Techmeme: Is Kickstarter selling dreams? (Felix Salmon)

July 20, 2012, 4:55 AM

Top News

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Mayer to Get Close to $60 Million (And Maybe More) in Overall Compensation for Yahoo's Top Job — Yahoo revealed in a regulatory filing that it could be paying its new CEO Marissa Mayer a total of close to $60 million to turn the company around. — The mega-sum includes salary, equity grants …

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

“Yes, Keep Moving”: Marissa Mayer's First Memo to Yahoos (Natch!) — While I might abandon my internal memo-quest at Yahoo at some point soon, I wanted to make sure to post the very first one from newly installed — and extraordinarily well-paid — CEO Marissa Mayer.

Tweets: @awallenstein

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:

Employee Offer Letter

More: ZDNet, Business Insider, SlashGear, VentureBeat, Mashable!, Reuters, Marketing Land, GeekWire, bizjournals, TechCrunch and Los Angeles Times

Paul Sloan / CNET:

Yahoo's Marissa Mayer to earn $1M salary, plus giant bonus potential

More: AllThingsD

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Microsoft Posts $492M Q4 2012 Loss Because Of $6.19B aQuantive Writedown, $18.06B Revenue — Microsoft just released its Q4 2012 earnings report, posting just $192M in operating income before taxes and its first ever loss ($492M) due to the writedown the company took because of its failed aQuantive acquisition.

More: Microsoft Investor Relations, TechCrunch, The Verge, Computerworld, Business Insider, Guardian, WMPoweruser, VentureBeat, BGR, Marketing Land, VentureBeat, Mashable!, parislemon, AllThingsD, Pulse2 Technology … and The Next Web

Tweets: @parislemon and @theromit

Brian Proffitt / ReadWriteWeb:

Don't Believe the Doomsayers: Microsoft's Q4 Results Are Good News — Despite notching its first-ever quarterly loss, Microsoft's fourth-quarter results beat analyst expectations, giving the software giant some breathing room as it heads into a year of major change.

More: MarketBeat and parislemon. Tweets: @cdixon

Mario Aguilar / Gizmodo:

Microsoft Just Lost Money For the First Time Ever

More: AppleInsider, GigaOM and GeekWire. Tweets: @davidgoldmancnn

Jolie O'Dell / VentureBeat:

Google nabs $12B for Q2, including a tidy billion from new subsidiary Motorola — Google has just released the details of its second-quarter earnings: $12.21 billion in total consolidated revenue, around $1.25 billion of which came from Motorola Mobility, now officially owned by Google.

Drew Olanoff / The Next Web:

Google's Nikesh Arora: Larry Page lost his voice, but continues to run the company — During today's quarterly earnings call, Google was asked about CEO Larry Page's health. This has been a topic of conversation for analysts and investors over the past few weeks, as Page skipped …

More: GigaOM, Bits, AllThingsD and TechCrunch

Sharon McBrayer / Hickory Daily Record:

Apple building new, smaller data center in Maiden — Site plans gives details of construction, more potential growth — MAIDEN, NC — In addition to the world's largest private fuel cell installation and solar farm, Apple Inc. is building a new, smaller data center on its Maiden campus.

More: Data Center Knowledge, CNET, AllThingsD, GigaOM, MacRumors, The Register and TUAW

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Here are the latest whisper dates for Microsoft's Windows Phone 8, Office 2013 — Summary: What's the latest scuttlebutt on Microsoft's fall slate of product and services due out this fall? — Follow @maryjofoley — As we've known, or at least suspected, for a while now …

More: Pocketnow, The Next Web, PhoneArena, The Verge, TechnoBuffalo, Engadget, Gotta Be Mobile, Ubergizmo, WinBeta, New York Times, WMPoweruser, Neowin, Gizmodo and Datamation.com

Brittany Darwell / Inside Facebook:

Facebook testing new Pinterest-inspired design for app stories in News Feed — Facebook appears to be testing a layout for Open Graph app stories that is similar in design to Pinterest, with boxes for individual items that allow Likes, comments and other app-specific actions.

More: CNET, Mashable!, PandoDaily, VentureBeat and Techie Buzz

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Apple Expands iTunes Movies in the Cloud to Over 35 New Countries [Updated] — In addition to today's iTunes Match expansion to Hungary and Poland, Apple has also undertaken a significant expansion of its iTunes in the Cloud feature, adding movies to the list of eligible items in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

More: The Verge, iDownloadBlog.com, The Next Web, TUAW, iLounge, MacNN, 9to5Mac and iClarified

Kevin Weil / Twitter Advertising:

New targeting adds greater relevance to your Promoted Tweets — It's a fact — brands have been on Twitter since our earliest days. They use the platform to connect with consumers in meaningful ways, offering everything from special discounts and exclusive content to new product information.

More: CNET, PC Magazine, VentureBeat, Fast Company, Business Insider, The Next Web, The Verge, WebProNews, Marketing Land, Pulse2 Technology … and Mashable!. Thanks:@hornokplease

Felix Salmon:

Is Kickstarter selling dreams? — My theory, when it comes to buying lottery tickets, is that if you have disposable income to spare, then often the dreams and fantasies that accompany your lottery ticket purchase are in and of themselves worth $1. This is true not because dreams and fantasies …

Killian Bell / Cult of Mac:

19% Of iOS Apps Access Your Address Book Without Your Permission... Until iOS 6 [Report] — Antivirus software specialist Bitdefender has found that nearly 19% of iOS apps access your address book without your knowledge — or your consent — when you're using them, and 41% track your location.

More: Mobile Entertainment, 9to5Mac and iClarified

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Apple's new iPad launches in China with short queues and no chaos — Apple product launches in China are renowned for being chaotic and rowdy but today the company began selling its new iPad in the country under rather unusual circumstances. Instead of being greeted by massive queues …

More: ZDNet, Reuters, Associated Press, AppleInsider, China Real Time Report, Macgasm and iDownloadBlog.com

Joel Falconer / The Next Web:

World's first Android Jelly Bean carrier rollout halted due to emergency call problem — The expected rollout of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to handsets on the Vodafone Australia network has been delayed as the update is not up to Australian regulatory requirements related to emergency calls.

More: Gizmodo, IntoMobile, Vodafone Australia blog, ITworld.com, Gotta Be Mobile, Android News, Rumours … and TechnoBuffalo. Thanks:@aaron_osteraas

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Begins Testing Sponsored Results, Its First Search Typeahead Ads — Heads up, Google. Facebook is testing a new format of search ads called Sponsored Results that lets advertisers show ads in the Facebook search typeahead to users looking for a particular Page, app, or Place.

More: Inside Facebook. Thanks:@elinblesener

Reuters:

Facebook, Wal-Mart chiefs meet to “deepen” relationship — (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is about to add the biggest retail players to his list of friends. — Zuckerberg and his senior management team will spend two days at Wal-Mart Stores Inc's Bentonville …

More: Engadget

Ari Levy / Bloomberg:

Kayak Software Raises $91 Million, Prices IPO Above Range — Kayak Software Corp. (KYAK), the online travel company, raised $91 million in its initial public offering, pricing the shares above its proposed range. — The company sold 3.5 million shares at $26 each, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

More: Reuters, Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, AllThingsD and Quintura blog

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:

Ubuntu adds WebApps to its Linux desktop — Summary: After adding its own cloud service to its Linux desktop, Ubuntu is now integrating Web applications into its currently shipping desktop Linux. — Follow @sjvn — Portland, OR: At OSCon, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical …

More: Canonical Blog, Softpedia News and ITworld.com

John Cook / GeekWire:

Russian ‘cyber bandit’ arrested for attacks on Amazon.com — A 25-year-old Russian man has been arrested for masterminding two denial-of-service attacks on Amazon.com, attacks that occurred in the summer of 2008 and prevented customers from accessing the Web site of the Seattle online retailer.

More: STBlogs Alpha, Agence France Presse, Wall Street Journal and Computerworld

Barb Darrow / GigaOM:

Amazon launches high-performance SSD instances — A new type of compute instance just added to Amazon's EC2 menu targets high I/O jobs, including NoSQL database applications. The new “High I/O Quadruple Extra Large” instances store and retrieve lots of data very fast …

More: Amazon Web Services Blog, The Netflix Tech Blog, CNET, ITworld.com, The Register, ZDNet and All Things Distributed

Trevor Gilbert / PandoDaily:

Pincus Considering Opening San Francisco Startup Incubator — Tonight at the PandoMonthly fireside chat between Mark Pincus and Sarah Lacy, Pincus dropped a little bit of a bombshell on the local San Francisco startup community. Pincus shared that he is considering opening a new startup incubator space in a building that he owns.

Tweets: @arrington

Stephen Mangan / Reuters:

EU orders Google to change mobile services: report — (Reuters) - EU regulators are demanding that Google makes broad changes to its mobile services as talks to settle an antitrust investigation enter their final days, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

More: ZDNet, CNET, Financial Times, Fox Business and Financial Times

Sponsor Posts

Microsoft BizSpark:

Featured Startup - FormVerse — If there was one tool not made for effective work, it would have to be email. If you take silos of information, and a chronological effect, where old or new is piled on top of each other …

Cloud Foundry:

Static.com Adds Hadoop Support for Cloud Foundry — In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity …

Rackspace Blog:

An Army Is Forming To Battle Patent Trolls — For the past several months, we've exposed the flaws in the patent system and how they're being exploited by opportunistic patent trolls looking to extort a quick buck …

Hortonworks » Blog:

Hadoop, Hadoop, Hurrah! HDP for Windows is Now GA! — Today we are very excited to announce that Hortonworks Data Platform for Windows (HDP for Windows) is now generally available and ready to support the most demanding production workloads.

Unison's blog:

“Yammer sucks” — Not to be mean to Yammer, or anything — it's a very good tool for some use cases — but that's what a customer told me recently (and others feel the same way).

Sponsor Techmeme

Who's Hiring In Tech?

Google: Do cool things that matter.

Automattic: 18% down, 82% to go. WordPress.

CBSi: Have your people call our people.

@WalmartLabs: A thin line between work and play.

Disqus: Build something worth talking about.

FancyCorp: We are real fancy.

imo: Awesome People. Awesome Products.

Zoosk: Fall in love. With your job.

Facebook: Best place to build & make an impact.

Amazon: Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

Square: Come simplify the complex.

Twitter: Less characters; more fulfilling.

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