July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Facebook was the initial public offering that people everywhere anticipated (and then lamented), but what really defined 2012 was a series of marvelous, high-profile, public debuts by enterprise software makers.

VentureBeat put together the following list of the top 10 technology initial public offerings in 2012, based on how much money each one raised, using data from the National Venture Capital Association.

You’ll notice that the gap between the No. 1 IPO — Facebook — and everyone else is huge.

But look beyond the dollars raised, and what you’ll find is that eight out of the 10 companies on the list make software and services for other businesses. Several of them proved to be Wall Street heroes, rescuing a technology IPO market that flatlined when Facebook tanked.

1. Facebook: $16 billion

Eight years after creating Facebook from his Harvard dorm, Mark Zuckerberg took his social networking company public in what became the largest technology IPO in U.S. history.

Facebook set a $38 IPO price and raised $16 billion through a May 18 offering that valued the eight-year-old social network at $104 billion. Zuckerberg rang the bell remotely from Facebook’s Menlo Park campus. Then reality set it in.

Nasdaq botched the social network’s debut so badly that it became a banker’s worst nightmare. The exchange has since offered $62 million to pay for its mistakes. Investors, especially those that missed their chance to flip shares in the no-pop IPO, quickly soured on the overvalued company. By August, shares were selling for more than half off, though they’ve regained some of those losses since the summer.

Further proving that bigger is not always better, Facebook still faces consolidated class action lawsuits for allegedly disclosing material information about financials to privileged insiders, but not to the public.

Stock ticker: FB

FB data by YCharts

2. Workday: $732.55 million

Cloud software company Workday showed us what a successful initial public offering could like with a stellar opening on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 12. The seven-year-old company sold 22.75 million shares, plus 3.4 million more through over-allotment options, to bring in $732.55 million.

Workday’s short stint on the public market has been a bit of a roller coaster. The human resources software-marker priced its shares at $28 for trading and experienced a 72 percent pop in its first-day trading. Better still, it’s currently on an upward climb and is trading in the mid $50′s. Not too bad for just two months of work.

Stock ticker: WDAY

WDAY data by YCharts

3. Splunk: $263.93 million

Splunk is currently in a small slump, but when the enterprise data software company, which helps businesses with big data needs, went public on April 19, it showed the world that Wall Street was shifting its sights away from consumer companies to enterprise firms.

Splunk priced its shares at $17 and sold 15.525 million of them for a healthy $264 million raise. It experienced an astonishing 108.7 percent jump before closing at $35.48 for the day. Founded in 2004, Splunk was the first true big data company to go public.

Stock ticker: SPLK

SPLK data by YCharts

4. Palo Alto Networks: $260.40 million

Computer security company Palo Alto Networks seemed insulated from the tech stock drama of 2012 when it went public on July 20. The company, which priced its 6.2 million shares for sale higher than expected at $42 a piece, managed to close its opening day with a 27 percent gain, something that was quite remarkable in the aftermath of Facebook’s bungled debut. In fact, Palo Alto Networks was one of the first technology companies to brave the market after Facebook had scared investors and companies away.

Palo Alto Network’s market reception warmed even more with time and shares climbed as high as $72. Then in September, the security provider disappointed Wall Street with a fourth quarter loss and investors started moving away from its firewalls of promised safety. Now, it’s currently hovering closer to its day one closing price of $53.13.

Stock ticker: PANW

PANW data by YCharts

5. ServiceNow: $241.16 million

Less than two weeks before Palo Alto Network’s coming out party, cloud computing and IT management company ServiceNow made its debut with the biggest IPO pop since Facebook cast its dark shadow on going public.

ServiceNow priced at $18 and sold nearly 13.4 million shares, when accounting for overallotment shares, for an impressive $241.16 million take. The company, which maintains the super-cool “NOW” ticker symbol, closed at $24.60, up 37 percent for the day. Since its July 9 unveiling, ServiceNow has remained one cool cucumber, steadily increasing its value from $2.17 billion to $4 billion.

With the market-normalizing offering, ServiceNow helped pave the way for the bigger and better enterprise tech IPOs that came later in the year.

Stock ticker: NOW

NOW data by YCharts

Go to the next page to see IPOs 6-10.

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Social media was inescapable in 2012. Facebook ballooned to 1 billion users, Instagram surpassed critical mass, Twitter took over the presidential election, and Pinterest gave us something new to root for.

But we also saw outlandish lawsuits and a botched IPO, ensuring that 2012 will be remembered as a year of both extreme highs and lows in social networking. What follows are our top 10 picks for the social media-related news stories that defined the year.

1. Facebook goes public

Facebook’s May 18 debut on the Nasdaq was the most hotly anticipated consumer Internet initial public offering since Google’s in 2004 and the largest tech IPO in U.S. history. While some where rightfully skeptical of the social network’s overblown $100 million-plus valuation, no one could have predicted the drama that started at 11:00 a.m. Eastern that day.

The Nasdaq proved ill-prepared to hand the volume of trading. The system got backed up, trading was delayed, and order and cancellation confirmations only made their way to traders and bankers much later in the day. The flubbed opening left the Nasdaq with more than a little egg on its face. The exchange eventually proposed a $62 million, all-cash settlement, which has yet to be approved by the SEC.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s share price was hit with the ugly stick. After a disappointing first day of trading that saw underwriters scramble to keep shares above the $38 IPO price, the stock went on to lose more than half of its value by early September. To boot, Facebook currently faces consolidated class action lawsuits for allegedly disclosing material information about financials to privileged insiders.

Glitches and big hiccups aside, Facebook’s stock has recovered somewhat in the final three months of 2012. The company appears much stronger on mobile and is aggressively pushing forward with initiatives like Gifts to boost revenue. Still, Facebook’s stock is down around 30 percent from its IPO price.

2. Facebook buys Instagram

No acquisition proved more gripping than the swiftly negotiated, colossal deal between Facebook and photo-sharing phenom Instagram.

On April 9, Facebook announced that it had agreed to acquire Instagram in a cash and stock arrangement then valued at $1 billion. The surprise buy came just days after Instagram launched its first application for the Android platform.

But it was the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing of Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom that made this deal particularly fascinating. In the weeks prior to the Facebook announcement, Systrom participated in active negotiations with cross-town pal Twitter. The photo social network received an offer and a term sheet from the information network, VentureBeat was first to report. Twitter apparently offered $525 million in cash and stock, the New York Times recently revealed.

Systrom was able to use the Twitter offer and an in-progress funding round to double the value of his two-year-old company during a speed round of negotiations with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The Facebook-Instagram deal eventually closed in October. By that time, Facebook’s stock price had dropped, making Instagram worth just $715 million at the time. Our fascination with the acquisition has yet to fade.

3. Pin it to win it

The award for the most surprising social network of 2012 goes to Pinterest. The web and mobile service for saving inspirational finds to digital collections called “pinboards” seemingly came out nowhere to become one of the most talked about and most trafficked sites on the web.

Pinterest first launched in 2010, but the San Francisco-based company waited until this past August to ditch its invitation-only process and release public apps for Android and iPad. No matter. Even before these significant releases, Pinterest became the obsession of recipe collectors, fashion curators, celebrities, brands, and even the POTUS.

According to analytics firm Nielsen, Pinterest grew its audience from 2.5 million people to 25 million between July 2011 and February 2012. By year’s end, Nielsen ranked Pinterest as the sixth most popular social network, with 27.2 million unique U.S. visitors.

Pinterest “had the largest year-over-year increase in audience and time spent of any social network, across PC, mobile web, and apps,” Nielsen said.

The startup’s quick rise wasn’t without its share of drama. In April, co-founder Paul Sciarra inexplicably left the company he helped create. The social network also dealt with serious challenges around making sure pins didn’t feature copyrighted content without the permission of the original creators.

4. Twitter distances itself from developers

Once the beloved buddy of developers everywhere, Twitter used 2012 to follow through on a promise to restrict app-makers’ access to its data and crack down on apps that replicate its tweet stream, features, or follow graph.

The policy changes, though long expected, ruffled plenty of feathers and even helped to spawn the creation of App.net, a developer-friendly social platform that replicates many of Twitter’s features.

Those affected by Twitter’s API attitude change range from social giants like Instagram and Tumblr to little-known apps simply looking to help people tweet from uncharted platforms.

PeopleBrowsr was the most disgruntled of the companies crippled by the changes. The social analytics company, which relies on Twitter’s firehose of tweet data, took legal action to maintain access to its lifeblood.

Tensions between Twitter and its developer community remain high, which means 2013 should be just as melodramatic as 2012.

5. Pop culture goes social

The Olympic Games, the 2012 U.S. presidential election, Superstorm Sandy, and other major world events all demonstrated one thing: Social media now plays an inextricable role in how people experience and react to everything.

During this year’s Summer Olympic Games, athletes and fans from around the world came together in the only places they could: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The unprecedented real-time gathering, which produced 150 million tweets in just 16 days, gave people around the globe an inside view into the games but also caused plenty of tension in the U.S., as results were typically broadcast through social channels before NBC showed them on television.

As for the 2012 election, both campaigns were eager to capitalize on social distribution channels to reach citizens. Twitter even became of the home of public discourse (and trash talk) during debate season. Debate-watchers’ real-time reactions gave birth to a new mainstream meme with each session. And when all was said and done, newly reelected President Barack Obama thanked voters on Twitter before he made his official post-election speech. His “four more years” tweet quickly became the most retweeted tweet ever.

Superstorm Sandy’s devastating trail of destruction was captured most poignantly by those who experienced her first-hand. On October 29, Instagram users shared their Sandy images at a rate of nearly 10 per second.

The ubiquity of Facebook and Twitter also often complicated breaking news stories this year. Most recently, social media proved to be the catalyst behind the digital lynch mob that went after Ryan Lanza, the man first identified as the alleged shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. Lanza’s Facebook profile was immediately besieged by angry web denizens. His photo, along with accompanying vitriol, spread virally through the social network. As it turns out, Ryan was not the shooter but the shooter’s brother.

See stories 6 through 10, including Viddy, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Yahoo, on the next page.

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The rumors are true: Facebook has decided to try its hand at self-destructing messages with the release of Facebook Poke for iPhone.

The new Poke application, which landed on the App Store today, borrows ideas made popular by mobile app SnapChat and gives members an instantaneous way to “poke” friends with text, photo, or video messages that disappear after a few seconds.

“You can poke an individual friend or several at once. Each message expires after a specific time you’ve set, either 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds,” Facebook explained in a blog post.

Poke joins Facebook’s lineup of single-purpose mobile applications that includes Messenger, Camera, and even Instagram. The social network’s motivation appears to be to make bits and pieces of its complex experience more accessible to members in a fun, lightweight, and entirely mobile fashion.

The Poke application certainly seems to be inspired by SnapChat, which people use to send photos and videos that self-destruct as well. SnapChat’s app is pretty popular with teens, but it may also have developed a following because of its sexting appeal. SnapChat is rumored to be raising an $8 million round of funding. That process may get a bit more difficult with Facebook in the picture.

Sand timer image via Shutterstock

Ending a rocky week on a high note, Instagram released new versions of its applications for iPhone and Android. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing property added and improved support for 25 languages and unveiled a spiffy new filter called Mayfair.

Instagram for iPhone version 3.4.1 and Instagram for Android version 3.4 now allow for 25 language translations including Danish, Japanese, Korean, Greek, and German. Both applications also include Mayfair, a filter with a thin black border, “warm pink tone,” and “subtle vignetting that brightens the center of the photograph.”

The Instagram for iPhone application also received a few additional tweaks such as native Facebook integration for iOS 6 users, the option to select photos from albums other than the device’s camera roll, and a bunch of bug fixes.

The Android application, meanwhile, just got super brand-friendly. Now, Facebook Page moderators can connect their accounts to Instagram and share directly from the Android application to their brand page.

The updates, particularly the new filter and Page support, may help partially appease Instagram users who were more than a little displeased when Instagram changed its terms of service earlier this week. The photo-sharing app has since backtracked, but some users likely still view the app and its eventual plans to monetization with trepidation.

Photo credit: maaco/Flickr

We’ve been trained to think of search as a strictly business traction where queries yield unfeeling results. With its latest update, Path, the private social network, wants us to see search as something far more personal.

Path today added search to its iOS and Android applications, but it’s not the kind of search experience you’ll find anywhere else. The mobile social network for exchanging intimate moments with real friends, which counts 5 million people as members, has created a nostalgic and deeply emotional way to revisit old moments.

With the release, people using Path on iPhone, iPad, and Android will now find a search bar atop their home screen. The bar promises a trip down memory lane with access to moments created in Path or imported from other social networks. As you type, Path’s search bar suggests different personalized options, including specific stories, and offers up a selection of filtering choices for revisiting the funniest of times (by emoticon) or finding highlights from last Christmas.

The experience follows the tenets of search in that you should have no problem finding the exact moment you’re in search of, but it deviates from the norm by providing you with a myriad of avenues you can take to recall adventures, near or far, you may have long forgotten. The avid collector or Instagram worrywart will also love that their imported moments — Path can import your Instagram, Facebook, and Foursquare history — are stored away for safekeeping and available to relive at anytime.

As is the case with most Path releases, the real beauty of search is in the little details, details you have to experience first-hand to understand. Path 2.9 with search is rolling out to users today. The updated app is be available in English only to start.

Photo credit: KJGarbutt/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Oracle is buying marketing automation company Eloqua for $23.50 a share, or $871 million. The surprise buy comes just four months after Eloqua’s initial public offering and follows a strong third quarter earnings report that beat expectations.

Why sell now? Marketing automation tools are becoming increasingly harder to sell to companies outside the technology industry, a person familiar with Eloqua’s business who asked to remain anonymous told VentureBeat. Tech companies use marketing automation, the person said, but the tech sector has been maxed out.

Eloqua, founded in 2000, makes complex technology that turns marketing into an exact science. Companies use Eloqua in conjunction with their CRM systems to manage how, when, and why customers receive promotional messages. The system considers an endless set of possible scenarios to trigger marketing messages and other actions around a customer’s behaviors. Think of the technology as “if this, then that” logic that incorporates thousands of if scenarios and thousands of that scenarios.

Eloqua competes directly with Hubspot and Marketo, which, as a result of today’s news, may become top acquisition targets for Oracle competitor Salesforce.

The challenge of selling these marketing automation tools to companies outside the tech sector is becoming increasingly difficult, likely because other industries still view marketing as more art than since, our source said. But without penetrating new verticals, Eloqua’s heretofore impressive growth rates would start to drop off. In the third quarter of 2012, Eloqua grew subscription and support revenue by 32 percent year-over-year.

The market rewards growth rates and growth potential. It punishes negative growth. If Eloqua’s growth rates were to slow or stall, its stock would take a major hit. Plus, since Eloqua is not a high volume stock, it is more vulnerable to volatility. One big trade could have a dramatic effect on its price and market value.

Eloqua referenced these potential hardships in its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“A downturn in the technology sector may disproportionately affect us because a significant portion of our customers are technology companies,” Eloqua said in the risk section of its S-1. “Our recent growth rates may not be indicative of our future growth,” the company also said.

Under Oracle’s care, Eloqua’s technology will reach customers in new verticals and successfully expand beyond tech. The tools will become the “centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing Cloud,” Oracle said. Eloqua also exited with a 31 percent premium over its share price, a factor that surely sweetened the deal. The $871 million price tag could make for some interesting M&A deals in 2013.

Photo credit: plαdys/Flickr

What messages do you want see in your Facebook Messages inbox? The social network hopes to answer, or at least better understand, that question with two releases: brand-new message filtering options for your inbox and a way to pay to ensure your messages are delivered to someone’s inbox.

Facebook announced Thursday that it was tweaking the Facebook Messages inbox experience to better ensure that relevant messages get to your inbox, as opposed to being dumped into the “Other” folder, which is Facebook’s equivalent of the spam folder.

The new inbox filters, which are rolling out globally, are Facebook’s way of correcting a broken system. The company currently routes messages to your inbox or other folder based on your settings, but it has found that it pushes too many “high signal” messages (read as: messages you probably want) to your Other folder, where they likely go unseen. To fix the problem, Facebook has created two filters, basic and strict, that will allow certain types of messages to reach your inbox that otherwise would not.

If you opt for the basic filter, Facebook will deliver “mostly messages from friends and people you may know” to your inbox. This means that messages from friends and friends of friends will go straight to your inbox. The strict filter is, well, stricter. Select this if you “mostly” want to receive messages from friends.

Both options, however, use the “mostly” terminology to allow for instances when Facebook puts its algorithmic magic to work and determines that a high signal message should get through. What’s a high signal message? One that comes from a Facebook Messenger for Android user who is not your friend but has your number, or an event invitation from someone you don’t know when the invite is going out to some of your mutual friends. Messages from a friend who emails your @facebook.com address will also get delivered.

There’s one additional high signal type of message that can get through to your inbox beginning today — but the signal in question is payment. Facebook is kicking off a small test in the U.S. that will let people you are not friends with pay a small fee to send messages directly to your inbox. The fee will vary, as it’s just a test, but prices start at $1 per message. The theory is that the fee will serve as a solid indicator that this message is important.

“The test is designed to address situations where neither social nor algorithmic signals are sufficient,” Facebook said in a blog post. “For example, if you want to send a message to someone you heard speak at an event but are not friends with, or if you want to message someone about a job opportunity, you can use this feature to reach their inbox.”

A Facebook spokesperson would not provide additional guidance on the pay-to-deliver test, other than to add that you’ll only be able to receive one paid-for message in your inbox each week.

Facebook photo via Shutterstock

In with the smart and out with the stupid — Twitter search, that is.

TweetDeck is finally ready to wise up with search improvements that make the web and desktop client for Twitter power users as intelligent as Twitter’s other applications.

The Twitter-owned client for viewing tweet streams in columns today announced that its apps are getting typeahead and people search functionality, important features that should help you find what you’re looking for faster.

Now, when you visit the TweetDeck search box, you’ll find a dynamic drop-down menu that changes as you type. The enhanced search box contains all of your previous searches on launch. It also works in real-time to autocomplete your queries and simultaneously look for matching Twitter users, which means results get better with each character that you type. You can also directly interact with tweets and accounts displayed from inside the search box.

Basically, the overall search experience inside TweetDeck now resembles what you find in Twitter’s mobile applications.

The search improvements are available today in the last version of TweetDeck for Chrome. They will make their way to TweetDeck’s web, PC, and Mac versions in the weeks ahead.

Owl image via Shutterstock

Facebook today made its mobile app install ads infinitely more attractive to app makers who want to pay to increase their downloads. The social network announced that members on iOS 6 can now download advertised applications from the mobile News Feed without ever leaving Facebook.

Mobile app install ads, formally launched in October, let iOS and Android developers buy prominent exposure for their applications inside Facebook’s mobile News Feed. Until now, the in-stream units directed members to Apple’s App Store or the Google Play marketplace to download the sponsored apps. Today, Facebook eliminated the extra step of leaving its social network, but only for people on iOS 6 devices.

“When they click on an ad, the App Store will appear in another dialog box. After installing the app, they will be able to continue where they left off on Facebook,” platform monetization product manager Deborah Liu wrote in blog post.

The change is a significant one for app makers. It makes the install process for members on iOS seamless, which means install conversion rates should shoot through the roof. For Facebook, the update could help it bring in a significantly larger amount of revenue from the relatively new mobile unit.

Facebook today also gave developers running the mobile app install ads the ability to customize their ad units with images and descriptions for their target audiences. The social network is also providing app makers with more demographic data on the Facebook members who install their applications. Mobile app install ad buyers can now break out new installs by age, gender, and country.

Mandatory commercial breaks are coming soon to your Facebook News Feed.

Facebook is currently shopping around its most outlandish ad unit yet, AdAge reported today. The social network plans to debut video advertisements that autoplay in the News Feed and is said to be courting TV advertisers with deep pockets. The ads are slated for release in the first half of 2013.

When reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson declined to discuss the company’s plans around video ads.

Facebook is hoping to attract the type of premium ads you see on television, according to the report. The company plans to allow advertisers to run 15-second spots that will take over your News Feed and play video, and possibly audio, automatically.

“On the desktop version of Facebook, the video ads are expected to grab a user’s attention by expanding out of the news feed into webpage real estate in both the left and right columns — or rails — of the screen. Facebook is also working on a way to ensure that the video ads stand out on the mobile apps as well,” said AdAge reporter Jason Del Rey, citing television industry executives.

Hopefully, the implementation of these video ads will be less obnoxious than what is being proposed. An inescapable ad inside a Hulu video is something web users have come to expect. A forced interruption of the News Feed, however, sounds like cause for Facebook users to revolt.

Even AdAge’s industry executives, who’ve reportedly seen the units in action, are fearful of the repercussions, particularly regarding the autoplay functionality. “There could be serious outrage,” one person said.

Old television image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Hulu’s “evil” plot to destroy the world and turn your brain to mushy mush is working — at least in part.

The streaming video company grew revenue by 65 percent year-over-year and will bring home about $695 million in revenue for 2012, CEO Jason Kilar wrote in a blog post Monday morning. Better still, Hulu’s premium offering, Hulu Plus, doubled its subscriber base and will finish 2012 with more than 3 million paying customers. Competitor Netflix has 30 million streaming subscribers.

The uptick in revenue and customers is likely the result of the company’s push to get Hulu Plus on more devices and its fulfilled commitment to add more content.

This year, Hulu launched Hulu Plus for Apple TV, Nintendo Wii and Wii U, and Windows 8 tablets. Hulu Plus, Kilar said, can now be accessed on 320 million Internet connected devices in the U.S., a figure that doesn’t include PCs. Hulu, as promised, also spent more than $500 million on content deals in 2012 and increased its selection of titles by 40 percent.

“At Hulu, we are doubly fortunate in that we are at the crest of two massive waves that we believe will persist for the long term: the rise of online video advertising and the rise of online video subscription services,” Kilar said.

So, just say yes to the mushy mush — the mushy-mush status report, that is. Hulu has done an okay job adding screens, bringing in fresh content for all ages, creating original series, signing additional advertisers, and attracting subscribers. But at what cost?

After subtracting content acquisition costs, Hulu made about $200 million this year. Then, there’s the undisclosed sum that Hulu spends on customer acquisition. The company often runs elaborate, celebrity-endorsed ads, and even ran a 2012 Super Bowl spot (embedded below) featuring Will Arnett that cost around $3.5 million just to broadcast. That $700 million revenue figure is sounding less impressive by the minute.

Plus, 2013 could be a problematic year for the five-year-old brand. Kilar is rumored to be on his way out the door and the service seems ready to adopt a tweaked model that would make it a less attractive destination for online viewers.

Photo credit: lhuga/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom played a dicey game of semantics in order to expedite the close of the deal between his company and Facebook, a once billion-dollar deal that was losing value with each passing day.

Testifying at a Fairness Hearing at the California Corporations Department in late August, Systrom, according to transcripts obtained by the New York Times, said that his company did not receive “any formal offers or term sheets” immediately preceding negotiations with Facebook. At best, those statements are a distortion of the truth. At worst, they amount to perjury.

Facebook declined to comment on Systrom’s testimony at the Fairness Hearing.

VentureBeat first broke the news that Twitter presented Instagram with a serious offer in the hundreds of millions of dollars range and a corresponding term sheet while the photo-sharing startup was negotiating a $50 million round of funding. Instagram, however, never signed anything. At the time, our sources, which were familiar with the negotiations, confirmed these details, and we still believe them to be accurate.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times surfaced a bit more information on the proposed deal, reporting yesterday that Twitter actually offered $525 million in cash and stock, and that negotiations went up until March 20. Just three weeks later, on April 9, Facebook announced that it had agreed to acquire Instagram for $300 million in cash and 23 million shares. Bilton’s sources said that Twitter would have liked the opportunity to counter and was prepared to do so. VentureBeat heard the same version of events.

The mammoth Facebook-Instagram deal eventually closed, but only after that all-important Fairness Hearing where the California Corporations Department, based on Systrom’s testimony, granted Facebook a permit to issue stock in Instagram. The deal was valued at $715 million when it officially closed in October.

Based on what we know, Systrom’s testimony to the department was not wholly accurate. Whether his statements constituted perjury, we can’t say. Systrom, as Bilton pointed out, was careful with his words, and also deliberate in how he handled the negotiations with Twitter.

We suspect that the repercussions of Systrom’s cunning are already in the works: a destroyed relationship with Twitter and the start of a vicious war for attention.

Photo credit: leweb/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Locals know best. That’s the new mantra of community-powered hotel alternative Airbnb and the primary reason behind its acquisition of two-year-old startup Localmind, an expert at connecting inquisitive travelers to locals in the know.

Airbnb announced today that it has acquired Localmind’s technology and team for an undisclosed sum. The deal closed earlier this year. Localmind creators Lenny Rachitsky, Beau Haugh, and Nelson Gauthier have already joined the Airbnb team to work on social initiatives.

Localmind is a small, seed-funded company from San Francisco that specializes in connecting people with questions about places to people who have the answers. The startup makes iPhone and Android applications to facilitate these location-based question-and-answer exchanges. It also connects to Foursquare and uses members’ check-in history to determine how knowledgeable they are about a particular venue — such as a bar, restaurant, conference hall, or gym.

Airbnb’s pickup may seem a bit peculiar at first. What does the company want with a little startup that makes Q&A apps? Simple. Local expertise. Airbnb, as we know, is currently investing its resources to help customers find the best neighborhoods when they travel.

In November, the four-year-old company launched a featured called Neighborhoods to help travelers select destinations that match their particular tastes. The Neighborhoods launch signaled its desire to rework its booking experience around these digital brochures and expose the knowledge its cultivated from locals with insights into the personalities and styles of their towns. Neighborhoods is only live for seven destination cities, but Airbnb has said it wants to introduce the feature to additional markets around the world.

Clearly, Airbnb views Localmind as a pivotal piece to understanding neighborhoods and better connecting its travelers to locals. A spokesperson said it can’t share specifics on how Localmind’s technology will be used, but it added that “connections to authentic, local experiences are foundational to Airbnb’s offering.”

“The role of social in travel is more important than ever,” Airbnb CEO and cofounder Brian Chesky said in a statement e-mailed to VentureBeat. “We’ve seen connections shape the experience for our community, so we’re excited to have the Localmind team join us and lead this next wave of social products.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Localmind application will remain operational, the Airbnb spokesperson said.

Photo credit: claydevoute/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) today decided the temporary fate of forward-thinking startups such as Uber, Hailo, and GetTaxi looking to modernize the city’s taxi system.

At a meeting in New York this morning, the commission voted to adopt a controversial e-hail pilot program that grants app makers permission to test their mobile taxi booking and payment systems in the city. The pilot, which passed with seven yes votes, will be a year-long endeavor that starts in February.

In October, the TLC proposed rule changes that would allow app makers to legally operate electronic hail and payment systems. A majority of surveyed passengers wanted to hail and pay for taxis through their smartphones. TLC chairman David Yassky has publicly stated his approbation for taxi apps. Incumbent players in the taxi and black car industries, however, are resistant to new competition and have actively lobbied against the changes.

Source: nyctaxi/instagram

The TLC uses Instagram to document the commission meeting.

Instead of discussing permanent changes, the commission today proposed and adopted a less radical pilot program, likely because several of the nine commissioners had indicated they would vote against permanent changes.

Earlier this year, San Francisco-based Uber launched an e-hail taxi service in the usually progressive city, but it shuttered the offering a month later after run-ins with the TLC.

Today’s vote will, on a pilot basis, allow Uber and others including Hailo, GetTaxi, Taxi Magic, and Cabulous to receive approval from the TLC, market their apps, and launch their mobile booking and payment systems once existing contracts expire at the end of February. Under the rules, licensed cab drivers can use the apps to find fares.

According to the TLC:

Participating E-Hail Apps may allow Passengers to identify the location of taxicabs, allow licensed TLC taxicab drivers (“Drivers”) to identify the location of Passengers, allow a Passenger to hail a taxicab electronically and allow a Driver to receive and accept a hail request. Additionally, participating E-Hail Apps may also allow E-Payment, the ability for Passengers to pay for their taxi fare, tip and extras through the E-Hail App.

The pilot also requires participants to abide by strict payment rules, which means service providers will have to break out exact charges for fees, fares, and tips. Currently, Uber does not provide this information, but the startup said today that its taxi service will return to New York imminently.

“When Uber rolled out New York’s first e-hail application in September, the demand we saw for the first dispatch service on taxis in decades was enormous,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement. “New Yorkers got around the five boroughs more efficiently and drivers earned hundreds of dollars more per week. We’re encouraged that Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his Taxi and Limousine Commission are expanding New York City’s incredible tech-friendly innovations to make yellow cabs work better for both drivers and passengers.”

Melissa Plaut, a part-time NYC hack, published author, and driver advocate for Hailo, said that she’s astonished that the city has taken this long to consider the changes.

“We cannot miss this opportunity. The drivers of New York deserve it. The passengers of New York deserve it. The fact that other cities already have it is almost embarrassing,” she said. “Like many cab drivers, I struggled to do the job; I struggled to do it well; and I struggled to make a living … that’s where my personal passion comes from.”

This post was updated with official TLC information on the pilot program.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk/Flickr

Days after giving the finger to Twitter, Instagram has puckered up to give life-long places partner Foursquare a big, wet kiss.

Foursquare, the social network centered around places, announced Wednesday that the Instagram iOS application now includes a special Foursquare button that directs people over to its places app for additional information.

The new, checkmark-styled button shows up atop all place pages inside the Instagram experience (as pictured below). Click on a venue from the Instagram stream, tap the Foursquare button on the venue page, and voilà! You’ve been transported to the venue’s Foursquare page, where you can save the place to one of your to-do lists and read up on tips.

The idea, at least on Foursquare’s end, is to encourage people to save their Instagram finds for later.

“It’s something we’ve chatted with Instagram about for a while,” a Foursquare representative told me. “The integration between the two makes a ton of sense, because when you see an interesting place on Instagram, you can tap right over to Foursquare and save it to your to-do list, and then Foursquare can remind you about it when you’re nearby.”

The logic behind Instagram’s decision to include the Foursquare button, and give it such a prominent position inside its popular app, is a little unclear. The companies have always had a close relationship (Foursquare powers Instagram’s location database), but this additional promotion seems unnecessarily chummy. Also, consider that Facebook, Instagram’s new owner, was once considered a challenger to Foursquare.

Whatever the reason, Instagram just gave Foursquare the gift that keeps on giving: exposure.

Photo credit: Mike Baird/Flickr

Twitter’s expanded tweets party is minus one VIP guest, but several other social services seem eager to make an appearance. The Yahoo-owned Flickr, alongside the release of a new app for iPhone, threw in support for Twitter Cards this morning, bringing its newly filtered captures to tweets near you.

Flickr vice president Brett Wayn hinted about the integration in a blog post this morning. Head of product Markus Spiering confirmed to VentureBeat that the Twitter Cards update went live early this morning.

A Flickr photo as seen on Twitter

Now, when you share a photo from Flickr to Twitter (from the new iPhone app or anywhere else), that photo shows up right inside your tweet, meaning your followers can enjoy the capture without leaving Twitter. Flickr previously employed a custom integration that enabled Twitter desktop users to see photos in-line with tweets, Spiering said, but the Yahoo photo property reworked the functionality to make its photos viewable inside Twitter’s mobile apps as well.

“When you think about what a user really wants, if you use the Flickr app, you chose Flickr as your photo service, and you upload your photos to Flickr,” Spiering said. “But also you make the explicit choice to share somewhere else. As a user, your expectation probably is … that you want to have your photos look as best as possible on the destination that you share them to.”

In-tweet Flickr photos are powered by Twitter Cards, also known as expanded tweets. Third-party partners can work with the information network to put their content inside your tweets for instant gratification. A smattering of companies, most recently Pinterest, have worked with Twitter to get their content in front of more people. But not Instagram. The hot photo-sharing app collected its square, stylized shots and went home.

With both Twitter and Flickr now offering their members photo filters, some could now see the companies as competitors. Flickr, however, desperately needs support from the hipper, more popular Twitter if the veteran photo-sharing service is to make a comeback. It also appreciates its relationship with Twitter, Spiering told me.

“For the mobile launch, it was important to us that we fully embrace Twitter’s platform and capabilities to provide the best photo-sharing experience for Flickr users,” he said.

Flickr also made adjustments to how its photos are viewed on Facebook. Now, photos shared from Flickr to Facebook are shown in full and look as if they were directly uploaded to Facebook, Spiering explained.

Photo credit: dirkdallas/Flickr

Believe it or not, Facebook is introducing simpler, more accessible privacy controls to help you keep certain aspects of your digital life private.

Facebook announced today that it is planning an end-of-year rollout of new features that put privacy controls in context wherever you are on the social network. The additions should mean fewer clicks to untag yourself from all the photos you despise, clearer application permissions, far less confusion about what’s private and what’s not, and always accessible shortcuts to the most important stuff.

“It’s good when there are no surprises,” Facebook product manager Sam Lessin told VentureBeat. “It’s good for people and good for Facebook.”

Today’s Facebook product announcements are entirely separate from the recent changes to the social network’s policy-related protocols.

Facebook is adding three key privacy shortcuts you can always get to from the top navigation. A lock icon will appear adjacent to your name and the home button in the upper right-hand corner of the site and give you one-click access to Facebook’s top privacy queries: “Who can see my stuff?” “Who can contact me?” and “How do I stop someone from bothering me?” The point is to help you skip the confusing run-around and get to the controls you want most.

Privacy shortcuts

Application permission screens are also getting tweaked so that you can decide each time you add a new app if you want that app to have permission to use your info and/or post to Facebook on your behalf. Instead of showing up on the same screen, as before, these options will be separated out for most apps, save for games, to allow you to selectively decide which permission(s) to allow.

Facebook is also introducing a series of educational messages at different touch points to keep you informed as you traverse the site. When you click to remove something from your Timeline, for instance, Facebook will tell you that the post still appears in search and News Feed, as well as give you the options to untag yourself or send a take-down request to the original poster. You’ll find similar messages when you click to view your profile as someone else or when you’re browsing photos.

Educational message on Timeline

Take-down requests, labeled “Report/Remove,” are not new to the Facebook experience, but they have been put in more places and made more obvious. You can also now use the reporting feature for bulk actions in the reworked Activity Log, which is also rolling out with the new privacy controls.

Activity Log was introduced last year alongside the Timeline release to provide people a simple place to see a comprehensive ledger of their updates, “likes,” tags, and so on. The better-looking and more informative Activity Log will sport a revised navigation, include easy-sort options such as a filter to see all the posts you’re tagged in, and provide you with a way to remove tags or request take-downs in bulk for the first time.

Facebook’s more permission-friendly Active Log

As for whether the privacy controls will be mobile-friendly, a Facebook spokesperson said yes — eventually. The reworked application permissions will launch on mobile the same time they launch on the web. All other new privacy controls will arrive on mobile at a later date.

Facebook often gets a bum wrap as a company that’s nonchalant about privacy, encouraging excessive public sharing by banking on the ignorance of its members. The pending changes may not change public perception, but they do appear to be motivated by good intentions.

Facebook photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Video-sharing application Viddy landed on Android devices today after long being available only on the iPhone.

Los Angeles-based Viddy makes a mobile application for shooting 15-second clips that can be enhanced with video effects called “production packs.” The company touts 40 million registered users and is often referred to as the “Instagram of video.”

The startup, which historically only supported uploads via iPhone, is traversing the mobile chasm with its first native application for Android that is said to support more than 757 different Google-powered smartphones and tablets. The release, several months in the making, comes more than 19 months after Viddy first landed on Apple devices in April 2011.

Viddy for Android follows the same 15-second shoot-spruce-and-share model as its iPhone predecessor, but it comes with 10 fresh video effects. The application also includes 16 soundtracks for adding audio to your clips, supports background processing (unique to Android), and is optimized for HD cameras on Android devices.

In a perfect world, Viddy for Android would help the young startup double up on users, content, and activity, but reality may be more bleak.

Competitors Klip and SocialCam, now an Autodesk property, already have a presence on Android, as do a number of other mini-video apps and services. Viddy co-founder and CEO Brett O’Brien believes, of course, that his app is better than the rest on the extremely popular platform because the company took the time to understand Android’s differences.

“Android has great technology, but developing a superior social mobile video product which exceeds user expectations on this platform is complex. There are different form factors, different versions of the operating system, challenges in accessing hardware acceleration for editing, etc,” he told VentureBeat. “We are the only company to even attempt this, and we think we have created a great experience for people.”

Viddy was all anyone could talk about in the first half of the year, but it’s hard to get an accurate reading on its level of hotness these days. Press attention peaked shortly after the company raised a $30 million round in May, partly because Viddy’s meteoric rise was driven by Facebook’s Open Graph and seemed unsustainable (it was).

Third-party tracking service AppData pegs Viddy’s monthly active Facebook-connected users at just 600,000. The startup does continue to see a healthy influx of videos from its celebrity members; the ever-influential Justin Bieber still uses Viddy to reach his 328,000 followers on the service. Meanwhile he has 4.2 million followers on Instagram.

Viddy also has an influential cavalcade of A-listers who want to see the app succeed. Biz Stone, Shakira, Will Smith, and Jay-Z are among the service’s celebrity backers.

At launch, Bing’s social sidebar, the right-hand section that surfaces Facebook activity and other social content related to your queries, was a tacked-on gray blob that did little to make search any better. Today, following cosmetic and content improvements, the number two search engine’s solution to socially enhanced search doesn’t look so bad.

Old social sidebar

Microsoft’s Bing announced Tuesday that its social sidebar, first introduced in May, has received a makeover to make it more functional. The idea is to better direct searchers to social network friends who may have the answers.

The ugly, separated gray bar has been replaced with a white-washed area labeled “Social Results” that now blends with the rest of the content of the page.

The section still includes potential subject matter experts from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Klout, but finally shows off their relevant content — photos, “likes,” updates — inside the bar instead of forcing you to hover over their name to see what they’ve shared. The seemingly pointless “ask friends” Facebook prompt has also been stripped from the experience.

New social sidebar

I first noticed the design and content changes yesterday when checking out Bing’s enhanced snapshot middle section. The social sidebar actually grabbed my attention for the time first, because it contained eye-catching photos from my Facebook friends — photos I didn’t know existed. The photos and extra Facebook content did not influence the end result of my search experience, but the refreshed sidebar did make Bing a more welcome, warm and fuzzy place.

In my opinion, the sidebar changes still aren’t radical enough to inspire people to make the leap from Google to Bing anytime soon, but they certainly supplement search results better than the old sidebar did.

Bing Social’s principal group program manager Chris Rayner said that the changes will be rolling out to Bing users over the next few days.

Photo credit: betsyweber/Flickr

It’s not exactly a tit-for-tat swap, but around the same time Instagram pulled its photos from the Twitter experience, Pinterest pins started appearing inside tweets.

Pinterest formally added support for Twitter Cards within the last week, VentureBeat has confirmed. The release went live as a limited test early last week and received little fanfare until the Twitter-embedded pins were spotted by Pinterest aficionado Kelly Lieberman and the story was picked up by the Daily Dot.

The Pinterest-Twitter mashup means that whenever you post one of your inspirational pins to Twitter, the contents of said pin will appear inside your tweet. With pins inside tweets, people can see a preview of your fashion finds or holiday recipes without having to click through to Pinterest.

The integration leverages Twitter Cards, also known as expanded tweets. The functionality allows third-party partners to put their photos, news, videos, songs, and so forth, inside your tweets for immediate enjoyment.

Twitter has an arsenal of partners pumping content into your tweets, but Instagram is not one of them. The Facebook-owned property unceremoniously dropped support for Twitter Cards last week, citing a desire to drive people to its website for a better experience.

Is it just a coincidence that Pinterest pins have arrived inside tweets as Instagram photos have exited from them? Yes and no. Twitter and Pinterest certainly worked together on the integration, but that may be only because of how Twitter Cards is currently structured. Companies interested in employing Cards go through a formal approval process that requires Twitter to review the implementation before it goes live. Pinterest, however, may have chosen to speed up the implementation process and expand the test after the Instagram dustup.

Regardless, the Pinterest addition is good for Twitter. The more top-tier partners Twitter can get to use Cards, the better its chances are of keeping its members engaged on site or inside the mobile apps longer. Perhaps people may also start to forget what they’re missing.

Update: A Pinterest spokesperson said Thursday, December 13 that the company has ended its test of Twitter Cards. “We have now completed the test and are turning off the integration while we evaluate the results.”

Blue bird image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Last-minute booking app HotelTonight is ready to alleviate your holiday headaches, be they travel or gift-related.

The company announced Tuesday that it’s now offering same-night stays in more markets, particularly Continental Europe, and giving the gift of convenience to people who want to buy a present in a pinch.

Two-year-old HotelTonight makes an extremely inviting iOS and Android app for booking same-night hotel stays on the cheap. The startup’s application has been downloaded more than 3.7 million times and is accessible to wanderlust-seekers in 72 cities across the world.

HotelTonight is adding Paris, Nice, Brussels, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Acapulco, and Calgary to its list of supported cities abroad. Stateside, HotelTonight is hitting the slopes with last-minute options in Lake Tahoe, Vail, and Breckenridge. The new markets are part of a refreshed application release that gives world travelers additional language options, including French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

“I think today’s announcement really speaks to our commitment to international expansion,” HotelTonight co-founder and CEO Sam Shank told VentureBeat. “Localizing the app was not an easy undertaking. It took months of careful work translating the app in the native language of each country and a full-team abroad working directly to bring on hotels.”

HotelTonight has made serving foreign markets its top priority ever since it closed a $23 million round of funding in June of this year.

The crop of new cities could turn out to be the gift of the season, at least for people who find themselves stranded while traveling this holiday season. The real gift, however, is the one you can now give to your adventurous friends and family members, as HotelTonight today released Gift Credits, its version of the gift card. You can purchase HotelTonight Gift Credits on the company’s website or via the apps, and you’ll get a pretty printable email that includes a promo code for redemption.

“We built Gift Credits to respond to a flood of customer requests asking for the ability to give the HotelTonight experience,” Shank said. “From a team standpoint, Gift Credits came from a one-day team hackathon here at HotelTonight headquarters.”

To date, the 80-person, San Francisco-based company has raised more $35 million in funding. First-time HotelTonight bookers can use the code “TONIGHT” to save $25 on their room purchase.

Photo credit: HGruber/Flickr

Embroiled in a photo turf war with Twitter, Instagram’s deadly weapon of choice is a revamped iOS application that allows users to snap better, more stylized shots.

The Facebook-owned entity today released a new version of its popular application for iOS, and a more subtly upgraded version for Android. Version 3.2 for iOS gives photo-sharers a completely refreshed camera experience, a new monochrome filter called “Willow,” an enhanced blur tool, larger images in the feed, and design tweaks throughout. Android users, meanwhile, simply get the new Willow filter.

The most significant changes to Instagram’s iOS app are to the camera, or the primary tool people use to shoot and filter their square captures on the photo social network. The Instagram team has entirely changed how the camera experience looks, feels, and functions.

Instagram’s new camera

“The camera has been the core part of the Instagram experience since the day we launched and as a result, we’ve made significant improvements to its look and speed,” the Instagram team said in a blog post.

Instagram users on iOS will find a giant blue Instagram shutter button now beckons them to take their shot. Alongside the button, application users will find a little window that offers up a preview of the most recent photo stored in their camera roll. In addition, the camera screen has been improved to make it a simpler, faster process to select from photos saved in the camera roll. There’s also a new grid guide available for shooting live captures; the grid is also included on the next scale and crop screen (pictured below).

Tilt-shift, the popular blurring effect included in the camera experience, should be noticeably improved in the new iOS app, Instagram said. The application now renders images in a new way so that depth of field is far more realistic and accurate.

The new Willow filter, introduced for both Android and iOS users today, is a monochrome effect with a hint of purple and is said to be ideal for “portraits, still life, and architecture photographs with contrast.”

Meet Willow, Instagram’s newest filter

The updates come as Instagram and former pal Twitter duke it out over your shared photos. Instagram recently dropped support for Twitter Cards, breaking the functionality that shows its filtered captures in-line with tweets. Instagram creator Kevin Systrom said the controversial decision was about driving people back to Instagram for a better experience, but the action has been viewed as an aggressive maneuver designed to do harm to a new foe.

Twitter, for its part, is about to introduce its own photo filters. The information network’s photo-altering features are expected to appear before the end of the year, according to a report that surfaced over the weekend. Hopefully, Twitter’s filters are a bit more enticing than the effects we’ve seen in images posted by Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey in recent days. Otherwise, it would appear that Twitter is bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Instagram 3.2 for iOS and version 3.3 for Android are available now on the App Store and Google Play respectively.

Photo credit: fotoyong/Flickr

Microsoft’s Bing search engine hopes to help you find more about the personalities and places in your queries with an update that spits out relevant information at the center of your search.

Bing is now using the middle column of its search page, called “snapshot,” to surface fast factoids about the celebrities or landmarks you search for. The two new categories, alongside content additions, help to spice up snapshot’s existing purpose of spotlighting pertinent information, on the main search results page, directly related to your queries.

“Now when you search for a famous person, celebrity or place, we will present relevant facts about that person in the center part of the screen so you can quickly find what you’re looking for without having to click through to another site or page,” Bing principal program manager Alam Ali wrote in a blog post.

What does this entail, exactly? Well, a search for the Hotel Del Coronado, the famous beachside resort in San Diego, includes aggregated room rates, a mini map of the hotel’s location, an overview of reviews from third-party sties, and photos in the special snapshot column. Or search for singer-songwriter Tristan Prettyman, and you’ll find bio details as well as links to songs and albums. Ads are, of course, also a part of the experience.

The end goal is to help you make quicker decisions. Bing has been billed as a “decision engine” all along, but the additional snapshot material, especially since its sandwiched between regular results and social findings, actually delivers on that promise.

Microsoft still has plenty of work to do if it wants to convince searchers to switch to Bing. Google holds 66.9 percent of the U.S. market, according to comScore.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg sold 946,588 Facebook shares across two separate transactions on Wednesday, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sandberg’s sales netted her $26.2 million.

The sale comes amid a bit of a stock recovery for Facebook, which closed the week at $27.48. Sandberg’s transactions were pre-determined sales, VentureBeat has learned, meaning they automatically kicked in at around $27.678 and $27.7403 respectively. Smart money, Sheryl!

You may recall that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and board members Marc Andreessen and Donald Graham previously committed to only selling a portion of their holdings to cover their tax liabilities. Sandberg made no such commitment, though she has proven to be rather philanthropic with her Facebook earnings. The female executive recently gave away nearly 500,000 shares in a generous gift valued at $11.8 million.

Don’t read too much into the most recent transactions. Ms. Sandberg has plenty of vested Facebook shares to spare — about 18.7 million of them.

Photo credit: hubertburdamedia/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

LinkedIn is catering to the entrepreneurially minded people on its team with a new program designed to advance great ideas they dream up in the workplace.

Appropriately called [in]cubator, the program allows employees to group together and pitch their big ideas to executives once a quarter. Should the team win the approbation of founder Reid Hoffman and co., the group will get to allocate up to three months of their time to bring the baby idea to life. They will also get weekly guidance from company executives, Hoffman included.

The safe cocoon was created after the company noticed that its monthly Friday “hackdays” were resulting in viable product prototypes, [in]cubator executive sponsor and LinkedIn engineering SVP Kevin Scott wrote in a blog post.

go/book, an [in]cubator idea

To date, LinkedIn has approved five projects through the initial pilot of the [in]cubator program, one of them being an internal meeting scheduling tool called “go/book” that’s already in use. The smart booking system, which works across the company’s 26 offices, has done so well, Scott said, that it’s been approved for a second round of development.

LinkedIn certainly isn’t the first company to fund ideas spawned from inside the company. Chipmaker Qualcomm used to run an internal business plan competition called Qin, but it has just kicked off a new program called Impaqt. Currently in its first iteration, Impaqt encourages staffers to pitch ideas to a panel of experts. The best ideas get funding, moved to R&D, or incubated in Qualcomm Labs.

Photo credit: MarioSundar/Flickr

Time to brush up on your shorthand, because come February, you’re going to have two less characters to tweet with when you share links on Twitter.

The information network announced yesterday in a developer blog post that it was extending the maximum length of t.co wrapped links (Twitter shortens your long, original URLs to t.co URLs) from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs, and from 21 to 23 characters for https URLs.

What this boils down to is two fewer characters to use when you’re sharing links on the service. It may sound like a small adjustment, but most avid users already feel the pinch when trying to squeeze in their commentary. The change will certainly make for some chopped-off thoughts and even less intelligible quips.

When reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson declined to provide specific reasons for increasing the length of t.co URLs, expect to say that “we made this change for a variety of reasons.”

Twitter posted the note yesterday to give third-party developers ample time to update their applications. The official launch is scheduled for February 20, 2013.

Feel free to share this story on Twitter and express your disapproval for the change with those two extra characters while you can.

Photo credit: id-iom/Flickr

Foursquare, a social network centered around places, is now helping the neighborhood bars, restaurants, bookstores, and coffee shops of the world get the word out about their in-store events.

The startup today gave merchants the option to add their own special events. Events previously just allowed members to check in to major sporting events, movies, or concerts.

The idea is to help businesses better promote their unique offerings. Events also allow customers to share, via check in, that they’re not just visiting a venue, but experiencing something special.

“The goal of our whole suite of business tools is to give business owners better ways to communicate with customers when they’re nearby,” a Foursquare spokesperson told VentureBeat. “We think of local updates, specials, etc. as a sort of digital chalkboard — a mobile version of the sandwich boards businesses often put out on the sidewalk — and today’s launch just enables businesses to share even more information with potential customers via Foursquare. “

The new addition may sound trivial, but the existing events functionally appears to be resonating nicely with the startup’s 25 million registered users.

“Concerts, sporting events, and movies are some of our most checked into categories, so we expect the response to this launch to be positive, too,” the rep said.

Photo credit: designwallah/Flickr

Google has graduated three time-saving experimental Gmail features, kicking them out of the protected confines of Labs and into your inbox.

“Quote selected text,” “default reply all,” and “send and archive” are now official Gmail features. All three options are intended to shed precious seconds from the often redundant process of composing and sending email.

Gmail users can make the send and archive button a default feature to combine two steps, sending and archiving, into one. Also now available as a default option is reply all. Once enabled, you’ll automatically reply to all parties on a thread when hitting the reply button.

Quote selected text also graduated today. The feature is easy to use — just copy-paste text and hit reply — but a little tricky to explain. Here’s how the gmail team describes the option: “Quote selected text’s graduation means that when you highlight text from an email you want to include in your reply, and then click reply, the compose template will be just what you selected.”

Visit the settings section of your Gmail account to turn on reply all as your default or to select to show the send and archive button. Previously, all three features were available through Gmail Labs, the email program’s test tube for half-baked ideas.

Typing image via Shutterstock

Facebook may be turning to its longtime pal Microsoft to complete its plan to create an external advertising network. Reports peg the social network as expressing serious interest in acquiring Microsoft’s Atlas Solutions.

Atlas Solutions is an ad platform that Microsoft picked up in 2007 as part of its acquisition of aQuantive for $6 billion. Microsoft is looking to offload the property, and Facebook appears to be the leading candidate for it, according to multiple sources cited in separate reports from AllThingsD and Business Insider.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson said Facebook doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.

Should Facebook get its hands on the ad-serving technology, the social network would be in a prime position to release an external ad network, as has been rumored, to serve its ads on third-party properties. The development would certainly bolster Facebook’s appeal to ad buyers wanting to connect their display units to Facebook’s expansive people database. It would also make Facebook a more threatening challenger to Google.

Sign photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Google today released an Android version of the sophisticated photo-editing application Snapseed, a product it picked up in its acquisition of photography software developer Nik Software. The company also updated the Snapsneed app for iOS to make it free.

Snapseed’s mobile application features auto correct and filters, just like Facebook-owned Instagram, but is more robust in the photo-editing department and not a social network for following friends’ or celebrities’ captures. The application won last year’s Apple’s iPad app of the year award.

Snapseed for Android, released Thursday, comes with all the same goodies previously found on iOS, including the ability to selectively adjust photo elements such as focus, brightness, saturation, contrast, and white balance. Both the newly free iOS app and the brand-new Android app come with one-click sharing to Google+, of course.

The releases are all about enhancing Google’s position in the hierarchy of places to consume and share digital photography. Facebook may be top destination for photo-sharing, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, but the company seems to think it can, with Snapseed’s help, make its Google+ social network the preferred destination for rich and beautiful images.

Google+ touts 135 million people active in the stream. The service also now has a groups feature called Google+ Communities.