Top Items:
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Breaking: Facebook Updates Beacon — Facebook has just announced that they will be updating their Beacon system. Stories will no longer be published "without a user proactively consenting." According to Facebook here is how the Beacon changes work:
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Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
Official: Facebook Flips On Beacon — Reports surfaced yesterday, and now we have the official word from Facebook. Users will now have to opt-in to share purchases via Beacon: … It seems like a win for users, although I'm sure the ramifications of this announcement will be dissected and considered in the hours and days to come.
Discussion:
The Register
New York Times:
Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking — Faced with its second mass protest by members in its short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking Web site, is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program. — Within the last 10 days …
Dan Farber / Between the Lines:
Facebook Beacon update: No activities published without users proactively consenting — Updated: On November 6, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg proudly launched the new services (Techmeme) that he expected to redefine the advertising business. — "People influence people.
Discussion:
GigaOM
Brad Stone / Bits:
Facebook Executive Discusses Beacon Brouhaha — Facebook does not appear to be conceding much ground on Beacon — the program that informs a person's Facebook friends what he has purchased or posted on sites like Fandango.com, Yelp.com and NYTimes.com. — Earlier today I spoke …
Jason Lee Miller / WebProNews:Facebook To Cry Uncle Over Beacon
Discussion:
Bits, The Caucus, Inside Facebook, Tech Talk with Dean Takahashi and The Constant Observer
Steve Goldberg / Official Google Reader Blog:
Attack of the interns: recommendations and drag-and-drop — One of the great things about Reader, and feed readers in general, is that they let you follow sites much more efficiently than you could just by visiting them directly. This means that once you get into the flow of it …
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / Read/WriteWeb: Google Reader's New Recommendations Exciting, but Insufficient
Oliver Rist / PC Magazine:
Leopard is the New Vista, and It's Pissing Me Off — Before Apple makes any more smug OS-related attacks on Microsoft, it ought to take a good look in the mirror. — I'm not sure what ticks me off more about Leoptard (I can't take credit for that nickname—some Brit coined it) …
Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
Google To Announce Wireless Spectrum Bid Friday — The Wall Street Journal is quoting "people familiar with the matter" saying that Google will announce a bid for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum Friday. — Google first expressed interesting in bidding in July, when it sent a letter …
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Comcast Getting 100Mbps Cable Modems Next Year, Fiber Scared? [Godzilla Bandwidth] — Comcast confirms we'll see the rollout of DOCSIS 3.—the next-gen data over cable standard allowing bandwidth of 160Mbps down and 120Mbps up—starting next year, with 20 percent of its footprint expected …
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Facebook Nabs $60 Million Investment from Li Ka-shing — While a lot of people were beginning to doubt Facebook's ability to raise more money after getting a lofty $15 billion valuation following a $240 million investment from Microsoft last month, it seems the stakes are not too high …
Betsy Schiffman / Wired News:
Spammers Giving Up? Google Thinks So — Bill Gates was wildly optimistic when he said in 2004 that the problem of spam would be "solved" by 2006. The volume of junk e-mail transmitted worldwide is still enormous. But a remarkable trend is underfoot, according to Brad Taylor …
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
Warner Music: We're totally screwed — I'm paraphrasing a little, but that seems to be the general thrust of Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s comments about the company's latest financial results. In a nutshell, Warner — which Edgar Jr. maintains is not a record company at all, but a …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Coming Soon: A Small Move by Facebook, with Big Implications — So a lot has been made of the Facebook vs. Google fight, whether it be the fight over talent or potential advertising revenues. The reality is that if Facebook needs to keep growing, it needs Google.
Dan Primack / PE HUB:
AdBrite Raises $23 Million — Online advertising company AdBrite has raised $23 million in third-round funding, according to a regulatory filing discovered by peHUB. Return backers include Sequoia Capital and hedge fund Artis Management (which often gloms onto Sequoia for hot VC deals).
Discussion:
TechCrunch, paidContent.org, GigaOM, CenterNetworks, alarm:clock, VentureBeat, CNET News.com, Mashable! and Susan Mernit's Blog
Scott Gu / ScottGu's Blog:
.NET Web Product Roadmap (ASP.NET, Silverlight, IIS7) — Last week we shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. This release is a big one for .NET, and delivers a ton of new capabilities and improvements for web, client, office and mobile development. — Over the next few months we'll …
