Social networks have a lifecycle: They start with a small core of early adopters, swell as mainstream users get pulled in by their friends, and then see growth taper off as people get turned off by spam. That's why Friendster is forgotten and why MySpace is looking increasingly stagnant. The price for reaching an audience advertisers care about seems to be a site users can't stand. Facebook, however, isn't following the fashionable trend. By the numbers, there are no signs of Facebook fatigue. The social network's ranks swelled from 100 million in August to 120 million in October. If it...
Here’s the video of Web 2.0 Summit host John Battelle interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a few weeks ago, in which Battelle floated a rumor that the social-networking site might be interested in buying Twitter. If you want to see the exchange, it starts at 22:15 minutes, when Battelle asks: “Is Twitter just a feature of Facebook?” Awkwardness ensues from there until 23:07 minutes, with no direct question about an actual acquisition effort asked. Thus, Zuckerberg does not have to fib in front of the Web 2.0 crowd about talks that were just then winding down between Twitter and...
Facebook recently initiated acquisition talks with Twitter for $500 million in Facebook stock, but those talks fell apart as recently as three weeks ago, Kara Swisher reports. Execs at Facebook, who have long been impressed with Twitter, were trying to make the purchase at Facebook’s $15 billion stock valuation. At the end of the day, Twitter investors were concerned about the valuation of Facebook’s stock, and weren’t ready to sell out to the first suitor when they believe Twitter has the potential to ride out the economic downturn. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently expressed his high view of Twitter when...
About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately-held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources...
The DRAM industry knows well that the global economy is struggling, and so too would the processor market if not for the popularity of netbooks and Atom chip sales. But one company who apparently didn't get the memo that the economy is in shambles is Hewlett-Packard.According to the company's fourth quarter results that were leaked on Monday, the OEM took in $33.6 billion in revenue in Q4 2008, representing a 19 percent jump from the same quarter one year ago, or 16 percent when adjusted for currency affects, Cnet says."HP delivered another solid quarter, as it continues to benefit from...
Why have social networks blossomed in as antisocial an environment as Silicon Valley? Because they allow computers to become a crutch for a task most engineers find imposing: dealing with other human beings. Turning relationships into a social graph that can be fed into a database and ruled by algorithms is a genius move for tech's clumsy savants. Alex French, a writer for GQ, interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for a profile, wonders if his cold stare and cagey responses are an incredibly calculating attempt to intimidate, or merely a sign that he's awkward. Either way, Zuckerberg shows a disdain...
OpenSocial is growing up fast. What started out as Google's effort to create a common API for developing small applications with HTML and JavaScript that can tap into data from across multiple social networking services is becoming more of a full-fledged, cloud application development platform. (Credit: Ben Metcalfe) According to the OpenSocial Foundation, OpenSocial has garnered a potential audience of 600 million users, with 7,500 compliant applications developed so far and 20 containers (hosts for social applications) supporting the APIs within the last 12 months. It was also spun out of Google, and incorporated as a non-profit foundation to ensure...
OpenSocial is growing up fast. What started out as Google's effort to create a common application programming interface for developing small applications that can tap into multiple social-networking services is becoming a full-fledged development platform. (Credit: Ben Metcalfe) According to the OpenSocial Foundation, it has garnered a potential audience of 600 million users, with 7,500 compliant applications developed so far and 20 containers (hosts for social applications) supporting the APIs within the last 12 months. The Google spin-off incorporated itself as a nonprofit foundation to ensure support from a broad range of social-networking competitors, including Yahoo, MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Ning,...
Randi Zuckerberg, the limelight-seeking sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has learned a key lesson of media success: As you scale the ladder, make sure to jab your stiletto heels into the faces of those you climb over. Zuckerberg, whose day job is in Facebook's marketing department, has been writing weekly for former magazine editor Tina Brown's mostly ignored Daily Beast website since it launched — but only recently has she turned mean. We love it, of course. The target of her freshly poisoned pen: the hipster lip dub, those single-shot singalongs so popular with startups and would-be Internet celebrities....
The revolving door at Facebook has been swinging less of late. Two top designers, Katie Geminder and Eston Bond, left in August and September. But the economic crisis seems to have scared the rest of the social network's staff into their seats, wondering when the ax will fall. There have been no layoffs, but we keep hearing tips from inside there's a hiring freeze on. In fact, there's not: Facebook's unofficial second-in-command, COO Sheryl Sandberg, asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to institute a freeze, and got turned down cold. And yet Facebook will end the year with 750 to 800 employees,...
Microsoft officially rolled out the next version of its Windows Live Services tonight, with a heavy emphasis on socializing them and giving users better tools to share all sorts of information from across the Web. Microsoft (MSFT) said the changes–similar to those made by Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL recently–would “begin rolling out to customers in the U.S. over the coming weeks and will be made available globally in 54 countries and in 48 languages by early 2009.” You might call its the “Facebooking” of Windows Live, which the brand name for Microsoft’s communications and...
