Changing around the style of your profile is a big part of MySpace’s culture. Heavy users change their profiles daily, leading to over half a million threads in MySpace’s forums from users asking how they can customize their profiles. Yet after four years of operation, profile design still consists of CSS hacked together through third [...]
Get ready to throw out that WAP browser on your mobile phone (if you haven’t already). The iPhone, with its fully-functioning Safari browser, showed us that mobile browsing need not be a compromise. Now, the folks at Mozilla are working on a mobile version of Firefox. A Firefox Web browser already exists for [...]
MySpace is gearing up to launch MySpace Platform, according to a number of third party developers who’ve been contacted for input on the product. While this has been rumored since June, this is the first indication that the service is preparing to actually launch. And we also have information that suggests that it will be [...]
eBay just launched more than 600 micro-social networks on its site called eBay Neighborhoods. Each one is organized around a different product, like coffee, iPhones, Eames furniture, Seinfeld memorabilia, or Ford Mustangs. Content from across eBay—including eBay blogs, guides, reviews, and product search—is pulled into each eBay neighborhood and packaged into widget-like modules. [...]
There’s a lot of talk about remunerating video creators these days. Revver’s been doing it a while, along with Metacafe. Blinkx is now monetizing video for publishers too, but unlike YouTube’s recent offering, ,revenue is only split between Blinkx and the publishers.They’re launching an ad network, “Blinkx AdHoc”, that lets publishers serve contextual ads on [...]
IBM and Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life) will announce a new partnership at the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose today that will focus on virtual world interoperability.The initial focus of the joint effort will be the ability to allow users to use a single virtual persona (or Avatar) across multiple virtual platforms, [...]
AdBidCentral has today launched its futures marketplace for “premium guaranteed display advertising” after a private beta test which commenced earlier this year.AdBidCentral powers sales of futures-oriented premium display advertising on top comScore-rated publisher sites with a patent-pending futures marketplace platform that aims to make forecast buying and selling of premium display digital media “easy, efficient [...]
I’ve personally lamented the end of Business 2.0, a magazine I faithfully subscribed to until the very end. But today they spammed their user base with an offer to subscribe to other magazines. With all due respect to my co-editor Erick Schonfeld who just left that publication, this was a pathetic end to an otherwise [...]
One of the knocks against Facebook is that it is a somewhat closed, proprietary platform. Here’s how the argument goes: The ultimate technology platform, in contrast, is the Web itself. It is open and ultimately will triumph over all other platforms, including Facebook. Any innovations that take hold in closed environments are [...]
BREAKING NEWS: Jaiku, the Twitter (and Pownce)-like service from Finland, has been bought by Google.Jaiku Founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen today posted this on their homepage:“While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we [...]
Goofy names, retread startup ideas, inexperienced entrepreneurs, free food—the WSJ does a nice job this morning laying out the gestalt evidence that we are in the midst of a second Silicon Valley bubble. Capping off the list of exhibits is none other than last month’s TechCrunch40 conference, which drew about 1,000 people (not counting [...]
Shelby Bonnie left the company he co-founded with Halsey Minor, CNET, just about one year ago. This morning he launches his next startup, PoliticalBase.The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will [...]
Poughkeepsie, NY startup Mixaloo wants to make the experience of purchasing music online more social and rewarding, both emotionally and financially.The company is taking a phenomenon - the mixtape - that has spanned several decades and media formats - 8 tracks, audio cassettes, CDs, and MP3 players - and bringing it to the web.As a [...]
RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service will become available to TiVo’s 10-12 million United States users, under a new deal to be announced today.Real’s Rhapsody will allow TiVo users to sign up for the $13 per month service and listen to the more than 3.5 million songs from their TiVo DVR streamed on demand.TiVo has previously inked [...]
