Techmeme: Start-Ups Follow Twitter, and Become Neighbors (Claire Cain Miller/New York Times)

5:25 AM ET, November 12, 2010

Top Items:

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Facebook's Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday — Back in February we wrote about Facebook's secret Project Titan — a web-based email client that we hear is unofficially referred to internally as its “Gmail killer”. Now we've heard from sources that this is indeed what's coming …

Discussion: Virtualeconomics, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Engadget, Inside Facebook, T3.com News and All Facebook

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:

(Not so) Crazy Microsoft Rumors: Facebook's new e-mail to feature Office Web Apps integration — As part of my job as a full-time Microsoft watcher, I get a lot of tips about Microsoft from customers, competitors, partners and even Softies themselves. However, ever since I worked for PCWeek …

Discussion: CNET News

Kevin Thau / Twitter Blog:

Twitter + Ping = Discovering More Music — Every day, millions of people use Twitter to follow and share what they care about. Twitter users now send over 95 million Tweets a day, many of which are about the music they're listening to. — Starting today Ping, iTunes' new social network for music …

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Twitter Plus iTunes Ping is a Non-Starter

Discussion: Virtualeconomics, SlashGear, The Next Web, AppleInsider, BGR, BetaNews, GigaOM and iClarified

Austin Carr / Fast Company: Apple-Twitter Partnership a Win-Win: Why Didn't Facebook Take the Deal?

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple-Owned ‘iTun.es’ Domain Could Be Used as iTunes Link Shortener

Discussion: TUAW

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Yahoos Freaking Out Over 20% Layoff Rumors (Update: Yahoo Denies) — Yahoo is preparing to lay off 20% of total staff, we've heard from two independent sources, and managers have been asked to begin to make the tough decisions on who stays and who goes. This news comes just days …

Discussion: Geek.com, ITworld.com, Bloomberg, Computerworld, CNNMoney.com, CNET News and Tech Trader Daily

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Adding Insult to Injury: Yahoo Is Prepping Layoffs, But Limited to Product Group and More Like 10 Percent — Yahoo is indeed preparing to lay off employees, in a reduction in force that will be done in December. — But the layoffs, first reported in TechCrunch at 20 percent …

Discussion: TechCrunch, paidContent, Pulse2, AdAge and SAI

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Google Offers Staff Engineer $3.5 Million To Turn Down Facebook Offer — In September I wrote about Google's “extraordinary” efforts to stop employees, particularly engineers, from resigning to join pre-IPO startups like LinkedIn, Twitter and especially Facebook.

Discussion: Virtualeconomics, Examiner, Gawker and Seattle Times

Nick Bilton / Bits:

For Sale: A $160,000 Apple Computer — True computer nerds, do I have a deal for you! — Christie's, the tony auctioneer, is hawking a snazzy computer that it hopes will sell for between $159,800 and $239,700. You're probably wondering what kind of computer is worth close to a quarter million dollars?

Discussion: Daily Mail, Newlaunches.com, SlashGear, Pulse2, AppleInsider, CrunchGear, Neatorama and PC World

Ryan Kim / GigaOM:

Google Looks to Play it Safe With Nexus S — The Nexus One had such ambitious goals: It was going to push the state of Android hardware and it was going to establish a direct-to-consumer model for unlocked phones. Now Google seems to be trading its ground-breaking approach for something more familiar …

Quentyn Kennemer / Android Phone Fans:
[Update] Best Buy: The Nexus S is Real, Would've Been Headed for T-Mobile First

Brian Barrett / Gizmodo: Unconfirmed: First Leaked Nexus S Pics

Chris Ziegler / Engadget:

Confirmed: Kin One and Two are returning to Verizon. Wait, what? — Unbelievably, against all odds and better judgment, we are able to independently confirm that Microsoft's short-lived Kin One and Kin Two are coming back for an encore performance on Verizon, possibly as soon as this quarter …

Discussion: PPCGeeks.com, PreCentral.net, Winrumors, SlashGear, Mashable!, LiveSide.net, Gizmodo, Electronista, PhoneArena, IntoMobile, WMPoweruser.com, The Next Web and Neowin.net

Derek Sivers / Sivers.org:

The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote — In May 2003, Apple invited me to their headquarters to discuss getting CD Baby's catalog into the iTunes Music Store. — iTunes had just launched two weeks before, with only some music from the major labels. Many of us in the music biz were not sure this idea was going to work.

Discussion: TechCrunch

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

“Flash Is Great.” — Anonymous Flash Developer — I used to think that Android fanboys worked themselves into the biggest tizzy when you suggest their favorite device of the week may not be the absolute bee's knees. I was wrong. Flash fanboys are much worse.

Discussion: Computerworld, Daring Fireball and Digital Trends

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Adobe Flash For Samsung's Google Tab Is An Embarrassing Disaster

Discussion: Guardian, Engadget and techblog.dallasnews.com

Groklaw:

Google Files Sizzling Answer to Oracle's Amended Complaint and its Opposition to Motion to Dismiss — Action in the OraGoogle mess, as I like to call that litigation. Google has filed its answer to Oracle's amended complaint and its memorandum opposing Oracle's Motion to Dismiss.

Discussion: The Register, TechEye, InfoQ, Mashable! and Computerworld

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Andreessen Horowitz Isn't Hedging its Bets with Picplz and Instagram; It Has Picked Picplz — It's a strict rule in the venture business that you don't fund two direct competitors, for obvious reasons. There's a massive difference between the valuation of the number one player in the market …

Discussion: SAI, VentureBeat, Pulse2 and paidContent

Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Gossip explodes over photo app Instagram

Discussion: TechCrunch, Venture Capital Dispatch, MediaPost, New York Times and alarm:clock

Andy Chu / Bing:

Bing for Mobile now available on all major US mobile operators — It's been an exciting week for us here at Bing. — On Monday, Windows Phone 7 hit US store shelves giving people access to Bing for Mobile out of the box. And for you Verizon Wireless customers, with the release …

Discussion: CNET News, Softpedia News, eWeek, The Next Web, Download Squad, Androinica, PhoneArena, Search Engine Land, Erictric, The Microsoft Blog and Winrumors

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

JACK IS BACK: Twitter Inventor Jack Dorsey Is Working For Twitter Again — Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey is back working at the company on a once-a-week-or-so basis, three industry sources tell us. — Dorsey was Twitter CEO until the company's chairman and top investor, Ev Williams …

Anthony Ha / VentureBeat: Square PR on Jack Dorsey rumors: “Nothing has changed”

Wall Street Journal:

Apple's iAd Helping Rivals — Mobile Advertising Companies Say Initial Worries Overblown as Businesses Gain — Apple Inc.'s iAd interactive mobile ad service is having an unintended impact on rivals: It's largely helping their businesses by generating broader advertiser interest in mobile phones and gadgets.

Discussion: AppleInsider and MacNN

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

Start-Ups Follow Twitter, and Become Neighbors — SAN FRANCISCO — When Joe Fernandez, a tech entrepreneur, moved his start-up here last spring, a big goal, he said, was “to be best friends with the Twitter guys.” His theory was that by hanging around with executives at one of the hottest …

Michael Grothaus / TUAW:

Rumor: iOS 4.2 delayed ‘at least a week’ — MacStories reports that the iOS 4.2 update scheduled for tomorrow has now been delayed due to a significant bug found in the gold master build. The bug involves WiFi connection issues found by developers currently running iOS 4.2 GM on the iPad.

Discussion: SlashGear, MacStories, Softpedia News, Examiner, 9 to 5 Mac, App Advice, NewsGrange, Electricpig.co.uk, Shoutpedia, Redmond Pie, TiPb, Recombu and Phones Review

Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:

Digg Adds Editors to Break News Faster — One of the issues Digg has always struggled with is that it can take quite a while before a breaking news story hits the front page. Waiting for enough users to vote a story up can sometimes take a few hours and in this age of real-time breaking news …

Discussion: Digg Blog, GigaOM, Pulse2, The Next Web, Download Squad and Voices on All Things Digital

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch: Digg's ‘Breaking News’ Feature Is Another Win For Human Editors

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