Groupon to Replace CEO Andrew Mason (SocialTimes)
Andrew Mason will no longer be the chief executive of Groupon, the company announced on Thursday. Stock in the daily deals business had fallen more than 20 percent after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings failed to meet analysts’ expectations, according to The Wall Street Journal.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. 
YouTube and Google TV held a hackaton in Los Angeles to encourage developers to build on their platforms. Read on for Google’s pitch to developers and the apps that won.
After Sony recently announced their purchase of the Gaikai cloud gaming service for $380m, they’ve now announced that they will be dropping OnLive from their latest Google TV powered Blu-Ray player. This makes sense, as OnLive is a competing cloud gaming service and it wouldn’t make sense to support the competition. OnLive has been making strides in partnerships with companies like LG and other Google TV manufacturers, and they likely anticipated this move by Sony and are focusing their efforts elsewhere.
OnLive, the cloud-streaming gaming company that removes the need for a console, are banking on the next generation of Smart TVs to get them into living rooms easily. The idea is that a consumer buys an LG Smart TV (powered by Google TV), buys an OnLive controller, gets home, and realizes that they can play a whole library of triple A console games without actually having a console. It sounds good for the user but its success will depend on the user experience.
Anne-Marie Roussel, a Sharp partnership and venture executive, has put together a great summary of the various different startups and businesses within the Social TV ecosystem, and for anybody interested in the intersection between social and TV should take a look at her work.
Google has acquired SageTV for an undisclosed amount. The tech giant has plans to take SageTV’s media management software and technology to next level, according Google’s spokeswoman. SageTV is an Inglewood-based company that provide DVR technology and streaming-video software for systems running Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac OS X.
What do you get when you combine personalized, curated video entertainment service Redux with Google TV? Redux founder and CEO David McIntosh answered that question with a post on the Google TV Blog.
According to Eric Berger of Sony Pictures Television, viewers spend about 50 minutes per visit to Crackle on connected TVs. Crackle can be found in the Channel Store on Roku, on the PlayStation 3 Internet Browser home screen and on all BRAVIA Internet Video devices. Crackle is partnered with Google TV and can be accessed via the Spotlight section.
Google TV announced that its Google TV Remote app is now available for the Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPods running iOs 3 or higher, joining the Android app, which debuted in December.
In addition to traditional remote-control functions such as changing channels or DVR access, users can search for their favorite shows via voice search.
Google TV added that the app currently does not support sharing Web pages from the Apple devices to TV screens.
Google TV released version 1.3 over this past weekend as an over-the-air update for its users.
Improvements include: support for more WMA audio files; better integration of Netflix and CNBC Real Time; improved transition between songs in Pandora; support for Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity on Sony devices; and support for more Blu-ray discs.
