Techmeme: Facebook Agrees to Change ‘Friend Finder’ Feature (Spiegel Online)

1:25 AM ET, January 23, 2011

Top Items:

Leander Kahney / Cult of Mac:

$10K iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple, Thought It Was a Prank [Exclusive] — Gail Davis of Orpington Kent hung up the phone when Apple called to say she'd won a $10,000 iTunes gift card. She thought it was a prank call. — The winner of the Apple's 10 billionth App download sweepstakes nearly …

Discussion: IntoMobile and Guardian

Trudy Muller / Apple:

Apple's App Store Downloads Top 10 Billion — Apple® today announced that more than 10 billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store℠ by the more than 160 million iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad™ users worldwide. The 10 billionth app downloaded …

Fred / A VC:

CEO Transitions — This past week was a remarkable one in the technology business. At the start of the week, Steve Jobs passed the leadership of Apple to Tim Cook and at the end of the week, Eric Schmidt passed the leadership of Google to founder Larry Page.

Discussion: SAI, USA Today, Geek.com and SlashGear

Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:

Is Larry Page the Consummate Anti-Social CEO? — Google's new CEO isn't much for the social Web. If he has a presence on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, it was created with deep privacy settings or a fake name. I couldn't even find a fleshed-out Google profile for Larry Page.

Discussion: TechCrunch, MediaMemo, Search Engine Land and Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Google Turns to Co-Founder to Step Up Attack on Facebook

Discussion: NASDAQ.com, Reuters and Wall Street Journal

AppleInsider:

Hacker finds evidence of Qualcomm baseband for Apple's next iPhone, iPad — A hacker claims to have discovered evidence pointing to an upcoming Qualcomm cellular baseband inside the code for Apple's iTunes software, possibly indicating that the iPhone maker plans to incorporate …

Discussion: Thoughts from the Sidelines, TiPb, TUAW, Zibri's Blog, Engadget, SlashGear, Forbes and Electronista

Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:

Apple Taps Former Navy Information Warrior for Global Director of Security — Apple has tapped security expert and author David Rice to be its director of global security, three sources who know Rice have confirmed to me. He's expected to start at Apple in March. Apple hasn't returned calls seeking comment.

Discussion: Apple Headlines, Electronista and iClarified

Phil Nickinson / Android Central:

Minimum advertised prices set for Motorola Xoom ($799) and HTC Thunderbolt ($249) — We just got hit with the news of the minimum advertised price for the Motorola Xoom Android tablet and HTC ThunderBolt LTE smartphone on Verizon. Looks like the Xoom will be going for $799 — we have to assume that's unsubsidized.

Spiegel Online:

Facebook Agrees to Change ‘Friend Finder’ Feature — Under pressure from the German government, the social networking site Facebook has agreed to make a major concession due to privacy concerns. The company says it will no longer automatically e-mail invitations to join the site through services …

Martin Bryant / The Next Web:

Pixable's smart Facebook photo gallery hits 100,000 users in 10 days — Facebook's API allows developers to present our friends' photos in all sorts of new ways, and one of the best we've found is Pixable's Photofeed app. — This app runs within Facebook and presents photos in a whole new way.

Scott Austin / Venture Capital Dispatch:

Groupon Actually Raised $377M In New Funding — When Groupon Inc. announced earlier this month that it raised $950 million in venture capital (the press release's headline casually touted “like, a billion dollars"), many publications quickly called this funding round a record.

David Armano / Logic+Emotion:

Quora Underscores Need For Corporate Ambassadors — Unlike Facebook but very much like Facebook Groups, Quora the social Q&A ecosystem is designed to support individual participants, not companies (for now). In either case, it's increasingly becoming clear that this is a place where people talk about companies and brands.

Discussion: Web Strategy …

Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:

Verizon iPhone 4 costs $50 more than AT&T iPhone 4 off contract — While both AT&T and Verizon sell the iPhone 4 for $199 or $299 depending on storage capacity, both cellular providers sell them for different off-contract prices. This important difference can be seen on the bottom …

Discussion: Apple Headlines, Phones Review, Life On My Mobile, iClarified and Internet Evolution

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