WebProNews

Tag: Social Media

  • Virgin America And Twitter Partner On Airfare Sale

    Virgin America is partnering with Twitter on a 24-hour "Fly Forward, Give Back" fare sale which aims to raise funds for educational causes.

    Virgin America will donate five dollars for each booking over the next 24 hours to education focused nonprofits.

     

    Virgin-America-Twitter

     

    The "Fly Forward, Give Back" Twitter 24-hour fare sale is good for travel across Virgin America’s network between August 24, 2010-November 17, 2010.  Tickets must be purchased between 7:00am PT on August 3, 2010 and 7:00am PT on August 4, 2010.

    Virgin America will donate up to $50,000 today – and 100 percent of the donation will go to KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Classroom Projects on DonorsChoose.org.  DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that allows people to help students.

    Virgin America is an ongoing supporter of the KIPP network, which operates free, open-enrollment, college-prep public schools in under-resourced communities.
     

     

  • Funny or Die Launches Redesign, New Ad Opportunities

    Popular comedy site Funny or Die has launched a new redesign, adding adds new content and features. The site now provides new themed photo galleries, top 10 lists, and special guest blogs. It also gives advertisers a larger presence on the homepage and more in-video opportunities across the site.

    "Our new design reflects how far we’ve come at Funny Or Die," says CEO Dick Glover. "We’ve grown beyond the top comedy website to become a best-of-breed digital studio producing content for all major distribution channels.  And, along the way we’ve become sustainably profitable."

    The site even has its own HBO show now called "Funny or Die Presents," which premiered in February (and is currently in production for its second season. Comedy Central has also tapped Funny or Die for content, and the company will present its first movie next year.

    Funny or Die Gets Makeover

    The company says this year it has expanded its service offerings to partners and advertising clients. This includes a branded entertainment division creating campaigns that combine brand advertising and viral video.  Examples include campaigns for the Axe Comedy Tour, Cottonelle, Mini Cooper, Pepsi Brisk, Sony’s "The Other Guys," Travel Channel, Edge, Paramount’s "Dinner for Schmucks," and others.

    Funny or Die also points out that it frequently drives trending topics on Twitter, and attracts a great amount of attention on Digg.  Currently Funny Or Die has about 1.5 million Twitter followers and 1.2 million 212,962 Facebook fans.

  • The Hotlist Comes to the iPhone

    The Hotlist Comes to the iPhone

    Geo-social aggregator The Hotlist has launched a new iPhone app aimed at letting users see the latest on their friends’ present and future social destinations, as well as venues and activities near the user’s current location.

    The Hotlist launched last year, claiming to be the first geo-social aggregator. Its platform calculates the popularity of events and venues, offering analytics and ratings for social planning.

    The app compiles info from sources like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, and filters public social activities of over 100 million people worldwide.

    "People work and people play. However, planning even the smallest get together can be very time-consuming and frustrating," says The Hotlist CEO Gianni Martire. "Our mobile app allows people to make the most out of TheHotlist Comes to iPhonetheir social life by giving friends a place to share their social plans, eliminating the stress of phone tag, endless text messages and disappointing evenings. The Hotlist instantly gives people information that used to take hours to figure out, a one-stop app to organize your social life."

    The Hotlist claims to have over 160,000 monthly active users, and the release of an iPhone app should only boost that number significantly. Then, the company will launch Android and BlackBerry apps at some point. No specific dates for these are mentioned, but they said to expect them "shortly."

  • BlackBerry Use Limited in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

    BBC News reports that two Gulf states have announced bans on some BlackBerry functions based on security concerns. The United Arab Emirates will block sending emails, accessing the Internet, and delivering instant messages to other Blackberry handsets, while Saudi Arabia will prevent the use of Blackberry to Blackberry instant messaging.

    The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting piece on companies that use softare to capture what people type on websites and sell it to other companies. The WSJ calls such spying on Internet users, "the fastest-growing business on the Internet."

    Google revealed a new imagery update for Google Earth that will soon also be available in Google Maps. The update includes high resolution aerial updates for numerous locations in the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as high resolution satellite updates for quite a few countries.

    Intel announced a milestone confirming that light beams can replace electronic signals for future computers. The company created the world’s first end-to-end silicon photonoics connection with integrated lasers, which it says can revolutionize computer design, dramtically increase performance, and save energy.

    The FTC is looking into a browser-level way for consumers to opt out of behavioral advertising to avoid being tracked by advertisers, Brocasting & Cable reports.

    Live Science points to a study that finds that you may increase your chances of living longer if you have strong social relationships. Interestingly, the study assessed how involved people are with their social networks and communities.

    Mike Masnick at Techdirt points to a new open iPhone App Market that doesn’t require jailbreaking, and that "Apple can’t stop." It’s called OpenAppMkt, and creates an app market for iPhones via HTML. "Effectively, this is an entire ‘app market’ for the iPhone that simply routes around Apple as a gatekeeper, and there’s really not much that Apple can do to stop it. And, of course, since the apps in the OpenAppMkt are just HTML, it likely won’t be difficult for OpenAppMkt to extend this to other platforms as well, such as Android (even though Android’s much more open market means that there’s less of a reason to developers to use OpenAppMkt for Android)," he says.

    Masnick also posted another interesting piece about how software firms are overwhelmingly against patents.
     

  • fbFund No More?

    Things have been a little slow on the fbFund front this year. The site hasn’t posed an update since January, and you probably won’t be hearing about new ventures anytime soon.

    Inside Facebook reports that fbFund appears to be "mothballed". fbFund is a seed fund and joint venture run by Facebook Founders Fund and Accel Partners. Investment capital for the fund was provided by these entities.

    fBfund gave startups up to $100k in investment, as well as access to key people, presentations on technology, product, marketing, and business topics, mentorship, and even office space. Eric Eldon writes:

    After noticing that the company has been completely quiet about fbFund plans so far this year, we asked it about its plans. "At this time we have no plans for future iterations of the program," a company spokesperson tells us, “but we will keep you posted as soon as we have anything new to share.” The company also says that it will "continue to support innovation from the startup community through initiatives like the developer garage program."

    fbFund operated for two years, funding companies building Facebook’s developer platform, and as Eldon points out, it has kind of taken a backseat to the big boom in the social gaming market.

  • YouTube Ups Upload Limit to 15 Minutes Per Video

    YouTube announced today that it has extended the upload limit to 15 minutes for all users. It was 10 minutes before. If you’ve tried to upload one in the past that was rejected for length, but would qualify now, you’ll have delete it from "My Videos" and do it again.

    "We want YouTube to be the best place to upload video," says YouTube upload and video management product manager Joshua Siegel. "Without question, the number one requested feature by our creators is to upload videos longer than 10 minutes."

    YouTube Upload Time Increased

    Additionally, he says YouTube has spent significant resources on creating and improving its ContentID system and other tools for copyright owners.

    "Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube," says Siegel. "Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today. We will continue our strong commitment to provide advanced technology and tools to protect the rights of small and large copyright owners worldwide. We’ll also do everything we can to release incremental improvements like this one that benefit our video creators."

    If you tag your videos with "yt15minutes" and upload it by August 4, YouTube may select it to feature on the YouTube homepage.

  • Which Sites Drive the Most Referral Traffic?

    John Pozadzides of the Web analytics company Woopra wrote a guest post for ReadWriteWeb looking at the web’s top sources of referral traffic. He breaks it down in to the following categories: social network, social bookmark, search, and media.

    Six versions of Google top the list for search before Bing makes an appearance. Facebook takes the cake in social networks, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn. In the social bookmark category, StumbleUpon leads, and in media, it’s YouTube.

    Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell reports that a court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia has demanded a Russian ISP block access to YouTube because it hosted what it says is an extremist video. The Internet Archive and three online libraries were also reportedly blocked. As O’Dell points out, a number of other countries have also blocked access to YouTube at different times.

    The New York Times reports that the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would effectively legalize online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban.

    Pocket-lint reports that Amazon claims ebook sales will overtake paperbacks next year. It’s a pretty astonishing notion, but not too hard to believe considering that Amazon recently announced that ebook sales have overtaken hardback sales.

    Mobile Crunch has pointed out that RIM has purchased the domain BlackPad.com, speculating that a long-rumored BlackBerry tablet could be called the BlackPad.

    News surfaced yesterday that a directory containing personal details of over 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on a file-sharing site. BBC News spoke to the man responsible who says he harvested the info for a security tool.

    Back in early May, it was discovered that Google had invested in something called Recorded Future. Now Wired reports that the CIA is involved as well, in the company that monitors the web predicts the future.

    Facebook launched the long-awaited Questions feature yesterday (in beta). Search Engine Land has a detailed walkthrough of the feature.

    According to Ben Patterson at Yahoo News, citing information from Courant.com, U.S. libraries are loaning more DVDs on a daily basis than Netflix and Redbox are renting them. This make sense given that many libraries offer free DVD loans, and cheap prices on new releases.

  • Buick Taps Facebook, Twitter And YouTube To Promote Regal

    GM is working on a campaign to promote its 2011 Buick Regal and has launched a website called "Moment of Truth."

    GM promises its Moment of Truth site will include all reviews and consumer opinions no matter if they are negative or positive.

    "We are inviting consumers to find out on their own that Regal is a true performance sedan and worthy of their consideration," said Craig Bierley, Buick advertising director. 

     

    Buick-Regal

     

    "We are making it easy for the consumer to get unbiased opinions in one online location."

    Moment of Truth will pull in content from a variety of social media sources and give users the ability to share via social networks.  It includes YouTube videos, Flickr photos, comments from Buick’s Regal tab on Facebook, tweets from Twitter, as well as automotive reviews and blogs. Anyone can be a contributor to Moment of Truth by sharing their stories related to the Regal and posting them online.

    Other elements of the Buick Regal advertising campaign started earlier this month in unconventional and traditional outlets. The campaign continues to build on advertising outreach that Buick started with the LaCrosse launch last year.
     

     

  • Apple Packs New Version of Safari with Extensions

    Apple released the latest version of its Safari web browser today, version 5.0.1. The release comes with Safari Extensions and the Safari Extensions Gallery.

    While extensions became available in Safari 5 lat month for developers, the gallery makes them available to users. A few organizations that have already created extensions for the browser include: Amazon, Bing, Major League Baseball, the New York Times, and Twitter.

    Amazon Safari Extension"Millions of our customers already use Amazon Wish Lists to store items they want to buy for themselves or receive as gifts," said Gianna Puerini, VP of Worldwide Design and Community at Amazon.com. "With Safari 5, we were able to quickly build the Add to Amazon Wish List extension that lets customers add items from any website to their Amazon Wish List with the click of a button."

    Jeff Henshaw, general manager of Bing’s User Experience says, "The Bing Extension for Safari brings Bing search intelligence to everyday browsing with Safari. When a user selects text in Safari, Bing instantly recognizes what they might need and pops up helpful, informative tips, from real time maps and driving directions to real time translations to direct web search results." 

    "Our extension for Safari is a great way for readers to get all of the latest breaking news and all the important stories, blogs and columns they want to see," says Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com. "While you browse other sites in Safari, our extension checks for updates and slides in new headlines and thumbnails, so you won’t miss a thing."

    "Creating our Twitter extension in Safari couldn’t have been easier," said Jason Goldman, vice president of Product at Twitter. "By providing features like the ability to tweet about a page and view trending topics, we’ve created a simple way to deliver relevant, interesting content to people regardless of where they are on the web."

    You get the idea. Expect a lot of useful extensions. 

    Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download here. The gallery can be viewed here.

  • Women Are Highly Engaged Social Networking Users

    Social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women then men globally, with 75.8 percent of all women online visiting a social networking site in May compared to 69.7 percent of men, according to a new report from comScore.

    "Understanding gender-specific differences in Web usage is valuable to any digital stakeholder looking to successfully reach and engage both women and men in the online environment," said Linda Boland Abraham, comScore chief marketing officer and executive vice president for global development.

    "We have seen that women across the globe share some similar usage patterns online, such as strong engagement with social networking sites, but it’s also important to understand gender differences on a regional, country and local level, where cultural differences are continually shaping online usage and content consumption."

    Worldwide, women have higher levels of engagement with social networking sites than men. Women represent 47.9 percent of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they view 57 percent of pages and account for 56.6 percent of total minutes spent on these sites. Women spend significantly more time on social networking sites than men, with women averaging 5.5 hours per month compared to men’s 3.9 hours, revealing the strong engagement women across the globe share with social sites.

     

    Women-Social-Networking

     

    Across each global region, Social Networking reached a higher percentage of women online than men. Social networking’s reach among women is highest in Latin America where it reached 94.1 percent of females online, and in North America where it reached 91.0 percent of females. Europe saw 85.6 percent of its female online population visit a social networking site in May 2010, while in Asia Pacific, where parts of the region still face low broadband penetration and site restrictions, reported a 54.9-percent reach.

    Social-Networking-Reach

    Other highlights from the report include:

    *Although men are in the majority across the global Internet, women spend about 8 percent more time online, averaging 25 hours per month on the Web.

    *Globally, women spend 20 percent more time on Retail sites overall than men. Among the various retail sub-categories, Comparison Shopping and Apparel sites reached the highest percentage of women at 24.8 percent and 18.7 percent, respectively, in May 2010.

    *In the U.S., women are more avid online buyers than men, with 12.5 percent of female Internet users making an online purchase in February 2010, compared to 9.3 percent of men.
     

     

     

  • Digg Updates iPhone App – More Stable, Better Twitter/Facebook Integration

    Digg has launched an update to its iPhone app, which comes with better Twitter and Facebook integration and improved stability.

    Digg lists the following as key changes in the app:

    • Logging in to, or changing accounts on, Facebook or Twitter
    • Sharing stories through Facebook or Twitter without first logging in to that service
    • Digging a story without first logging in to your account
    • Running a search for a random string with no results
    • Navigating away from a story while it is loading
    • Saving a story or trying to access saved stories
    • Loading more user comments related to a story

    The app was originally launched in March, then received an update in April, making some stability improvements. Those apparently weren’t enough, as most of the feedback Digg has received since then, has been about stability issues. We’ll see if they got it right this time around.

  • Booyah Launches Check-Ins for Products in MyTown

    Booyah, one of the companies gaining buzz in the check-in service space, has announced a new product check-in feature for its MyTown game/service.

    MyTown from Booyah - Now with Product Check-in featureWith the feature, users can use their iPhone camera to scan barcodes of products to unlock points and earn virtual goods, as the company puts it, "creating a game out of real life items."

    "We first made the location check-in fun," says Booyah CEO Keith Lee. "Now we’re making products fun. It adds a whole new layer on top of the MyTown experience."

    "It’s a holy grail for marketers and brands to have their target audience actually hold their products in their hands," adds Lee. "It’s as close as you will get before point of sale. Not to mention that a consumer’s product check-in history is invaluable data."

    This could make the whole check-in trend all the more appealing to businesses looking to sell their products. MyTown already boasts over two and a half million active users.

    MyTown lets users "buy and own" their favorite real-life locations, and collect rent when other people check-in to their shops.

  • British Royal Family Launches Flickr Account

    The British Royal Family has launched a photo account on Flickr.

    The British Monarchy Flickr accounts features up to date images of royal engagements and archive photographs from the Royal Photograph Collection.

    In addition to contemporary images of The Queen and Members of the Royal Family at work, the Flickr account features historic photographs from current Royal Collection exhibitions at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and on loan to museums and galleries around the UK. They include masterpieces of early British photography collected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

     

    Royal-Family

     

    The Flickr launch follows the launch of the new Royal website and the British Monarchy Twitter account in 2009 and the Royal Channel on YouTube in 2007.

    Highlights of the Flickr account include:

    A "Latest news and diary" gallery showing the latest photographs from royal engagements.
    – Collections from The Queen’s recent visit to Canada and New York, and Holyrood Week.
    – A "Queen and Commonwealth" section, which includes pictures of Royal visits to Commonwealth realms and related engagements.

    At launch there are over 600 photographs, and this number will increase as the Flickr account is updated with photos from Royal engagements and events.
     

     

  • Email Still Beats Social Networks for E-Commerce

    A new report from Econsultancy suggests that email still beats social networks when it comes to marketing for e-commerce. The report says that over a third (37%) of consumers don’t use a social networking site, and that those who have become a "fan" or "friend" of a company or brand online are still in the minority.

    Is email marketing more effective than social media for you? Let us know.

    The report is based on a survey of over 1,400 U.S. consumers, which the firm calls "nationally representative."

    While Facebook may think email is "probably going away," marketers are still having a great deal of success with it. And just as increased mobile adoption continues to fuel social media use, it’s not exactly hurting email.

    The report suggests that the rise of mobile will continue fuel email’s success. It notes that each generation of chipsets moves mobile devices closer to the personal computer. "Advanced behaviors today (accessing the Internet or checking email from a mobile device) will clearly soon be commonplace, at least for people in their working years. Nearly two-thirds of people under 24 have checked email on a mobile device," Econsultancy says.

    Best way to receive ads? - Email

    "Online product research contributes a far larger percentage of total retail than the 8% directly attributed to e-commerce, while the evolving nature of digital interaction and customer service is changing the fundamental relationship between companies and consumers," says Econsultancy’s US Research Director, Stefan Tornquist. "The winners will be those who use digital communications most effectively, to influence and enable both online and offline purchases."

    "Although a variety of media are competing for consumer attention, email continues to be the desired channel for many types of commercial communication," adds Tornquist. "Social networking and its effect on the nature of brand is the hottest topic in digital marketing, and deservedly so. It’s still worthwhile for marketers to remember that social network adoption is far from maturity."

    The entire report can be found here.

    Of couse, it’s not really a competition between social media and email. Both should be part of your marketing arsenal, and are effectively used together all the time. For example, another recent study from ExactTarget found that nearly 40% of consumers visit Facebook and Twitter to supplement the news, information or deals they receive via email marketing.

    In what ways do you incorporate social media into your email strategy? Share with other WebProNews readers.

  • Facebook Makes Improvements to the Like Button

    Facebook announced today that it is releasing some new features for the Like button social plug-in. There is now commenting for the iFrame version, publishing to connected users via the Graph API, and "more robust" analytics.

    "Now, when a user adds a comment to the iFrame version of the Like button, a larger, more prominent story will be shared with the user’s friends. In the past, we’ve seen comments result in increased distribution and referral traffic," says Facebook Platform product manager Austin Haugen.

    Like Button gets comments feature

    "We encourage websites with objects that people may want to more permanently connect with, such as a brand or product, to publish relevant updates to its connected users," says Haugen. "For example, publish a special offer to users who have liked a specific product. Simply add a few Open Graph tags to your Web page and click on the Admin Link (only visible to admins) to use the Publisher."

    Documentation on how to use the Open Graph API to publish to multiple Open Graph pages can be found here.

    As far as analytics, Facebook has added parameters to help you test and optimize Like button performance on your site. With these, you will be able A/B test different types and placements of the button.

    More info on all of these new features is available here.

  • YouTube Shows Future Standard Embed Code

    YouTube has introduced a new way to embed videos. The new style uses an <iframe>.

    Viewers of videos which use the following embed code style will be able to view the embedded video in one of YouTube’s Flash or HTML5 players, depending on viewing environment and preferences:

    <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID" frameborder="0">
    </iframe>

    YouTube Player

    YouTube lists environments that support HTML5 here. They just use Flash when it’s not supported.

    "An additional benefit of the new embed style is that it will eventually allow embeds to work on mobile devices, which typically use a built-in player instead of Flash or HTML5," says YouTube software engineer Toliver Jue on YouTube’s API Blog.

    YouTube evidently intends to make this the standard embed code for users eventually, but for now they’re just previewing it.

  • Flickr Updates iPhone App to Utilize iOS 4 Capabilities, Adds Twitter Sharing

    Flickr has released an updated version of its iPhone app, specifically targeting new features of the iPhone 4 like multi-tasking and support for HD-video uploads.

    "The version 1.2 adds multi-tasking and allows users to upload their photos and videos in the background," a representative for Flickr tells WebProNews. "After tapping the ‘Upload’ button, you can simply do something else; no longer do you have to watch the progress bar until it’s finished. When multi-tasking, we’ll always bring you back to the same place where you left the application."

    Flickr has also introduced a new Twitter sharing feature in the app (which doesn’t only apply to iPhone 4 users). Users can upload a photo or video to Flickr and post its short flic.kr address to Twitter followers at the same time. Users must link their Flickr accounts to their Twitter accounts obviously.

    "In addition to the cool features, we enhanced the overall user interface, provide the option to clear your recent searches and developed an even better full screen browsing experience – once you swipe to the next photo the navigation controls disappear and you can enjoy the photo," the representative says. "Not sure how to enter the full screen mode? Just tap the photo on a photo detail page in the app."

    The app can be downloaded in the App Store for no cost.

  • YouTube Launches New Version of Music Page

    YouTube has launched a revamped version of its Music page, following in the footsteps of its shows and movies pages. The new page showcases the most viewed music videos, as well as special promotions, curated playlists, and unsigned talent.

    Users can also create their on mixes. "For example, in the mood for electronic beats? Just scroll down to that genre and click ‘play’ for an instant playlist," says YouTube Music Manager Michele Flannery.

    YouTube Music Page Revamped

    The page will soon include an "events near you" section that will show live music in your area, according to the company.

    The new music section could help Google as it builds its rumored "Google Me" social network. Soon all YouTube users will have to have their accounts connected to Google accounts after all.

  • Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Talks Legal Battle, Won’t See “The Social Network”

    This week Facebook surpassed 500 million users, but that’s not the only reason the world’s largest social network is making headlines.

    This post from O’Reilly Radar breaks down where Facebook’s half a billion users reside by region. Asia appears to be the fastest-rising region for Facebook users, currently sitting at 17% of the social network’s user base.

    Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by "The Facebook Effect" author David Kirkpatrick and Guy Raz from NPR. All Facebook’s Nick O’Neill put together a list of seven takeaways from what Zuckerberg had to say. Among these were that the company is working on improving Friend lists, the daily percentage of active users has increased, and Facebook has 400 engineers.

    Kirkpatrick contributed his own piece to Fortune, talking about the current legal battle Facebook is in with Paul Ceglia, who claims to own 84% of Facebook (a little more on that here if you’re not familiar). He says Zuckerberg told him there is no truth to Ceglia’s claims. "It was all about his website. I hadn’t even thought of Facebook yet. How could I have given him an ownership interest in it?" he quotes Zuckerberg as saying.

    Zuckerberg also talked to Diane Sawyer, and dismissed the upcoming Facebook movie "The Social Network" as fiction, though he also says he has no plans to see it. ABC posted the following clip:

    Fred Wilson, an investor in both Twitter and Foursquare spoke at the Geo-Loco conference in San Francisco, where he is reported to have said, "Facebook is a photo-sharing site, really. Maybe with some chat attached to it" and "I don’t think the open graph is important. Everybody’s got a social graph. Every large-scale web app has a social graph. I don’t think Facebook’s social graph is anything to be scared of." He did, however comment on a VentureBeat story about it that he was just trying to be fun and controversial on stage, but that "I do believe, at least in some way, in everything I said."

    Do you believe the open graph is important? Share your thoughts.

  • Consumer Watchdog: Google Spent $1.34 Million Lobbying in Q2

    Consumer Watchdog: Google Spent $1.34 Million Lobbying in Q2

    Consumer Watchdog issued a press release saying that Google spent $1.34 million trying to influence federal lawmakers and regulators in the second quarter of 2010, a 41% increase over $950,000 in the same period a year ago.

    The group says Google has spent a total of $2.72 million lobbying during the first half of the year. This is based on reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.

    Ars Technica points to a new report from the FCC about broadband access claiming that between 14 million and 24 million Americans still lack access to high speed Internet and that "the immediate prospects for deployment to them are bleak."

    Robin Wauters of TechCrunch reports that a California court has ruled that Facebook doesn’t violate competition laws. This is in regards to an ongoing legal dispute between the company and Power.com.

    "We are pleased the court rejected Power’s fundamental claim—antitrust violation—and upheld our right to protect our users’ data and enforce the privacy decisions they make on Facebook," a Facebook spokesperson told the publication.

    As expected, Facebook announced that it has surpassed 500 million users. Half a billion and no signs of slowing down. The company also says it gets 100 billion hits per day and has 50 billion photos. Meanwhile Facebook Open Graph partner Pandora announced today that it has surpassed 60 million users.

    A new social news iPad app called Flipboard has captured the interest of the tech industry today. Robert Scoble calls it "revolutionary." He provides an in-depth look at it and interview with its CEO here:

    Skype has upgraded its iPhone app to allow users to make calls over 3G data connections for no additional charges. In addition, it supports multitasking.

    Mashable looks at the recently updated Android distribution chart indicating that over 55% of all Android devices are running version 2.1. Just 22.1% are running version 1.6.

  • Pandora Reaches 60 Million User Milestone

    Pandora Reaches 60 Million User Milestone

    Facebook isn’t the only one announcing impressive milestones today. Pandora announced at the New Music Seminar that it has 60 million registered users. That’s not exactly Facebook’s 500 million, but pretty impressive nonetheless.

    It wasn’t that long ago that Pandora’s obituary was all but written, but things are looking bright for the company now.

    Pandora’s collection consists of hundreds of thousands of songs from 90,000 separate artists, and 80% of them are played every month, according to the company. As MG Siegler says, "Think about that compared to traditional radio, where you often turn it on and hear the same things over and over and over again."

    No doubt.

    "Pandora plays the music of tens of thousands of artists every day. It’s a very promising sign for the industry that music fans are so quickly embracing this new form of radio," said Pandora CEO and President Joe Kennedy.

    Facebook Pandora"The New Music Seminar convenes the architects of the next music business and Pandora is certainly one of them," said Tom Silverman, director of the New Music Seminar. "This milestone is a major building block in the foundation of the next music business. We congratulate Pandora on its achievement."

    Not only are Pandora’s mobile apps popular, but the company was one of Facebook’s launch partners for the Open Graph, which likely provided a nice boost. With the Open Graph, users can see music their Facebook friends like on the service, which can make it even more fun.

    As smartphone usage continues to rise, Pandora will probably continue to grow right along with it. As a mobile app, it’s an easy, accessible way to take personalized music with you, and that is something that many find very appealing. As Siegler points out, Pandora is also looking to find its way directly into more vehicles and various other devices as well.