VentureBeat

Tweetmeme launches buttons for re-tweetable advertising

Twitter said it’s planning a large-scale advertising network soon, but U.K.-based Tweetmeme beat them to the punch with a monetization effort of its own today.

The startup, which creates those green ‘Retweet’ buttons you see everywhere (including on this site), is rolling out the same feature for ads. They’re partnering with Federated Media to insert retweet buttons into their advertising two weeks from now, enabling people to share compelling ads with others.

Advertising in social streams has… Continue Reading

Hot Potato launches event streaming, storytelling in real-time

Expect big things from this location-based service.

Brooklyn-based Hot Potato launched a site and iPhone app today that lets groups of people share and create streams of content around events.

You can create an event like a concert or a football watching session and let other people check in to it. Everyone “checked in” at an event can post their thoughts, photos and videos about what’s going on, creating a stream of activity for others to see.

All… Continue Reading

Google search marketing gets all touchy-feely

Google hasn’t traditionally engaged in large-scale advertising campaigns. Instead, it has relied mainly on word of mouth to become the $180 billion company it is today. However in the last year, the company has rolled out bigger and bigger paid advertising efforts (as many mature brands start to do). That includes the Go Google campaign back in August, promoting Google apps as a reliable alternative to Microsoft Office for businesses.

Yesterday, Google rolled out a series… Continue Reading

Twitter COO Dick Costolo: Revenue is on and advertising is coming soon

Twitter COO Dick Costolo is on-stage at the Real-Time CrunchUp in San Francisco. I’m taking some notes as we go.

The big takeaways are that Twitter is making more than $4 million a year, but won’t specify how much and that’s through the recent data-sharing deals with Microsoft and Google.

Next, Twitter is going to roll out advertising soon. Costolo says, “You’ll see an advertising strategy from us in the near future. It will be fascinating and… Continue Reading

Seesmic jumps on Twitter’s new location feature with map previews

Seesmic, the Twitter client that was the first to incorporate lists, has now jumped on the social network’s new location-tagged tweets. You can roll over tweets that have a special marker to show a map of where they are, without ever leaving the client.

Twitter finally rolled out its location application programming interface earlier today. It lets you pair a tweet with data about where you are. It could be extremely valuable for real-time data about… Continue Reading

Twitter finally enables geotagged tweets with new location API

Twitter finally rolled out its new application programming interface for tagging tweets with your location.

It won’t appear on Twitter.com, but it will be enabled for location-based services like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid and Twittelator Pro. Tweetie already switched on some geotagging functionality earlier this year, so you can see nearby tweets.

This is probably the most significant update Twitter has released in the last half-year and it’s hard to say what outside developers will… Continue Reading

New targeting on Pages gives Facebook leg up over Twitter for marketers

Facebook unveiled what could become a pretty powerful marketing tool for large multinationals and brands last night. You can now target specific locations and languages when you send out updates on a Facebook page. A brand like McDonald’s could use the new feature to send out coupons to Japanese followers, for example.

Why is this important? “Drip marketing”, or social media marketing — whatever term you want to use for it — has become increasingly essential… Continue Reading

Twitter retools prompt, asks “What’s happening?”

Twitter unveiled a small marketing tweak today.

The company’s changed its main question from “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?” It’s more of a cosmetic change to make it clearer to outsiders what Twitter is all about. Status updates have come to encompass a broad range of behavior, not just the much-mocked example of “I’m drinking a latte right now.” People use it share links, videos, images and small, provocative thoughts.

Co-founder Biz Stone writes:

“…a birds-eye… Continue Reading

Yahoo juices up its news search with Twitter

Yahoo is using Twitter to surface timely and relevant news stories, images and videos starting today.

As news organizations pile into the microblogging service and as shared links and retweets become a decent metric of what’s interesting, the web’s biggest search destinations are incorporating Twitter. (Microsoft and Google both signed data-sharing deals with Twitter last month.)

What’s unique about Yahoo’s approach is that they haven’t built a separate real-time search engine outside of their primary search as… Continue Reading

Imeem — another music streaming story ends in tears?

If I were Spotify, I’d be paying close attention right now.

Imeem, which was one of the first music startups to work out streaming deals with all four major record labels, is going to MySpace for a bargain basement price of $1 million in cash, according to TechCrunch. (Update: Sources tell us the acquisition valuation is closer to a range of $7 to 9 million. That’s $1 million in cash plus earnouts to retain key employees.)

Neither… Continue Reading

Twitter adds description to new lists feature

Twitter just added a bit more description to lists, a recently launched feature that lets you create and share groups of accounts to follow. I’ve put an example up above with Venturebeat’s list. You can take an existing list, click ‘Edit’ if you’ve created it and just add a description.

How is the new feature doing? Well anecdotally, judging by the lists created around our VentureBeat account, it seems like plenty of people have experimented with creating… Continue Reading

LinkedIn lands in your Microsoft Outlook inbox

LinkedIn became the second of Silicon Valley’s biggest social networks to make a compelling distribution move this week. It’s landed in your inbox — quite literally if you have Microsoft Outlook.

They’ve partnered with Microsoft to launch the Outlook Social Connector, which will deliver LinkedIn updates directly to your inbox and give you better social context when you reach out to business contacts. When you write an e-mail, you’ll be able to tell what the other… Continue Reading

Profitable Paltalk acquires Vumber for phone number privacy services

Paltalk, the profitable chat startup that bought back its own stock earlier this year, acquired Vumber to offer phone number privacy services today. They didn’t disclose the acquisition price — but Vumber had 3,000 paying subscribers and a monthly rate of $9.95 per month.

Vumber gives you an extra number for your phone in case you want to keep your real one private. It’s a service you could use for dating or if you’re a salesperson… Continue Reading

5 O’Clock Roundup: Moving into a networked era, Tumblr envy, Open Web

Watch out Lexis-Nexis and WestLaw! Google’s coming: You can now read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts with Google Scholar. Expect an oligopoly (as in the legal research industry) to feel some pressure as Google rolls out another free and disruptive service. You can search by cases, topics or specific phrases. You can also explore how different rulings are cited by other judges and later opinions.

Google also experiments… Continue Reading

Updated: RockYou raises $50 million for in-game advertising, growth in Asia

RockYou , one of the largest developers and ad networks built around Facebook’s platform, just raised $50 million in venture funding from Softbank. That brings RockYou’s total funding to $119 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and DCM. Softbank was the only participant in this round, the company says.

Venture capital firms have got to be a bit emboldened about companies built around Facebook’s platform given last week’s sale of Playfish… Continue Reading

Multimedia messaging comes to Twitter in the U.K. thanks to Orange

Is this the beginning of the end for photo-sharing services TwitPic and YFrog?

U.K. Twitter users can now send multimedia messages and photos directly to Twitter with help from mobile operator Orange. If you’re a Orange U.K. user, just text the shortcode number ‘86444′ with the phrase ‘START’ to initiate the service.

Then you can take a picture with your phone, send it to that shortcode, and it will be posted on an Orange-hosted site called Snapshot…. Continue Reading

Motorola probably sold 250,000 Droids in first week, Flurry says

Motorola probably sold 250,000 Droids in the first week, making it the Android platform’s first legitimate challenger to the iPhone, according to analytics firm Flurry. Those figures are more than four times what HTC and T-Mobile were able to do with the MyTouch phone and about one-sixth of what Apple pulled off with the iPhone 3GS in their first weeks. (Keep in mind that Apple launched that model in eight countries, not one like the… Continue Reading

How about that new Twoffice? (Photo slideshow of Twitter’s new headquarters)

Twitter just relocated across San Francisco’s SoMa District to new digs at 795 Folsom St. from its old headquarters on Bryant St. Co-founder Ev Williams‘ wife Sara Morishige Williams helped put together the new decor — complete with hundreds of bird decals and a DJ booth. Here’s a slideshow (from Twitter’s official set and Ryan King’s)

How much has Facebook’s valuation grown this year? Not much, says Sharespost report

Has a bull market help lift Facebook’s value in the eyes of investors?

Not really, says a report by NeXt Up Research, a firm founded by Michael Moe, a former director of global growth research at Merrill Lynch. Expectations of $1.5 billion or more in annual revenue by 2014 have already been priced in, plus much of Facebook’s growth is now taking place in the developing world, where it’s less profitable per user.

NeXt Up pegs Facebook’s… Continue Reading

Google Earth adds custom map-viewing to iPhone app

Google Earth is adding custom map-sharing to its iPhone app — so you can share anything from your favorite places in Barcelona to a preferred hiking trail with friends. (They’ve given a few examples, including Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler’s favorite destinations and Ferran Adria’s recommendations for places to eat.)

While logged into Google Maps on a computer, you can save maps you’re interested in so they’ll appear when you log in to your iPhone app… Continue Reading