Techmeme: Facebook at $50 Billion Looks More Like Tencent Than Google (Bloomberg)

9:10 AM ET, January 6, 2011

Top Items:

Ballmer At CES 2011: “Whatever Device You Use, Windows Will Be There” — Today in his Consumer Electronics Show keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer declared that Xbox is no longer a gaming device but an entertainment hub. And Windows will be everywhere, from your TV through Xbox …

Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:

Windows at CES 2011 — It's been an exciting day for Windows with lots of news shared. I did however want to take a few minutes to share with you a bit more about the rest of the Windows story and the things we will be talking about this week at CES. — At last year's CES …

Discussion: Telegraph, Computerworld, InfoQ, Datamation, Tim Anderson's ITWriting and All about Microsoft Blog

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Microsoft gives LCDs the power to see with Surface 2.0 — Microsoft's Surface touchscreen technology for large displays has lost a lot of bulk in its newest iteration, and in the process it has also given LCDs the power to see with its new PixelSense technology.

Discussion: The Next Web, Forbes, Geek.com, WinRumors, The Microsoft Blog, BetaNews and TechFlash

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
CES: What Microsoft's Ballmer didn't say

Discussion: ZDNet, Between the Lines Blog, The Register, Inquirer, TechEye, Softpedia News, VentureBeat and Geekword

Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Next Version of Windows to Run on System-on-a-Chip Architectures

Andy Rubin / Google Mobile Blog:

A Sneak Peek of Android 3.0, Honeycomb — The past few weeks have been exciting ones for the Android team: we recently released Nexus S and Android 2.3, Gingerbread, and we've even had some of our most popular team members take a trip to space. But we haven't stopped buzzing with excitement …

Brian Barrett / Gizmodo:

Avatar Kinect: Now Your Avatar Smiles, Smirks and Talks When You Do — Your Xbox Live avatar leads a lonely existence. Or did, anyway, before Avatar Kinect came along. Now, Kinect recognizes your face: When you smile, when you raise your eyebrows, when you talk—and your Avatar uncannily does the same.

Discussion: Games blog, Microsoft, Guardian, eMoney, LiveSide.net, Geekword, Pocket-lint and BetaNews

Ross Miller / Engadget:
Netflix and Hulu Plus with Kinect coming this spring to Xbox 360

Discussion: The Next Web and TechNet Blogs

Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:
Microsoft sold 8 million Kinects in 60 days

Discussion: Fast Company, VentureBeat, Reuters, Daring Fireball and Neowin.net

Wall Street Journal:

Goldman Flooded With Facebook Orders — Interest in shares of Facebook Inc. is so strong that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to stop soliciting interest from potential investors on Thursday, after the securities firm received orders of several billion dollars, according to people familiar with the situation.

Discussion: SAI, The Register, DealBook, BoomTown, VatorNews, Music Ally, Fortune, Felix Salmon, Deal Journal, The Atlantic Online, TechCrunch, SFGate, NetworkEffect, All Facebook, PE Hub Blog and Guardian

Bloomberg:

Facebook at $50 Billion Looks More Like Tencent Than Google — Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc., with a valuation of $50 billion, looks more like Tencent Holdings Ltd., China's top Internet company by market capitalization, than fellow U.S. Web company Google Inc.

Discussion: Bloomberg

Shira Ovide / Deal Journal:
Read Goldman Sachs' Secret Facebook Pitch Memo

Discussion: SAI and TechCrunch

AppleInsider:

Apple restricting employee vacations as first 2011 products loom — Apple is quietly prohibiting vacation days for some retail employees for three weeks beginning later this month, a move that could foreshadow a significant product introduction in the coming weeks, AppleInsider has learned.

Discussion: SAI, THINQ.co.uk and SlashGear

Apple:

Apple's Mac App Store Opens for Business — Apple® today announced that the Mac® App Store℠ is now open for business with more than 1,000 free and paid apps. The Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac, so you can find great new apps …

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, TechCrunch, SlashGear and Realmac Blog

Federico Viticci / MacStories:
Apple Releases OS X 10.6.6 and Mac App Store

Discussion: Macworld, Gizmodo, The Next Web, Engadget and TUAW, Thanks:viticci

Zach Epstein / BGR:

Motorola XOOM tablet announced — Motorola Mobility on Wednesday announced the tablet countless Android fans have been waiting for. The Motorola XOOM is a 10.1-inch full touchscreen device with specs that look like they'll line up pretty well with the rest of the Android slates we'll …

Jacob Schulman / Engadget: Motorola Xoom first hands-on! (update: video!)

Marco.org:

Google's decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search — Jeff Atwood, in Trouble In the House of Google: … (via Anil Dash's nice roundup on the issue) — I've been frustrated as well by Google's apparent defeat by spam. It's not a sudden issue — it's been gradually worsening for a few years.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Zynga To Acquire Flock, The Social Browser That You Never Used — Zynga is acquiring Flock, a beleaguered startup founded in 2005 by Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone, we've confirmed. The deal should be announced shortly. — The company has raised nearly $30 million in venture capital, although the last round was closed in 2008.

Discussion: Computerworld, VentureBeat, The Atlantic Online, Download Squad, paidContent and eMoney

BBC:

Thousands of stolen iTunes accounts for sale in China — Apple's iTunes service has been targeted several times by criminals in recent years — Tens of thousands of fraudulent iTunes accounts are for sale on a major Chinese website, it has been revealed.

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, Agence France Presse, MacStories, The Mac Security Blog and RazorianFly

Andrew Munchbach / BGR:

Ballmer on Windows Phone 7: 5,500 apps, updates coming, Verizon and Sprint in first half of 2011 — Speaking at his company's CES keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer let go several pertinent facts about the Windows Phone 7 operating system. For starters, the much anticipated WP7 software update …

Discussion: paidContent, Softpedia News, GottaBeMobile, ReadWriteWeb and Electronista

Oliver Chiang / SelectStart: Windows Phone 7's Success May Hinge On Games

Nadia Damouni / Reuters:

LinkedIn plans to go public in 2011: sources — (Reuters) - LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, plans to go public in 2011 and has selected its financial underwriters, three sources familiar with the process told Reuters. — Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JPMorgan …

Discussion: Forbes, DealBook, CNBC, ReadWriteWeb, TheStreet.com, DailyFinance, Wall Street Journal and The Next Web

Arron / RazorianFly:

EXCLUSIVE: Tweetie 2.0 For Mac Will Launch With The Mac App Store, Tomorrow … Post comment as — This is awesome, I can't wait to see the App Store and Twitter for Mac! — Reply — View comment — If it's free, what is the business model ? Shouldn't it be paid, at least a buck ?

Discussion: Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Pocket-lint, BGR, Download Squad, SlashGear, The Next Web and 9 to 5 Mac, Thanks:hornokplease

Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:

Samsung's Series 9 laptop is the Windows Macbook Air killer you've been waiting for — Second-generation Intel Core Family processors are here, and laptop manufacturers are wasting no time announcing new models. Samsung has the eye-popper of the Consumer Electronics Show (OK, so far) …

Discussion: Inquirer, Engadget, Pulse2, Softpedia News and TechSpot

Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:

BlackBerry PlayBook Review — A Hands-On Pre-Release Review of the BlackBerry PlayBook — I've FINALLY gone hands-on with the BlackBerry PlayBook and thus it's time for me to report back with my initial review and impressions of Research In Motion's first tablet device featuring the all-new QNX-based BlackBerry Tablet OS.

Discussion: Gizmodo, Reuters, Engadget, BGR, GigaOM, AppleInsider, MediaFile, BerryReview.com, The Mobile Gadgeteer Blog, TiPb and 9 to 5 Mac

Marin Perez / IntoMobile:
BlackBerry PlayBook will have Sprint 4G

Discussion: eWeek, Featured News, DailyTech and GottaBeMobile

Jonathan Christensen / The Big Blog:

Skype coming soon to Sony BRAVIA and VIZIO VIA TVs — Last year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), we ushered in a new era of face-to-face communications with the introduction of Skype-enabled TVs. This year at CES, we're making further strides in the living room by making it even easier to get Skype on your TV.

Discussion: SlashGear

AppleInsider:

New Apple patent for network booting could lead to cloud-based Mac OS X — Apple has recently been granted a patent for administering and maintaining a network-booted operating system, possibly laying further groundwork for a cloud-based version of Mac OS X.

Discussion: GigaOM, TUAW and The Register

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