• AT&T: New iPhones Go 3G
    The groaning could be heard across the Web when Apple announced that its iPhone would run on AT&T's 2G Edge Network. If this was to be a state-of-the-art product, they asked, shouldn't it run on a state-of-the-art third-generation wireless network? Well, less than six months after the iPhone's release, Apple has announced that a newer version of the popular handset will indeed operate on AT&T's 3G network. "Next year," AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in response to a question about when the iPhone would make its 3G debut. Pricing for the newer model has yet to be sorted …
  • TV Companies Make $120 Million Online in 2007
    While Hollywood writers continue to strike over royalties for digital work, the four major U.S. television networks will generate around $120 million from free Web streams of their content. That's according to Tracey Scehppach, senior vice president of leading media-buying agency Starcom, which claims that advertisers are flocking to reproductions of shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "Heroes" on the Web. The $120 million figure is an estimate based on what Starcom has been paying for spots across the four networks. One of the contentions the networks make in their continued standoff with writers is that they're …
  • Report: Google Spectrum Bid Confirmed
    Google will bid on the wireless spectrum the FCC is putting up for auction on Jan. 24, according to inside sources. We knew that Google was going mobile, but many speculated that the search giant wouldn't go beyond mobile software. This latest revelation shows that Google wants to take on the cellular carriers, too, though it's unclear whether the company plans to build an uber-expensive wireless network itself, or hire an outside party to do it for them if it wins the auction. Google already has a few things going for it prior to the auction, not the …
  • Attack Of The Fake Search Results
    A massive attempt to defraud search users was thwarted yesterday, according to the BBC. Hackers created thousands of booby-trapped Web sites that tricked Google, MSN and Yahoo search crawlers into ranking them very high. The hackers used comment spam on blogs to achieve the high results. The Web sites would come up in search results for terms like "Christmas gifts" and "hospice," the report said. Users who clicked on these fake sites risked having their computers hijacked and their personal information stolen. However, the attack was uncovered yesterday. "This was fairly epic," said Alex Eckelberry, who heads Sunbelt Software, …
  • No Truth in Online Advertising
    If you're looking for one truth in online advertising, it's that there is no truth. At least that's what Bob Ivins, one of the leading men at Web measurement firm comScore Media Metrix says. comScore is in the business of telling advertisers what they're paying for. Just think of the sheer number of measurement options: Do you want to know page views, uniques, time spent, hits, click-throughs, streams sessions, queries or engagement? There's a dizzying array of options by which advertisers can measure their spend. Problem is none of them paint a comprehensive picture. Page views used …
  • I Want My...MySpace?
    MySpace is bigger and some might say more mature than Facebook, the current rising star of social networking. At the moment, it's certainly more profitable: This year the News Corp. company is set to rake in $200 to $300 million before interest and taxes on revenue of $800 million. However, MySpace's user growth is slowing, which means that stickiness, or average time spent per user, has become the key growth metric for the social network moving forward. As it ages, MySpace is starting to look more like MTV and less like a traditional social network. Content is …
  • Bigger, Creepier Social Networks
    Do online social networks add value to one's real-world social networks? To a degree, yes, but what happens if one online network grows so dominant that it eventually contains most of the Web's users? That could present a massive problem for many people. Our real-world social networks exist in silos: work, school, family, the activities and interests we share with other people. Sometimes, we don't want these worlds to mix. What happens, for example, to the homosexual man or woman who doesn't want their colleagues at work to know, when the boss requests that they become friends …
  • LinkedIn Worth "A Lot More" Than $1 Billion
    Is LinkedIn is exploring a possible sale to MySpace parent News Corp.? Dan Nye, the social network's CEO, doesn't deny that Rupert Murdoch made an offer, but he maintains that the company's board is more interested in building LinkedIn than cashing out. "It would take a helluva lot to get us off that path," Nye says. $1 billion? More than that, he says. Might News Corp. make the board an offer it can't refuse? Several news outlets, including Breakingviews.com and TechCrunch UK (which started the rumor) points out that a LinkedIn acquisition would make sense for Murdoch's …
  • Nearly Now or Never For eBay's Skype
    2008 could be a "make-or-break-year" for Skype, the voiceover Internet protocol company eBay bought for $2.6 billion two and a half years ago. At the time, the Skype purchase widely regarded as a bizarre deal because many wondered how the online auctioneer planned to integrate an Internet telephony company that offered its services for next to nothing into its online shopping business. In the end (if indeed the marriage is approaching an end), eBay never quite made it work, admitting as much when the company took a $1.4 billion impairment charge on the 2005 acquisition. Things haven't …
  • Report: Facebook May Tweak Beacon
    Facebook may be the media darling of 2007, but the red-hot social network also knows a thing or two about growing pains, having shown in the past that it isn't too proud to make up for its mistakes. Well, Mark Zuckerberg and co. may have another one to make up for, as the peer-to-peer notification program "Beacon," unveiled recently as part of a broader social advertising initiative, continues to anger thousands of Facebook users. Beacon alerts Facebook users' "friends" about purchases and other activities they make involving third-party Web sites. Those actions are revealed unless users choose to opt-out …
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