It’s no secret that Facebook is worth about $100 billion because it collected personal data about its users. A lot of data. Although Twitter tracks its users too — albeit in a much less aggressive way — the company has decided to take a different route. It announced Thursday that it is joining Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox Web browser, and giving its users the ability to opt-out of being tracked in any way through Twitter. Twitter is doing this by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser that enables people to opt-out of cookies that collect personal
Read MoreFacebook employees give their CEO a standing ovation at the start of the company’s pre-IPO hackathon, which will run through the night and finish up shortly before FB shares begin trading on the NASDAQ. Photo via Facebook Product Designer Francis Luu , who has a set of pictures documenting the event.
Read MoreHere’s a memo that interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn sent his troops earlier today about some management switcheroos. No surprise that ousted CEO Scott Thompson’s first big hire from his former job at eBay’s PayPal unit is gone — just-installed-a-minute-ago commerce leader Sam Schrauger. (Also heading out, but not in the memo is PR head Amanda Pires, also from PayPal.) Also moved aside is Thompson’s Chief of Staff Marta Nichols, who had been head of investor relations at Yahoo, to a position unknown. Levinsohn’s new chief of staff is Michel Protti. So who’s in? Levinsohn favorites, of course, including: Mickie Rosen, who headed Americas media and who now gets global media and commerce; Mollie Spillman, who was co-running commerce with Schrauger and is now head of marketing (replacing former CEO Carol Bartz regime exec Penny Baldwin). For those following the soap opera that I am chief writer for, “Days of Our Yahoos,” Levinsohn became leader of the beleaguered Internet giant after a controversy over a false computer science degree on Thompson’s bio. Like sands through the hourglass, these are the former employees of our Yahoo. (At least, though, this is not a story about the Facebook IPO — hands up for those sick and tired of that one now?) Here’s the Levinsohn memo: Yahoos: Thank you for all of the feedback, support, and comments since our all-hands meetings in Sunnyvale on Monday and NYC on Wednesday. I’m fired up and I hope you are too. I believe in the power of what we’re doing. We have an incredibly talented team, unparalleled strengths in key areas and most importantly, I see the purple pride building everywhere. Let’s move forward quickly with conviction and confidence. We have a lot to do. The most pressing thing I heard from you is the desire to clearly define our vision and strategy. I promise you we will be transparent and plan to articulate this in the coming weeks. Right now, we’re identifying the most critical priorities and initiatives, clarifying the scope and charter of teams, ensuring we’re positioned to build on successes quickly and effectively, and focusing on Q2. As part of this, there are a few changes to the structure of my leadership team beginning today: **Mickie Rosen is now the head of global media and commerce. Mickie has done a fantastic job driving our Americas media network and will now lead the global media team — including media editorial, business development and partnerships, product, design, and engineering.
Read MoreDavid Karp has focused on expanding Tumblr Inc.’s network of free bloggers for the past five years. Today, 55 million of them are posting text, photos and videos on the site. Even Beyoncé and Jay-Z turned to Tumblr’s blogging platform earlier this year to release the first photos of their newborn to the public. But now, both Mr. Karp, a 25-year-old New Yorker, and his company are heading into a risky new phase: Making the site profitable. For the first time, he is making plans to sell advertising and sponsorships to Tumblr’s network of bloggers and their followers. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreNowadays, more and more people are turning to their phones instead of digital cameras for their picture-taking needs. For one thing, it’s convenient (you always have your phone with you), and two, the cameras on smartphones are getting better. However, there are still some great advantages to having a dedicated digital camera, and Sony today introduced two new cameras designed to deliver better-looking portraits and actions shots. First up is the Sony Alpha NEX-F3. The 16.1-megapixel camera features a pocket-size body with interchangeable lenses, so it’s ideal for consumers who desire a compact body size akin to point-and-shoot cameras but want a bit more power and flexibility in lens choices. Due out in June for $600, the camera will ship with a more general purpose 18-55mm lens, but a telezoom lens with 11x zoom will also be available for $850. If you’re looking for a new Facebook profile picture, the NEX-F3 has a 180-degree tilting LCD screen to help you frame self portraits. In addition, an Auto Portrait Framing feature takes note of a subject’s position in the picture and crops out any excess scenery for better composition.
Read MoreA two percent decline in mobile phone shipments during the first quarter of 2012 may have hurt some handset vendors, but it did little to slow Samsung, which was the world’s largest mobile handset vendor for the first three months of the year. According to the latest metrics from Gartner — which measure sales of handsets to customers, not shipments into the channel — Samsung sold 86.6 million mobile phones in the first quarter, 25.9 percent more than it sold during the same period a year ago. That was enough to give it a 20.7 percent share of the market and seize the title of “world’s largest mobile handset vendor from Nokia, which sold 83.2 million cell phones during the quarter as its market share slipped to 19.8 percent from 25.1 percent a year ago. Unfortunate news for Nokia, which had been the market’s leader since 1998, but inevitable given the company’s recent decline and, perhaps, its choice of Windows Phone as an OS for its newest handsets. Because what’s driving Samsung’s growth is Android. According to Gartner’s sales data, Samsung was by far the largest Android smartphone vendor, claiming nearly 44 percent of Android-based smartphone sales. Interestingly, no other Android phone manufacturer captured more than 10 percent of the market. So if Samsung commandeered the handset market’s top spot in the first quarter and Nokia its second, who claimed third? Apple, which sold enough iPhones to capture 7.9 percent of the total mobile phone market. As for mobile OS market share, Android continues to rule the market — 56 percent of smartphones sold to end users globally in the first quarter of 2012 run the OS, far more than the 22.9 percent running Apple’s iOS.
Read MoreWith 50 percent of the mobile browser market in its home market of China, UCWeb is now looking across the Pacific. UC’s next target is the U.S., where the company released localized Android and iOS versions this past week and plans to open up a Silicon Valley office later this year. (It has already made inroads into India, where it has 20 percent share and is close to knocking off market leader Opera, execs said.) UCWeb's Roy Rong and Yu Yongfu visit AllThingsD. UC Browser is more than a just dumb container for Web sites; in China, the browser includes its own virtual currency accounts, identity system, social network and navigation services. In a way, it’s more like a mobile-only Facebook platform than the pure Chrome or Safari browsers. Plus, UC browser is quite fast, because the company maintains local data centers from where it compresses Web sites and sends them to phones. Opera Mini and Amazon’s Kindle Fire Silk browser use similar techniques. Bridging to the U.S. market won’t necessarily be easy, but UC’s design and experience across the spectrum of low- to high-end phones could be instructive. CEO Yu Yongfu — who’s on a grand tour of Silicon Valley this week — emphasized that while his company started doing all this in 2004, the U.S.
Read MoreChina Mobile told its shareholders on Wednesday that the company is in talks with Apple on carrying the iPhone. “China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation,” Chairman Xi Guohua said, according to Bloomberg . “When there is more specific news, we will disclose it.” The company reportedly indicated it is unclear whether a deal will be reached this year. An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment. However, sources have said that a meeting with China Mobile was among the stops CEO Tim Cook made during a China trip earlier this year . With roughly two thirds of a billion users, China Mobile is the biggest carrier in the world, as measured by number of customers. The company’s current 3G network doesn’t work with today’s iPhone, but a next generation iPhone could well work with China Mobile’s 4G network, which is currently in a few spots. China Mobile has also applied to offer service in the United States, Reuters said , but it is unclear how well that bid will be received
Read MoreThere are a bunch of ways to explain away GM’s decision to stop spending ad dollars on Facebook . We’ll get to those. But there’s one thing that even the most ardent Facebook fan can’t argue with: Facebook advertising is very much a work in progress. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Facebook itself: “We believe that most advertisers are still learning and experimenting with the best ways to leverage Facebook to create more social and valuable ads,” the company says in its IPO filing . If you’re a Facebook bull, those words sound reassuring. Facebook sold $3 billion worth of ads last year , and it’s just getting started. Imagine what happens when things really kick in . But if you’re a skeptic, and there are lots of them, that uncertainity is a real problem. When Google went public in 2004, it had already built AdWords, the search ad engine that still generates the majority of its revenue today. Facebook doesn’t have an AdWords, so it doesn’t have a tried-and-true plan it can present to advertisers: Put dollars in here, see results over there . Instead Facebook marketers try different things over time. A few years back, they were all building Facebook apps. Then they started concentrating on amassing fans/followers
Read MoreEven though Groupon continues to carry the warning that its financial processes are weak, a handful of analysts upgraded Groupon to a buy rating today and investors sent the stock soaring after the company released impressive first-quarter results yesterday. Apparently the final reassurance analysts and investors were looking for was that the company is indeed still growing. Despite taking several measures over the past couple of months in the wake of an awkward fourth-quarter earnings revision, Groupon has not been able to regain investor confidence and has watched its stock price slowly dwindle to half its IPO price of $20 a share. Today, the company’s stock opened at $14.93 a share before settling at $12.17 at the close, up 3.7 percent. At least two analysts were bullish on yesterday’s first-quarter results, upgrading Groupon’s stock to a buy. Sterne Agee upgraded Groupon from neutral to a buy and set a price target of $20. In a note to investors, analysts Arvind Bhatia and Brett Strauser wrote that the strong first quarter “alleviated several concerns,” including Groupon’s ability to have operating leverage. An additional plus, they wrote, is that the stock is trading so far below its IPO price. Likewise, Mark Mahaney from Citi wrote that “we’ll grab this deal,” and upgraded the stock to a buy with a $22 price target. Four factors drove his decision: 33 percent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth in North America, international margins turning positive for the first time, marketing spending declining for the fourth quarter in a row and the very low stock price. As my colleague Ina Fried reported yesterday , Groupon’s first-quarter revenues topped the company’s prior forecast as well as analyst expectations, totaling $559.3 million during the period, compared with $295.5 million a year ago.
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