The social … [Read more...]

Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr is already being hailed as a brilliant move, securing a younger Internet demographic and a fertile field for native advertising, an innovative business model where content from brands lives side by side with users' contributions. In buying Tumblr, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made a nod to the company's past missteps in promising to "not screw it up." But in one crucial way, she already has. That $1.1 billion is a lot of shareholder cash. And so Yahoo is promising investors that Tumblr will contribute to the bottom line next year. An understandable promise—but it's the wrong strategy for Yahoo and for Tumblr. A … [Read more...]

If Google had its way, everyone in the world would be on the Internet, using Google services. To bring that goal to fruition, Google is reportedly working to build cellular networks in Africa and Southeast Asia to help bring hundreds of millions of people online for the first time. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is in talks with countries like Kenya and South Africa to fund and deploy cellular networks in those countries, using wireless spectrum reserved for television broadcasts. … [Read more...]

Google and Microsoft are finally shaking hands and agreeing to work together over Microsoft's controversial YouTube app for Windows Phone devices. "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube’s API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time," Microsoft and YouTube said in a joint statement sent to ReadWrite. … [Read more...]

It's a huge year for TV's future. Yet for all the excitement about Web-first soap operas, data-driven programming and the disruption of broadcast, the Internet TV "inflection point" that 2013 has become is just the beginning. A Trojan horse is slowly rolling into town, and it's bursting at the seams with data. Wheeling it along is none other than Google. … [Read more...]

Guest author Sam Hailes is a freelance journalist from the UK. "What does this button do?" … [Read more...]

Reports are coming out today that Israeli mapping company Waze is now being eyed as an acquisition target by Google, for the tune of $1 billion. This, just days after similar reports that Facebook was looking at picking up Waze for a similar price tag, and reports earlier this spring that Apple was in the hunt too, definitely puts Waze in the cat-bird seat. Why the sudden interest? For Google, it could be a simple absorb-the-competition play, or a chance to acquire Waze's social media features for it's own Google Maps. Whatever the reason, Waze is going to be on everyone's map now. (See also … [Read more...]

You might think that Nintendo, beleaguered by falling revenues, minuscule profit and the almost-but-not-quite-failed launch of the Wii U, already has enough problems to worry about. And you would be wrong, as Nintendo itself set out to demonstrate last week by going out of its way to alienate a bunch of its fans on YouTube. The fans in question make YouTube "playthrough" videos about, well, video games — features that combine elements of commentary, review, tutorial and walk-through. Some of these commentators reach millions of subscribers, and many support themselves in full or in part by running ads against their videos. The Empire Strikes … [Read more...]

Ready to embrace another arbitrary holiday - or just looking for an excuse to slack off and eat cake? Who isn’t? This Saturday, May 25, is internationally known as Geek Pride Day. “But, Pi Day and Star Wars Day … [Read more...]

You probably already knew this, but a new report from Forrester … [Read more...]

Google is reducing Datastore prices by up to 25%, according to an announcement on their Cloud Platform Blog. This price change impacts both App Engines HRD and the new Cloud Datastore introduced last week at I/O. The price decrease is sure to capture the attention of Amazon Web Services, perhaps even to the point of a small cloud price war. (Also read How Amazon's Rising Headwaters Could Threaten Google.) … [Read more...]

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) polices are increasingly popular as a way for companies to let workers use the hardware they like best and are most productive with. But according to a new study from Cisco, that not be the best way to think about BYOD. Implement a strong BYOD policy, Cisco says, and your organization could save $1,300 per year per mobile user. Users meanwhile, report that they are happier and more productive - even though they may end up paying more out of their own pockets! (See also Worried Workers: BYOD Or You're SOL [Infographic]) Happier, More Productive, But Poorer? The survey, released Wednesday by Cisco's Internet Business … [Read more...]

Despite Google Android's long market-share rise against Apple iOS, developers continued to stick with iOS as their first deployment target. While Android offered superior volume, that volume was fragmented between different versions of the OS and disparate hardware. Meanwhile, Apple offered better development tools plus clearer, more profitable revenue options. Even open-source developers tended to congregate on highly proprietary iOS. Something changed in 2012, however, and Android-related open-source development exploded. According to new research from Black Duck Software, new Android-related mobile open-source projects outstripped open source iOS … [Read more...]

Square, the mobile payment service that has been making strong inroads within the North American retail sector, has announced the availability of its service in Japan. The company is already processing $15 billion in annualized payments, and this move into Asia is expected to greatly increase the popularity and profitability of the service. … [Read more...]

You can't have a conversation about Big Data for very long without running into the elephant in the room: Hadoop. This open source software platform managed by the Apache Software Foundation has proven to be very helpful in storing and managing vast amounts of data cheaply and efficiently. But what exactly is … [Read more...]

What has Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood and his team been up to since selling the email-app maker to Dropbox for a reported $100 million in March? Mostly working on new versions of the product - like an iPad version of the app, which is coming out Thursday morning on Apple's App Store. Like the original iPhone version, which attracted a million users at breakneck speed, Mailbox for iPad lets you swipe messages off to the right or left to handle them. A short swipe to the right archives them, while a long swipe deletes them; a short swipe to the left "snoozes" messages for later reading, while a long swipe puts them in folders based on actions: "to … [Read more...]

This post is the second in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, in which we explore the opportunities and challenges mobile developers face trying to make money from Android apps. How do you get mobile developers to love you? Give them free tools and pad their wallets. … [Read more...]

Aligning itself aesthetically more along the lines of social networks like Facebook and Google+, LinkedIn has introduced a new navigation bar to its website. The aim is in line with the company's simplification efforts, which so far have included redesigns of the homepage and profile pages and as an overhaul of its mobile apps and the discovery news page LinkedIn Today. … [Read more...]