Top Items:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google Tests Additional Search Box Within Search Results — Tamar tipped me off to people seeing secondary search boxes in the Google search results. I see them myself now. For example a search on amazon returns this search box directly under the snippet but above the URL, here is a picture:
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Sheryl Sandberg Will Become COO of Facebook — Facebook will announce that it will hire top Google executive Sheryl Sandberg as COO this afternoon, in a major hire that is sure to shake up the company and also deliver a blow to rival Google. — At Google (GOOG), Sandberg is the vice president …
Discussion:
Webware.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, GigaOM, Outside the Lines, Bits, New York Times, Techmamas, Valleywag, The 463, The Social, VentureBeat, Tech Ticker, Los Angeles Times, Network World, Silicon Alley Insider, WebProNews, Epicenter, Mark Evans, paidContent.org, HipMojo.com, All Facebook, Master of 500 Hats, Mashable! and TGDaily.com
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Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Q&A with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, on hiring, growth, and its platform — Facebook has just hired a new COO, Sheryl Sandberg of Google (our coverage). So I talked with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg today, to get some more context on her hire and how it fits in with the company's larger plans.
Nancy Gohring / PC World:
Microsoft Develops New Operating System From Scratch — Microsoft Research unveiled the new operating system, Singularity, as a prototype aimed at academics and researchers. — Microsoft showed off a new operating system on Tuesday, but don't get too excited.
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Matt / Photo Matt:
Backing BuddyPress — Some of you may remember when I wrote about Chickspeak, a WordPress MU-based social network. Andy Peatling, the fellow behind it, later decided to recreate the work he had done as an Open Source effort he called BuddyPress. And it was good.
Discussion:
Blaze New Media, Maple Leaf 2.0, GigaOM, Changing Way, Podcasting News, TechCrunch and Mashable!
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Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
Wordpress: Going after Ning.com? — I'm still technically on vacation in Florida as I type this, but it's raining outside and I can't help but post something on the news that Automattic — the parent company of Wordpress — has acquired Buddypress, as Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg describes on his blog.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Love Him or Hate Him, Fortune Cannot Make Up Its Mind About Steve Jobs — Once again, Steve Jobs is on the cover of Fortune magazine. He is there because Apple is the most admired company in America. No, wait. He is there because investigative reporter Peter Elkind wrote a 12-page takedown of his Steveness.
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Tom Krazit / One More Thing:
Apple shareholders pepper Jobs with questions — Apple CEO Steve Jobs fielded several wide-ranging questions from Apple shareholders Tuesday at the company's annual meeting, covering ground from the iPhone to the plans for a post-Jobs Apple. — For the most part, Apple's shareholder meeting is just as boring as anyone's.
Arik Hesseldahl / Byte of the Apple:Highlights from Apple's Shareholder Meeting
Discussion:
Tech Check with Jim Goldman, MacRumors, Silicon Alley Insider, MacDailyNews, MacUser, Valleywag, One More Thing and Tech Trader Daily
Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:
Yahoo Looks at New Way to Survive — As it scrambles to avoid defeat in its battle with Microsoft, Yahoo may try to put a little more time on the clock. — Microsoft, whose offer for Yahoo is now worth $41.2 billion, was preparing to escalate its takeover fight by starting a proxy contest next week.
Discussion:
paidContent.org
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Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Office Live Workspace vs Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison — Today, Microsoft announced that the Office Live Workspace beta is publicly available for everyone to access. The site, a free web-based extension of Microsoft Office, lets you access your documents online and share your work with others.
The Technium:
1,000 True Fans — The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches. — But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators.
Discussion:
BUZZYEAH
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Demand Media Buys Pluck for $75 million — Demand Media, a big buyer and operator of Internet domain name companies, completed negotiations to acquire Austin-based Pluck last night after about two months of negotiations. The price is not being disclosed but is rumored to be in the $50 million range.
Discussion:
Pluck, VentureBeat, Money Out Blog, Texas Startup Blog, Epicenter, CNET News.com, Mashable! and Todd Watson
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Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com:Will 2008 be the Year of Micro Deals?
Discussion:
Howard Lindzon
Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Ask.com scales back in makeover — SAN FRANCISCO - In a dramatic about-face, Ask.com is abandoning its effort to outshine Internet search leader Google Inc. and will instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives.
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Stuart Elliott / TV Decoder:
Firebrand Burns Out — The fire has been banked in an experiment to transform advertising into entertainment. — Firebrand, a television and online service that since October has been presenting commercials as content, is being shut down as its major investors decided to stop providing more money.
Discussion:
HipMojo.com, Podcasting News, paidContent.org, Adrants, Reel Pop, Silicon Alley Insider, NewTeeVee and Gawker
Steven Hodson / WinExtra:
The economy of Friending — Just about every part of the Web 2.0 evolution that has occurred over the last while has all been based on the success of one thing - the likelihood of people willing to mark some-one that they may or may not know from either mutual reputation or mutual interests as a friend.
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Generate, a video creation shop, joins Velocity's digital media portfolio — Generate is a two year old effort run by executives who have left their big companies for the startup life. The company creates compelling short videos on small budgets, that are distributed across the web, television and mobile devices.
