Tag: Facebook

NationBuilder raises $6.25m to build political organising software

March 8, 2012 10:00 pm by April Dembosky

Joe Green, NationBuilder co-founder

In the summer of 2004, Joe Green, then 21, lived in a trailer with a 70-year old roommate in the 120-degree Arizona desert, while his college friends holed up in a house in Silicon Valley were building a website called TheFacebook.

Green led the grassroots campaign for John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, for four months in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, mobilising local residents to knock on their neighbours’ doors and win votes for Kerry.

Today he’s become the president of NationBuilder, a start-up company that builds software to make jobs like the one he toiled at during that hot summer easier.

Continue reading: “NationBuilder raises $6.25m to build political organising software”

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Posted in Internet, Social, Software, Tech |

Tim Bradshaw Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales dislikes Facebook buttons

March 7, 2012 10:57 am by Tim Bradshaw

Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales says that the online encyclopedia is “very unlikely” to integrate Facebook’s Like button or other ways of sharing on the social network, despite it becoming an increasingly important source of traffic, because he is concerned about readers’ privacy.

Speaking at the FT’s Digital Media Conference in London on Wednesday, Mr Wales also said that he was more concerned about big technology companies and app stores controlling the internet’s creativity than threats to “net neutrality”.

Continue reading: “Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales dislikes Facebook buttons”

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Posted in Digital media, Internet, Social, Tech |

Founders Fund backs “Facebook for scientists”

February 23, 2012 12:55 am by April Dembosky

ResearchGate, a social network for scientists and academic researchers, has received a second round of venture funding from Founders Fund, adding to the growing cadre of health and science related social start-ups attracting the attention of Silicon Valley investors.

The Series B round builds on the company’s earlier financing from social networking VC gurus Benchmark and Accel in 2010. The company did not disclose the funding amounts for either round.

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Posted in Social |
From FT.com February 15, 2012

Last month the European Commission proposed adding a new “right to be forgotten” to privacy law. This deceptively simple idea is a ticking time-bomb in the booming internet economy. It is also essential – both for Europeans and Americans – to protect personal privacy in the age of pervasive social media and cloud computing, writes Richard Falkenrath, cybersecurity adviser and adjunct senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Continue reading: “Opinion: Google must remember our right to be forgotten”

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Posted in Tech |

No Burning Man ticket? Blame Facebook

February 11, 2012 1:05 am by April Dembosky

At the exact same time Facebook filed for its IPO last week, Burning Man, the iconic counter-culture art festival held annually in the Nevada desert, began announcing the results of its first-ever, ill-fated ticket lottery system.

Designed to overcome the computer glitches and server crashes that beleaguered the 2011 ticket sale, the 2012 random lottery system succeeded mainly in infuriating long-time Burning Man participants, about 70 per cent of whom did not get tickets.

Continue reading: “No Burning Man ticket? Blame Facebook”

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Posted in Social |

Tim Bradshaw Facebook’s deal with Bango points to new mobile app payments

February 8, 2012 11:58 am by Tim Bradshaw

Listen carefully in the City of London and, very faintly, you may be able to hear the bell ringing for round two of Facebook’s simmering battle with Apple over mobile apps.

Bango, a small mobile payments firm, quietly announced to the stock market on Wednesday that it has “signed an agreement to provide payment services to Facebook”.

Continue reading: “Facebook’s deal with Bango points to new mobile app payments”

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Posted in Digital media, Mobile, Social |

Tim Bradshaw Samsung, Instagram and Twitter score at Super Bowl

February 6, 2012 12:06 pm by Tim Bradshaw

Tech news from around the web, Super Bowl edition:

Although automotive companies were the most prolific advertisers during Sunday’s Super Bowl, many of the $7m-a-minute spots also involved tech companies – large and small.

Continue reading: “Samsung, Instagram and Twitter score at Super Bowl”

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Posted in Digital media, Social, Tech |

Story of the Week: Facebook’s IPO filing

February 4, 2012 4:21 pm by Maryam Nabi

This week, Facebook’s much-anticipated IPO filing gave a glimpse into the company’s financials and the thinking of its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

For many commentators, the filing raised questions about whether Facebook can continue this pace of accelerated growth.

Continue reading: “Story of the Week: Facebook’s IPO filing”

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Posted in Internet, Social, Tech |
From JOHN GAPPER COLUMN February 2, 2012

Mark Zuckerberg

At long last Facebook has filed for its initial public offering, the most eagerly awaited event in Silicon Valley since Google went public in 2004. Having read the prospectus, with its details of how profitable and cash-rich the social networking enterprise is, may I suggest it calls the whole thing off.

There is still time to cancel its IPO and the filing provides plenty of reasons why it ought to, and why Mark Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive, would probably be happier if it did. He could carry on running Facebook as a private company and would not have to justify himself to outsiders.

Continue reading: “Facebook ought to ditch its public offering”

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Posted in Social, Tech Finance |

Chris Nuttall The force is with digital, mobile games

February 2, 2012 10:28 pm by Chris Nuttall

Two trends clear in Facebook’s IPO filing on Wednesday were the inexorable rise in importance of digital-based gaming revenues and the growth in mobile – we learned Zynga was a key revenue-generator for Facebook and half of Facebook’s members were now users of its mobile products .

Earnings and data from Electronic Arts, THQ and Japan’s Gree over the past 24 hours further emphasise that the old order of disc-based console gaming will have a declining share of consumers’ attention, as consoles become more general entertainment boxes and smartphones and tablets proliferate.

Continue reading: “The force is with digital, mobile games”

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Posted in Games |
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Richard Waters, Chris Nuttall and April Dembosky in the FT's San Francisco bureau share their views - plus tech insights from Tim Bradshaw and Maija Palmer in London and Robin Kwong in Taipei.



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Contact the FT Tech Hub team: richard.waters@ft.com, chris.nuttall@ft.com, april.dembosky@ft.com, maija.palmer@ft.com, robin.kwong@ft.com and tim.bradshaw@ft.com.

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