Kevin Rose could hardly have sent a clearer signal: Less than 12 hours after announcing his takeover as CEO, the Digg co-founder killed the social news site's controversial "DiggBar." It would seem Rose finally had it with Digg inflating traffic.
Yelp has surrendered. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman announced his local-reviews site will stop selling merchants the ability to select "favorite reviews," which push negative feedback further down profile pages. So now how will Yelp make money?
Just as the public was learning that a huge chunk of Zynga's social gaming revenue came from scammy "quizzes" and "special offers," Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capitalists rewarded the company with $15 million. Hey, that's just how VC's roll.
No one knows what Facebook and Twitter are really worth, sexy though the startups may be. But AdMob, an obscure company in Silicon Valley's hinterlands, has a very clear, solid value: $750 million in stock from acquirer Google. Yay boring!
Silicon Valley pundits like to talk about social media as a potential geyser of cash. What they leave out is that one of the only ways social networks like Facebook, MySpace have done that is joining league with online scammers.
Clearly, the online ad market is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament, wrath of God type stuff: Dogster and LOLcats-based I Can Has Cheezburger are now selling ads together, per a new agreement. Next up: Mass hysteria.
America has a terrible health insurance system and crippling shame about sex. On the bright side, our problems are helping some Eastern Europeans make thousands of dollars per week, one fraudulent internet transaction at a time.
The Independent has a massive piece today on YouTube and how, despite having close to 350 million users worldwide per month, it's set to lose almost half a billion dollars this year. And it's all your fault, naturally.
Everyone has misunderstood why Google, from CEO Eric Schmidt on down, is cozying up to Barack Obama. It's not out of some likeminded geekiness. It's out of desperation and fear.
Carol Bartz, Yahoo's recently installed CEO, is a woman of many charms, not the least of which is her gutter mouth. She dropped the F-bomb today while announcing Yahoo's sucky earnings (and more layoffs).
There's something adorable about Nick Grouf, the babyfaced, waggle-eared cofounder of Spot Runner. Who would think he'd be capable of bilking investors out of tens of millions of dollars, as one shareholder charges?
Facebook's revenues are reportedly up 70 percent from last year, when they came in between $250 million and $300 million. What's their magic trick? Junky ads with catchy photos!
Make it official: Google's not immune from the bad economy and plummeting ad market. We've been hearing for weeks that Google would have layoffs. Google is cutting 200 employees today, the company now confirms.
When is an advertisement not an advertisement? When Twitter says it's an "interesting topical experience." That's what cofounder Biz Stone, who once promised Twitter's website would never carry ads, is calling Microsoft's ExecTweets.
The accountants have taken over the Googleplex, once a hotbed of amiably unprofitable innovation. The notion that ads would pay the way for everything has been dropped — and "fee" is replacing "free."
Susan Wojcicki, the Google vice president who's also the sister-in-law of cofounder Sergey Brin, announced that Google would start tracking the websites people visit, wherever Google serves ads — which is something like 90 percent of the Internet worldwide. Google will then assign "interests" to those users based on…
The news that Google is placing ads on Google News has sent a renewed wave of handwringing through the newspaper industry. How dare those Googlers make online news a profitable business!
Pundits will say Newsday's desperate plan to charge for the Long Island newspaper's website is some kind of bellwether for the industry. What it really means: Newsday and its owner, Cablevision, have nothing to lose.
"Once every hundred years, media changes," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in 2007, predicting a sea change in online advertising. The reality: His social network is leading the way in online scams.
