In the wake of the run-in with St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa last week Twitter has officially launched its verified accounts beta. The service was mentioned over the weekend in Biz Stone’s blog post that made it known that Twitter would bow to no one on legal concerns that they viewed as frivolous.
Massive Layoffs Await MySpace Employees
Layoff described by one source as ":massive" are coming to MySpace although there is no official word yet from the company. MySpace shed 5% of its staff a year ago and laid of as many as 45 more last month. But these cuts will go far deeper, according to TechCrunch and could hit several hundred. Management will inevitably blame a tough economy and plummeting ad revenue, but declining traffic is the real culprit.
Google Street View Meeting EU Privacy Guidelines
Google has announced it is making additional privacy modifications to its Street View project in Europe.
Google says it is continuing to work with the Article 29 Working Party, which brings together representatives from all 27 European Data Protection Authorities. It is complying with European authorities request to provide advance notice to the public about the Street View project before driving in a new country.
The Article 29 Working Party has requested that Google set a time limit on how long it retains unblurred photos of panoramas in Street View.
Opera to Reinvent the Web Next Tuesday
Next Tuesday at 9:00 am Opera is going to reinvent the web.
Sigh. How many times has the web been "reinvented" now? I’ve lost count… but could this time be different?
What does Opera have up their sleeve? Tell us what you think.
Video Game Sales Fall In May
U.S. video game sales fell by 23 percent in May from a year ago, dipping below the one billion dollar mark for the first time since August 2007, the NPD Group said in its new report.
Sales of videogame hardware, software and accessories dropped to $863.3 million in May from $1.2 billion in May of 2008.
Hardware sales declined 30 percent to $302.5 million and software sales were off 17 percent to $448.9 million. Sales of accessories were 25 percent less at $112 million.
AP Says Scrapers Targets, Not Bloggers
The Associated Press plans soon to sic a scraper-bot on the Web to find swiped AP content. While no one would argue with taking on scraper sites, the vagueness of AP news editor Ted Bridis might be worth considering.
More Americans Going Online For Health Information
The majority (61%) of Americans are going online for health information and most are reading reviews and comments posted by other users, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Among those who have gone online, 59 percent have done at least one of the following activities:
Twitter Given Entry In AP Stylebook
Twitter hit another milestone of sorts today, and thanks to this development, members of the mainstream media have more or less lost their last excuse for mangling terms related to the site. Yes, believe it or not, the Associated Press Stylebook added Twitter.
Are You Prepared for the New AdWords Interface?
Google announced today that it has two updates regarding the release of the New Adwords Interface. For one, they’ve made the interface available to everyone who uses AdWords Standard Edition. Secondly, Google has begun the migration process already with a small number of accounts.
AOL Buys Two Local Online Media Companies
AOL has acquired two local online media companies Patch Media Corp. and Going Inc. in an effort to further build on its current local network.
Patch is a local news platform focused on smaller towns and Going is a local platform for people to find and share information about things to do in a number of cites.