Weekly Round-Up 10/04/10

Social Media

• What a Wiretappable Internet Could Mean for Facebook, Apple, Google, and You
• Inside Gatorade’s Social Media ‘Mission Control’ : Team Conducts Thousands of 1-to-1 Convos.
• Interesting story on Twitter’s refusal (for now) to sell Promoted Tweets for political campaigns

Apple

• FastCompany finds out what’s inside Apple TV–you know, extra slots, spots and a hackable future
• Digg’s Kevin Rose thinks Apple TV can change everything.
• Could it be true? Internet Tethering Coming to iPad [RUMOR]

AOL Acquisitions

• Kind of a big deal as AOL moves to own culture content, via Tim Armstrong: “We Got TechCrunch!”

Also:

• 5min media video acquired for $65mm
• AOL acquires Thing Labs founded by Jason Shellen — Congratulations to Jason and team as he continues his winning streak building great value and bringing it into a larger platform (past wins include Google Reader, greenlighting FeedBurner at Google and Blogger with Biz & Ev).

Google

• What’s display advertising look like by 2015? 75% will be social, and mobile equals #1 screen for  engagement
• Google launches worldwide Android smartphone gallery.

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Weekly Round-Up 9/13/2010

In case you missed some posts from a given week and a variety of curation approaches I use between Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and more, I’ll endeavor to serve the most talked-about news in these round-ups. It makes for easier reference and archiving than feeds like Twitter and Facebook which “age” quickly through volume or time to become more difficult to recover. Here’s a look back to the weekend and beyond:

Facebook News:

• Monitoring your friends activity on Facebook just got a little more intense and easier as Facebook tests a new feature that makes individual socialgraphs more like an RSS feed.
• Facebook launches “Like-app” to make pages more discoverable
• Speaking of Facebook and Privacy:-), here’s a Danah Boyd interview by Roy Christopher with a good description of privacy at the end

Facetime News:

• How Apple can ship 48 million FaceTime devices this year (Fortune)

Google: Making Noise About Display

Social Gaming

• SocialGaming passes email in internet time usage exceeded only by it’s parent, Social Networking (Nielsen)
• What Disney was looking for in Playdom for the Magic Kingdom Part I–Interview with Playdom’s VP of Business Development, Sean Phinney
• SocialGaming in the Magic Kingdom is Playdom Part II–Interview with Playdom’s Head of Sales, Benjamin Chen

Virgin Mobile + Android

• Cheap no-contract virgin mifi hotspot – Your Own Hotspot , and Cheap
• And equally cool, here’s a short “how to” video on WIFI Tethering your Android“

What else should be on last week’s round-up. Did I miss anything? Please post below. Cheers!

Weekly Round Up 9/07/10

Competition heats up with new products, features announcements and new battleground forming in Censorship

If you judged last week’s news by buzz monitoring, the share of voice would land easily in Apple’s camp as their fall event introduced a new line up of iPods, operating systems features, AppleTV and a social music service called Ping. Looking beyond Steve Job’s presentation and masterful marketing machine you can see competition heating up on a number of fronts:

Competing for talent: Google Making Extraordinary Counteroffers To Stop Flow Of Employees To Facebook

Google competing with Skype & Microsoft? Last week’s round-up included mention of Gmail’s voice calling capabilities, making it a telephony & Skype market disrupter. This week, it’s all about lowering the switching barriers on your current email services, like Microsoft’s Outlook and RIM’s mobile email client, through removing inbox-overload pain. Read more:  Gmail just got a whole lot smarter with Priority Inbox – an adaptive algorithm that aids in identifying urgent priority emails, and helps to cut down on “insignificant email” reading time.

Competing for wallets: Social Gaming’s popularity continues to rise, and Facebook makes their smart entry into brick and mortar stores. Target to Sell Facebook Credits as Gift Cards in Stores

Competing for time/SocialNetworking value: Apple’s new Ping rocks out as it allows you to see what music your friends are digging, as well as connect with your favorite music artists and see what they’re tuned into. Preview: Apple’s Ping Music Social Network In Action on iOS.

Competing on form/platoform:

• Archos unleashes five (five!) new Android Froyo tablets and they’re all in different sizes–Engadget goes hands-on
• Mobile OS by the numbers–while Jobs claimed 230,000 installs per day, Android continues to make progress
• Apple: 74% tablet market now & >70% in 2011 much like their mp3 player dominance. http://bit.ly/cMVkxv

Censorship in the news:

• Apple Hides Prop 8 Tweets from Lady Gaga Promo Page for Ping
• Craigslist blocks Adult ads; some see it as a ploy while others worry about expanded government reach into censorship

Any big market news I missed from last week? Post it in comments below.

Weekly round-up 8/31/10

Enough activity on bookmarking, favoriting and facebooking in the past week to begin to roll them into a round-up post:

M&A goodness coming in threes- As balance sheets swell start-up and mid-market companies find buyers on a shopping spree.

• Intel’s tapped Infeon’s Wireless offerings, McAffee Software and the cable mobile business of Texas Instruments.
• Google’s three bets for Social: Slide, Jambool and now Social Deck.

Speaking of Google…Google added voice calls to gmail. Significant news due to scale, integration, implications for expediting non-carrier wifi solutions for consumers. Free in US & Canada, 2-cents to call elsewhere. I see the banditos Carriers like Telemex–who once charged me $50 for a five-minute emergency call–dripping with irony as they scream “foul!” Encourage you to try it out right away. Feel free to call me :-).

• Five ways Google Gmail Voice Chat is better than Skype
• This is a big deal for travelers: Google adds voice calling to Gmail (think wifi) http://bit.ly/googvm
• Skype/Google faceoff on Mashable. Poll puts Skype @ 43% and Google @ 42%–a statistical dead-heat with over 2,000 votes as of this posting. Shouts volumes in terms of the strength of a Real Brand.

From App to Hollywood & FAO – Angry Birds, the iPhone game whose popularity has soared and entertained many, is working on getting a plush toy line and their people are talking to people about a movied deal. You’ll hear this theme continually from me: The Valley is not just creating the technology that’s doing more to change consumer’s behaviors and expectations than Hollywood and Madison Avenue combined; it’s also creating the best entertainment of any kind. Anyone got options on “Farmville The Movie?”

Quotable Stats: Some findings on how influential active Twitter users are, and their engagement with brands online– “Study Finds Twitter Users Three Times More Likely to Impact Brands Online”