Zillow, Pandora only fresh IPOs to outlast market slip

Continued uncertainty about financial stability in Europe and a government deadlock in the United States struck publicly-traded equities on Thursday, sending the tech-heavy NASDAQ index down 3.3 percent and below a technical level of support that might indicate future weakness.

The S&P 500 crashed through a level of support — a numerical value that sends a signal to automatic trading algorithms to stop selling stocks — the index held at around 1,150 during a massive … Continue Reading

HP’s CEO revolving door will hurt it in the long run

Hewlett-Packard has many advantages as the world’s biggest technology company. But having a consistent CEO is not one of them.

Today, the company announced that Meg Whitman will replace Léo Apotheker as CEO, giving the company its fourth CEO in a decade and its third in a year. That says a lot about a failure at the company’s board of directors, which has seen a considerable amount of turnover itself. Now the task at hand … Continue Reading

New HP chief Meg Whitman pledges to stay the course

As expected, Hewlett Packard ousted chief executive Léo Apotheker today, replacing him with former eBay chief Meg Whitman.

HP board chairman Ray Lane will take a more active role in managing the company alongside Whitman, becoming executive chairman (he was previously non-executive).

As co-leaders of the company, Lane and Whitman both pledged to stay the course set by Apotheker, but with a renewed focus on operational execution and maintaining shareholder value.

“HP really matters. It … Continue Reading

Medical appointment startup ZocDoc grabs another $25M from Goldman Sachs

Online doctor appointment startup ZocDoc on Thursday announced that is has raised an additional $25 million in third-round funding from Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs.

ZocDoc is shaking up the businesses of scheduling doctor appointments, as well as making doctors more accountable by having patients publicly rate them. The company makes its money by charging doctors $250 a month to list their practice. It lets patients find a doctor easily, set up appointments and rate … Continue Reading

Analysis: Facebook makes a move to capture your whole life

Facebook made its power move to capture everything about your life today. In a keynote speech at Facebook’s f8 developer conference today, Facebook CEO executive Mark Zuckerberg talked about how to make the social network indispensable to the recording of our memories, the big moments in our lives, and our interactions with friends.

What Zuckerberg didn’t say about this move is that it is also a huge power grab. If Facebook successfully captures all of … Continue Reading

Twilio announces its 7 hackathon finalists (exclusive)

Seven developers have emerged from last night’s Twilio’s hackathon to pitch their Twilio-based products in the hopes of winning up to $10,000 in prizes.

It seems every conference has a hackathon these days, an event in which developers band together at night and to create a new and hopefully useful product by the next day. Twilio’s hackathon requires developers to use Twilio’s application programming interfaces (APIs) and hack together a product for the next generation … Continue Reading

Netflix announces Facebook integration for Canada, Latin America — U.S. will have to wait

Netflix users in Canada and Latin America will soon be able to see what streaming videos their Facebook friends have been watching, but those of us in the U.S. will have to wait a bit longer due to a 1980s law regulating wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sale records.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings hit the stage at Facebook’s f8 developer conference today to announce the news, which could fundamentally change the way Netflix … Continue Reading

Facebook debuts ‘Lifestyle Apps’ for cooking, exercising and way more

Facebook today showed off its new Lifestyle Apps, a set of applications for the social network that allow users to share information about their lifestyle activities, such as exercising, cooking, watching TV shows, picking out clothes and more.

The apps mark a huge shift in the way Facebook interacts with its users’ lives.

“This is going to make it possible to build a completely new class of apps that wasn’t possible before,” said Facebook CEO … Continue Reading

Building energy efficiency analytics provider FirstFuel Software raises $2.4M

FirstFuel Software, a provider of analytics software that tracks energy usage in commercial buildings, announced today it has raised $2.4 million from Battery Ventures in its first round of funding.

The company tracks energy usage in a building without installing energy-tracking devices like smart thermostats and plugs. Instead, the company tracks energy usage data from utilities and then combines it with weather data — such as how hot or cold it is near the building … Continue Reading

Facebook’s big plans for music and media: You can now watch & listen on Facebook.com

Facebook isn’t just for sharing what you like anymore. As of today, it’s also where you can watch and listen to what you like.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that users can listen to music, watch TV and films and more without ever leaving Facebook.com. For some types of content, absorbing new information and media will be as simple as hovering your mouse over a friend’s post.

These new features will be in beta … Continue Reading

Facebook enables new real-time social interactions for games

Facebook’s next-generation Open Graph platform will deliver a bounty of new features for social games, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said today at the company’s f8 event.

“Social games are killing it on Facebook,” Zuckerberg said, explaining that games are still the most popular apps on Facebook.

The updates to the Open Graph platform will enable new kinds of social game interaction. For instance, if two of your friends are playing the Zynga game Words With … Continue Reading

Star Wars: The Old Republic may see 2012 release date

Game publisher Electronic Arts‘ massive online role-playing game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, could be delayed until 2012, the company’s chief financial officer, Eric Brown, told investors today.

The Old Republic is Electronic Arts’ Hail Mary pass in online games and aims to rip users away from rival online games, such as Blizzard Entertainment’s seven-year-old game colossus World of WarCraft. If Electronic Arts succeeds, it will have persistent revenues coming in from subscription fees charged … Continue Reading

Facebook’s new Open Graph enables a wave of apps including joint music listening

An update to the Facebook’s Open Graph platform will allow people to express themselves in new ways and will let developers create a new class of app, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning. Friends can use these apps to do things like listen to a song at the same time and help each other discover new music.

“We are making it possible to build a new class of apps and rethink a number of … Continue Reading

LivingSocial may take $200M round instead of filing an IPO

Daily online deals startup LivingSocial might delay filing its initial public offering in favor of a new $200 million funding round, according to a Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

The fact that both LivingSocial and rival Groupon are rethinking their IPO strategies could signal a slow down in the market demand for daily deals across the board.

The potential round, which would value LivingSocial at $6 billion, could include both equity … Continue Reading

Mark Zuckerberg announces Facebook’s big changes, including all new Profiles

Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled some huge changes to the social network and its platform at f8, Facebook’s developer conference.

The tagline for today’s event is “Read. Watch. Listen,” which foreshadows the media features and content consumption and sharing functionality Zuckerberg announced from the stage.

But before Zuckerberg stepped onto the stage, Andy Samberg appeared to give his signature send-up of the young CEO, which both the crowd and “Zuck” himself clearly got a … Continue Reading

iPad to dominate tablets until 2014, says Gartner

Not that it’s a huge surprise, but it doesn’t appear that Apple’s iPad will be dethroned as king of the tablets anytime soon.

The iPad will account for 73.4 percent of worldwide tablet sales this year (down from 83 percent last year), and it’s expected to hold more than 50 percent of the market until 2014, according to research firm Gartner.

Apple’s tablet reigns supreme because it “delivers a superior and unified user experience across … Continue Reading

Report: Meg Whitman will likely be named HP’s new CEO later today (updated)

Former eBay CEO and Calif. governor hopeful Meg Whitman will likely be named the new full-time CEO of Hewlett-Packard after markets close later today, according to All Things D.

Whitman will replace current HP boss Léo Apotheker, who has attracted much criticism after shaking up the company in the last few months. Apotheker recently laid off 500 employees in HP’s WebOS division, killed the WebOS-equipped TouchPad after just six weeks on the market, bought software … Continue Reading