Facebook: Twitter is "in the rear-view mirror"

Twitter may still be the media darling of the day, getting all kinds of attention amid its huge user growth earlier this year. But Facebook, once considered Twitter’s most fierce competitor because it also wants to let users post bite-sized updates online about their thoughts, apparently no longer thinks of Twitter as a threat.

Facebook’s executives aren’t really thinking much about Twitter these days and see it as a niche site which is unlikely to … Continue Reading

How startups lose at Buzzword Bingo

I had the pleasure (and occasionally the pain) earlier this week of watching more than 50 companies demonstrate new products and answer questions from a panel of judges at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco. While watching I live Tweeted my reactions to every presentation from the stage. Very early on the first day I started a series of tweets where I played a game of Buzzword Bingo.

Many of the presentations were exceptional, … Continue Reading

Google unwraps ad placement system for images, video, Flash ads

Google, the Internet’s advertising monolith, has a plan it hopes will draw ad buyers to spend more on “display ads,” the pictures, videos, and interactive Flash games that pull your eyes away from dull old text and deliver your eyeballs to a marketer with a message.

Display ads, while much more attention-grabbing, have failed to sell as well as Google’s unique text ads.

In a post on the official Google Blog, product management vice president … Continue Reading

Facebook's self-serve ads "crushing it," help turn startup cash-flow positive

When social networking company Facebook announced Tuesday that it was cash flow positive for the first time, the company was cryptic about the reasons. But here’s Facebook’s secret weapon: “Self-serve ads,” or those ads that advertisers can create on the site in a matter of minutes to target specific demographics of users.

“Self-serve ads are the gift that keeps on giving,” said Facebook’s vice president of growth, mobile and international expansion Chamath Palihapitiya (pictured), in … Continue Reading

One billion users, $1 billion: how did Twitter get the numbers?

A company valued by its private investors at $1 billion, with nary any revenue in sight?

Color most traditional investors incredulous.

But the company — and its investors — must have justified its value somehow. Earlier this summer, leaked company documents showed Twitter was gunning for 1 billion users in 2013 — a user base that would make it the largest site in the world.

That was the result of a thought exercise, co-founder Biz … Continue Reading

Joost sues Mike Volpi and Index Ventures over theft of information used in Skype bid

Online video player Joost and the founders of Skype have filed a lawsuit against Joost’s former chief executive and chairman, Mike Volpi, for alleged theft of company information that was used in the successful bid for Skype. It also named Volpi’s venture capital firm, Index Ventures, which he joined after leaving video-sharing firm Joost.

Joost was founded by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom. On Sept. 11, they announced that Volpi was stepping down … Continue Reading

Is the tech boom over for entrepreneurs?

There are a lot of tech start-ups launching these days, but Tom Siebel, Chairman of First Virtual Group (and founder of Siebel Systems) says they’re more bells and whistles than real breakthroughs. In this entrepreneurial thought leader lecture given at Stanford University earlier this year, Siebel argues that all of the great technological advances and development of great companies are behind us – and the growth rate for the tech sector is just on par … Continue Reading

Casual game firm Miniclip moves into Android games with Holland9

Miniclip is one of the biggest casual game web site operators. Now it’s moving into games that run on Google’s Android operating system for cell phones. It is doing so through an allliance with Amsterdam’s Holland9, a six-employee game development company that was started earlier this year.

Jorik Bremer, chief executive and founder of the company, said that Holland9 is focusing purely on games for Google Android, largely because of its potential as a worldwide … Continue Reading

Seesmic and TweetDeck: Two ways to immerse yourself in your social nets

Do you still use Facebook and Twitter by opening facebook.com and twitter.com in a browser? Or, have you tried using a desktop client to organize all the incoming status updates, tweets, comments, and other notifications into one little window on the side of your computer’s screen? Do you hope to find a way to shove all that data out of the way of your work?

My advice: Give up. What you need to do is … Continue Reading

Realizing Microsoft's potential in the cloud

[The following story, by Amitabh Srivatsava, Microsoft's vice president for Windows Azure, is part of a series of posts about cutting-edge areas of innovation. The series is sponsored by Microsoft. Microsoft authors will participate, as will VentureBeat writers and outside experts.]

Cloud computing is democratizing the internet in the same way that personal computers democratized computing itself decades ago. With the greater efficiency and agility of the cloud, running internet-scale applications is now … Continue Reading

Facebook lets users decide who has the Golan Heights

As Facebook ramps up its growth abroad, it will have to contend with more highly-charged political conflicts. One of them is how to manage disputed territories like the Golan Heights, a mountainous region connecting Israel to Syria that was captured by Israel in 1967.

Until a few weeks ago, if you lived in Katzrin (also called Qasrin), a larger town in the region, it meant you lived in Syria according to your Facebook profile.

Not … Continue Reading

5 O'Clock Roundup: Pre fails Palm, Pogue pities Zune, Microsoft battles Google Apps

Palm’s losses mount as Pre fails to catch fire – The Wall Street Journal’s most trusted analysts estimate Palm sold only 500,000 Pres in its quarter that ended on August 28th. Cutting the phone’s price from $200 to $150 through Sprint didn’t help enough. Palm won’t give out its own count, but the Pre clearly isn’t the iPhone killer, Android killer or Windows Mobile killer Palm had hoped for. I bought another BlackBerry. Sorry, guys. … Continue Reading

New VC Marc Andreessen joins HP board

Entrepreneur and angel investor Marc Andreessen, who recently became a fully-fledged venture capitalist with the launch of his firm Andreessen Horowitz, has joined the board of directors at computer maker Hewlett Packard.

HP likes to stay connected with the venture and startup communities, so Andreessen isn’t the first venture capitalist on its board. Tom Perkins, co-founder of top venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,  famously left the board in 2006 after learning that HP … Continue Reading

Playfish keeps expanding in social games with new San Francisco studio

Social games makerPlayfish is one of the fastest-growing companies in its field. Today, the company announced that it is opening a new game development studio in San Francisco.

Even in a recession, it’s clear that social game companies such as Playfish are in the midst of a big growth cycle. Founded in late 2007, the company has had an extraordinary string of original hits on Facebook with titles such as Pet Society, Restaurant City and … Continue Reading

Posterous finally adds themes to make your blog look less boring

Posterous just announced an exciting-if-inevitable addition to its simple blogging service — themes that let users customize the look of their blogs.

The San Francisco startup has been around for a year now. Posterous’ main draw is its simplicity (first-time users don’t even have to create an account to publish their first post; they can just send an email), and recent improvements include better support for video viewed on mobile phones. Still, as the site … Continue Reading

Report: Insight Venture Partners is new Twitter investor

Who’s responsible for boosting Twitter’s valuation to around $1 billion?

It looks like East Coast money. New York-based Insight Venture Partners is the new firm backing the fast-growing microblogging network, according to TechCrunch. With more than $3 billion, Insight is a late-stage, private equity buyout fund, not one that would have come in during earlier rounds of financing.

The firm invested in Photobucket, which sold to News Corp. for $300 million in 2007. It was … Continue Reading

Real Networks will help developers push mobile games to 1,700 phone types

Once developers create a mobile game, it’s a royal pain to adapt it to all of the different types of cell phones in the world. Real Networks is announcing its Federation of Studios mobile publishing business today to address that problem, enabling a mobile game to get on as many 1,700 different cell phones in a matter of six weeks.

The new platform could help widen the reach of hit games to the broadest audience. … Continue Reading

Rouxbe takes you to cooking school — online

Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, you’ll still find lots of startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with Rouxbe, below.

Instructional video sites like Howcast and 5min are becoming … Continue Reading

San Jose, PG&E lift veil on major Smart Grid collaboration

Pacific Gas and Electric announced today that it’s partnering with the city of San Jose, Calif., to deploy a major project integrating smart meters provided by the utility with the city’s well-developed solar energy infrastructure.

PG&E has been gradually rolling out smart meters in its California service areas. Just like traditional meters, they record how much electricity a household or business is consuming in real time. Only now, they transmit the data they collect to … Continue Reading