Earlier this year we asked if Facebook was “monopolising the social networking market“.

An upstart social network aggregator, Power.com, had sued Facebook in California court, and it looked like the law might force Facebook to open up its walled-garden. Power was alleging that Facebook restricts users and stifles competition, and was in violation of California’s unfair competition laws and US antitrust laws.

The answer seems to be no. On Friday a judge dismissed the case. Power’s claims “contain no factual allegations,” wrote US district judge Jeremy Fogel. Continue reading "Facebook cleared of antitrust claims (Updated)"

Social games are oft criticised for being little more than drivel. It’s a fair charge. After all, there’s not much intellectual value in games like Sorority Life and Mob Wars.

Nonetheless, they have become among the most popular activities for users of social networks. Zynga, the largest maker of social games, says it has 50m daily active users of its various games, most of those on Facebook. In turn, Zynga is raking in cash through the sale of virtual goods.

Now Zynga is trying to do a bit of good in the world. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco yesterday, Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus said the company was now raising money for charities through “social virtual goods”. Continue reading "Social games to change the world?"

Silicon Valley cheered three months ago when there was a slight uptick in venture capital investment during the second quarter of the year. Sure, investment was down 50 per cent from a year ago, but at least it was up from the first quarter, representing a “new normal” from which growth could begin anew.

Turns out the celebrations were premature.  Investments in US venture-backed companies dropped in the third quarter, putting 2009 on track to be the worst year since 2003, according to new data from  Dow Jones VentureSource. The total number of deals was up to 616, from 595 the previous quarter. But the total dollars invested was down to $5.1bn from $5.4bn.

“The slow recovery we’ve seen for venture capital has faltered,” said Jessica Canning, director of global research at Dow Jones VentureSource. “As liquidity and fundraising lag after the economic meltdown in 2008, investors have no choice but to keep a tight rein on investments until the industry is on more solid ground.”

Nor are many venture firms raising new funds. Just 17 VC firms raised new funds in the third quarter, the smallest number since the third quarter of 1994, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

What’s worse, VentureSource didn’t take a rosy view of the future. Continue reading "Quiet all that talk of a VC recovery"

Ebay’s attempt to offload Skype to a group of investors just got even more complicated.

Joost and Joltid, the companies owned by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, today filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against Mike Volpi and Index Ventures, two of the players in the group seeking to buy Skype. If granted in full, the injunction would essentially ban Mr Volpi and Index from participating in the deal for the time being.

The motion is the latest move in a legal onslaught from Mr Zennstrom and Mr Friis that began even before the current deal for Skype was announced, and seems designed either to get them control of Skype or, more likely, make sure they get a piece of the action after a sale. Continue reading "Skype founders try to put brakes on sale"

Part of Amazon’s success is attributable to the ease it has brought to the payments experience. Shopping on Amazon.com is made simple by Amazon storing much of a customer’s checkout information and minimising clicks, and a few years ago Amazon rolled out Checkout, which lets users on other websites pay using their Amazon credits or payments information stored on Amazon. (Amazon doesn’t reveal Checkout has been successful.)

Now Amazon has released a Mobile Payments Service. The programme will let e-commerce sites integrate the Checkout experience into sites designed for mobile phones, presenting yet another option for developers who are eager to encourage more mobile-commerce. Continue reading "Amazon gets into mobile payments"

“No, Your Social Networking ‘Friend’ Isn’t Really in Trouble Overseas” — That’s the title of a press release put out yesterday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The release was a warning to users of social networking sites, encouraging them to be sceptical of suspicious requests, even if they look like they are coming from friends. In a recent popular scam, fraudsters have been infiltrating accounts, announcing they are in trouble overseas, and asking their friends for money. Continue reading "Scammers and spammers target social sites"

When I talked with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in July, he said that much of his company’s future would play out not on Facebook.com, but on the myriad other sites across the web that use Facebook Connect.

Sure, Facebook’s user base was growing fast (it had topped 200m when we spoke, and recently eclipsed 300m), but Mr Zuckerberg said the real potential was in allowing users to log in to other sites, such as CNET and Citysearch, with their Facebook identity.

“That’s a lot of the future,” he said at the time. “A really interoperable graph of people’s identity that they can bring with them to other places.”

Today Facebook unveiled two new features for Facebook Connect that should help bring Mr Zuckerberg’s vision to fruition. Continue reading "Facebook makes it easier to Connect"

Listing its cars on Ebay was evidently not a novel enough gimmick to drive new sales to slumping Detroit automaker General Motors.

A month and a half after announcing their “virtual showroom”, America’s biggest automaker and biggest online auction site are calling off their partnership.

The trial  was set to end on September 30, and will not be renewed. The trial programme, which let California buyers haggle with local dealers online, was heralded as a “win-win for both sides” if it worked.

But after 50 or so days, it looks as if it didn’t. The Ebay site may have attracted 1.5m hits, producing 15,000 leads for dealers. But neither Ebay nor GM would say how many cars were sold, suggesting that the results were less than stellar. Continue reading "Ebay / GM call off partnership"