Twitter's business model is starting to show. An early sign came in April, when the popular microblogging service launched in Japan and the home page for every Japanese user included a big banner ad in the top right corner.
Then, on Aug. 7, Twitter made another change, this time in the U.S., by limiting the number of people a single user could connect with, or "follow," to about 2,000. Most recently, on Aug. 14, Twitter made the biggest move yet to slash costs. It killed outbound message delivery to mobile phones via short message, or SMS,...
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Google was in the due diligence stage of the deal, where they peer deep into Digg’s technology and financial statements. Most term sheets are non binding, so anything that gives the buyer pause can be used as an excuse to walk away - but generally the buyer already has a very good idea what they are getting well before the term sheet stage.
Two sources close to the companies suggested that some issue that came up during technical due diligence was to blame. One source said that the issue was more personality driven, and that Google...
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Just four days after escaping a federal minimum-security work camp, "Spam King" Eddie Davidson shot his wife and child and wounded a teen-age girl before turning the gun on himself.
Sheriff's deputies responded to a report of gunfire in the small plains town of Bennett at about 11:15 a.m. today and found Davidson, 29-year-old Amy Lee Ann Hill and their 3-year-old daughter shot to death.
Davidson's most recent spam business, Power Promoters, was based in Bennett.
Arapahoe County Undersheriff Mark Campbell said the bodies were found...
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This one is getting passed around pretty quickly, but as he retires from Microsoft, I couldn't resist highlighting this fantastic internal email from 2003 from Bill Gates complaining about the usability of some Windows features.
---- Original Message ----
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame
I am quite disappointed at how...
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As expected Yahoo has announced a non-exclusive ad pact with Google. In an announcement, the company says it has agreed with its arch rival to run ads against some search queries as well as other of its web properties. From the announcement: “Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! will select the search term queries for which – and the pages on which – Yahoo! may offer Google paid search results.”
The nonexclusive deal is aimed at giving a lift to Yahoo’s finances, and the company said it would generate an additional $250...
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EQAL, the new name of the production company behind the pioneering online video series Lonelygirl15, has received $5 million in funding from various investors to develop more shows beyond its first franchise and KateModern in UK. The round was led by Spark Capital, and includes some Silicon Valley heavyweights including Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen, and Georges Harik, a former Google executive. Also investing, Conrad Riggs, a Hollywood producer involved with TV shows such as “Survivor” and “The Apprentice”. All this for a Santa...
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TechCrunch says Digg is now finally serious about selling itself and is gathering bids via Allen & Co. Microsoft, Google, and two media companies (CBS, News Corp.?) are said to be at the table.
The real news, though, is that Digg has apparently cut its price from the $300 million the company originally wanted. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington says Google will bid $200-$225 million and that Digg will likely accept this. Microsoft is expected to bid even less. 100M?
In an interview several weeks ago, Digg founder Kevin Rose told CNET...
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Late last night, Amazon issued a statement explaining the cause of the problem that hobbled its S3 storage system yesterday morning. It was not a hardware failure. Rather, the service's authentication system, which verifies the identity of a user, became overloaded with user requests. As one person explained to me, it amounted to a kind of accidental DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, and Amazon didn't have enough capacity in place in one of its data centers to handle the surge.
Here's Amazon's explanation:
Early this morning,...
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The Times is reporting that Yahoo wants to restart merger talks with AOL as a way of avoiding the clutches of Microsoft, a move that — if true — is roughly equivalent to screaming “we’re totally desperate” from the rooftops of Yahoo headquarters. In this case, of course, it’s difficult to know who is the more desperate of the two, Yahoo or AOL. Neither has what amounts to a viable strategy, and neither has managed to capitalize on any of their vaunted media assets, despite years of trying...
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Yahoo Inc would consider a business alliance with Google Inc as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo's strategy said on Sunday.
Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft's bid, that source said. At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said.
A second source close to Yahoo said it had received a procession of preliminary contacts by media, technology,...
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