Facebook Wanted To Buy German Site Before Suing
Before Facebook sued the German social networking site StudiVZ last month for copying its "look and feel," it had been in talks to purchase the site.A former StudiVZ executive says Facebook had been negotiating for months to buy the social network.
Google Leaps Into Olympic Content Race
Google’s not in its usual place ahead of the pack; you could almost compare the search giant to a runner who somehow got his feet stuck in the starting blocks. But, following Yahoo and Microsoft, Google’s finally unveiled some things related to the Summer Games.
Google Not Thrilled With AOL As Investment
The billion-dollar stake Google took in AOL to keep the company out of Microsoft’s hands nearly three years ago doesn’t look like it will approach that value now.
Libraries Expand Digital Content
In an effort to attract readers, libraries have increased the amount of digital content they offer including books, music, and movies that can be downloaded by patrons to a computer or mobile device for free.To access the program users need a library card, access to the Internet and some downloadable software such as Adobe Digital Edition, the Mobipocket Reader or the OverDrive Media Console.
McCain Camp Employs Comment Spam
At what point does campaigning become propaganda? Immediately? When does shrewd and savvy cross the line to become just plain yick? Senator John McCain’s campaign squad doesn’t seem all that concerned about these questions; blog comment spam these days is just part of the political landscape. If the landscape consists of AstroTurf, anyway.
Gmail, Google Apps Issues Resolved
A game of word association would have to go on for quite some time before most people would put "Google Apps" and "Gmail" together with "outage." The two services recently took a partial tumble, though, and the experience has left some of the affected users less than happy.
Facebook Sees Significant Growth In Japan
The Japanese language version of Facebook had more than triple the amount of visitors to its site in the past year according to comScore World Metrix.The leading social network in Japan was Mixi.jp with 12.7 million visitors in June. Facebook, which recently launched a Japanese language version of the site, has seen significant growth in the past year, gaining 213 percent to 538,000 visitors. MySpace captured 1.2 million visitors, up 10 percent over a year ago; Orkut attracted 638,000 visitors and Gree brought in 455,000 visitors.
LaTimes.com Credits SEO As Traffic Winner
Tech-pundits have droned on for years that print is dead. It sure started to seem that way this year, with report after report of lost newspaper revenue and subscribers. Cooler heads all along have countered the impending doom theory with the idea that nothing worth anything dies—it only evolves. The LA Times puts itself up an example of the latter idea.
Microsoft Live Search Unveils Impressive Olympic Features
A picture of an ice cave is currently displayed on the Live Search homepage, but Microsoft’s users aren’t being left in the cold when it comes to Olympic-related information. Several special features have already launched, and even more are on the way.The most immediately noticeable thing may be the disappearance of said ice cave. In an email to Murdok, a Microsoft spokesman wrote, "The Live.com Homepage will rotate Olympics images in the background for the duration of the games."
MySpace Announces Decison08 Contest Winners
MySpace and NBC have announced the winners of the Decsion08 Convention contest for citizen journalists.Close to 50,000 MySpace users cast votes and selected Matt Britten and Sara Pat Badgley to act as citizen journalists at the 2008 Democratic and Republican conventions.