Links – 25 March to 1 April 2011
April 4, 2011 Leave a comment
Facebook snaps up Snaptu
Quite a big strategic move by Facebook to enable distribution to so-called “feature phones”, ie. the cheap ones. Obviously, they have realised that there is a massive growth potential in this market.
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World wide puddle
The long-term impact of the interweb on us as a species. Brilliant quotes in this piece by Doc Searl.
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Aggregators: if we can’t beat, them let’s join them
Here Guardian’s Organ Grinder wonders whether we should all climb down from our Ivory Towers and join the successful aggregator model. Why waste money on writing stuff when you can link to it? Of course, the HuffPo (one of the most successful organisations adapting this motto) has just announced that they are going to compete on Guardian’s home turf with a summer launch of it’s UK site.
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Investing like it’s 1999
There have been quite a few stories about the new tech bubble recently. This NYT article draws scary comparisons between 1999 (24 companies worth $71 billion) and today (5 companies worth $71.3 billion). We all know where that’s going…
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The Mobile-Payments Business Is Heating Up
Disruption is hitting the mobile payments market with Google teaming up with Mastercard and Citigroup. Watch this space.
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Money Flows To Mobile Startups: Appia, Apperian, Bubble Motion, And Others
“It may not be $41 million, but there are still serious funds flowing into the mobile sector at the moment, and the companies taking advantage of the loosened purse strings are all over the map in terms of what they’re doing to get investors’ attention.”
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Google’s Android Ready For In-App Purchases
OK, this will help competing with Apple, but the biggest milestone for me is the launch of Amazon’s Android store with 10m downloads for Angry Birds, Rio, in the first 10 days.
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Apple Seen Breaking From Summer Launch Pattern With iPhone 5
Sounds like we have to wait a bit longer for iPhone 5, but then again – who knows? The only thing for sure is that Apple rumours keep consumer and geek hype going.
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Lukewarm Reaction To Playbook Could Force Drastic Measures For RIM
The mobile industry is consolidating, and it looks like RIM is going to be a victim sooner rather than later.
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Time Warner Cable Turns Off iPad Streaming…
News Corp. Tells Time Warner Cable To Stop Streaming Channels On iPad
A new battle ground is emerging on who can stream whose content to what platform. Carriers, cable companies and content owners will fight this out over the next years. I just hope consumers won’t lose out.
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The Consumer In Me Likes Zite; The Producer?
Really enjoyed this read as I am a big fan of the Zite app (although it did occur to me that their type face is very similar to Germany’s Die Zeit, which is pronounced Dee Zite). Never mind, what really upset some publishers was that the app reformatted their content, making it “more readable, while diverting their traffic and advertising revenue”. Cease and desist letters followed. Zite’s CEO Ali Davar’s comment: “It’s a bummer that they did this, but we expected it.” Let’s just say I am glad I haven’t got any of my money tied up in his business…
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Note to all website owners: the European E-Privacy directive is just a start. We all need to reassess our privacy policies and stop ignoring the wishes of our readers.
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Google launches +1 button
Yes, had to include this in my list. Google fires another shot at Facebook – no, seriously!
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Amazon cloud player steals march on Apple and Google
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News International have been a bit secretive about their subscriber numbers – and they still are. Roy Greenslade points out that in any case the story is pretty depressive. Subscriptions alone will not save news.
