Techmeme: Report: eBay To Launch “The Plaza,” A New Brand-Focused Online Mall For Retail Goods (Leena Rao/TechCrunch)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News

January 16, 2014, 8:00 AM

Top News

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

He Was Fired: Here's Marissa Mayer's De Castro Buh-Bye Memo to Yahoo Staff — Here it is, the internal memo to Yahoo staff about the sudden — though it was not sudden, by any means — leave-taking today of its COO, Henrique De Castro, courtesy of one of my 10,563 sources left at Yahoo!

More: The Register, Computerworld, Softpedia News, VentureBeat and Business Insider

Tweets: @evelynrusli, @moorehn and @danprimack

See also Mediagazer

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

A First Look at the Target Intrusion, Malware — Last weekend, Target finally disclosed at least one cause of the massive data breach that exposed personal and financial information on more than 110 million customers: Malicious software that infected point-of-sale systems at Target checkout counters.

More: ZDNet, New York Times, Ars Technica, Forbes, Reuters, CNET and Business Insider. Tweets: @privacychoice

Federal Trade Commission:

Apple to refund consumers at least $32.5M for in-app purchases made without parental consent — Apple Inc. Will Provide Full Consumer Refunds of At Least $32.5 Million to Settle FTC Complaint It Charged for Kids' In-App Purchases Without Parental Consent — Company Also Will Modify its Billing Practices Under FTC Settlement

John Paczkowski / Re/code:

Apple Agrees to FTC Consent Decree Over In-App Purchases (Memo)

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Spotify Drops Free Web Listening Time Limit Everywhere - A Big Scalability Milestone — Spotify's advertising engine and paid customer conversion funnel are finally working well enough that today it eliminated all limits on free, ad-supported web listening in all countries.

More: Spotify Blog, BGR, Engadget, Gizmodo, CNET, SlashGear, Electronista, Pocket-lint, The Next Web, GSMArena Blog, The Verge and Gizmodo UK. Tweets: @joshconstine. See also Mediagazer

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

BitTorrent Creator's New Software DissidentX Hides Secrets In Plain Sight — Encryption tools help people keep secrets. Bram Cohen has a more subtle ambition: he wants to help people keep secret the act of keeping secrets. — For the last year Cohen, who created the breakthrough file …

More: SlashGear

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Report: eBay To Launch “The Plaza,” A New Brand-Focused Online Mall For Retail Goods — According to a new report from Macquarie Capital, marketplace giant eBay is set to launch a new vertical this spring called The Plaza on eBay that will focus on direct-to-consumer sales.

More: SlashGear, CNET and Softpedia News

Bloomberg:

Microsoft CEO Candidate List Is Said to Include Ericsson's Vestberg — Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s board is considering Ericsson AB Chief Executive Officer Hans Vestberg as a potential successor to departing leader Steve Ballmer, according to people briefed on the search.

More: TheStreet.com, LiveSide.net, WinBeta, CNET, Gigaom and Light Reading

Tweets: @bloombergtech and @parislemon

Sinead Carew / Reuters:

Price war in U.S. mobile market raises fear of profit hemorrhage — (Reuters) - New Year's rivalry among U.S. mobile operators has Wall Street worried that the industry's profits could seriously decline. — After months of aggressive moves by T-Mobile US to lure customers from other carriers …

Bloomberg:

Verizon Victory on Net-Neutrality Rules Seen as Loss for Netflix — Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)'s legal victory over the Federal Communications Commission lets the carrier charge extra fees for speedier delivery of online content, potentially increasing costs for Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and other Internet companies.

More: USA Today, Mashable, Variety, ABC News, Reuters, The Switch and FierceWireless

Fred Wilson / A VC:

How losing net neutrality will discourage investing in bandwidth-intensive startups

More: Gigaom, Los Angeles Times, CNET, Business Insider, Music Ally, BGR and InfoWorld

Tweets: @adamnash, @cdixon, @timkarr and @brizilla

Edward Wyatt / NYT Bits:

F.C.C. Chairman Adds More Ambiguity to His Position on Network Neutrality

More: Slate, Official FCC Blog, Wired, New Yorker, The Verge, VentureBeat, E Pluribus Unum and SlashGear. See also Mediagazer

Jim Salter / Ars Technica:

Bitrot and atomic COWs: Inside “next-gen” filesystems — We look at the amazing features in ZFS and btrfs—and why you need them. — Most people don't care much about their filesystems. But at the end of the day, the filesystem is probably the single most important part of an operating system.

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Adobe Partners With MakerBot and Shapeways To Bring 3D Printing Support To Photoshop, Adds Perspective Warp Tool & Resets 30-Day Trials — Adobe today launched the latest update to its subscription-based Creative Cloud suite. While the company is updating a variety of its tools …

More: Gigaom, Engadget, The Next Web, The Verge, Inquirer, Mashable, Gearburn, VentureBeat, Macworld, Gizmodo and Softpedia News

Larry Seltzer / ZDNet:

Microsoft to extend Windows XP antimalware updates one year — Summary: Security updates for Windows XP will end this April, but updated antimalware signatures for the operating system will continue for another year. — Microsoft has announced that they will continue to supply antimalware signatures …

More: Technet, The Next Web, SiliconANGLE, BBC, TechEye, ZDNet, BetaNews, Bink.nu, The Register, SecurityWeek, Softpedia News, TWCN Tech News, gHacks Technology News, WinBeta, Ubergizmo, CNET, Neowin, Computerworld, Ars Technica and Liliputing. Tweets: @parislemon

Martin Bryant / The Next Web:

Compass survey: 66% of Silicon Valley startup founders pay themselves less than $50k — What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get? Probably not a very high one — If you're a startup founder, how much should you pay yourself? Not very much, according to data that Compass has shared with The Next Web.

Tweets: @baris and @sosventures

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

OUYA Founding Team Member And VP Of Product Development Departs — One of OUYA's founding members, Muffi Ghadiali, has left the company, TechCrunch has learned. Ghadiali was instrumental in helping launch the OUYA on Kickstarter and to the consumer market, and has previous experience working for Lab126 …

More: VG247, The Escapist, VentureBeat, Polygon, GamesIndustry International, destructoid, Gamasutra and Re/code. Thanks:@vmgarmstrong

Evan Schuman / Computerworld:

Starbucks caught storing mobile passwords in clear text — In a case of convenience for users trumping security, Starbucks has been storing the passwords for its mobile-payment app, along with geolocation data, in clear text — The Starbucks mobile app, the most used mobile-payment app in the U.S. …

More: Full Disclosure, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Engadget, Cult of Mac, Softpedia News, MacRumors, CNNMoney.com, PhoneArena, TechnoBuffalo, Help Net Security, iDownloadBlog.com, TUAW, Ubergizmo, GeekWire, Examiner, SlashGear, FierceMobileIT News and Computerworld

Brent Rose / Gizmodo:

Google Play Movies and TV Finally Comes to iOS — First Google Play Books made its way to iOS. Then Google Play Music undertook the pilgrimage. So, it should be little surprise that today Google Play Movies and TV has finally made the jump. This is significant not just because it brings …

More: Inquirer, AppleInsider, Google Play, Gigaom, Cult of Mac, TechnoBuffalo, AppleTell, IntoMobile, Ars Technica, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, The Next Web, Engadget, Macworld, The Verge and 9to5Google. Tweets: @googleplay

JP Mangalindan / Fortune:

A third of SF cabbies switched from registered cabs to Uber, Lyft or Sidecar in the past year — San Francisco cab drivers are Uber's latest pickup — Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing upstarts are transforming a slow-to-change industry from the outside in. — FORTUNE — Being a cab driver isn't what it used to be.

More: ParisLemon. Tweets: @conorsen, @bgurley, @eladgil and @caseynewton. Thanks:@jpmanga

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Zuckerberg Calls Snapchat A “Privacy Phenomenon” — Mark Zuckerberg thinks Facebook's innovated by creating a place where people could share what wasn't shared before, which is also why he thinks Snapchat is important. Today in a low-profile talk at Stanford alongside discussions of the NSA …

More: AllFacebook. Tweets: @startupljackson. Thanks:@gallagherbilly

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Viddy, the “Instagram for Video” That Wasn't, Acquired by Web Video Startup Fullscreen — Remember Viddy? — Back in 2012, the video-sharing app was growing like a weed, and lots of smart money bet that it would become an “Instagram for video.” Then Facebook, which had been fueling Viddy's rise …

More: Business Wire, Softpedia News, Mashable, The Next Web, Los Angeles Times and The Verge. Tweets: @caseynewton. See also Mediagazer

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

LinkedIn Expands Its Jobs Database With A New Volunteer Marketplace For Unpaid Non-Profit Work — Yummly Takes Its Recipe Discovery Platform International With U.K. Site & iOS App Launch — LinkedIn, the social network for the working world, has gained a reputation as a place …

More: Official LinkedIn Blog, The Verge, tech.co, The Next Web, TechHive, VatorNews and Re/code

Sponsor Posts

Google:

Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life

Shopify:

Shopify's new AI commerce stack — Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.

Zoho:

Zoho People in 2025: A year in review — As we wrap up 2025, we're taking a moment to look back on a year filled with progress and transformation at Zoho People. Our team has been constantly pushing boundaries …

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box 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

Lenny's Podcast:

The coming AI security crisis (and what to do about it) | Sander Schulhoff

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:

OpenAI's Potential, Google's Speedy Model, Copilot Hits Turbulence

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.

Hard Fork:

Why Roomba Died + Tech Predictions for 2026 + A Hard Forkin' Xmas Song

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Access:

Betting on reality with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

"Neither Side Is Used to Losing." Lucas Shaw on What's Next for Netflix and Paramount in the Battle for Warner Bros.

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.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:00 AM ET, January 16, 2014.

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.