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12:00 AM ET, May 20, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn Closes At $94 Per Share, With $8.9 Billion Market Cap  —  After opening to $83 per share and a market cap of $7.8 million, LinkedIn closed at $93.86 per share, giving the company a valuation of $8.9 billion.  Although the professional social network priced at $45 per share …
RELATED:
Ari Levy / Bloomberg:
LinkedIn's Founder, Biggest Backers Will Own $2.5 Billion Stake After IPO  —  LinkedIn Corp.'s founder Reid Hoffman and its three top venture backers will own a combined stake of about $2.5 billion after an eight-year wait for the first initial public offering by a major U.S. social-media site.
Henry Blodget / SAI:
CONGRATULATIONS, LINKEDIN!  You Just Got Screwed Out Of $130 Million  —  The stock of social-network LinkedIn has had a heck of an IPO debut this morning, popping 90%+ above the IPO price.  —  That means folks like us get to write breathless stories about how much money investors are making and how everyone's partying like it's 1999.
Sam Gustin / Epicenter:
Red-Hot LinkedIn IPO Heats Up Tech Bubble Talk  —  (Updated at 4 p.m. EDT with closing stock price and commentary.)  —  LinkedIn went public Thursday and, as expected, soared in its debut.  But the social network for professionals outdid even the wildest expectations in what has become …
Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:
SecondMarket Unseals LinkedIn Pricing Now That It's Public
Sinead Carew / Reuters:
Verizon to offer family data plans  —  (Reuters) - Verizon Wireless will offer family plans for data services supporting multiple devices including smartphones and tablet computers, according to a top executive of parent company Verizon Communications.  —  Verizon Wireless plans …
RELATED:
Amazon.com:
Amazon.com Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Print Books  —  Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family  —  (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995.  Twelve years later in November 2007 …
Jay Greene / CNET News:
Scoop: Microsoft closes consumer skunkworks unit  —  A little more than three years after opening Pioneer Studios, a skunkworks operation to develop consumer electronics and experiences, Microsoft has closed the unit, CNET has learned.  —  Pioneer was the brainchild of J Allard …
Discussion: PC World, GeekWire, Gizmodo, Electronista and SAI
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Facebook to use Microsoft's PhotoDNA technology to combat child pornography  —  Facebook will be the first company outside of Microsoft to roll out the Redmond company's PhotoDNA technology — a move that the companies are describing as a big step in the fight against child pornography …
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Whoa!  Apple Patent Confirms iTunes Cloud Media Services  —  In January we pointed to a possible HP music cloud service that could debut with their future TouchPad tablet due to their 3par acquisition.  Such a service had the potential of upsetting Apple's iTunes kingdom.
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Updated: Liberty Media Offers Nearly $1 Billion For Barnes & Noble; Would Buy 70 Percent  —  Bankrupt Borders needs a sale the most but Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), whichput itself in play last August, is the book retailer with a serious suitor—and they don't come much more serious than John Malone.
Wolfgang Gruener / ConceivablyTech:
Google Is Serious: You Can Kill Chrome's URL Bar  —  We wrote about this feature a few months ago and now we are seeing a first implementation of it.  The URL bar in Chrome is still active by default, but there is a flag to hide it.  Chrome is serious about keeping the URL bar flexible …
Peter Burrows / Business Week:
Nuance Plays Hardball in Voice Recognition  —  The speech-recognition software maker has acquired at least four companies after suing them first  —  When rumors swirled on May 7 that Apple (AAPL) might acquire Nuance Communications (NUAN), shares of the software company rose 10 percent to $22, within pennies of an all-time high.
Ina Fried / Mobilized:
Qualcomm Bringing Augmented Reality Software Kit to the iPhone  —  Although its chips don't power the iPhone, Qualcomm has decided to bring its augmented reality software kit to Apple's phones in an effort to make it more attractive to developers.  —  Qualcomm released free software tools …
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Internet Explorer emerges as only browser not vulnerable to huge memory leak  —  The developer teams at Microsoft may have something to smile about this morning after it has emerged that the company's Internet Explorer browser is one of the only modern web browsers that is not susceptible …
Discussion: Web Browser
CNN:
Argentine court blocks Google ‘suggested’ searches  —  Buenos Aires, Argentina (CNN) — An Argentine court this week granted an injunction that blocks internet giant Google from “suggesting” searches that lead to certain sites that have been deemed anti-Semitic, and removes the sites from the search engine's index.
Reuters:
Facebook looks at China, Zuckerberg packs bags  —  (Reuters) - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to make his second visit to China as the world's No. 1 social networking company looks for the best way to expand into that country.  —  “Our company mission is really clear …
Discussion: TechCrunch and The Next Web
David Chen / /Film:
‘Neuromancer’ Goes Into Pre-Production  —  After years in development, Vincenzo Natali's Neuromancer is finally moving forward.  According to a press release, the film has secured sales from distributors at Cannes and visual effects work has already begun.  Filming will begin in 2012 …
Discussion: Jacket Copy
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Exclusive: A First Look at AT&T's LTE Network  —  Yesterday, I took a tour of AT&T's Foundry space in Plano, Texas.  I interviewed Jon Summers, SVP of application and service infrastructure at AT&T, with other reporters, to try to understand the shift AT&T is making in how it approaches buying goods …
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Google, Smartphone Contacts & Social Graphs: Has Eric Schmidt Crossed The Creepy Line Again?  —  Things have been a little quiet — perhaps even boring — since Eric Schmidt stepped down as Google's CEO to become the company's Executive Chairman.  The strange quotes and not-so-funny attempts …
Lex Friedman / Macworld:
Group looking to form Apple Retail Workers Union  —  As Apple celebrates the tenth anniversary of its retail stores, some store employees are seeking to unionize.
Matt Rosoff / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Netflix Is On A Hiring Spree For Big Europe Push  —  Netflix is staffing up for a big European push as soon as the second half of 2011.  —  Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said back in December that the company would consider expanding to Europe and Asia once the results of its Canadian operation, which it launched last fall, became clear.
Discussion: Electronista
Trevor Mogg / Digital Trends:
Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists  —  In a recently screened BBC documentary, UK neuroscientists suggested that the brains of Apple devotees are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious people are stimulated by religious imagery.
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report Blog:
Apple to support reps: “Do not attempt to remove malware”  —  Apple is actively conducting an internal investigation into the Mac Defender malware attack I wrote about yesterday (here and here).  An internal document with a Last Modified date of Monday, May 16, 2011 notes that this is an “Issue/Investigation In Progress.”
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Google Advisor Wants To Be Your One-Stop Shop For Financial Comparisons  —  Google has rolled all of its finance tools into one product today, merging its mortgage, credit card and bank account comparison tools into Google Advisor.  Google Advisor allows you to compare offer options for your credit cards …
Chris Morris / Gamasutra:
Sony Tells Dev Partners PlayStation Store To Return May 24  —  Barring any additional problems, Sony plans to bring the PlayStation Store back online next Tuesday, May 24, according to a memo sent to Sony's game developer and publishing partners.  —  The company has sent a tentative publishing schedule …
 
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 More Items: 
Noreen O'Leary / Adweek:
Eric Schmidt Named Cannes' Media Person of the Year
Audrey Watters / ReadWriteWeb:
iOS Users Downloading 5 Million Games a Day, Report Finds
Discussion: Distimo
Esther Dyson / Project Syndicate:
Illusions of Democracy  —  NEW YORK - The Internet is an extraordinarily powerful tool.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Kleiner backs Quattro co-founder's new startup Session M
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
RIAA v. the cloud: Box.net faces subpoena over prerelease music
Discussion: Hollywood Reporter
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Salesforce Jumps 8% On FYQ1 Beat; Q2, Year View Tops Estimates
Discussion: PR Newswire, CNET News and Reuters
Edwin Chan / Reuters:
Symantec buys Clearwell for $390 million
Discussion: silicontap.com, eWeek, CNET News and Xconomy
 Earlier Items: 
Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:
Read Léo Apotheker's “Tough Quarter” Memo in Full
Discussion: SAI
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
63% of Younger Generation Eager for NFC & Mobile Payments
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Lawsuit claims AT&T overcharges iPhone data users up to 300%
Zach Epstein / BGR:
Google to acquire Modu patents for $4.9 million
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Khosla Ventures Is Raising, Like, A Billion Dollars
Discussion: VatorNews
Gartner:
Gartner Says 428 Million Mobile Communication Devices Sold Worldwide in First Quarter 2011 …
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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