VC’s simply love the Facebook Mafia

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:21:43 +0000

Following the jaw-dropping $50 million funding of Quora, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based knowledge community, folks from New York-based research firm, CB Insights crunched some data and came up with these following stats about the Facebook mafia - aka people who left Facebook to start their own companies.

A new way to make six figures on the Web: teaching

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:00:59 +0000

San Fransciso-based online video course startup Udemy today released the salaries of the top 10 instructors on the 2-year-old platform. All of them earned more than $50,000 on their own and the top individual made more than $200,000.

Pottermore adds Kobo as a Harry Potter e-book partner

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:39:22 +0000

Pottermore has partnered with Kobo to make the Harry Potter e-books available on Kobo devices. Pottermore has similar arrangements with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Google (but not Apple yet).

10 things to know about tech startups in Brazil

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:23:55 +0000

Compared to Mexico, the web and mobile startup ecosystem in Brazil is hot -- probably too hot. Here's 10 things you should know if you want to build, buy, invest in or work at a tech startup in Brazil.

How mobile networks are policing the web — badly

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:55:43 +0000

Mounting evidence suggests Europe's mobile operators are becoming increasingly censorious, thanks to haphazard adult content filters that are applied to millions of users. The result? De facto, unregulated censorship that screens out thousands of legitimate websites, including GigaOM.

Confirmed: Pinterest taking $100m for e-commerce play

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:04:53 +0000

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten wants to plug Pinterest in to purchasing, after leading a $100 million investment in the social pinboard curator.

Will Facebook adapt to mobile or will mobile adapt to Facebook?

Wed, 16 May 2012 23:42:13 +0000

If Facebook’s future is mobile, then it may not be enough for it to merely secure a piece of the mobile ad market. It will need to have an outsized impact on the industry.

Hacked recipes and printing food: When bytes meet bites

Wed, 16 May 2012 23:17:01 +0000

Everyone may not get excited about open APIs or 3-D printing (what is wrong with y’all?) but everyone loves food. Here are four novel ways the tech world interacts with food (or even food prep). So grab a snack and read on.

Social gaming to gambling: states inch forward

Wed, 16 May 2012 22:33:34 +0000

When will the floodgates open? It feels like an eternity that the casino industry and makers of games like Zynga Poker have been waiting for states to flip a legal switch that will let them turn virtual gaming into real gambling.

Twitter and Reddit as crowdsourced fact-checking engines

Wed, 16 May 2012 22:01:57 +0000

New research about how news is verified through Twitter and a crowdsourced debunking of some fake Wikipedia entries reinforce the point that social networks and online communities can be powerful tools for the real-time verification of events, something that used to take place behind closed doors.