Facebook adds Skype video calling
Facebook has announced video calling, powered by Skype, as the first in a series of improvements to its social networking service, used by 750m people, coming over the next few weeks and months. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
Twitter is in the process of raising funds that values the start-up at about $7bn, according to Bloomberg. The San Francisco-based micro-blogging site is in talks with investors to receive hundreds of millions of dollars, a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.
Sticking with Twitter, Mashable reports that the site is testing a Facebook-style message wall on users’ profile pages. The move will allow users to send public tweets – @ replies- to specific users directly from their profile pages. Read more
Large California-based companies are raising salaries and bonuses to prevent seasoned employees from defecting to a competitor, while compensation for junior engineers just leaving university has gone up 30-50 per cent in the last year, according to several industry insiders.
Microsoft in April announced a pay rise for its 90,000 employees. That followed Google raising salaries by 10 per cent at the end of last year to prevent a loss of talent to other Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
