• Facebook's Stock Sinking Like A Rock
    Facebook’s stock on Wednesday took its worst fall in more than five weeks on what Bloomberg reports to be concern that employees will start selling their shares now that prohibitions on insider sales have ended. “Shares of Facebook fell 5% … and earlier touched $20.73 for the biggest intraday decrease since Sept. 24,” Bloomberg reports. The lockup was originally put in place to prevent a rush of shares immediately after the company’s initial public offering in May. 
  • Sandy Wreaks Havoc On Web
    Beyond the loss of life and incredible physical damage, GigaOm is keeping tabs on Hurricane Sandy’s impact on the Web. As of Tuesday morning, data center sites and colocation centers in and around New York City were “struggling to stay online with varying degrees of success,” it reported. “And there are reports of intermittent issues with undersea cables crossing the Atlantic Ocean.” 
  • Glassdoor Grabs Another $20M
    Ready for a little worldwide expansion, career community Glassdoor just raised another $20 million. New investor DAG Ventures led the Series D round, along with existing investors, including Benchmark Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Battery Ventures. To date, Glassdoor has raised $42.2 million in outside funding, TechCrunch reports, adding that the 4-year-old startup is growing rapidly thanks to some smart Facebook integration. 
  • The Future Of Augmented Reality
    Diving into what will likely be a serious matter for media buyers in, say, five years, The Atlantic looks into the future of augmented reality, and what sort of content -- including advertising -- it will offer consumers. “If you pick up a book, do you see a biography of its author, an analysis of the chemical composition of its paper, or the share price for its publisher?” For a little guidance, the magazine goes to Google, which, with its Glass project, has already established itself as a leader in AR. 
  • Madison Ave. Enters Age Of Mobile
    Now that the U.S. has finally entered the Mobile Age, The New York Times investigates how advertisers are adjusting. “Some mobile ads remain just miniature versions of ads on Web sites, an echo of the early days of the Internet,” it writes. “But increasingly, advertisers are tailoring ads to phones by taking advantage of elements like their ability to track location, make a call, show maps with directions and add calendar alerts.” 
  • Hurricane Sandy Hits Web
    Unfettered by land or sea, Hurricane Sandy is also reshaping the digital landscape. In preparation for the storm, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have temporarily suspended their paywalls to give readers potentially life-saving information. More broadly, “Hurricane Sandy has already hit one news outlet hard -- albeit online,” reports CNet. “Weather.com has reported 960 million pageviews in the last three days -- an increase of around one-third on its normal traffic.” 
  • Samsung -- A Smartphone Selling Machine
    Worldwide, Samsung shipped 56.9 million smartphones in the third quarter of the year, according to new research from Strategy Analytics. “That adds up to a massive 35% global share in a market that is also growing at 35% annually,” VentureBeat notes. Even more impression, that more than double the number of iPhones that Apple sold -- 26.9 million -- during the same period. As for other phone makers, VB writes: “Apple and Samsung appear to be almost the only companies that matter in mobile.” 
  • Twitter Initiates Gender Ad-Targeting
    Advertisers can now use Twitter to target their promotions based on users’ gender, Marketing Land reports. “Gender targeting may sound a bit strange since Twitter users don’t have to declare if they’re male or female anywhere in the account settings, but Twitter says that it’s confident the science behind the new targeting is strong,” it writes. The new targeting system joins Twitter’s existing mobile, geographic and interest-based targeting options already available. 
  • Amazon's LivingSocial Buy Was A Bust
    In its third-quarter earnings report, Amazon took a writedown of $169 million for its stake in daily deals site LivingSocial. That is nearly equal to the $175 million the ecommerce giant paid for the Groupon rival less than two years ago. Along with Groupon’s sagging stock price, Mashable suggests that the writedown is the clearest sign yet “that the daily deals bubble has burst.” Making matter worse for Amazon, the company reported its first quarterly net loss in four years, despite strong net sales. 
  • Apple Plans Ad-Backed Music Service
    Apple is reportedly moving full speed ahead with its plans for an ad-supported streaming radio service. That means intensifying talks with major music labels, and figuring out how to share ad revenue, Bloomberg reports. “A deal could be reached by mid-November, with Apple starting service in the first three months of 2013,” it reports, citing sources. Both Apple and record companies are being driven by a decline in music downloads, and a need to create new ways for customers to discover and buy music. 
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