Twitter has made its first acquisition, buying the search engine Summize. Summize would also see five out of six employees being Twitter employees, the one who is not is its founder Jay Verdy, who has departed the company to work on a "new project".
Silicon Alley Insider has put the value of the deal at around $15 million, with the transaction being mostly in stock. The search engine is used to track any user’s posting on the microblogging tool, or known as tweets.
Yesterday at 6am, the world’s oldest blogger passed away. Olive Riley, from the New South Wales’ central coast region, died at a nursing home at the age of 108. She will be mourned by her family and thousands who have read her blog at http://www.allaboutolive.com.au (which is apparently down) and http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com/.
She had more than 70 posts on her blog, or what she called it, “blob”; sharing her experiences and life to a wide audience. However, illness made her stop blogging on June 26, saying, “I still feel weak, and can’t shake off that bad cough.”
She would have been 109 on October 20. Her funeral will be held later this week.
paidContent, a blog about "the economics of content", has said that it will be acquired by UK media company Guardian Media Group, owners of The Guardian and Guardian.co.uk. The Guardian Media Group itself is owned by the Scott Trust.
Its parent company, ContentNext Media, has said that it will remain as a independent business and also says that it is a major expansion for the Guardian Media Group’s US presence. It will also own paidContent’s UK equivalent, mocoNews.net and contentSutra.
Founded by Rafat Ali in 2002, it has offices in Santa Monica, California, and Manhattan, and also runs several conferences. In May, Conde Nast bought Ars Technica for $25 million, $5 million less than the ContentNext buyout. The full press release is below.
Court papers have told the world one fact that we already know: Facebook is not worth $15 billion. This ‘revelation’ comes when ConnectU is suing Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their idea and code.
That value, $15 billion, was the value when Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake on Facebook for $240m, but its common stock is worth $3.75 billion. ConnectU argued that the deal was bogus since they lied about its value when Microsoft went and bought a stake in the social network.
In other words, ConnectU apparently nabbed Facebook’s internal valuation - meaning there is a mole in the company. But the NY Times is saying that Microsoft bought preferred stock and not common stock - meaning that they have more rights as shareholders.
So now, we don’t know the value - but we do know two things: It is below what Microsoft evaluated it and it is too high what ConnectU claims.
As part of its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, Viacom had asked for the source code for all of its search functions on the YouTube site, its new "Video ID" program and databases containing all user information and every video hosted on YouTube, including all private videos and those removed.
Though Viacom won’t be able to get all of the source codes, it will be able to access all the databases containing what videos you watch and all videos hosted and those were removed. However, your private videos will not be given to Viacom.
The user database, which is 12TB, will allow Viacom to determine on all the views that its content uploaded without their permission - among the other information that could be used against other lawsuits. In other words - if you watch anime on YouTube, Viacom will now know what anime you watched.
YouTube currently insists that it is protected by the DMCA’s "safe harbour" provisions, but with this decision - it looks like that the case would continue until 2010.
And you thought it would be dead because Yahoo has a partnership with Google. Well, you were wrong as The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft has been looking for partners that would help make a new bid for Yahoo’s search business.
The paper is also reporting that Microsoft has met with Carl Icahn, the board member that’s leading the way to replace the current board, and urged him to continue the proxy fight in an attempt to motivate the board at Yahoo.
Who thinks that this is now completely stupid and wants this ended now? I know I do…
Vodafone has struck a deal with MySpace to launch a brand new platform for your mobile, called Vodafone Music Reporter - allowing fans of its music events a chance to present a MTV show that will be shown online and on mobile.
It will also see interactivity on MySpace profiles and hopes to expand Vodafone’s music activity, which includes summer festivals in the UK and Germany.
Fans from Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK will be able to compete and will be asked to "demonstrate their reporting skills" across the events. To enter the competition, you will need to upload a photo and video review of their favourite recent gig experience - then "friends" of the Vodafone Music Reporter community will decide on who are the best.
The winner will then join an MTV crew for a day of recording and will have a chance to record their report on-site for the show.
I have one word to say - interesting?
Twitter is now turning into crap, with constant downtime and many features being disabled for a short (or long) period of time. Now I’m getting fed up with it. So I’ve decided to list my alternatives for a Twitter alternative, all of them I have used.
Jaiku
The now-Google owned service was one of the major competitors to Twitter, and still is. It even goes further to allow you to have your RSS feeds from blogs and data from services like Last.FM. There is the same character limit, but there is limited customisability.
Pownce
The Kevin Rose-owned company is another favourite with others, and it looks like a more classier version of Twitter. It even offers some themes, but if you can pay for an upgrade, you can create your own. It also embeds photos, videos and links - and there is no word limit. While there is no way you can add your feeds as ‘notes’, you can put links of your social network profiles.
FriendFeed
FriendFeed is the other alternative to Twitter; while maintaining its own site. With its special application, AlertThingy, you can post Tweets to your Twitter account.
BlurbEM!
Yes, remember that service. It is a very good start-up, which is growing. From our review, it seems that it has added some features (stay tuned for a re-review), but there is no SMS feature and there is still a limited number of people who use the service.
Now, I’m wondering what is your idea for a Twitter alternative. We may also listed on this post - so go ahead. Also make sure that you also link to the site, I don’t want to go burying for it.
I’ve had reports from terence, that optus has had a little screw up in their system. Look at the attached image, boy hasn’t terence used alot of offpeak!
In my opinion, TYPICAL OPTUS!
Time of screw up: 12:43AM.
Dan Farber from CNET has written up a blog post showing a brand new design and logo for CNET.com. The logo sees CNET being "cnet" and not "c|net" - changing the logo for the first time.
As well, the design is also ditching the "yellow and green" design in favour of a "carnival of colours". It is also releasing a new API on the design as well so it can deliver pages "40 to 50 percent faster" and it will make it easier for their partners to work with CNET content.
Here are the images of the new homepage and reviews page.
