Who needs Yelp? With Near Field Communication-enabled window stickers in tow, Google has started rolling out Hotpot, Google Places' recommendation/rating engine. Writes Engadget: "Yelp may be the raconteur of restaurant recommendations and Foursquare the cardinal of check-ins, but Google has an ace up its sleeve: NFC chips." Beginning with Portland, Oregon, the search giant is sending out Google Places Business Kits with window stickers featuring NFC, which carry information about the business on its Places pages. "Well, now we know exactly why the Nexus S (and Android 2.3 Gingerbread) …

Despite design overhauls, big media partnerships, and more star power than a telethon, Twitter remains a largely niche American pastime. Indeed, only about 6% of American adults (8% of those online) are Twitter users, according to new research from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. What's more, as SFGate.com notes, only about 36% of Twitter users actively use the service, while 41% hardly check their accounts if at all. Meanwhile, Business Insiders notes that 6% of U.S. adults comes out to fewer than …

The nerve of some people. Michael Birch, who started Bebo in 2005 and sold it to AOL for $850 million in 2008, has reinvested on the social network and taken on the role of strategic adviser. "Birch says he hopes to help Bebo's current management make the social network 'relevant again,'" according to the Associated Press. The current team was put in place after AOL sold Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners in June for an undisclosed amount. In June, AOL confirmed selling Bebo to private investment firm. Criterion reportedly offered to pay just $2.5 million for Bebo, …

As planned, AOL's hyper-local news network Patch has launched its 500th Web site. "Yes, you read that right: 500 different websites, all with the same look and general feel, but each one staffed by an editor devoted to writing about the people and businesses in that community," writes Bizjournals' Portfolio.com. "What's more impressive than the total number of Patch sites is the rate of growth for the company." At the beginning of the year, Patch had 30 sites online. Judging by a map illustrating Patch's national presence, its network is chiefly concentrated in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, …

By the end of next year, the iPad will generate over 2% of all Web traffic in North America, according to ad network Chitika. As of this month, the iPad accounts for 0.83% of all traffic on Chitika's network, research director Daniel Ruby tells Digital Daily. The company has been tracking iPad adoption rates on its ad network (three billion ads served monthly across more than 100,000 sites, according to Digital Daily) for some time. "And at current growth rates, which have been steady since the device's launch, it should hit 2.3 percent by the end of next year," …

Sure to send Smithian scholars into a tizzy, Mark Zuckerberg has joined a growing number of ambitious entrepreneurs who've agreed to give the majority of their wealth to charity. The Facebook founder has signed onto the "Giving Pledge," which asks its signatories to commit publicly to give away the majority of their wealth relatively early in their lives, according to The Wall Street Journal. Other billionaires on the list include AOL co-founder Steve Case, investor Carl Icahn and former junk-bond king Michael Milken. As The Journal reports, "The Giving Pledge is an effort organized by software mogul …

As a little holiday gift to marketers, Twitter is explaining how to win a spot on its popular Trends list. "Twitter Trends are automatically generated by an algorithm that attempts to identify topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously," the microblogging services writes in a blog post. "The Trends list captures the hottest emerging topics, not just what's most popular. Put another way, Twitter favors novelty over popularity (as BuzzFeed noted in a great article & infographic earlier this week)." According to VentureBeat, the post was "apparently prompted by …

Capturing the business world's attention, Chinese video site Youku.co and E-Commerce China Dangdang soared over 90% after their U.S. initial public offerings. According to Bloomberg, Youku raised $203 million on Tuesday after boosting the size of its IPO by 20%. "The offerings were the first of five mainland Chinese IPOs scheduled in the U.S. this week," Bloomberg reports. "The four previous Internet companies from China that completed sales this year surged an average of 57% in their first day of trading." According to Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank, these IPOs represent an "intersection of China …

Beyond specific features, what are experts saying about Google's long-awaited Chrome OS browser-based operating system and Chrome Web Store. In short, "Show us the hardware!" Google on Tuesday said "Technologies have finally evolved to the point where a Web-based framework ... is capable enough to be a workable productivity, social, and entertainment platform for the majority of technology users," reports CNet, citing comments from Google head Eric Schmidt. But, adds CNet, "We'll ... evaluate the hardware and the OS to see if we have, finally, reached the point where we can kiss …

In order to enrich its existing platform, Twitter this week announced several new media partners, including blip.tv and Rdio. The partnerships are an extension of Twitter's recent homepage design, which included an enhanced sidebar for users to display images, video, and user profile information without leaving the news stream. This "new Twitter," as PCMag calls it, was fully rolled out to all users by mid-October, and included partners like YouTube, Flickr, Ustream, and iTunes's Ping social network. "Twitter is now extending this feature to blip.tv, Instagram, Rdio, SlideShare, and Dipdive," PCMag reports. "With blip.tv, Twitter users can watch more …