Posts Tagged ‘Yahoo!’

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Facebook Camera App Launches for iOS (TechCrunch)
Facebook began rolling out a standalone photos app Thursday with which users can shoot, filter and share single or sets of photos and scroll through a feed of photos uploaded to Facebook by your friends. Facebook Camera for iOS lets users rapidly pick one or more photos, apply filters, tag friends and locations, add a description and post. Gizmodo iOS users are used to pulling down at the top of apps to refresh a stream, but this action reveals your iPhone’s photo album, instead. This takes getting used to, as does the process of selecting multiple photos to upload or changing your mind and removing one. Wired The product highlights the company’s commitment to its mobile business. But considering Facebook’s recent purchase of the photo-sharing app Instagram, it’s hard not to compare the two. Silicon Valley Mercury News Facebook agreed to acquire Instagram on April 9 for cash and stock then valued at $1 billion, but the value of the stock has widely varied after the Menlo Park, Calif.-headquartered social network went public last week and has experienced volatility on Wall Street. The deal has not closed, and Facebook recently changed wording in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings that indicated it did not expect the acquisition to be complete in the current quarter. Reuters Less than a week after its IPO, Facebook is already facing multiple lawsuits by disgruntled shareholders who claim that the company and its underwriters told only select institutional investors about the social media company’s weakened growth forecast. This is not the first time investors in a hot tech company’s initial public offering have alleged that underwriters favored their regular clients at the expense of the little guys. Read more

Yahoo!’s got a brand new search tool that will follow you from your desktop all the way home.  Launched Wednesday night, Yahoo! Axis is socially connected, spatially redesigned, and has some unusual features that definitely make it worth a test drive. See a demo and screenshots here.

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Facebook IPO Week: The Basics (PC Magazine)
Big news for Facebook this week — and no, not just because the company is testing new ways for its users to annoy each other in the form of paid-for “highlighted” posts. Actually, it’s Facebook IPO week! The significance of this fact carries a ton of importance if you’re an institutional investor, a small amount of importance if you’re a neophyte investor, and absolutely no meaning whatsoever if you think the stock market is little more than organized gambling. ZDNET Going public brings with it all new pressures. For venture-backed companies such as Facebook, it means a difficult transition from the multi-year expectation on delivering returns to the quarterly results horizon. Even in the extremely fast-moving world of Internet companies, this can come as a shock to the system. AP He famously wears a hoodie, jeans and sneakers, and he was born the year Apple introduced the Macintosh. Today is his 28th birthday. With eight years on the job, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has logged more time as leader than the average CEO, whose tenure is a little more than seven years, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. Bloomberg News Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said he will buy shares in Facebook when the social networking company sells stock to the public. Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer with Steve Jobs and co-founded the company with him in 1976, said he would buy Facebook’s stock regardless of its valuation. Mashable Facebook, infamous for its changing policies and confusion among users about what they’re getting themselves into when they use the world’s largest social network, has finally aggregated all its terms and policies under the same roof. That roof — Facebook.com/policies — contains, in the words of Facebook, “Everything you need to know, all in one place.” Read more

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Apple Kills Chomp for Android (GigaOM)
Apple acquired app discovery service Chomp earlier this year, betting that it would help make app discovery easier and better on its iTunes App Store. The casualty of that acquisition is the Chomp for Android app which seems to have been discontinued. Ars Technica Chomp’s app allows users to search the App Store using a proprietary algorithm to figure out what apps actually do (instead of just using keywords or app names). The app also allows users to see which apps their Facebook or Twitter friends have reviewed, adding a social networking element to the service. MacRumors Apple reportedly paid about $50 million for Chomp, which also had a deal with Verizon to power its Android app search tools. That agreement will presumably be ending as Chomp completes its integration into Apple and focuses all of its attention on iOS. SlashGear Still, beyond the annoyance factor for Android users previously relying on Chomp to ferret out new software, the real interest should come when Apple better integrates the engine into its own store. According to sources speaking when the deal was first revealed, Apple intends to use the technology to dramatically improve the discoverability of new and interesting apps in its increasingly crowded store. Read more

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Facebook Acquires AOL Patents From Microsoft (paidContent)
Facebook announced today that it will pay $550 million to Microsoft for the right to 650 patents and patent applications. Microsoft acquired those patents and hundreds of others in a deal with AOL earlier this month. The New York Times / Bits The deal allows Facebook to bulk up its intellectual property portfolio ahead of the social networking company’s initial public offering, expected next month, and it is a further sign of the growing importance of stockpiling patents in the arsenal of any big technology company. AllFacebook Facebook is currently embroiled in a controversial patent-infringement lawsuit filed by Yahoo in March. Meanwhile, last September, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft joined forces to challenge Facebook on the online display advertising revenue front. PandoDaily Another thing is astounding about this story: The ever-bumbling AOL has actually done something smarter than Yahoo, the purple dinosaur. AOL sold and licensed its patents for a cash injection of more than $1 billion. Yahoo wanted money too, but it chose to use its patents to extort that kind of cash out of Facebook via a conveniently timed lawsuit — with zero attempt at negotiations before hand. Read more

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Facebook Smacks Back at Yahoo With Patent Claims in Counter-Lawsuit (AllThingsD)
In its counter-claim filing, involving 10 patents held by Facebook, the social networking giant said that Yahoo is infringing via a wide range of its offerings, including its homepage, content optimization, relevance engine, Flickr photo-sharing service and advertising throughout its huge site. AllFacebook The timing is dangerous for both companies, as Facebook is nearing its initial public offering, while Yahoo is poised to announce massive layoffs in the thousands. paidContent Facebook’s rapid response suggests the company is spoiling for a fight. Ordinarily, a defendant in major litigation will use procedural tactics to delay filing its defense or counterclaim. PandoDaily This fight is about so much more than Yahoo and Facebook – it’s keying off of years of anger over software patent trolling that have long been coming to an ugly head. Read more

A new VEVO-Yahoo announcement has hit the web—you can now watch VEVO videos on Yahoo! Music.

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Yahoo, in a move that will be referenced as a ‘brand disaster’, has decided to sue Facebook for infringing on 10 patents related to various social networking and advertising technologies — technologies that are seen as open ideas by most of the web community.  The backlash has been intense, and add social CRM company Yammer’s CEO David Sacks to the list of mudslingers.  In a post on Twitter, David first admonished any employee that works at Yahoo, and said that they would not hire anyone who didn’t leave the company in 60 days.

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Microsoft’s Bing might be coming up the ranks as it continues month after month gradually wearing down Google’s control over search traffic.

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Struggling Yahoo finally released the Livestand for iPad news reading app that was first announced way back in February. Yahoo discusses the technical details of the server and client technologies developed and used for the app in their developer blog.
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