Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
8:30 PM ET, January 3, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
DealBook:
Goldman Offering Clients a Chance to Invest in Facebook  —  Updated  —  Goldman Sachs has reached out to its wealthy private clients, offering them a chance to invest in Facebook, the hot social networking giant that is considering a possible public offering in 2012, according to people familiar with the matter.
RELATED:
John Cassidy / Rational Irrationality:
Facebook-Goldman: Where Is the S.E.C.?  —  Happy New Year everybody.  I'm working on a post about the economic prospects for 2011, but, first-up, a quick memo to Mary Schapiro, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Mary, once again the boys and girls at Goldman Sachs appear …
Henry Blodget / SAI:
Goldman Sachs Clients Can Invest In Facebook's IPO — But You Can't  —  Aren't you glad the government fixed the IPO market?  —  In the old days (the 1990s), small companies could sell their stock in the public markets at reasonable cost, just like big companies.
Peter Lattman / DealBook:
Why Facebook Is Such a Crucial Friend for Goldman
Discussion: Mediaite and Mashable!
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries / Digits:
Facebook's Valuation: By the Numbers
Nielsen Wire:
Apple Leads Smartphone Race, while Android Attracts Most Recent Customers  —  The race for the lead in U.S. smartphone operating system (OS) consumer market share is tighter than it has ever been.  According to November data from The Nielsen Company, the popularity of the Android OS among …
RELATED:
Andrew Munchbach / BGR:
Best Buy's new ‘Buy Back’ program to launch January 5th for phones, laptops, tablets, and TVs  —  One of our trusted Best Buy sources has come through with several documents that provide additional details on the retailer's new Buy Back program.  The new protection plan …
Nick Farrell / Inquirer:
Intel's Sandy Bridge sucks up to Hollywood with DRM  —  CHIPMAKER Intel has cut a deal with Hollywood in its Sandy Bridge chips to put digital restrictions management (DRM) in them.  —  Intel's sellout to the big media companies makes it ‘safer’ for Hollywood studios to offer premium movies …
RELATED:
Jessi Hempel / Fortune:
What the hell is going on with TV?  —  Google TV.  Xbox.  Apple TV.  Roku.  All these gadgets promise to make television more like the web.  There's just one hitch: None of them are ready for primetime.  —  By Jessi Hempel, senior writer  —  You don't have to wait for Thursday nights to watch The Office these days.
Discussion: VentureBeat and Mediaite
Jeff Atwood / Coding Horror:
Trouble In the House of Google  —  Let's look at where stackoverflow.com traffic came from for the year of 2010.  —  When 88.2% of all traffic for your website comes from a single source, criticizing that single source feels ... risky.  And perhaps a bit churlish, like looking a gift horse in the mouth …
Discussion: Anil Dash
Donya Blaze / WebNewser:
Marissa Mayer on Google's Failed Groupon Bid  —  After incessant buzz that Google was looking to buy Groupon, word finally came that the fast-growing “deal of the day” company had turned the tech giant down.  So, does that mean Google might launch its own coupon-type service instead?
Dave Winer / Scripting News:
What will become of Twitter?  —  The current crop of tech writers in Silicon Valley are making the mistake tech writers always make.  They don't understand how the industry loops, so they misread the signs.  It's happening as they try to understand the connection between RSS and Twitter.
more at Mediagazer »
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Apple's market cap tops $300 billion  —  Giving ExxonMobil a run for its money in the race to be the world's most valuable company  —  In a broad 2011 rally that pushed the Dow up nearly a point in mid-morning trading Monday, Apple (AAPL) popped more than $7 (2.25%) to hit new record intraday highs …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Exclusive: News Corp. Online Gaming Head Sean Ryan to Head Facebook's Social Gaming Partnerships  —  Sean Ryan (pictured here), who arrived at News Corp. mid-year to set up a new online gaming unit, is moving to Facebook to head partnerships at its key gaming platform, according to sources.
Roger Cheng / Wall Street Journal:
Verizon Wireless to Showcase Google-Powered 4G Phones  —  Verizon Wireless is expected this week to show off several devices powered by Google Inc. software for its new 4G network, underscoring the importance of the two companies' relationship even as speculation mounts that Verizon will get to offer the iPhone this year.
Jay Yarow / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple Is Due For A (Relatively) Boring 2011  —  Top Apple analyst Gene Munster just released his roadmap for Apple in 2011, and we have to say it looks relatively snoozy.  —  Compared to last year when Apple had an amazing year with the iPad, iPhone 4, Apple TV, and redesigned MacBook Air …
Greg Bensinger / Bloomberg:
Sprint Declines to Buy Clearwire Debt Before Deadline  —  Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) — Sprint Nextel Corp., the third- largest U.S. mobile-phone carrier, said it chose not to buy debt from partner Clearwire Corp., which is trying to raise capital to avoid running out of cash.
Discussion: IntoMobile and FierceWireless
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Did StumbleUpon just pass Facebook for social media traffic?  —  According to analytics service Statcounter, Stumbleupon has surpassed Facebook to become the number one website for generating social media traffic in the U.S, accounting for 43.34% of the market as January 2011 commenced.
Discussion: SelectStart and Soshable, Thanks:martinsfp
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Reddit Has Banner Year, Boasts 232% Traffic Growth  —  Social news site Reddit has just posted some interesting statistics on it's banner 2010 filled with traffic and user engagement growth.  Most notable?  The jump in pageviews from 250 million in January of 2010 to 829 million in December of 2010, a 232% growth.
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Vizio details specs on VIA Tablet and VIA Phone, reveals VIA Plus is Google TV  —  Vizio has unveiled more about its plans for the new year which seem to consist largely of a huge push on Android, from the 4-inch phone and 8-inch tablet running a (still unspecified) flavor on their 1 GHz processors …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Digg Founder Kevin Rose Launches Private Newsletter Called Foundation  —  I bet you didn't know that Twitter was almost named Jittter or Twitch.  Well, now you will.  —  Last year Digg founder Kevin Rose was mulling over a new video show called fforward.  Fforward never launched, but the idea did change into something else.
Discussion: Kevin Rose, VentureBeat and Pulse2
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft: Missing Hotmail e-mails are back  —  Over the past weekend, a number of Hotmail users reported that their Hotmail messages in various folders were gone.  (And were, unsurprisingly, none too happy about it.)  —  Microsoft officials said on January 3 that the company had identified the cause of the problem and fixed it.
Andy Kessler / Wall Street Journal:
How Videogames Are Changing the Economy  —  From Silicon Valley to China to media, they are leading the next productivity revolution.  So hug a geek today.  —  This fall, the Chinese National University of Defense Technology announced that it had created the world's fastest supercomputer …
Discussion: Techdirt
Chris Matyszczyk / CNET News:
Apple support company sues customer for complaining  —  Returning to my inbox after the New Year's break, I found it full of Greeks bearing rifts.  —  The national press, the tech blogosphere, even normal, ordinary human beings on Twitter are railing against Systemgraph …
Discussion: Macworld, TUAW and MacNN
Reuters:
Apple iPhone alarm woes continue across the globe  —  (Reuters) - Some iPhone users across the globe complained of malfunctioning alarms on the first working day of 2011, even after Apple reassured users that its phones' built-in clocks will work from Monday.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Time For Google To Leave Italy?  Italy Announces That YouTube Responsible For All Content  —  Not this again.  The Italian government has long had trouble comprehending how YouTube is simply a platform for users.  Of course, some might say this is willful ignorance.
Discussion: Search Engine Land
Tim Conneally / BetaNews:
Motorola's big split takes place tomorrow  —  After trading closes down today, Motorola Incorporated is expected to begin distributing shares of its newly spun-off mobile devices company known as Motorola Mobility (MMI).  This split has been in preparatory stages for the last three years …
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 8:30 PM ET, January 3, 2011.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Sponsor Techmeme
 
 See Also: 
Techmeme: site main
Techmeme River: reverse chronological Techmeme
Techmeme Mobile: for phones
Techmeme Leaderboard: Techmeme's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Techmeme RSS feed
Techmeme on X
Techmeme on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Steve Case's New Soapbox for Defending AOL: Quora
Discussion: Steve Case on Quora, Thanks:mathewi
Joe Mullin / paidContent:
Wal-Mart Could Pay $40 Million To Settle Claims It Colluded With Netflix
Stefan Krempl / The H Security:
27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents
Discussion: Help Net Security
Serena Saitto / Bloomberg:
Technology Takeovers May Pick Up as IBM, HP Push Into the Cloud
Scott Gilbertson / Webmonkey:
Opera Unveils Touch-Based Web Browser ‘Opera for Tablets’
Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:
Kinect designers to debut motion controller for PCs
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Business Wire, SAI and Kotaku
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
Google TV Coming To Vizio TVs and Blu-ray Players Later This Year
Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
BitTorrent reaches 100 million subscribers monthly, 400k downloads daily
 Earlier Items: 
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Assessing the fate of the ‘Facebook Way’
New York Times:
Outlawed, Cellphones Are Thriving in Prisons
Discussion: All Facebook and Gawker
Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:
Exits Lag in the Fourth Quarter, but IPO Hype Boils for 2011
Joanna Stern / Engadget:
Toshiba announces unnamed Tegra 2-powered Android tablet, waits only for Honeycomb
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Samsung Galaxy S hits target, surpasses 10 million units sold
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency
 
Sister Sites:

Mediagazer
 Top news and commentary for media professionals from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page