Techmeme: Disruptions: The Logic (or Lack of It) in Appraising Start-Ups (Nick Bilton/NYT Bits)

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April 7, 2013, 7:25 PM

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Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Facebook Begins Big Ad Blitz To Tout Its New Android “Home” — Although Facebook Home won't be available for another week or so, the social network has begun a major ad campaign pitching customers on its new Android software. — On its own mobile and desktop sites, Facebook is pushing …

More: Adweek, CNET, Mashable, iMore and Engadget. Tweets: @sdkstl

Mat Honan / Wired:

Facebook's ‘Phone’ Is Another Triumph of Mediocrity — Maybe you were hoping for something radically new and different from a Facebook phone. If so, Zuck just broke your heart. But so what. Facebook never does anything new. New doesn't matter in the blue.

More: TechCrunch, Forbes, Business Insider, PandoDaily and Datamation.com

Ken Segall / Observatory:

iPhone naming: when simple gets complicated — When Apple introduced the iPad 3 as “the new iPad” — dropping its number altogether — it gave Apple watchers something new to ponder. — Would the coming iPhone 5 simply be “the new iPhone”? Would Apple's naming convention finally be applied equally across all product lines?

More: ParisLemon, Business Insider, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhoneHacks, Phones Review, AppleInsider, MacNN, Softpedia News, GigaOM and The Verge

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Disruptions: The Logic (or Lack of It) in Appraising Start-Ups — I have a vision of how suitors decide how much to offer for a start-up they want to buy. Several executives go into a conference room. Each scribbles a number on a piece of paper and places it in a hat.

Tweets: @sfiegerman

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

Google's $100 Million Man: The Neal Mohan Story — Two years ago, Twitter was in disarray. — On April 14, 2011, Fortune's Jessi Hempel blasted Twitter for failing to launch exciting new products, generate meaningful revenues, or hang on to executive talent.

Tweets: @mdudas and @hunterwalk

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Allen Stern, blogging pioneer and entrepreneur, passes away — we will miss you Allen — Allen Stern, an early blogger as well as an entrepreneur and an all-around great human being, passed away last week, according to an update posted on his Facebook page by his sister Sari Rosenberger.

More: Facebook, louisgray.com, CNET, Dan Lewis, Tech Cocktail, Stealthmode and Sean Percival's Blog

Tweets: @samgustin, @fredericl, @briansolis, @jason, @robinwauters, @percival, @caro, @parislemon and @cdixon

Thanks:@percival

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

The Next Don: How VCs Plan For The Future — We all remember the last scene in The Godfather, where Michael Corleone is depicted as the next Don, taking over the role from his father as the figurehead of the mafioso Corleone family. As a viewer, we are partly left with a sense of relief …

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Streaming Sites and the Rise of Shared Accounts — LAST Sunday afternoon, some friends and I were hanging out in a local bar, talking about what we'd be doing that evening. It turned out that we all had the same plan: to watch the season premiere of “Game of Thrones.”

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @cschweitz, @amyfiscus, @cschweitz, @ericgoldman and @palafo

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Until Today, If You Were 17, It Could Have Been Illegal To Read Seventeen.com Under the CFAA — If you are 17 or under, a federal prosecutor could have charged you with computer hacking just for reading Seventeen magazine online—until today. — It's not because the law got any better.

More: Digital Trends and Techdirt

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

California Court Rules It Illegal To Check Maps On Your Phone While Driving — For years, we've discussed the problematic nature of “distracted driving” laws that seek to outlaw things like talking on your phone or texting while driving. It is not that we don't think these behaviors are dangerous.

More: AllThingsD, PC World, PC Magazine, TechCrunch, The Verge, Gotta Be Mobile and CNET. Tweets: @orinkerr

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

YouTube Won't Put Your Video Back Up, Even If It's Fair Use, If It Contains Content From Universal Music — Patrick McKay, who has been a harsh critic of some of YouTube's failings when it comes to the DMCA process and various takedowns, has highlighted a very serious issue with YouTube that has received little attention.

More: PC Magazine, Fair Use Tube, Werner von Wallenrod's … and TorrentFreak

Martin Bryant / The Next Web:

Google publishes - then removes - a post stating that Fiber will launch in Austin, Texas next — A report from VentureBeat yesterday, citing multiple sources, claimed that Google and the City of Austin would be announcing the launch of the Google Fiber gigabit Internet service in the Texan city on Tuesday.

More: AllThingsD, KVUE-TV, Engadget, CNET, Digital Trends, VentureBeat, GigaOM, Neowin, Geekosystem, Mashable, GigaOM, Gizmodo, PC World, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, CNET, AllThingsD, Macgasm, PC Magazine, SlashGear, PandoDaily and The Verge

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