How Facebook plans to fuel the app economy with Facebook Credits
New details emerged today on Facebook Credits, a long-awaited virtual currency on the social network that will likely have a lot of impact on how much money is made by Facebook’s ecosystem partners.
The discussion at a session at the f8 developer conference focused on how Facebook Credits can be used as a virtual currency in games, which you play for free but pay for specific virtual items with the virtual currency, which you buy … Continue Reading
Scribd adds social tools for people tired of reading alone
Following Facebook’s announcement this morning of powerful new social tools for websites, book- and document-sharing site Scribd is unveiling features taking advantage of the new capabilities. While that might sound like a minor upgrade, founder and chief executive Trip Adler said the improvements should reshape who uses Scribd and why.
“It’s really recasting the site as a community not just for publishers, but for readers too,” he said.
There was plenty of reading going on … Continue Reading
Facebook seeks to unravel Google's Web with the Open Graph
The core of Facebook’s big f8 conference today is centered around the idea of an Open Graph, a map of people’s relationships and their connections to all objects and content on the Web. That means Facebook can not only map who you’re friends with, but it and other applications interacting with the social network can also graph the restaurants, books, movies, news articles and cities you like.
The company is positioning this Open Graph as … Continue Reading
Zuckerberg takes off the "serious" necktie for 2010
Last year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg switched from neutral-colored hoodies to a business shirt, jacket and necktie. A necktie, in Palo Alto? On University Avenue? “2009 is a serious year,” Zuck told a Fortune reporter.
Good news for geekdom: The necktie is gone. Boy-billionaire Zuckerberg appeared onstage today at Facebook’s f8 conference in San Francisco wearing a dark brown hoodie. Normally I’d attribute it to plain old poor aesthetic sense and too many Brooklyn bloggers … Continue Reading
Amonix raises $129 million for concentrating photovoltaic technology
Southern California-based Amonix has scored a major round of funding for its concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems. The company has raised $129.4 million in a funding round led by Kleiner Perkins, according to the New York Times.
Concentrating photovoltaic systems offer many benefits over traditional solar technology. CPVs are more efficient, since they use lenses to concentrate sunlight into high efficiency solar cells, which can generate more electricity than standard photovoltaic technology. Amonix’s multijunction cells are … Continue Reading
AT&T: iPhone is keeping us rich
Whether or not Apple renews its exclusive iPhone contract with AT&T for the coming year, several million iPhone buyers helped AT&T beat the street in its most recent earnings report.
AT&T’s first-quarter profit, prior to a previously announced billion-dollar charge to cover the anticipated cost of U.S. healthcare reform, was 59 cents per share. That’s about 10 percent higher than Wall Street’s forecast of 54 cents.
“Now that they have a large enough base of … Continue Reading
Metaio helps Lego market toys with augmented reality kiosks
Metaio has been working hard for 18 months on an augmented-reality (AR) “digital box” for Lego, the Danish toy manufacturer. After being tested in a few locations, the product is now hitting Lego retail stores worldwide, and with it, consumers get a 3D image of what the toy will look like once assembled.
The idea is to hold up a box of Lego to a kiosk that consists of a webcam, a screen, and Metaio’s … Continue Reading
New data storage rules, permissions could rekindle Facebook privacy concerns
Facebook is getting rid of restrictions that developers can only store user data for 24 hours in a move that could rekindle privacy concerns.
The company said the reason for the change was primarily technical as the restrictions have been difficult for developers to work around, the company said. The move was greeted with applause when chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced it on-stage at the f8 conference in San Francisco today.
“We heard that developers … Continue Reading
FriendFeed cofounder: No plans to shut down the site
FriendFeed, a site where users can aggregate their social networks and communicate in real-time, has become something like a forgotten stepchild after Facebook acquired the company last year. As one of a dwindling number of users, I felt pretty confident that the site would disappear eventually, but apparently there are no plans for a shutdown.
At the time of the acquisition, FriendFeed said there were no immediate plans to take the site down, even as … Continue Reading
Graph API, Like button put Web at Facebook's beck and call
Want to know how to connect the Web? Forget hyperlinks. Forget Twitter’s Annotations, announced last week.
Today Facebook launched a powerful set of features that will compel publishers across the Web to organize their content for sharing and indexing by the social network.
The company released a Graph application programming interface that allows publishers to tag their content by type. For example, if a page is about a restaurant or a band, a developer can … Continue Reading
Microsoft Office and Facebook partner to ward off Google Docs
One of the more promising parts of the coming upgrade of Microsoft Office is the online version — but the responses I’ve seen to sneak peeks of the web-based Office apps have been pretty mixed. Beyond the Office brand name (which is certainly formidable), what’s going to make these apps any better than what companies like Google already offer?
Well, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg just shared a feature that could give Microsoft a big … Continue Reading
Facebook socializes the Web with powerful new plugins
At its f8 conference in San Francisco Wednesday, Facebook announced that it is launching a series of plugins that will dramatically expand its presence across the Web.
“Social plugins are a way you can provide an instantly personal experience with one line of HTML,” said Bret Taylor, the company’s director of product.
All of these pieces form the basis of what Facebook says is a new philosophy for the web — one that is centered … Continue Reading
Zipcar buys into second European car-sharing company
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zipcar announced this morning that Zipcar has acquired London-based Streetcar, a similar car-sharing service. In England, Streetcar is described as a “pay-as-you-go car club.”
Last year, Zipcar acquired a minority stake in Spanish car-sharing service Avancar.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Zipcar did say in a press release that Streetcar vehicles will be rebranded as Zipcars. That’s the same approach Zipcar took when it acquired American rival Flexcar in 2007. … Continue Reading
At f8, Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook Credits coming soon
[updated with comment from Zuckerberg]
Facebook Credits are coming soon, and this new virtual currency for the social network will have some big implications for the company’s ecosystem of publishers and developers.
More than 100 apps are currently testing the beta version of Facebook Credits and it will eventually roll out to the whole network, said Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, in his keynote speech at the f8 developer conference in San Francisco.
Zuckerberg … Continue Reading
Facebook has 400M users, 100M on Connect
Before making the big announcements today at f8, Facebook’s developer conference in San Francisco, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg shared some numbers on how massive the site and related services have become. Oddly, the big number, 400 million users worldwide, was the same milestone the company mentioned crossing back in February.
But that didn’t stop Zuckerberg from crowing about 400 million users. That means that if you’re building a website, most of your users are probably … Continue Reading
Mark Zuckerberg says it's all about the open graph at f8
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized a different philosophy for how the Web should be organized today at the f8 conference in San Francisco.
“The Web is made of unstructured pages linked together. The open graph puts people at the center of the Web. It puts personal and semantic meaning behind the Web — I like this band. I am attending this event,” he said. “We think what we will show you today is the most … Continue Reading
Watch Mark Zuckerberg's keynote live (video)
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to delivered the keynote address at the f8, the conference for Facebook application developers, today at 10am Pacific. Stealing back the spotlight from Twitter, which announced its advertising business model at its Chirp conference last week, Zuckerberg is expected to unveil a bunch of new features.
Kim-Mai Cutler, Dean Takahashi, and I will all be posting from the conference, but you can also watch Zuckerberg via this live … Continue Reading
To take on PayPal, Visa buys CyberSource for $2B
Visa announced today that it will acquire publicly traded e-payment company CyberSource for $26 per share, or around $2 billion total.
In a conference call this morning, Visa Chairman and Chief Executive Joseph Saunders acknowledged that this is “somewhat in reaction” to the growth of PayPal: “We’re paying attention to PayPal, as well as other companies that are getting into the e-commerce space, and we are obviously concerned that that would have an effect on … Continue Reading
Google in talks to buy travel tools behind Bing, Orbitz
Google execs are considering spending $1 billion to buy ITA Software, according to a report from Bloomberg, in order to compete with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and other online travel services. The online travel sector brought in $88.4 billion in 2009.
ITA doesn’t provide travel services direct to consumers. It provides back-end services to Bing Travel, Orbitz, CheapTickets, Kayak, and several airlines including Air France.
The carefully-worded report claims three unnamed sources for the story, … Continue Reading
Partovi brothers say goodbye to iLike at MySpace
The entrepreneurial Partovi brothers are stepping away from MySpace after it acquired their social music sharing startup iLike last year. Hadi is leaving MySpace entirely, while Ali (pictured here) will serve as a strategic adviser, down from a full-time role.
MySpace says Hadi, who was the company’s senior vice president of technology, will be focusing on advising and angel investing in startups, along with his non-profit work.
The move isn’t surprising, and shouldn’t be taken … Continue Reading
