Sep 25
Microsoft is reported to be in talks to buy a stake in Facebook that could value the social networking website at as much as $10bn (£5bn).
The talks could lead to a showdown with Microsoft’s rival, Google, which is also keen to invest in Facebook, the Wall Street Journal says.
The newspaper says Microsoft wants to buy up to 5% of Facebook, for a price between $300m and $500m.
Microsoft and Google both declined to comment on the report. Continue reading »
Sep 24
LOS ANGELES - The social networking Web site MySpace is launching a free, advertising-supported cell phone version Monday as part of a wider bid by parent News Corp. to attract advertising for mobile Web sites.
Fox Interactive Media, which oversees News Corp.’s Internet properties, said it also plans to roll out versions of FoxSports.com, the gaming site IGN, AskMen and its local TVaffiliates in the coming months that will work on cell phones that can access the Internet.
The company said it also plans to offer a mobile version of its Photobucket picture sharing site in coming months. Continue reading »
Sep 24
Three council workers have lost their jobs for spending too long on the internet auction site eBay.
One was sacked and two resigned after managers at Neath Port Talbot Council found some staff were spending up to two hours a day on the website.
Union officials have blamed bosses for “putting temptation in their way” - by allowing access to the internet.
The council said it carried out an investigation after officials spent a “significant time” on the internet. Continue reading »
Sep 23
XIAONEI.COM does not just look like Facebook, the booming social-networking website. As well as borrowing its design, it has also lifted its strategy and transplanted it to China. It is not alone. All the big “Web 2.0” sites—those that let people share information, collaborate and link up with friends—have many Chinese knockoffs. YouTube, the video-sharing site that is now part of Google, has over 200 copycats in China, about 10% of them backed by venture capital, says Isaac Mao, an internet investor and a Chinese blogging pioneer.
And no wonder, since most Web 2.0 sites do not have official Chinese versions. So enterprising start-ups simply copy the ideas and graphics, and localise them to suit Chinese tastes. The Chinese market is now so saturated that it is much harder to raise money than it was a year ago, says Gary Wang, the boss of Tudou—a site known as the “Chinese YouTube”. This is a good thing, he says, because it means investors are being much more discriminating. Continue reading »
Sep 22
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Google filed with the European Union competition regulator on Friday for permission to buy rival DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, and the deal almost immediately became contentious.
The European Commission said it had set a review deadline of October 26 — when it could approve the deal, give a two-week extension or open an in-depth, four-month investigation.
“We are asking the European Commission to look at the proposed acquisition. We believe this deal is positive for both users and advertisers and fosters competition,” Julia Holtz, Google’s competition counsel, told Reuters. Continue reading »
Sep 21
Beginning in October, NBC.com will unveil a new beta service called NBC Direct, which will allow users to download episodes of some of its TV shows. With the new service, NBC Digital Entertainment executive vice president Vivi Zigler said, “We are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment.”
Despite these claims, however, the episodes from NBC Direct are not only ad-supported, but they expire within a week of the episode’s original on-air date, not a week after download. The list of shows available at launch includes Heroes, The Office, Life, Bionic Woman, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Continue reading »
Sep 21
Stephanie Painter’s death was swift and painless. At 9.10pm on February 11 she bid her 121 Facebook friends goodbye with one last “poke” (mood: sorrowful), then left the virtual world peacefully with a quick click of the mouse.
“It was hard to kill the profile I’d spent so long creating, but I felt it was the only way out,” says Stephanie, 27, a PA from Fulham, West London. “Facebook was damaging my relationship with my boyfriend to such an extent that if I hadn’t done it we wouldn’t be together now.” For Painter found that what had seemed like an innocent way of reconnecting with old friends and colleagues had opened a huge can of worms.
“Within a couple of months a number of ex-partners and people that I’d had random flings with were asking to be my “friend” in Facebook. I didn’t feel I could decline them and I admit I was intrigued by what they were up to,” she says. “But not only did that ignite unwanted feelings in me, it also made my boyfriend Danny, a 28-year-old TV producer, incredibly insecure. As one of my friends, he could view my profile page, my friends’ list and my ‘wall’ (an area on which messages are posted). Continue reading »
Aug 27
BOSTON (Reuters) - Monster.com waited five days to tell its users about a security breach that resulted in the theft of confidential information from some 1.3 million job seekers, a company executive told Reuters on Thursday.
Hackers broke into the U.S. online recruitment site’s password-protected resume library using credentials that Monster Worldwide Inc said were stolen from its clients, in one of the biggest Internet security breaches in recent memory.
They launched the attack using two servers at a Web-hosting company in Ukraine and a group of personal computers that the hackers controlled after infecting them with a malicious software program known as Infostealer.Monstres, said Patrick Manzo, vice president of compliance and fraud prevention for Monster, in a phone interview. Continue reading »
Aug 27
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said on Sunday it was giving its e-mail users more ways to reach friends and online contacts by allowing them to trade messages with mobile phone users.
The new e-mail-to-phone connection is one of the features the Internet media giant plans to add as it makes available to the more than 250 million Yahoo Mail users a new version of the world’s most popular e-mail program in coming weeks.
The Yahoo Mail overhaul is part of a drive to transform its e-mail franchise into more of a social activity that blends the convenience of instant communication with the implicit network of relationships found in one’s online address book.
Already this year Yahoo has been testing another feature that lets its e-mail users communicate using conventional e-mail or via instant messages using either Yahoo Messenger or Microsoft Live Messenger. Continue reading »
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