Top Items:
Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
The three business models that make Twitter a billion-dollar business in 12-24 months. — Allen wrote a blog post today about Twitter focusing on a business model. Allen, my friend, you're thinking small. Get out of Brooklyn and spend more time in the Valley. Business models!?!?!
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Brad Stone / New York Times:
Netflix Partners with LG to Bring Movies Straight to TV — SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix, the DVD-by-mail company with more than seven million customers, has a new strategy that may one day make those red envelopes obsolete. — The company wants to strike deals with electronics companies …
Discussion:
ParisLemon, Silicon Alley Insider, NewTeeVee, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo and Hacking NetFlix
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Netflix-LG Movie Deal: Picking Winners And Losers — Netflix and LG will team up to make gadgets that stream NFLX online movies to your hi-def TV. The devices won't go on sale for months, so it's far too early to call the partnership a success. But if they take off, here's an idea of who scores and who gets stepped on.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Sears: Come see the softer side of spyware — Sears and Kmart are places you might go when you need a new air conditioner filter or a lawnmower; they're not generally thought of as havens for spyware. But that's what the two stores have become, at least online, where their websites were found …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Swarming Media, Techdirt, WebMetricsGuru, CA Security Advisor … and GracefulFlavor
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The Boy Genius Report:
Jay-Z launching record label with Apple — This one's been floating around like a hot air balloon, but we've just about confirmed it. For those that don't know, Jay-Z left Def Jam as President last month, and everyone's been talking about where he's heading.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Next Google Search Challenger: Blekko — Rich Skrenta, who created the first computer virus (Elk Cloner), co-founded the Open Directory Project, and co-founded online news site Topix, may have bitten off the biggest challenge of his career - taking on Google. In search. — Skrenta left Topix last June.
Discussion:
Entrepreneurship Blog
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Plaxo's For Sale — Plaxo, the Sequoia-backed start that transformed itself from a hated spam monster into a mild mannered and interesting business social network, has started a sale process according to a source. They've hired an investment bank, Revolution Partners, who are spearheading the sale effort.
Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0:
How Many Journalists Would Go All Digital If They Could? — Kara Swisher, a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter, who has covered the Silicon Valley boom and bust for the print WSJ newspaper, has announced that she's gone all digital, i.e. she will be writing exclusively for the All Things Digital web site.
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Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
Free WSJ.com Would Need 12x Traffic To Offset Loss; DJ Buy To Shave A Penny From NWS: Analyst — Turning WSJ.com into a free site would require a 12x increase in traffic growth to offset the lost revenue, according to a new report from Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang.
Megan McCarthy / Epicenter:
Facebook Ads Make You the Star — And You May Not Know It — Have you used Facebook to give a shout-out to businesses you like? Best make sure your profile picture catches your best side, because you might be an unwitting star in those businesses' next Facebook ad campaigns.
Michael Kanellos / CNET News.com:
Coming soon: A notebook with a terabyte — It's the notebook for neurotics. — Asus, the Taiwanese computer maker, will come out with a notebook that sports two 500GB hard drives from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Combined, this will give a fully configured Asus M70 notebook a terabyte of storage.
John P. Falcone / CNET News.com:
HP bows updated MediaSmart TVs — New MediaSmart TVs will sport full MCE functionality — HP has updated its MediaSmart TVs for the new year. On the surface, the new SL4282N (42-inch) and SL4782N (47-inch) are very similar to their 2007 counterparts: full 1080p resolution LCD flat-panels …
Peter Ha / CrunchGear:
Lenovo lets loose three IdeaPads — Ever since my conversion into the Apple race, I tend to shake my head at other notebook manufacturers and think their hardware isn't as nice or pretty or whatever. I obviously come to my senses shortly after and take another look at it from an objective standpoint.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
JPMorgan Predicts 2008 Will Be “Nothing But Net” — JPMorgan's Internet analyst Imran Khan and his team released a massive 312-page report this morning titled Nothing But Net that paints a bullish picture for the major Internet stocks (Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Expedia, Salesforce.com …
