|
Gavin O'Malley, Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 1:41 PM
5 Billion Strong And Growing
The Telegraph
The revolution might not be televised, but it most likely will be tweeted. In the wake of new financing and a $1 billion valuation, the micro-blogging service just surpassed 5 billion tweets.
To put that number into perspective, the service only reached its billionth Tweet last November, and was only up to 1.6 billion in April. That means the remaining 3.4 billion Tweets were sent in just six months, which suggests massive growth.
There is some debate about who sent the 5 billianth tweet on Twitter, ut it appears to be one Robin Sloan, a former Current Media executive turned novelist based in the San Franscisco Bay area. What did he say? "Oh lord."
To date, a third-party site called GigaTweet, which has been counting all Tweets for some time, says some 5,018,584,000 tweets have been sent -- a number which is increasing by roughly 300 a second.
It remains to be seen how Twitter will capitalize on its stratospheric rise to fame, but that question will likely be answered sooner rather than later. The company is reportedly in advanced talks with both Microsoft and Google to license its full feed, which could then be integrated into either companies' own search results.
Last month, Facebook's community crossed the 300 million member threshold worldwide, and said it's becoming "cash-flow positive" -- meaning that cash it generates from advertising and other forms of revenue now exceed the cost of servers and other capital expenditures required to keep Facebook running. When Twitter reaches that milestone is anyone's guess.
Read the whole story...
Twitter: We'll Make Money In '09
Wired
Twitter is on track to earn $4 million in revenue this year, according to Wired magazine. Not a mind-blowing figure, but not bad for a company that at least feigns utter naivety. "If there are three sentences I'd use to describe Twitter," co-founder Biz Stone tells Wired, "One of them would be 'I don't know.'"
The company has serious international ambitions, which it intends to realize through deals with telecoms that build Twitter into browsers or texting options. How's it going to start raking in the cash? In no time at all, Twitter is going to have verified accounts, plus analytics to help companies look at discussions on Twitter. There's search revenue, and it will have a lot of precious data on people.
Read the whole story...
Google Hatching Own Smartphone
TheStreet.com
Google is about to enter the smartphone market with an Android phone of its own. The search giant is working with a smartphone manufacturer to have a Google-branded phone available this year through retailers and not through telcos, Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar tells TheStreet.com. The move would fulfill Google's pledge to bring a new generation of open-standard mobile Internet devices to consumers.
By bypassing the carriers, who keep tight controls over the features and applications that are allowed on phones, it looks like Google will offer a device that lets users determine the functions. Both the Chrome netbook and the Android phone will use Qualcomm chips, with the netbook running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform, says Kumar, who has discussed the plan with original design manufacturers working with Google.
Read the whole story...
Is Media A Slave To Search Algorithms?
Media Decoder
The algorithm is taking over! Wired'sDaniel Roth explains how Demand Media uses a three-part algorithm that uses search terms, ad market key words, and content from other available media to decide on a variety of topics that people will be searching for, and then turns out "stories" to rank highly in organic search results. Demand serves up 4,000 videos and stories a day designed to attract consumers and advertisers. By next summer, Demand expects to be publishing one million items a month.
But is Demand's answer and news factory, which cranks out answers to questions that are just forming in the minds of audiences, a societal good or evil? Both Roth and David Carr of the Times blog seem to be on the fence about it. If search ranking was the only factor involved in marketing a piece of content, we'd be more concerned.
Read the whole story...
Apple Warms To Social Media
TechCrunch
If at a glacial pace, Apple seems to be slowly warming to social media. Back in March, the company started tweeting from its first official Twitter account, iTunesTrailers. They even highlighted the account on their Apple.com Trailers page. The account now has well over 1 million followers.
Apple also added a bit of social media to iTunes 9 recently, by including the ability to share items on both Facebook and Twitter. More recently, it appears as though Apples added a few more Twitter accounts, a couple of which have just over 1,000 followers. One account you'll notice that Apple does not have though, is twitter.com/apple. That account has one tweet, from March 16, which reads, "I love apples."
Read the whole story...
Yahoo Loses Search, Then Dignity
AFP
Yahoo has issued an official apology over a lap dance show organized during a brainstorming meeting for Internet engineers in Taipei over the weekend. The move came after girls wearing bras and miniskirts performed in front of male participants seated on stage during an event that was part of a Yahoo Hack Day, when developers work on creating new Web applications.
"This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended," Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo Developer Network, said in a statement posted on the company's Web site. "As many folks have rightly pointed out, the 'Hack Girls' aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose," Yeh said. Right. No official word from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on the incident.
Read the whole story...
|
RSS FEEDS • PRIVACY/TERMS & CONDITIONS
PRINT
COMMENT
SUBSCRIBE
RSS