Techmeme: Google punishes Rap Genius in search ranking for SEO practices, founders seek resolution (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

December 26, 2013, 4:30 PM

Top News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Christmas delayed: Amazon offers $20 gift cards, refunds shipping charges after UPS and FedEx problems — Didn't get what you expected under the tree? It's probably marooned in a package delivery center. — Following widespread complaints about absent packages, Amazon …

More: internetretailer.com, Business Insider, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, The Next Web, SlashGear, louisgray.com, TechnoBuffalo, Gotta Be Mobile and IntoMobile

Shelly Banjo / Wall Street Journal:

Surge of online orders causes fulfillment, delivery delays, frustrates customers on Christmas — Shipping Delays Left Many People With Little to Put Under Tree … Many shoppers are blaming online retailers for stealing Christmas. — Companies from Amazon.com Inc. to Kohl's Corp …

More: UPS, BetaNews, BestTechie, NBCNews, VatorNews, Business Insider, The Verge, Corporate Intelligence and InvestorPlace

Tweets: @levie and @eholmeswsj

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Dogewallet announces Dogecoin theft, a dubious milestone for the new cryptocurrency that started as a joke — Millions Of Dogecoins Stolen In Apparent Heist — Much robbery, so anger, etc. Users of the functional joke currency are reporting emptied wallets.

More: doges.org, The Verge, SiliconANGLE, Forbes, TechCrunch, ReadWrite, Business Insider, Vacuum, VentureBeat, Mashable, Mediaite, Tech in Asia, Gizmodo, The Next Web and Electronista

Tweets: @daweiner, @cshirky, @samir, @tmfbiggles, @fmanjoo, @dcbigjohn and @russellbrandom

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Amazon's “best ever” season saw 1M new Prime members in one week, 426 items sold per second — Amazon Prime tops 20 million members as company touts its best holiday season ever — Amazon is exiting the 2013 holiday season with “tens of millions” of Amazon Prime members …

More: NYT Bits, Quartz, AllThingsD, CNET, Gigaom, The Verge, VatorNews, Businessweek, Tech Trader Daily, Gigaom, Benzinga and The Next Web

Tweets: @zseward and @zseward

Thanks:@belril. See also Mediagazer

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Plain Vanilla Games, Maker Of Ultra-Hot Trivia App QuizUp, Raises Another $22 Million From Sequoia — Plain Vanilla Games, the company behind ultra-hot trivia app QuizUp, has raised a $22 million Series B Round of financing. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation …

More: VentureBeat, Betabeat, The Verge, AllThingsD and The Next Web

Tweets: @semil and @caseynewton

Thanks:@chrisvelazco

Farhad Manjoo / Wall Street Journal:

Snapchat's popularity shows we all may want a more erasable Internet — The Internet doesn't necessarily have to keep our digital effluvia around forever. Do we want it to be erasable? — The Internet doesn't necessarily have to keep our digital effluvia around forever, and Snapchat has proved it.

More: BGR and MacDailyNews. Tweets: @fmanjoo, @stevesi and @hunterwalk

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Google punishes Rap Genius in search ranking for SEO practices, founders seek resolution — Google Destroys Rap Genius' Search Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam, But Resolution In Progress — Google hit back hard today after it learned lyrics site Rap Genius had been using dubious SEO tricks to attain top spots in search results.

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Scores of Music Services Stream Into Crowded Field — Many of the New Models Will Focus on Genre — The number of music-streaming services is set to explode next year, as record labels have warmed up to the idea of renting consumers access to a vast collection of tunes, rather than selling them individual albums or songs.

Tweets: @zseward

Steve Dent / Engadget:

LG mum on smartwatch rumors but confirms that a wearable device is coming — Amidst rumors of 2K displays and octa-core CPUs for the LG G3, the Korea Herald has just added another: the upcoming smartphone will come with a G-Arch smartwatch and G-Health fitness band.

More: The Korea Heald, VentureBeat, WebProNews, TechnoBuffalo, TechnoBuffalo, Yahoo! News and Droid Life. Tweets: @liliputingnews

Shelly Banjo / Wall Street Journal:

Online retailers mine transaction data to discourage returns, a growing problem — Rampant Returns Plague E-Retailers — Sellers Suggest Sizes and Redirect Discounts to Break Bad Habits — Free shipping and lenient return policies have given online retailing a huge boost.

More: Intuitive Systems, SlashGear and Marketing Pilgrim. Tweets: @notaxation

Jenny W. Hsu / Wall Street Journal:

Taiwan fines Apple $667K for influencing carriers' iPhone pricing, can face additional $1.6m if it fails to comply — Taiwan Fines Apple for iPhone Price-Plan Meddling — Island's fair-trade body says Apple told mobile-service providers how to charge for handsets

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

KakaoTalk is used by 93% of South Korean smartphone owners, expects $200M revenue in 2013 — With $200 Million in Revenue, South Korea's Top Messaging App Is All Smiley Faces — In South Korea, there's no escaping KakaoTalk. The country has a smartphone penetration rate of 73 percent …

Tweets: @papadimitriou. Thanks:@electricwaffles

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

Get UAE eInvoicing ready with Zoho — The UAE announced its eInvoicing mandate on 30 October 2024, when the Ministry of Finance issued Federal Decree-Laws No. 16 and 17 of 2024, laying the legal groundwork for a national eInvoicing system.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Invest Like the Best:

Gabe Stengel - Building Investing Superintelligence

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Grit:

Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Lenny's Podcast:

90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord's product chief | Peter Sellis

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Big Technology Podcast:

AI Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Sources:

Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:30 PM ET, December 26, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.