Techmeme: Tumblr gets a dedicated ad sales team again, after integration with Yahoo ad sales failed (Eugene Kim/Business Insider)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News

February 15, 2016, 12:40 PM

Top News

Andrew Liszewski / Gizmodo:

Mattel's $40 Google Cardboard-compatible VR View-Master 2.0, coming this fall, fixes many problems of the original — The VR View-Master 2.0 Will Be the Best Google Cardboard You Can Buy — Last year Mattel completely re-invented the View-Master by turning it into what eventually became …

More: 9to5Google, Marketing Land, The Verge, TechCrunch, Ubergizmo, Pocket-lint, Road to VR, The Next Web, Tech Times, Engadget and Liliputing. Tweets: @marshallk

Ben Thompson / Stratechery:

How Facebook and Google dominate digital advertising, and why other tech companies struggle — The Reality of Missing Out — When it comes to ad-supported services, pundits everywhere are fond of the adage “If you're not the customer you're the product”.

Tweets: @mdudas

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Immersion files a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple over 3D Touch, Force Touch, Taptic Engine and other haptic feedback technologies — Haptic Feedback Company Immersion Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Apple — Immersion, a company that develops and licenses haptic touch …

More: The Next Web, AppleInsider, O'Grady's PowerPage, Business Wire, TechSpot, The Tech Portal, Fone Arena, Business Insider, Network World, The Register, Law360, Silicon Republic, Re/code, Engadget, Good E-Reader and Pocket-lint

Fitz Tepper / TechCrunch:

Tidal Tops U.S. App Store After Landing Exclusive Rights To Kanye West's New Album — After scoring exclusive streaming rights to Kanye West's new album, The Life of Pablo, Tidal has taken over the number one spot on the U.S. App Store. … The album, which went live yesterday …

More: ABC News, Gizmodo, Tech Insider, iPhone Hacks, The Verge, The Verge, New York Times, App Advice, VentureBeat, Ubergizmo, Tech Times, The Next Web, Wall Street Journal, Engadget and The Loop

Anthony Noto / New York Business Journal:

Web.com to acquire SMB digital marketing firm Yodle for $342M — Yodle agrees to $342M takeover offer from Web.com — New York-based Yodle Inc. has been toying with the idea of an initial public offering for almost two years. Today, it opted for M&A instead.

More: Street Fight, eWeek and Wall Street Journal. Tweets: @mdudas

Biz Carson / Business Insider:

VCs interviewed at Upfront Summit concerned by cooling markets and troubled unicorns, but look to the down market to propel startups with strong business models — ‘The Great Reset’: Venture capitalists and startups have shifted from greed to fear — If the terrible headlines and stock prices …

More: Forbes

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:

AWS Bolsters High Performance Computing Offering With NICE Acquisition — AWS attempted to enhance its high performance computing offering today when it purchased NICE, an Italian software and services company for an undisclosed price. — NICE provides a set of tools and technologies …

More: nice-software.com, AWS Official Blog, PCWorld, The Register, SiliconANGLE, WebProNews, VentureBeat, Business Cloud News, Fortune, Reuters, Latest, TheStreet.com and GeekWire. Tweets: @nice_hpc

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget:

Hulu's universal Windows 10 app features live tiles and Cortana — A big part of the promise of Windows 10 is the big push for universal applications, which enable developers to write one app that'll work on PCs, phones and tablets. Hulu has embraced Microsoft's vision and is launching its universal Windows 10 application today.

More: Windows Blog, Windows Central, Business Insider, The Fire Hose, VentureBeat, TechCrunch and Neowin

Ben Rosen / BuzzFeed:

How one teen and her friends use Snapchat, replying to 40 snaps in under a minute, getting scores of 100K+ in 45 days, burning tens of gigabytes of data a month — My Little Sister Taught Me How To “Snapchat Like The Teens” … TRENDING — I'm 29 years old, and I've been on Snapchat for about a year now.

More: Washington Post and Motherboard. Tweets: @katie_roof, @dshankar, @nickbilton, @profjeffjarvis, @wickedgood, @umichlsa and @marshallk

M. Mitchell Waldrop / Nature:

Semiconductor industry roadmap to abandon pursuit of Moore's law for the first time as computing becomes increasingly mobile — The chips are down for Moore's law — The semiconductor industry will soon abandon its pursuit of Moore's law. Now things could get a lot more interesting.

More: Guardian, Silicon Republic and The New Stack

Tweets: @stevesi, @natisho, @mdudas, @stevecheney, @akposthuman and @cdixon

Quentin Hardy / New York Times:

AT&T CEO pitches employee education program, hoping to build a cloud computing business — Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else — DALLAS — Thirty-four years ago, Kevin Stephenson got his younger brother, Randall, a job with the telephone company.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @wadhwa and @stephfierman

Om Malik:

Facebook's Free Basics isn't free, it's all about advertising and making money — Nothing Is Free, Not Even Facebook Free Basics — The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has given Facebook's Free Basics (a cutely rebranded Internet.org) a big thumbs-down, according to reports.

More: Digital Trends, The Atlantic, New York Times and TechCrunch. Tweets: @daveg

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: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26 — Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.

Zoho:

The best time to become a Zoho Partner — The business world is not only changing but it is being rebuilt. Customers want connected ecosystems that will help them automate, unify their data, and do more with less.

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

Big Technology Podcast:

OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble

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:

Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped

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:

Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain

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

Subscribe to Access.

Great Chat:

So what happens after AGI?

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

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.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:40 PM ET, February 15, 2016.

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.