Top Items:
Business Wire:
AOL to Acquire Global Social Media Network Bebo — NEW YORK—(BUSINESS WIRE)—AOL announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Bebo (http://www.bebo.com), a leading global social media network. Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network …
Discussion:
STARTUP CHATTER, The Social Web, BBC NEWS, Between the Lines, GigaOM, Rev2.org, Susan Mernit's Blog, TechRadar.com, Guardian Unlimited, Search Engine Journal, David Galbraith, New York Times, Bloggers Blog, BetaNews, Screenwerk, Gadgetell, mocoNews.net, Mashable! and Online Media Cultist
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
AOL Buys Bebo For $850 Million — I'm not going to say that we told you so, but we told you so. — AOL has acquired social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. AOL CEO Randy Falco (left in picture) sent an email to all AOL employees this morning. Allen Stern's press call notes are here.
Discussion:
Fortune, CenterNetworks, TechCrunch UK, Silicon Alley Insider, Patricia Handschiegel, PE Hub Blog, broadstuff and Snipperoo
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Bebo: By the (Not So Big) Numbers — What's AOL getting for its $850 million in cash to purchase of social networking site, Bebo? — A very attractive social networking service and a very experienced exec who has been running it. — But, perhaps more importantly for those who focus on pesky numbers …
AOL News:
AOL to Acquire Social Media Network Bebo — AOL has entered into an agreement to acquire Bebo, a leading global social media network. Founded in 2005, Bebo now has 40 million members worldwide. Together with AIM and ICQ, AOL will have a social network of approximately 80 million unique users worldwide …
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
AOL buys social network Bebo for $850 million — AOL issued a press release on Thursday morning to announce that the company has acquired social-networking site Bebo. The price tag, according to the AOL statement, is $850 million in cash. Neither company has yet stated when the deal is expected to be closed.
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
Bebo To AOL for $850 Million — AOL has announced this morning that they have acquired social networking service Bebo for $850 million in cash. Bebo has 100 employees operating in offices in the UK, San Francisco and Austin, TX. Bebo is the third-largest social networking service in the U.S. behind MySpace and Facebook.
Robert Andrews / paidContent.org:AOL-Bebo: Falco: ‘Gamechanging For AOL’; Shields: Didn't Plan …
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Embraces The Semantic Web - Expect The Internet To Organize Itself In A Hurry — Yahoo's embrace of all things open continues today - expect an announcement in an hour or so that they are expanding their Open Search Platform that we wrote about last month.
Discussion:
The Semantic Web, /Message, Minding the Planet, Mashable!, Seeking Alpha and The Real McCrea
RELATED:
Yahoo! Search Blog:
The Yahoo! Search Open Ecosystem — A few weeks ago, we began talking about the new Yahoo! Search open platform. Today, we're releasing more details about two important components of the initiative — the developer platform as well as our support of a number of semantic web standards.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
And Nerds Became Kings: Yahoo! to Announce Semantic Web Support — TechCrunch and Search Engine Land are reporting this morning that Yahoo! will now be indexing Semantic Web and Microformats markup from around the web and will use that information to display more structured search results.
Tom Simonite / New Scientist:
Nerve-tapping neckband allows ‘telepathic’ chat — A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a “voiceless” phone call for the first time. — With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound.
RELATED:
AppleInsider:
Apple TV DVR interface revealed in patent filings — A series of Apple patent filings published this week reveal a version of the Apple TV media device capable of browsing and recording live television programming in addition to serving up pre-aired content from the company's iTunes Store.
John Biggs / TechCrunch:
iPhone 2.0 “sneak peek” — There has been a lot of talk about the new iPhone firmware and its enterprise capabilities. Well, the iPhoneDevTeam has cracked the 2.0 (actually 1.2) firmware and created a version of the firmware that works with any GSM SIM card without difficult incantations and installations.
Vishesh Kumar / Wall Street Journal:
DirecTV to Start On-Demand — In its yearslong battle with cable-TV operators, DirecTV Group Inc.'s Achilles' heel has been its inability to offer any sort of video-on-demand service. The company intends to change that. — The No. 1 satellite-TV provider by subscribers is testing …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
The Lost Features of Google — Google created tons of products in the past. And some of them, they removed again after finding that they didn't work, required too many resources, didn't take off, or were overshadowed by legal concerns. Here are some of the “lost” Google services and features.
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:
Source: Yahoo in informal talks with Microsoft — Microsoft and Yahoo are holding informal merger discussions, marking a shift from the “radio silence” that previously existed between the two companies, according to a source familiar with the talks. — A lot has changed over the past two weeks …
Discussion:
Between the Lines, paidContent.org, Beyond Binary, Silicon Alley Insider and Tech Tracks
