• Gavin O'Malley, Sep 29, 2010, 1:40 PM
  • A Little Talky: Facebook Friends Skype In Google Voice Battle All Things D et al Challenging Google and its popular Voice service, Facebook is working with Skype on a "wide-ranging" partnership, reports BoomTown's Kara Swisher. "You didn't think Facebook would integrate with Google Voice, did you?" she jokes.

    Citing sources, Swisher says the broad partnership will include integration of SMS, voice chat and Facebook Connect.

    Bigger picture, what the does the would-be deal mean?

    "Such an alliance would be a challenge to Google, a value for business users, and would benefit both Facebook and Skype," PCWorld writes. "Google has dabbled ... social networking ... Turning the tables, though, a Facebook-Skype alliance could challenge Google as a communications platform."

    Indeed, Facebook, "is aiming to be the central communications and messaging platform for its users, across a range of media," writes Swisher. "Facebook's goal, according to sources: To mesh communications and community more tightly together and add more tools to allow users to do so."

    "The integration would mean that your Skype contacts would come to include all of your Facebook contacts, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at given Facebook's prominence as the hub of our social identity online," writes ReadWriteWeb.

    "The deal is a win for both companies," adds VentureBeat. "Facebook gets access to a robust voice and video calling platform, and Skype will see a massive surge in new users from Facebook's 500 million users."

    GigaOm's Om Malik, meanwhile, thinks Facebook should just go ahead and buy Skype. It makes sense, he says, "considering both are software-driven, social-centric, communication utilities and not hardware-centric like Cisco."

    "Sure, this would be a big, hairy merger, but look at it this way: In one swoop, Facebook would dominate what I've maintained is both the new age and classic social networking," Malik adds. "They have people's credit cards; they have their real-world phone information; and in the end, they have a better, more useful, social graph than Facebook itself." Read the whole story...
  • Arrington: How The AOL Deal Went Down TechCrunch Following the AOL's official agreement to buy TechCrunch, founder Michael Arrington is dishing on all the behind-the-scenes details. According to Arrington, the opportunity first presented itself when he and AOL head Tim Armstrong where chatting backstage at a conference in May. Armstrong asked how Arrington was doing. Arrington said he was fried, and "half retired," to which Armstrong replied: "That's too bad ... we'd love to acquire you, but we'd need to know you would stick around."

    Said a shocked Arrington: "Wait. What? Yeah I'm great! Lots of energy, I'm having so much fun! Will probably do this for the rest of my life." According to Arrington, the conversation resumed over the summer, with a focus on "our commitment to keep doing what we do." Arrington assured Armstrong that he and his time could do their jobs even better without the operational headaches that come with running a startup. Still, whether TechCrunch can keep its edge post acquisition is anyone's guess. Read the whole story...
  • Twitter Surpasses MySpace, Lauded By Schmidt The Los Angeles Times Twitter has surpassed MySpace in unique visitors to become the third-most popular social networking service, reports The Los Angeles Times. "According to its latest stats, Twitter has more than 160 million users and is adding 370,000 users a day."

    To boot, Twitter had nearly 96 million unique visitors in August, up 76% from the same period a year ago, ComScore said. Even Google chief exec Eric Schmidt admits Twitter is a big deal. "Twitter strikes me as being a very important platform," Schmidt said during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this week. "Twitter should be able to come up with advertising and monetization products that in our opinion are highly lucrative." MySpace, meanwhile, shed 17% in the same period, dropping to 95 million unique visitors last month. Still, Twitter and MySpace are "tiny" compared with Facebook, notes the LA Times. Yep, the top social network jumped 54% to 598 million unique visitors in August, while Microsoft's Windows Live profile, which combines the company's Web-based e-mail and other services to grabbed 140 million unique visitors. Read the whole story...
  • Google Vows To Make Display 'Sexy' The Wall Street Journal Google is promising to make display advertising much more engaging, and, dare they say, "sexy," (they do, in fact, dare) The Wall Street Journal reports. "Display is bringing 'sexy' back," Barry Salzman, a Google managing director for media, said at the IAB advertising conference this week. Until now, display ads were "static" and it was "tough to engage Madison Avenue's most creative minds," Salzman said.

    In five years, Salzman predicted that 75% of display ads will be "social." In other words, according to The Journal, "People will be able to comment on them, share them with friends on social networks, or 'subscribe' to them, implying that users could sign up to receive notices of when similar ads are available to watch." Salzman also said 50% of display ad campaigns will include video ads for which advertisers pay based on how many individuals viewed them, while 50% of ads will use real-time bidding technology that wasn't previously available, according to The Journal. Read the whole story...
  • Top Networks Sue Web TV Service Ivi Bloomberg Online subscription service Ivi is being sued by the top networks for streaming their programs over the Web without authorization. The companies, including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the Public Broadcasting Service, accuse Ivi and its founder Todd Weaver of copyright infringement in a federal court complaint in New York, reports Bloomberg.

    "Defendants have launched their infringing Internet TV service to coincide with the start of the new fall television season," the broadcasters said in the complaint. Based in Seattle, Ivi reportedly began streaming TV stations there and in New York 24 hours a day to Web subscribers worldwide earlier this month. For $4.99 a month after a 30-day free trial, subscribers could stream all the programming their wanted. On Sept. 20, Ivi and Weaver filed suit in federal court in Seattle seeking a ruling that Ivi isn't infringing copyrights. "Big media is choosing to fight Internet delivery the same way they fought against cable delivery and satellite delivery, when in reality it is legal to retransmit," Weaver tells Bloomberg in an e-mail. Read the whole story...
  • Ballmer On Kin, Clouds, And Facebook The Seattle Times What did Microsoft learn from its failed Kin endeavor? The importance of a focused product vision, chief exec Steve Ballmer told The Seattle Times in a Q & A this week. "The No. 1 message from Kin is a message of focus," Ballmer said. "You only get so many things you can really talk about, communicate, work on with the consumer. You've got to be bold, you've got to look forward and you've got to stay focused. Kin was neither -- with 20-20 hindsight -- bold enough relative to where the market's going, and it just defocused activity from Windows Phone."

    Meanwhile, Ballmer calls cloud computing "the biggest profit opportunity in front of us ... because we can deliver more value to our customers on the cloud instead of at premise, which means we have an opportunity to make more money." Ballmer also admits that he's on Facebook everyday, along with 11 or so other "Steve Ballmer" impersonators. "Not as many as there are Bill Gates," he says, "but there are a few Steve Ballmers." Read the whole story...