• Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian internet group that has invested $200m in Facebook, will purchase up to $100m in common stock from existing shareholders in the social network. The deal clarifies Facebook’s valuation, giving its common stock a value of about $6.5bn. This is higher than the rumoured valuations last autumn when a similar deal was considered, but lower than the value of Facebook’s preferred stock.
• Microsoft escalated its battle with arch rival Google, reacting to an assault on one of its core businesses with the announcement of a free online version of its widely used Office software, to be launched next year. While likely to take only a small bite out of Office revenues in the short term, the move represents one of the most radical steps yet by Microsoft as it tries to refocus its software business around the internet, according to analysts. Continue reading "techfile 14.07.09"

Our notion of real time as it relates to the web is still fuzzy in its newness.

The Real-Time Stream Crunchup event in Silicon Valley was the first major conference to look at this year’s buzz trend - the real-time web. Ironically, it was running over an hour late by the time I got there on Friday. Continue reading "Reaching for the moon in real time"

• The chipmaker Broadcom has admitted defeat in its attempt to acquire smaller rival Emulex, putting its market share in corporate networks and data centres under pressure. In what has been a bitter takeover battle, the Emulex board unanimously rejected Broadcom’s latest and final offer of $11 a share, valuing the company at $912m.
• The waves of cyber-attacks that crippled government and commercial websites in the US and South Korea relied on roughly 200,000 computers, more than triple earlier estimates, and used an established technique for spreading the infections through other compromised internet pages, researchers said on Thursday.
• Following widespread reports that advertisers were being overcharged on Facebook, one company has filed a lawsuit against the social network. RootZoo, a sports site, is alleging that Facebook charged it for more “clickthroughs” than RootZoo actually received. RootZoo also said that it sought compensation from Facebook, but was denied.

• Microsoft and Brussels have started a new round of talks over a potential settlement of the software company’s antitrust travails in Europe. The resumption of what one person close to the situation described as the “on again, off again” discussions comes as the regulators move closer to imposing stringent penalties on Microsoft over its practice of “bundling” its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system.
• Facebook showed off the power of its Connect service today, as about 1m of its users logged into sites like CNN, ABC and MTV to chat about the Michael Jackson memorial service. Some members were wallflowers, but others were chatty, posting upwards of 800,000 status updates through the partner sites. Twitter, no doubt, also experienced a boost during the memorial service, but Facebook clearly proved that it, too, could be a prominent forum for public discussion. Continue reading "techfile 08.07.09"

• FriendFeed accelerated the move towards truly real-time search engines, with the introduction of real-time, constantly updating search results. As companies including Twitter, Facebook, Google and even Microsoft jockey to capture the audience for real-time search, FriendFeed remains a small player, but a technological innovator.
• The woman accused of cyberbullying a 13-year-old into committing suicide had her conviction overturned by a federal judge. Lori Drew and a group of teenagers had harassed Megan Meier by through pseudonymous accounts on MySpace, leading Ms Meier to hang herself.
• Microsoft withdrew the new ad for Internet Explorer 8 that had been roundly criticsed as tasteless, and described by some as “the worst technology commercial ever”. The ad, which was meant to highlight a feature in IE8 that lets users surf the web without their browsing history being recorded, featured a woman projectile vomiting after she saw what her husband had been looking at online.

David Gelles meets Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in Friday’s Financial Times and looks at the prospects for the world’s biggest social network, with 225m active users:

“Even as he reacts to new threats, Mr Zuckerberg is intent on extending his company’s reach and deepening its connections with its members. In this, at least, he has shown some remarkable results. Facebook’s user numbers are growing quickly – more than half have signed up in the past year. It is available in 50 languages and in just about every country in the world. Perhaps most importantly, Facebook users seem to be addicted. The site, it turns out, is “sticky”. More than 100m users log on to the site at least once a day.”

Continue reading “What friends are for”

FT correspondents in Cairo, Rhiyadh and Dubai have been investigating how social networking and sites like Facebook and Twitter are being used in the Arab world, beyond the protests in Iran:

“When Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger and political activist, was detained by prosecutors in April after an altercation with his neighbour, a police officer, he used Twitter, the social networking website, to keep the world updated on his interrogation.”

Continue reading “Arab online dissent stretches beyond Iran”

• The Palm Pre is heading for the UK, with O2 close to announcing an exclusive deal to sell the well-received smartphone, according to the Guardian. Meanwhile, an analyst said he believed Palm was on track to deliver 1m of the handsets to Sprint in its first quarter, well above most most estimates.
• A California appeals court ruled that MySpace - and by extension other internet service providers - could not be held liable if paedophiles use its service to make contact with minors. The NewsCorp social networking site is guaranteed more time in the headlines on Thursday when Lori Drew, the mother convicted on three misdemeanour counts for online harrassment of her daughter’s friend, who later committed suicide, faces sentencing.
• Facebook will begin encouraging users to make more of their personal information public to everyone on the web, a shift that moves the company into more direct competition with micro-messaging service Twitter.