What it means, exactly, isn’t clear. But what it could mean is trouble for social networking. Facebook has been granted a patent on the Newsfeed –the method it uses for “displaying a news feed in a social network environment.” A method which looks amazingly similar to something that all other social networking sites do. The questions raised are: What does the patent describe
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Google’s Bradley Horowitz has insisted that Google Buzz is not a direct competitor for the likes of Facebook and Twitter, but that it fills a niche ‘not currently met by market’. Although it has suffered a controversial birth, the company believes that the combination of various Google functionality and the third-party support will win out. When asked by eWeek whether Buzz was a competitor to Twitter and Facebook Horowitz stated “Absolutely not.” A new category of communication “…this is creating a new category of communication. It’s filling a niche which is currently not met in the market,” he added. “I think something unique is happening on Buzz that will continue to evolve.
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LG has announced the Mini GD880, a phone it says is a ‘response’ to unwieldy large touchscreen handsets on the market. The phone appears to be mostly about its design, with LG extolling the virtues of the ’smallest and slimmest’ 3.2-inch touchscreen phone on the market. The touch display also extends to the edges of the phone, which LG says gives it “a finish that is as smooth as ice”. Socially conscious There’s Wi-Fi, A-GPS, a 5MP camera with face detection and push email too under the skin to add some decent phone features to the game. There’s also 7.2Mbps HSDPA and social networking tools, such as Social Network Connect, which allows linking of your online buddies to their contacts on the phone (similar to that seen on the LG Intouch Max Android handset)
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Some product announcements are self-contained. Others, like D-Link’s of the Boxee Box, come in chunks, with this one, timed for the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, offering (some) specifications and pricing info , with both looking pretty good. The idea behind Boxee is straightforward–software that brings together the myriad of media options available on the Internet so you don’t have to catalog that ever-changing, ever-expanding universe.
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Money is burning a hole in Google’s pocket. Back in November Google purchased AdMob for $750 million . Now Google is expressing a serious interest in Yelp , and a figure of $500 million is being bandied about as the possible price of acquisition. Yelp is a social networking company that concentrates on user reviews of local businesses, promising “Real People. Real Reviews.” Yelp has a presence in 40 states, and has user reviews on nearly 31,000 local businesses
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LinkedIn is highly likely to go public at some point in the future, according to co-founder Reid Hoffman, but not in the near future. Hoffman, talking to Reuters, confirmed the general belief that LinkedIn was a candidate for an initial public offering, or IPO. The social network, which allows professionals to form links and host their accomplishment and details online, has 53 million members, and is amongst a group that includes the like of Facebook that is expected to go public when the economy picks up “Probably at some point a balance will occur when that’s the right thing. That will not occur in the near term,” Hoffman said at a London event to celebrate the network’s reaching 3 million users in Britain. Financially sound The last time that LinkedIn went through financing in 2008 it raised huge amounts of money, and it has not splashed that cash yet
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