Facebook Encountering Setbacks In China
So much for global domination. Less than two weeks after Facebook targeted the Chinese market, users’ problems with its Chinese-language site point to either serious regional outages or government censorship.
Google Launches Traditional Media Blog
A lot of people don’t participate in Google’s TV, newspaper, and radio advertising programs. Others aren’t even aware they exist. So Google has launched a new traditional media blog with the aim of changing both these conditions.
Justice Department Steps Up Google, Yahoo Probe
Antitrust regulators will take a closer look at the potential implications of an advertising deal made by Google and Yahoo last month.
Courtney Love Drops Embezzlement Bomb On MySpace
On her MySpace blog today, Courtney Love penned an erratic message to her fans detailing an elaborate-sounding embezzlement scheme by her management, which includes computer hacking and dummy corporations, to fleece her for $380 million. It’s unclear if what she posted is real, a joke, or off-the-deep-end crazy.
Google Gains Right To Sell AOL Stake
Google’s owned a five percent stake in AOL for the better part of three years. Now, thanks to the passage of time and the terms of their partnership, the search giant’s getting the option of escaping.
Facebook’s Value Is Decreasing
If you’ve forgotten, just nine months ago, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million. Doing the math from that, the total value of Facebook last October was $15B.
Nobody Went Public Last Quarter
For the first time in thirty years, Wall Street saw a quarter come and go with no companies going public. The second quarter of 2008 proved to be a disappointing one all around. Adding on to residual distrust from the dotcom bust, venture capitalists and investment firms are reluctant to debut their startups to the public market during such a weak climate. Memories of Vonage’s embarrassing public offering two years ago don’t help the situation; venture capitalists feel going public during the current market’s mood would be anticlimactic.
GoDaddy Auction VP Gets Slashdot Treatment
There’s nothing improper about the VP of aftermarket domain auctions bidding up domain prices, says GoDaddy, but they’ve banned employees from participating in the future anyway, just to make everybody happy. And likely, to make the all the dirty looks go away. What looked like an idle comment in NamePros.com’s domain forum stirred up the hornets nest a bit. The comment from a senior forum member going by Stevie read this way:
Google Apps Catches Big Customer
Google Apps is something we don’t hear about too often; compared to search, it simply doesn’t come up. Google Apps is getting along just fine, though, and a new development involving Taylor Woodrow proves this point.
Adobe Helps Google, Yahoo Search Flash Files
Site publishers who love Flash for its presentation but hate its near-invisibility to search crawlers should appreciate a recent announcement from Adobe.