Change.gov is coming — and has Obama picked his CTO?
President-elect Barack Obama has long said he wants to create the position of chief technology officer in his cabinet, a person who will make government more accessible to citizens. The first step in that plan, reportedly coming later today, is the launch of a web site about the new administration’s transition into the White House. Not yet live, it’s called Change.gov.
Meanwhile, the Obama has named Julius Genachowski — a former executive at Internet company... Continue Reading
As MySpace’s revenues continue to grow, its music site may now have a CEO
MySpace Music, the music site created by the News Corp.-owned social network in partnership with major record labels, may finally have a chief executive: Courtney Holt. He was first named as a candidate in a CNET article last week. Today, MediaMemo says his contract is almost but not quite signed.
MySpace Music launched at the end of September without a chief executive. Ex-Facebook chief operating officer Owen Van Natta and a variety of others have... Continue Reading
Here are the election sites I’m twitchily refreshing every minute
Yeah, this post will likely be completely uninteresting in a few hours.
But for those of us living in the moment, online….
Data analysis sites:
Pollster.com — Live poll analysis and map
Five Thirty Eight — Live poll analysis
Google’s live map — With AP data
Yahoo’s live map — Slick (via Eric Doyle)
News blogs:
Drudge Report — Blaring headlines that seem to be ahead of everyone else
Silicon Alley... Continue Reading
The constantly updating U.S. election map widget, here
We’ve tried to stay focused on technology and investing here at VentureBeat — but the craziness of this year’s election has basically overcome us by this point.
Here’s the live-updating map widget of the U.S. elections, provided by Google.
We’ll be fully back to our beat tomorrow.
Glam slows payments to publishers in its ad network
Glam, a women’s site publisher and ad network, is becoming more like most other ad networks out there. It will further delay payments that it owes to partner publishers, starting this month.
Publishers typically have to wait awhile for ad payments, whether in old media formats like print, or new media formats like online ad networks. First, an ad will run with a publisher, then the advertiser gets the bill, then they pay the agency... Continue Reading
B2B media platform company Diva.AG gets funding from Creathor Venture
Diva.AG, a Zurich, Switzerland based company, offers a business-to-business “platform” technology that allows media companies to manage digital assets such as videos. It has raised an undisclosed amount of money from Creathor Ventures.
Data-sharing service Gnip raises $3.5 million
Gnip, a company that provides technology to help other web services quickly share information provided by users, has raised $3.5 million.
Here’s how Gnip works: When a user updates their information on a site like Digg or Twitter, it takes that information and updates it quickly on the user’s accounts at other sites, such as Plaxo’s personal information aggregator service, Pulse.
The San Francisco, Calif. and Boulder, Colo.-based company has already signed partners like Yahoo... Continue Reading
Reports: Do you prefer your banner ad revenue weak, or really weak?
Prices for banner ads dropped eleven percent across 270 ad networks last quarter, a new report by ad-matching company The Rubicon Project shows. It’s hardly surprising that this form of online advertising is getting hit by the economic downturn. While search engine ads can demonstrably make advertisers money due to users doing things like clicking through to buy products, banner ads are aimed more at generating brand recognition — and TV still does that better,... Continue Reading
Social network ad company Adknowlege buys Adonomics
Adonomics, an analytics service for Facebook apps, started off strong last year, led by developer Jesse Farmer. But Farmer left for other projects and now Adonomics has been sold off to social network advertising company Cubics, part of online ad targeting company Adknowledge. Adonomics data services will be integrated with Cubics’ other ad services. More on AllFacebook.com.
In bid for international money, Facebook takes gifts off dollar standard
Facebook quietly announced it has taken its paid virtual gifts off the dollar standard, last Friday evening. The company is moving to a universal, floating currency of “credits.” The intent is to optimize paid gift-giving among users at prices that make sense to those who use non-dollar currencies.
With the new credits schema, gifts that have cost $1 to buy now cost 100 credits. By making gift pricing more flexible, Facebook could also start pricing... Continue Reading
Reunion.com and Wink merge to form new people search site
Reunion.com, a social network of sorts that aggregates data about you, is merging with people-focused search engine Wink. The two companies will relaunch as a single, branded people search service early next year. They already made a strategic partnership last year, and Reunion.com began providing Wink’s search engine on its site then.
Los Angeles-based Reunion.com started in 2002 as more of a social network than what it is today. Since then, it has collected user... Continue Reading
Irrepressible widget-maker RockYou targets Asia, raises $17M
RockYou, a company that started out two years ago making simple slideshow widgets for MySpace, and, more recently, applications for social networks including Facebook, is now invading Asia.
It has taken on strategic funding and sweet deals from big regional partners: $14 million from Japanese carrier Softbank, which is the largest shareholder in Yahoo Japan, and $3 million from the venture arm of Korean carrier SK Telecom.
Redwood city, Calif.-based RockYou could be setting itself... Continue Reading
MTV Networks starts making money on MySpace, via video ad-matching tech
MTV Networks can now make money when a MySpace user uploads its content — say a clip from comedy newscast “The Daily Show,” or prank show “Punk’d” — via ad-matching technology created by a Palo Alto, Calif. startup called Auditude.
Similar to the “Content ID” system recently introduced by Google-owned YouTube, Auditude automatically identifies professional video clips and lets a content owner serve targeted ads alongside them.
In the meantime, MTV owner Viacom is pressing... Continue Reading
Patent lawyer on Bilski ruling: Without tech, your patent might have a problem
A top U.S. patent court delivered a ruling yesterday clarifying what types of innovations can be patented. Many anti-patent groups took the ruling, called In re Bilski, as good news. It specified that an invention must entail some form of “machine or transformation,” and it excluded a number of business method patents. But the legal world is still trying to get its head around the implications, and pro-patent lawyers are already spotting loopholes.
So what... Continue Reading
What we know and what we don’t know about Facebook’s finances
Updated twice
Is Facebook desperate for cash because its growth has caused costs to far outpace revenue, as TechCrunch suggests? Not necessarily. Revenue will be in the hundreds of millions, and will greatly exceed the $150 million the company brought in last year, a source close the company tells me — pointing out that outsiders “don’t have a good appreciation for the diversity” of Facebook’s revenue streams.
EMarketer, a third party marketing research firm, has... Continue Reading
Report: Facebook looking to raise more money, fast
See this follow-up article with additional reporting and comment from Facebook.
Facebook’s growth to 110 million monthly active users worldwide has been so fast that costs have been increasing more than revenue. Now the company is scrambling to raise money to pay for its gains. That’s what a report from TechCrunch says, at least, citing sources that place the company’s chief financial officer, Gideon Yu, in Dubai this week. Maybe Yu is trying to raise... Continue Reading
Ten years later, court does mulligan and rejects “business process” patents
Thousands of patents that cover business models and software are likely headed into history’s dustbin, per a ruling today by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Specifically, the court rejected an appeal by the founders of a company called WeatherWise — they had been trying to patent a method of managing risk associated with sudden changes in energy costs, based on existing methods used by utility companies.
When one entity holds a process... Continue Reading
Motorola says no Android phones until the 2009 holiday season
Motorola has become the sick man of the Open Handset Alliance, the industry consortium backing the Google-created Android operating system. The third largest handset manufacturer in the world, Motorola saw sales shrink more than 30 percent from a year ago, according to its third-quarter report out today, leaving it with 8.4 percent market share.
The company still plans to bet a lot of what’s left of its handset business on Android, though. A device running... Continue Reading
Post-redesign, Facebook’s platform working well for some applications
Whether you love Facebook’s new redesign or hate it, one thing is clear: The changes have not killed the developer platform, contrary to some reports. It is certainly true that some applications have lost substantial traffic, but not nearly all of them.
For example, the SocialCalendar application, which offers features for coordinating your social life with your Facebook friends, has surged from 478,467 monthly active users as of August 10th to 2,178,010 users as of... Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo developer platform launches, Wal-Mart sells G1, and more
Here’s the latest action:
So many games, so little time — The typical household video game collection boasts 48 titles, but 11 percent of gamers say they own unopened games. That’s according to a new survey by analyst firm the NPD Group.
Desktop software still relevant, Microsoft chief executive Ballmer maintains — His email to customers, here.
Yahoo launches developer platform — See our preview from last week.
Discounted G1 phones go on sale at... Continue Reading