook Joins Today’s Gillmor Gang, Talks Twitter
Michael Arrington
9 comments »
He was pretty careful about what he would and wouldn’t talk about, but former Twitter Chief Architect Blaine Cook bravely faced the Gillmor Gang today to talk about the challenges facing Twitter, the feasibility of a decentralized Twitter competitor, and other Twitter related issues. The timing is perfect, as big media is starting to take notice of Twitter and its passionate users. Google engineer Bob Lee also joined the show.
The most interesting thing Blaine said in my opinion was that as of late 2007 Twitter had just three engineers (including himself) and one operations guy. No wonder they couldn’t keep the fast growing service online.
Listen to the show here. A transcript will be up shortly.
| Website: | twitter.com/Blaine |
| Companies: |
Blaine Cook is the former Architect at Twitter. Before his departure he focused on building and maintaining Twitter’s Jabber-based real-time backend infrastructure that tracks and distributes millions of updates every day to users on the Web,… Learn More
Exclusive Look at Plazes for iPhone
Jason Kincaid
15 comments »
Today Plazes CEO Felix Petersen gave us a peek at iPlazer, the upcoming iPhone client for the geo-tagging social networking site. The app will be available when Apple’s official App Store launches in mid June. Plazes has been around for a while - it was one of the first companies to be covered on TechCrunch. Since then it has switched gears a couple of times, but it’s best described as Twitter with geotagging, points of interest, and social networking features.
Right now iPlazer seems like a combination of Twitter and Dopplr. The phone detects the user’s location through the iPhone API, then presents the user with a number of suggested descriptions (for example, opening Plazes from our office presented us with choices of “TechCrunch HQ” and “The Mansion”, both of which were assigned to the coordinates by previous visitors).
After choosing a location label, the user is prompted to send “activity” messages to their friends (it’s basically a tweet tagged with location information). These activity messages are compared by the server, and Plazes notifies you if you’re in the same neighborhood as one of your friends. You can get a feel for the app in the screencast below.
Plazes is also launching a new version of their main site, which will enter private beta next week. Most notable about the launch is the introduction of Twitter integration, which is strange because Plazes seems to mimic Twitter in some ways. For the time being Plazes stands to gain by allowing Twitter users to send geo-tagged tweets, but things may work out differently in the long term. The new version of the site also introduces a Dopplr-esque nearby friend notification system and support for iCal integration. You can request an invite here.
Readers may remember Felix Petersen as the guy who got busted by his own product. Petersen backed out of a speaking gig at a conference, telling them that one of his kids was sick, then proceeded to party at a different event (while Plazes told the world). The whole thing was overblown, but it was amusing nonetheless.
| Website: | plazes.com |
| Location: | Zurich, Switzerland |
| Funding: | €2.7M |
Plazes allows you to find out what others are up to and see what’s happening at different locations. Users share where they currently are, what they’re doing and post future plans. Posting this information can be done on Plazes.com or by mobile… Learn More
Rumor: Google To Launch Hosted Site Search, Ditch Mini
Mark Hendrickson
18 comments »
A source has informed us that Google plans to announce the replacement of its Mini Search Appliance with a new enterprise search solution called Hosted Site Search in the next few days.
We hear it will be a for-pay product that, as the name suggests, will allow businesses to search their websites and other data stores in the cloud. In addition to moving this type of search off-premise (the Mini sits behind the firewall), the Hosted solution will differentiate itself by automatically including organizations’ webpages in the Google index. This feature, however, is said not to affect anyone’s page rank.
Suppliers who help Google manufacture the Mini apparently have been told to reduce their shipment forecasts for the product because it will be shelved soon. The shift in strategy is also understood as a response to Microsoft’s gains in the appliance-based search market.
The Mini is a less powerful version of Google Search Appliance, which can index millions of documents and 220 file types. The Mini, by contrast, can only search up to 300,000 documents and is therefore meant for smaller businesses.
It’s not exactly clear what this decision means for the enterprise search industry, but it won’t be surprising if Google does indeed come out with a cloud-based solution.
| Company: | |
| Website: | www.google.com/enterprise/mini/i... |
The Google Mini Search Appliance is a less powerful version of the Google Search Appliance, which can be used by enterprises to bring Google-quality search functionality… Learn More
| Company: | |
| Website: | www.google.com/enterprise/gsa |
The Google Search Appliance is piece of hardware that corporations install on-premise so that employees can search enterprise data the same way they search the web with Google.
The appliance can index millions of documents and 220 file types…. Learn More
Jennifer Aniston Geeks Out, Let’s Revise Those Kindle Estimates Upward
Michael Arrington
31 comments »
One thing Citi analyst Kevin Mahaney didn’t know about earlier this week in his very optimistic sales estimates for the Kindle: Jennifer Aniston is apparently a fan. At least, that’s what it looks like in the picture above published by US Weekly (that is the first time and also the last time that publication will be mentioned here on TechCrunch, promise).
Get the Lowdown on Cloud Computing at GigaOM’s Structure 08
Michael Arrington
48 comments »
Next month GigaOM will hold Structure 08, a conference centered on the changing face of computing infrastructure. The event will discuss the wave of cloud computing technology that has been driving a revolution in web applications and has started to overthrow the notion of conventional servers.
Structure 08 will feature a workshop on Google App Engine, along with keynote presentations from Werner Vogels (Amazon), Greg Papadopoulos (Sun), and James Crowe (Level 3). You can see a full schedule here.
We’re giving away five tickets to the event, so leave a comment telling us why you’re too financially impaired to pay for a ticket and we’ll pick the best responses.
Structure 08 will be held on June 25th at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center. TechCrunch readers who register by May 20 can get a 10% discount on registration here.
Why’d You Have To Go And Make Things So Complicated?
May 16, 2008 — 11:44 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow — — 2 Comments
When Data Portability was first announced, it sounded like it would solve what had become one of the biggest problems in the social networking space: a seemingly endless array of new services, each of which required you to setup and maintain your own profile, friend’s list, photo albums, etc. With the support of just about every key player in the industry, Data Portability offered the promise of “being able to access [your] friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems …” Problem solved, right?
Not quite. At first, it seemed like Data Portability was a lot of hot air, with everyone scrambling to put out a press release and associate themselves with “the open Web,” but offering little in the way of specific plans. But then last week, MySpace announced Data Availability. Finally, there was a real implementation of Data Portability on the horizon, that out of the gates promised us integration with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter. But then, Facebook announced Facebook Connect. And then, Google announced Friend Connect. Facebook then decided it didn’t like Friend Connect and blocked it. So much for that idea. There’s a word to describe this, and that word begins with cluster and rhymes with duck.
The thing is, as we move to an environment where one profile essentially controls them all, all of the corporate interests want to be THAT profile, and for good reason. If I can make updates to MySpace and keep up with my friends that use it from Facebook, why would I ever login to MySpace if Facebook is my preferred network? In that scenario, MySpace loses page views and revenue, and gains what? Positive PR from a bunch of tech bloggers who push for open standards? Rupert says “No Thank You!”
So, What Are Consumers Left With?
For consumers, there will be marginal benefits from having at least 3 (and probably many more) big players in the social space offering portable profile data. The thing is, similar to what we saw on the application side of things, where developers needed to consider apps for Facebook, OpenSocial, Bebo, etc, developers will now need to consider which social networks they allow users to port data over from. So, if Twitter implements only MySpace Data Availability, but not Facebook Connect, new Twitter users will be out of luck. Of course, they can still do things the old fashioned way and just, you know, create an account.
So, What Does a Developer Choose?
Much like with the social networking application race, if you have the resources, you should support every big social network that wants to let you port over their profile data. Your competitors will, and if you don’t, you’ll be left behind in terms of gaining users and seeding your community with valuable data. However, if you don’t have the luxury of building to support every protocol under the sun, your best bet is to go with the one which has the demographics most similar to those you are targeting. Building a new flash widget company? Support MySpace. Building a new site for study abroad students? Support Facebook. You get the idea.
What About The Google?
Although Google might not be a huge player with any one social networking destination site (minus Orkut’s supposed popularity in Brazil and India), they have a huge advantage over everyone else (except maybe Yahoo): accounts. Between Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Apps, YouTube, and so on, it won’t be long before just about everyone that’s anyone on the Web has a Google account, either by choice or as required (by an employer).
While you may not implicitly think of Google as a social network, the company has been aggressive (some might even dare say “evil”) with building your contact list behind the scenes, the most obvious example being the way contacts are added to your Gtalk and in turn Google Reader. The company is many magnitudes more mainstream than Facebook, MySpace, or any other social network could ever hope to be, and hence, as Friend Connect spreads its tentacles (and they will be spreading … 19,000 employees need *something* to do all day), it’s not inconceivable at all to think that the company could in the not-so-distant future be the one that owns your universal profile. After all, who do you think Middle America is more apt to trust? The company consistently voted one of the world’s most respected brands (Google), Rupert Murdoch, or a mysterious company run by mostly twenty-somethings?
So What?
Complicated? Yes, but only to those of us who eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. The bottom line is we’re not moving towards openness at all, but we are moving towards a more manageable online social presence. The Internet behemoths will slug it out over who we use to manage it, but at the end of the day, there will be plenty of consumer choice and the free market will win – always a good thing in my book.
AOL Launches ParentDish
May 16, 2008 — 10:04 AM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — — 4 Comments
AOL has added a new channel to its AOL Living portal; this one is for parents. As we all know, blogging has become a favorite pastime for parents all over the world. Sites like CafeMom has taken off, and have raked in some high valuations. Most of the older portal sites from Yahoo, etc. are still leveraging this format, and AOL has been growing out its Living portal for some time, with verticals health, and other topics of interest.
The new parent destination is called ParentDish, and will feature editorial content from parental experts, celebrity contributors, and more. Supported by AOL-s advertising network Platform-A, AOL plans on incorporating information from across its Living portal (and beyond) to supplement a wide array of multimedia content for readers. That even includes video content from Warner, specifically promotional content from MomLogic.
Between verticals becoming more niche and larger companies like AOL hoping to tap into specialized demographics in order to expand their advertising potential, we’re sure to see a lot more networks such as ParentDish cropping up. What’s even more interesting is AOL’s blog approach to this particular vertical.
However, there’s little interaction for the readers of this content, meaning ParentDish isn’t likely to completely attract the mommy-blogging crowd. As mommy bloggers are a force to be reckoned with, I imagine a few more appealing factors geared towards this audience would be helpful.
Vodafone Buys ZYB, Cites Likeminded Interest And Philosophy
May 16, 2008 — 09:02 AM PDT — by Paul Glazowski — — 1 Comment
Vodafone, the largest mobile network operator in Europe, has announced the acquisition of ZYB, a company based in Denmark with an eye on content backup as well as social networking. Vodafone intends to add ZYB to its “Total Communications” strategy, in which it seeks to serve customers with an integrated mobile phone and PC experience.The purchase price is reported as 31 million euros, or 48.65 million dollars.
We first mentioned ZYB as it was expanding its business model to encompass items other information storage in the cloud. At that point it seemed to be finding its place among Web services devoted to mobile users whilst maintaining connections to users’ primary information portals: their desktop and laptop computers and full-fledged social networks.
In the months since, ZYB has evidently kept its focus on users’ contact lists uploaded to the Web from their devices, which Vodafone apparently considers a business model quite in line with its own. Vodafone’s Internet Services Director, Pieter Knook emphasizes the importance of the social network that everyday mobile users rely on through the mobile rolodexes of their handsets.
Such logic does certainly make sense in Vodafone’s case, but it is also worth noting the popularity of standalone networks like Facebook (a website Vodafone has partnered with; MySpace, too) as the means by which more and more subscribers of mobile Web services communicate. It is undoubtedly the case that mobile users consider today that the basic services delivered by mobile networks - like 3G broadband access, for example - are mere gateways through which users can venture to preferred websites, entirely independent of their service providers’ influence. So whether Vodafone can exploit the assets of ZYB effectively to offer a networking solution that its subscribers indeed latch onto rather than pass over, is an open question - and one that may likely be answered in short order.
Financially speaking, of course, the investment made in the purchase of ZYB is one that Vodafone can likely consider an afterthought when all is said and done.
Jerry Yang To Workforce: Nevermind The Pitchforks And Torches. Keep Coding.
May 16, 2008 — 08:06 AM PDT — by Paul Glazowski — — 2 Comments
The past 24 hours have been thoroughly intriguing. It hasn’t been very long since Yahoo and Microsoft ceased their deeply fouled rendezvous with a reversal from Redmond. And though Yahoo seems to have staved off a shareholder mutiny in post-prod, at least for the short term, it is now forced to contend with a purportedly peeved Carl C. Icahn.
As many have now learned, the billionaire investor now claims himself as a shareholder of the Sunnyvale-based Web giant. And in this newfound role, he strongly suggests to the Yahoo board that they reconsider a purchase by Microsoft. (Semi-official word from Microsoft is that the company has “moved on” from its buyout attempt.)
Now, we heard yesterday from Yahoo’s chairman, Roy Bostock, as to the company’s aversion to Icahn’s suggestive hostility play. Yet in the hours following Yahoo’s initial volley, word has also escaped the CEO’s desk, according to Dawn Kawamoto of CNET News, intended to update the executive and working classes at the company as to his own thoughts about the week’s unexpected developments. Naturally, Jerry writes mostly in the collective mindset of “we.” As in, “what’s best for us to do,” not, “what’s best for me to do.”
In reading Mr Yang’s response to Icahn’s quite explicit letter (whose openness seems a bit refreshing, given Microsoft and Yahoo’s elusiveness and general passive aggressiveness in their correspondences of the last few months, no?), one might be forgiven in thinking that Yang is playing a propagandist. And not a very good one. He mentions to the broad employee base of Yahoo to disregard rumors and speculation and to continue to do “what we do best.” Over and over again. Odd? Odd. (more…)
Pushed By Icahn, Yahoo Jumps Back Into Ad Deal With Google?
May 16, 2008 — 06:45 AM PDT — by Stan Schroeder — — 3 Comments
According to the New York Post, Yahoo-Google advertising deal is not far from reality. After Carl Icahn announced his plan to seize Yahoo’s board of directors, which would consqeuently accept a Microsoft buyout, Yahoo execs are up for an open alliance with Google, and there’s a good possibility that an ad deal between two companies wiill be announced next week.
The deal will likely result in (yet another) open platform, which would allow other companies, besides Yahoo and Google, to bid for contextual ads tied to search queries. The big question is: would this open platform be fair to everyone? Not everyone thinks so. Kevin Lee, chairman of search engine marketing firm Did-It, and Michaek Kassan, founder of advertising consulting firm Media Link, both think that such a system would be biased towards Google, who would win in most of the bids.
The advantage of such a system is the fact that it’s less likely that it would be called a monopoly, which was the biggest obstacle for the actualization of any advertising deal between Yahoo and Google. Furthermore, an open platform would make it less obvious that Yahoo gave up on Panama (although, clearly, this is what’s happening) which would enable them to create more optimistic predictions about their future growth which no one believes in.
One thing is certain, though: in every scenario we’ve written about so far, Google is always a winner.
Thanks to Our Sponsors
May 16, 2008 — 06:30 AM PDT — by Tamar Weinberg — — 1 Comment
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FriendFeed - Does It Enrich The Conversation Or Add To The Noise?
May 16, 2008 — 03:50 AM PDT — by Stan Schroeder — — 14 Comments
Muhammad Saleem made an interesting point about FriendFeed on Twitter earlier today, which turned - ironically, and against his will - into a big discussion on FriendFeed.
As many of you know, FriendFeed aggregates all your other social profiles into one feed. But it does more than that; it’s another social network in itself, meaning that you can comment for example, on a Twitter item on FriendFeed. The comment doesn’t show up in the Twitter feed; it only shows up in FriendFeed, therefore forcing you to check your FriendFeed account as well as Twitter to follow the entire conversation. As noted by Saleem in an older blog post, SocialThing - a FriendFeed competitor - doesn’t do it like that; it lets you comment on the original service instead.
The problem with FriendFeed’s behaviour is that it fragments the conversation further. Instead of consolidating all of your feeds and making them easier to follow, it makes life more complicated for you, because you need to follow comments on both Twitter - for example - and FriendFeed if you want to be in the loop. This fragmentation sometimes really goes too far; for example, you can comment on a blog post using Disqus; the comment shows up in FriendFeed, and people can comment on that, etc. In the end, a casual user can never follow the entire discussion which can move away from the original infromation and go back and forth these various services. Unless you’re the ubergeek that follows absolutely every service out there, the conversation becomes so fragmented that it’s not making sense anymore.
Personally, I am that kind of geek; I have no problem following everything and information overload is my bread and butter. But I’m interesting in what you, the readers, think. Please answer in the poll below and/or elaborate in the comments.
Web 2.0 Invites for May 16th, 2008
May 16, 2008 — 12:55 AM PDT — by Pete Cashmore — — 2 Comments
New Web 2.0 services await; all you need to do is grab your free invites over at Mashable Invites!
Web 2.0 Marketplace Listings for May 16th, 2008
May 16, 2008 — 12:55 AM PDT — by Pete Cashmore — — 1 Comment
The Web 2.0 Marketplace is a place to list Web 2.0 and “New Media” websites for sale, job offers, consulting services, Facebook development services and more.
Podiobooks Signs Ad Deal with Wizzard Media
May 15, 2008 — 09:38 PM PDT — by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — — 4 Comments
A couple of months ago, on Mashable Conversations we spoke with Scott Sigler, a published fiction writer who launched his career with social media (specifically podcasting). He, along with a number of other aspiring and accomplished authors, would debut his work to the public by releasing serialized episodes of the chapters of his book, something that became such a trend that a community site called Podiobooks sprang up around it.
Today, according to Podcasting News, Podiobooks has already moved their backend podcast storage system over to the LibsynPro hosting solution, and has signed a advertising partnership with Wizzard Media. The deal will end up making available to Wizzard advertising clients the entire Podiobooks inventory.
This is a pretty significant deal for both organizations, raising the public profile for Podiobooks, but also a bit of cash for the community. On Wizzards side of things, it’s simply yet another impressive partnership in what is become a long list of good news for one of the few podcast companies that seems to have nothing but good luck.
To learn more about Podiobooks and what they’re all about, check out my interview with Scott Sigler. The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
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Lori Drew Indicted over Megan Meier Cyberbullying
May 15, 2008 — 08:37 PM PDT — by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — — 3 Comments
Well, it turns out that it just might be illegal to impersonate someone on MySpace and crush a teenage girl’s spirit so much that she ends up hanging herself.
Just when you thought the saga of Megan Meier was over with and the villain was going to get off free and clear, the culprit Lori Drew has been indicted on charges that could lead her to as much as 20 years imprisonment. Certainly no one can disagree that what Ms. Drew did was evil, at worst, and downright scummy at best.
The problem here is that the charges, at this point, are pretty flimsy at best. The charges filed, according to the LA Times, are “three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress on the girl and one count of conspiracy.” Add to that the fact that the case is being tried far outside the jurisdiction of the Missouri town where the incidents took place, and the government is going to have a very hard time bringing this case to term.
Only in the biggest stretch in the sense of the word can you call MySpace a protected system, especially when what all Drew did was click on a very prominent sign-up button, and then enter false information for the personal data.
It also calls into question First Amendment rights - how exactly do you define what sort of speech is designed to “inflict emotional distress,” and which sort of speech is designed to simply put those Steve Jobs-worshipping trolls on the VistaFan forums in their place?
John Mayer secures a BlackBerry Bold, makes world envious
Samsung's SGH-i900 is a feature-laden stunner
[Via UnwiredView]
Philips patent application details gadget-charging handbag
[Via Unwired View]
WD's 500GB My DVR Expander drives certified for use with DISH HD DVRs
[Via FarEastGizmos]
Fujitisu set to debut AMILO GraphicBooster external graphics card
[Thanks, Master_P]
Chilean MSI wind gets in-depth hands-on
HTC Touch Diamond unboxed, packaging worthy of the phone
[Thanks, SlashPhone]
Konami unveils Rock Revolution drums, forgets to try
[Via Joystiq]
Nintendo re-launching Metallic Rose DS Lite as standalone system
Blackberry Bold release dates, pricing leak out
by Nilay Patel, posted May 16th 2008 at 11:45AM
Shinoda Plasma showcases 125-inch curved PTA display
[Via Pink Tentacle]
Angstrom Power shows off G2 portable fuel cell power source
[Via Gizmo Watch]
Nikon's Coolpix S52c now shipping
Displaced by XP, Sugar Labs goes it alone
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