Social

OpenTable acquires Foodspotting for $10m

January 31, 2013 2:18 am by April Dembosky

Turns out people’s obsession with photographing their food is worth millions of dollars.

Foodspotting, a three-year old mobile app that allows people to post photos and reviews of dishes, has been acquired by OpenTable, the online reservation system, for $10m in cash.

Foodspotting’s catalogue of 3m photos is small compared to the number of food images on Instagram, the Facebook-owned mobile photo-sharing site with more than 100m users. Instagram could prove a formidable force for the new partnership to battle if Facebook ever decides to build an advertising tool linking food photos with restaurants. Read more

Posted in Digital media, Mobile, Social |

What to look for in Facebook’s results

January 29, 2013 11:02 pm by April Dembosky

Wall Street is predicting a good showing from Facebook on Wednesday when it reports financial results for the fourth quarter of 2012, and the full year.

Investor sentiment towards Facebook appears to have shifted towards a cautious optimism in the last quarter, with the company’s stock price rising back above $30 for the first time since its initial public offering in May, when shares were priced at $38, then quickly fell below $20.

Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group predicts the stock will pop after the next couple of earnings reports, then “come back to earth” as the market better understands the company.

This quarter, Facebook’s revenues will reflect advertising purchases related to the November presidential election and the holiday shopping season. Analysts are expecting the social network to report earnings per share of 15 cents on $1.53bn of revenue. For the full year, estimates average at 52 cents earnings per share on $5.03bn in revenue. Read more

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Posted in Digital media, Mobile, Social |

Tim Bradshaw Twitter flies to $9bn despite Facebook’s fall

January 25, 2013 10:34 pm by Tim Bradshaw

It’s been a torrid 12 months on the public markets for consumer internet stocks, with Facebook, Groupon and Zynga all seeing their valuations collapse after going public.

Yet during that period, privately held Twitter has managed to increase its valuation: a tender offer to employees by a BlackRock fund prices the social media site at more than $9bn, sources familiar with the situation told the FT. Read more

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Posted in Social, Tech, Tech Finance |

Story of the Week: Facebook’s slice of the search cake

January 20, 2013 5:00 am by Maryam Nabi

Interesting commentary from around the Web on the tech story that made headlines this week.

This week Mark Zuckerberg took the wraps off Graph Search, Facebook’s revamped search engine that allows users to search through their social connections. The unveiling of the feature triggered a wave of discussion from tech commentators over whether the social network can add a new revenue stream by going after Google’s large slice of the search cake. Read more

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Posted in Internet, Social, Tech |
From inside business column January 16, 2013

It’s not what you get out of it that matters, it’s what you put in.

That is the real significance of Facebook’s inelegantly named Graph Search, the new “social” search engine it unveiled this week. The company that probably already knows more about you than any other single business would now like you to divulge one other, extremely valuable thing: what you want.

 Read more

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Posted in Internet, Social |

Richard Waters Facebook announces Graph Search

January 15, 2013 4:58 pm by Richard Waters

Facebook has announced a new social search service at an event at its HQ in California today.

Mark Zuckerberg has gone out of his way to stress that “graph search” is not intended to be a Google-killer. But for advertisers, this could be a significant moment. With a trillion social connections, Facebook believes that searching the social graph will yield something more revealing than trawling links on the Web.

Read our blow-by-blow analysis live from the event as the news unfolded.

 Read more

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Posted in Digital media, Internet, Social, Tech |

AP juggles impartial news and Samsung-sponsored CES tweets

January 7, 2013 7:58 pm by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson

The right balance between commercial imperatives and editorial purity has been debated since Benjamin Franklin first made a habit of carrying advertising in the Pennsylvania Gazette. But when the Associated Press announced on Monday that it would be sending out sponsored tweets from Samsung during the Consumer Electronics Show, the news agency still managed to raise eyebrows. Read more

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Posted in CES 2013, Digital media, Social, Tech |

Buzzfeed raises $19.3m and heads to UK

January 3, 2013 3:46 pm by Duncan Robinson

Buzzfeed, the social news website that publishes everything from funny pictures of cats to long-form reporting on the US presidential race, has secured $19.3m in funding to bulk up its original editorial content and expand internationally.

The website will launch an office in London later this year, according to Jon Steinberg, Buzzfeed’s president and chief operating officer.

“London is the natural next expansion,” said Mr Steinberg. Although the office will include both editorial and sales staff it will be “very small” with “fewer than 10” staff. Read more

Posted in Digital media, Internet, Social, Tech, Tech Finance |

Tim Bradshaw Zuckerberg donates $500m to Silicon Valley charity

December 19, 2012 4:00 am by Tim Bradshaw

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla have made their biggest charitable donation yet, giving Facebook stock worth $500m to a Silicon Valley foundation. Read more

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Posted in Digital media, Social |

Tim Bradshaw Twitter tops 200m users

December 19, 2012 12:05 am by Tim Bradshaw

Twitter has topped 200m active users, more than doubling its audience since September last year.

While 2011 saw Twitter come to the fore in political events such as the Arab Spring protests and the UK scandal over superinjunctions, 2012 has seen it gain more mainstream attention through international events like the US presidential elections and the London Olympic games, as well as on-screen promotions of tweets and hashtags on TV news and talk shows, where its live, up-to-the-minute updates can really shine. Read more

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Posted in Digital media, Social |
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