VentureBeat

Brizzly steps up to be the next client supporting Twitter lists

Brizzly, the status update client from the makers of Google Reader, has stepped up to become the second big app to support Twitter lists. (Seesmic was the first earlier this week.)

Lists are what they sound like — groups of Twitter accounts that people can recommend… Continue Reading

Max Levchin on Slide’s big virtual goods bet, scams and — mating

Slide, which started in photo-sharing, moved into Facebook widgets and then raised funding at a reported $550 million valuation last year, shifted gears this year and went aggressively into virtual goods. The company’s looking to become a  mainstream version of Second Life, where there’s a… Continue Reading

Twitter cleans up trending topics to make search results more relevant

Twitter is cleaning up trending topics by returning more relevant results when you look up popular keywords people are tweeting about.

One of the neatest little features that grew out of the Twitter phenomenon last year were these trending topics. The company adopted them after acquiring… Continue Reading

New retweet feature on Twitter begins limited roll-out

Retweets, a way of sharing content on Twitter, are coming into their own.

Twitter’s testing a new official retweet feature after announcing they were going to incorporate the informal practice earlier this year.

As you can see in mock-ups above, there will be a link to retweet… Continue Reading

Google Dashboard: All Your Data That Are Belong To Us

OK, so all that personal data doesn’t really belong to Google, but it would be nice to know how much the search giant has on us — embarrassing e-mails, search histories and all.

The company released a dashboard today that shows all the data it has from… Continue Reading

Blogger gives Google Friend Connect a 9-million site lead on Facebook

Google released some interesting statistics today about Friend Connect, which is part of the search giant’s push to build a social layer across the web where visitors can get tailored experiences depending on their interests and friend network. So how has Friend Connect done since… Continue Reading

Google Friend Connect sites start offering tailored web content, ads

More than a year ago Google and Facebook started a head-to-head race to build a social layer across the web with Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect. The vision was, if you visited a web site, you’d get a custom experience based on your own… Continue Reading

Share button madness: Real-time search startup Topsy launches one of its own

Real-time search startup Topsy launched its own variation on the retweet button today to compete with Tweetmeme’s leading version.

It’s important because the retweet button was one of the distinguishing features that allowed Tweetmeme to break out from the pack of real-time search startups that launched… Continue Reading

Omidyar Network puts $2.4 million into government transparency abroad

Omidyar Network, the philanthropic fund created by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, just invested $2.4 million in Global Integrity, a non-profit firm that researches corruption and transparency in developing countries.

Global Integrity has academics, journalists and local contacts on the ground in about 100 countries feeding information… Continue Reading

¡Fue muy rápido! Twitter is now in Spanish

That was fast. About a month after Twitter launched a crowdsourced translations program to tap its burgeoning user base for help, the site’s now available in Spanish, according to co-founder Biz Stone.

The microblogging network has some prominent Twitter users including the Spanish government, basketball player… Continue Reading

Loopt aims for that mobile, social and real-time sweet spot with Pulse

Mobile social network Loopt is getting into the real-time game with Pulse, which will bring recommendations for things to do to depending on where you are and what’s popular at the moment.

It pulls in data from content partners like Zagat, Daily Candy and Thrillist along… Continue Reading

Show off those Twitter curation skills with the Lists widget

In a very natural extension of the Lists feature Twitter finally rolled out last week, the company added a widget which lets you embed tweets from an entire list.

Why might this be useful? If you’re a business owner, you might want to show off public… Continue Reading

Vidly’s mobile video app finally gets go-ahead from Apple — two months later

Talk about a long wait.

It took Vidly two months and 17 days (or 6,739,238 seconds by their count) to make it into Apple’s app store.

The San Francisco-based startup, which used to be called TwitVid.io and is backed by angel investors including Ron Conway, released its… Continue Reading

Why virtual economies defy the rules of your old college textbooks

Scarcity — it’s the first concept drilled into any beginning economics major. And economics is about the production, distribution and consumption of scarce resources.

But in virtual economies, one could give a farmer unlimited grain and cows. So given that very key difference, if you’re the creator… Continue Reading

Photo of the day: Google’s Android dressed in its Halloween finest (and more)

Standing in its rightful place between a donut and a cupcake on Google’s campus in Mountain View, Google’s Android, dressed as a pirate for Halloween, salutes passersby. I have no idea why it’s holding a shopping bag, but it does have a peg leg!

Google’s not… Continue Reading

MyYearbook deepens push into virtual cash with toolbar, Target cash cards

A little bit of lunch money can go a long way.

Teen social network MyYearbook reached profitability earlier this year on the back of its virtual currency called Lunch Money. So it’s no surprise that the New Hope, Pennsylvania-based company is aggressively pushing it forward, with… Continue Reading

Facebook wins $711 million in damages against “Spam King” Wallace

A federal district court in Northern California awarded Facebook $711 million in damages against Sanford Wallace, an online marketer who accessed users’ accounts without their permission, sent phony messages and wrote wall posts. These were used to trick people into visiting outside phishing and commercial… Continue Reading

Half of all Twitter users now have access to lists feature

About half of all users should have Twitter’s new lists feature turned on.

It lets you create groups of users to follow and ideally should make the site a lot stickier for new users (or a lot noisier for people who already follow hundreds of accounts)…. Continue Reading

Facebook is leaving Twitter in the dust, says Hitwise

Here’s a mind-boggling statistic: Facebook.com makes up 6 percent of all U.S. Internet visits, according to web research firm Hitwise. And it’s leaving Twitter in the dust.

Hitwise general manager of global research, Bill Tancer, wrote:

I believe this figure confirms our original hypothesis of Twitter-stall due… Continue Reading

Facebook’s big changes to the platform — key takeaways

Facebook did go through with the big top-down overhaul we reported on earlier. This could have significant implications for the way top-performing games attract new users through the system. (If you want the full live-blogged version, it’s here.)

Facebook is releasing an open graph API that… Continue Reading