Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.
Recent Posts
With iPhone app upgrade, iLike moves towards front of live music business
ILike is one of the larger music startups to survive the recession (and music-licensing issues). It has managed to become a “self-sustaining” business through its iTunes plugin and its popular social networking applications. Today, the company is expanding while most of the industry struggles, introducing… Continue Reading
Watercooler brings new revenue strategy to this fall’s Facebook fantasy football season
Watercooler, a company that has gained 25 million users on Facebook sports and television applications, is hoping to rack up the revenue this fall with a new version of its popular fantasy football app, Fantasy Football 2009, that emphasizes a combination of payments and targeted… Continue Reading
MySpace Mail launches, officially part of the new MySpace
While MySpace is figuring out its future as a sort of entertainment portal, an older and but still heavily-used product has made it out the door. MySpace Mail has been upgraded from simple messaging to a full-blown email service. You can send and receive real… Continue Reading
What real-time data means to me: A better commute
Real-time: It’s a hot new buzzword trying describe the potential that immediately available data can have in our day-to-day lives. But what potential? When I’ve tried to think about how real-time data services are going to transform my daily routine, I haven’t been too successful.
Until… Continue Reading
With uncertain future, Bebo gets a new president
AOL might spin out its expensively-purchased social network, Bebo, as it prepares to be separated from media parent company, Time Warner. Or so say long-running rumors. In the meantime, Bebo has a new president: Stephane Panier, its former chief operating officer, who has previously been… Continue Reading
Any port in a storm: Social network Friendster up for sale
Popular-in-Asia social networking site Friendster is up for sale, according to banker documents obtained by TechCrunch. One of the earliest social networks, the company has been haunted by younger rivals, starting with MySpace, which became more popular in the US earlier this decade.
It’s not MySpace,… Continue Reading
MySpace is a big gaming platform but it hopes to be more of one
Many of MySpace’s nearly 125 million monthly active users are already playing social games made by companies like Playdom and Zynga. But the News Corp.-owned social network is hoping for more, chief digital officer Jonathan Miller said today at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference happening… Continue Reading
Arrington on Twittergate: “I wouldn’t do things any differently”
As a reporter who blogs — and who has been competing against Michael Arrington for the past couple of years — I’ve been helplessly fascinated by the Twittergate debate of the last couple of weeks. It is a perfect storm of technology news and journalism… Continue Reading
Twitter 101: An official how-to guide for the David Lettermans of the business world
Microblogging service Twitter is hot — or at least it has been experiencing heat waves of growth. So the company has just rolled out an extensive guide so businesses can get a better understanding of how to make use of its 140-character broadcasting service. Called… Continue Reading
YouTube Insight shows global reach of political videos
Yesterday, YouTube began letting video uploaders share traffic statistics with the public via its Insight analytics service. One interesting early result, political technology blog techPresident has discovered, is that you can see who is watching — or not watching — President Barack Obama’s speeches.
Whether or… Continue Reading
With My Career launch, Plaxo moves deeper into business networking
Social address book service Plaxo has been busy over the last few years building out social features, like a lifestreaming service, and integrating social data from sites like Facebook. But now it’s moving deeper into helping people do business networking.
It has recently launched a new… Continue Reading
Adknowledge buys Super Rewards, expands to virtual goods advertising
Super Rewards, an Web advertising company that offers points or other rewards to Web users who sign up for services, has been acquired by advertising conglomerate Adknowledge.
It is one of the largest acquisitions to date among companies that build services on social networking platforms.
Super Rewards’… Continue Reading
Facebook Connect now available in more languages
Around 70 percent of Facebook’s 250 million monthly active users are outside of the US, and most of them aren’t speaking English. The site has been seeing massive growth around the world, partly the result of Facebook letting users translate the site into their own… Continue Reading
iPhone prototype goes missing; Chinese worker investigated, commits suicide
Updated
Last Thursday, 25 year-old Sun Danyong committed suicide after a fourth-generation iPhone prototype he was responsible for went missing. It’s a story, from what tech-industry friends in China tell me, of how Apple’s secretive ways send extreme pressure all the way down the company’s international… Continue Reading
Panjiva: Using government data as a platform for international trade
The White House doesn’t yet have much to show yet for its efforts to make the government more transparent. But, unsurprisingly, the private sector is forging ahead where there are business opportunities. A fascinating example is Panjiva, a company that processes publicly-available trade data about… Continue Reading
AOL Ventures gets new leader to clean, rebuild house
Former Googler Tim Armstrong is making more moves to redefine AOL, the struggling and soon-to-be spun off former Time Warner subsidiary that he is now chief executive of. He just named an old business partner, Jon Brod, to run the company’s venture unit, according to… Continue Reading
MobileBeat: Making mobile software social
Mobile software on compelling new devices like the iPhone is creating huge new industries, but the world is a year or two away — at least — from seeing the results really manifest themselves.
Or that was the unsurprising consensus among the panelists I moderated yesterday… Continue Reading
Can Facebook help apps get iPhone distribution?
One of the biggest problems for iPhone apps is finding users — the main way growth happens now is, paradoxically, by climbing the charts of the iTunes app store rankings. The more popular you get, the higher you get in the rankings, and the more… Continue Reading
Penguin FB: A truce offering or Trojan Horse from Facebook to Twitter?
Now this is interesting. Facebook, which at one point a few months ago seemed set on becoming Twitter, might now be experimenting with a way of making its service work rather smoothly with the microblogging service. Earlier today, Inside Facebook spotted a tweet from Facebook… Continue Reading
Facebook adds 50 million users in 3.5 months, now up to 250 million actives
Facebook likes to keep its traffic numbers close to its chest. Its last update was at the beginning of April, when it said it hit 200 million monthly active users worldwide. Today, it says it has 250 million monthly active users — so an increase… Continue Reading