Techmeme: What Skype Really Paid For GroupMe (Michael Arrington/TechCrunch)

7:30 PM ET, August 23, 2011

Top Items:

Making It Easier to Share With Who You Want — Today we're announcing a bunch of improvements that make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want. You have told us that “who can see this?” could be clearer across Facebook …

Matt Rosoff / The Business Insider:

Facebook Rolls Out Major, Sweeping Privacy Changes — Facebook is making a sweeping set of changes to its privacy and sharing policies that will give users much more control over the information they share and who they share it with. — See our guided tour of the changes→

Discussion: About Foursquare, Mashable!, All Facebook, Guardian and NBC Bay Area

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

One Year Later, Facebook Killing Off Places ...To Put Location Everywhere — It was almost exactly one year ago that Facebook launched Places, their location-based offering. Reading the press at the time, you would have thought it was going to be the Foursquare-killer, the Gowalla-strangler, the Loopt-beheader, etc.

Discussion: Gizmodo, Betabeat, PSFK and @taylorbuley

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook's Massive Kitchen Sink Update: Photo Tag Approvals And So Much More

Discussion: VentureBeat, GigaOM, All Facebook, AllThingsD and @r

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:
Facebook Finally Helps Users Avoid Being Tagged in Embarrassing Photos, But Also Expands Who Can Tag

Discussion: @kashhill, Thanks:forbestech

Wall Street Journal:

Sprint to Get iPhone 5, Sources Say — Sprint Nextel Corp. will begin selling the iPhone 5 in mid-October, people familiar with the matter said, closing a huge hole in the No. 3 U.S. carrier's lineup and giving Apple Inc. another channel for selling its popular phone.

Dennis K. Berman / @dkberman:
Breaking from WSJ: Sprint to start offering Apple's iPhone 5 in October. $S $AAPL

Discussion: Sprintfeed and @sammywalrusiv

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

Samsung cites Stanley Kubrick's ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ movie as prior art against iPad design patent — Late last night, Samsung filed its opposition brief to Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction in the United States. The main part of Samsung's opposition brief has not yet entered …

Chris Smith / TechRadar: Samsung: Kubrick invented tablets, not Apple

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

Failbook Phone: AT&T Already Looking To Ditch The HTC Status, Says Source — Surprise! Even a clever little gimmick like a dedicated Facebook button can't save a bad phone from an early demise. — After just 36 days on the shelves, a trusted source close to AT&T tells us the carrier …

Discussion: BGR, Friending Facebook Blog, The Business Insider, Electronista, Android Phone Fans and GottaBeMobile

Brad Reed / Network World:

Google fiber network beta goes live at Stanford — Initial Speedtest results show connectivity over 150Mbps — Some lucky Palo Alto, Calif., residents are getting a glimpse of what Google's new fiber network will soon deliver to Kansas City, Kan. — Google today lit up a beta version …

Discussion: DSLreports

Matthew Humphries / Geek.com:
Google Fiber shows its potential with 151Mbps download speeds

Discussion: Telecompetitor

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Source: The iPhone 5 Will Indeed Be A Dual-Mode CDMA / GSM ‘World Phone’ — The upcoming iPhone 5 will almost certainly be a single phone that supports multiple networks, namely CDMA (such as the one used by Verizon or Sprint in the United States) as well as GSM (which is used by AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S.).

Discussion: DSLreports, AppleInsider, CNET News, Tech Trader Daily, DailyTech, I4U News, Ars Technica, TiPb, PC World, Computerworld, MacStories, Redmond Pie, iThinkDifferent, Geek.com, Appolicious Advisor, FierceWireless and SlashGear

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

What Skype Really Paid For GroupMe — On Sunday we broke the news that Skype was acquiring group messaging service GroupMe. What we didn't know was the price, and neither company disclosed any of the terms of the deal other than that GroupMe would remain a standalone brand for now, and the team would stay in New York.

Discussion: The Business Insider

Bill Ray / The Register:

Google closes Android developer complaint forums — Silent support costs more, but it's less embarrassing — Google is shutting down the Marketplace forums which have, until now, required Android developers to resolve their problems in public and without much in the way of official support.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and 9to5Google

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:

Facebook Seeks Acquisitions to Fend Off Google — Facebook Inc., the world's largest social network, is planning acquisitions that will improve site design, keep its service reliable and advance mobile features to stave off competition from Google Inc. (GOOG) and Twitter Inc.

Discussion: Search Engine Land, VatorNews and Wired In Blog| BNET

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Y Combinator Unloads Massive New Batch of Start-Ups — The start-up incubator Y Combinator today is pushing out 63 new companies, its largest and most daunting class ever. Of them, 31 are presenting themselves on the record for investors and press at the newly embiggened Y Combinator headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Discussion: VentureBeat, @bryce, @cdixon, @aplusk, @christine, @bryce and The Next Web

Andrew Hampp / AdAge:

Revamped MySpace Will Have iTunes, Spotify and Vevo in Its Crosshairs — New Marketing Chief Explains Site's New Direction Under Specific Media, Talks Forthcoming Ad Campaign — Forget Facebook and Twitter. When MySpace relaunches later this year under new corporate parent Specific Media …

Discussion: Betabeat, ReadWriteWeb and Adotas

Patently Apple:

Apple Wins Key Patents Related to Multi-Touch & “Numbers” — The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 16 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In our second and final granted patent report of the day you'll learn about two key patents that Apple has won.

Irina Slutsky / AdAge:

Five Years in, Twitter Seeks PR Help — Social Network Hunts for Agency as It Plots Global Growth, Broader Usage — Even social-media companies need a dose of good old-fashioned PR. Twitter is on the hunt for an agency to help it through its next stage of growth, Ad Age has learned.

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Sony's S1 Android Tablet is the Tablet S, due to arrive in early September — While one consumer electronics giant is unceremoniously exiting the tablet wars, after many teaser trailers we're hearing Sony is finally ready to reveal its entry. We uncovered the S1 PlayStation Tablet ahead …

Discussion: 9to5Google, The Toybox Blog, IntoMobile, Liliputing, Electronista, Android Phone Fans, This is my next, SlashGear, TechSpot and Inquirer

Reuters:

Exclusive: Apple suppliers building cheaper, 8GB iPhone 4 — (Reuters) - Asian suppliers to Apple Inc have begun manufacturing a lower priced version of its hot-selling iPhone 4 with a smaller 8 gigabyte flash drive, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Robert Nyman / Mozilla Hacks:

Introducing WebAPI — Mozilla would like to introduce WebAPI with the goal to provide a basic HTML5 phone experience within 3 to 6 months. — The current situation — Where we are today, there's a clear distinction between the Open Web and native APIs and how things have to be built.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Daring Fireball and Softpedia News

Matthew Humphries / Geek.com:

China airs documentary proving military university is hacking U.S. targets — For a long time now there has been suspicion that China is a hotbed of hacking activity either endorsed or ignored by the government and targeting foreign individuals, companies, and even governments.

Discussion: Epoch Times, eWeek Security Watch, F-Secure Antivirus …, Computerworld and Softpedia News

Fred / A VC:

Identity, Authentication, and Provisioning Them Online — Christina jotted down some thoughts on indentity on a flight to SF and I read them this morning. In her post, she references Ev's excellent post on the same topic from a while back. So I went on a bike ride as the sun rose …

Bloomberg:

Torture in Bahrain Aided by Nokia Siemens — The interrogation of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar followed a pattern. — First, Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses beat the 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist in a windowless room two stories below ground …

Discussion: Threat Level

Alexander Vaughn / App Advice:

Apple Now Streaming Red Hot Chili Peppers' Upcoming Album In iTunes - First Sign Of More To Come? — Rumors of a “Spotify-like” iTunes in the cloud have been going around for years before Apple finally pre-launched iCloud and the possibility to re-download previously purchased songs.

Discussion: AppleInsider, everythingiCafe, TUAW, Electronista and Insanely Great Mac

Digital Chosunilbo:

Korea to Develop Own Web-Based OS — The government has decided to develop an operating system capable of rivaling Google's Chrome OS in collaboration with Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, a move to gain ground in the emerging cloud computing service industry.

Discussion: PhoneArena

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Windows Phone Reaches 30,000 Apps, Opens Marketplace to Mango Submissions — There are now 30,000 mobile applications available for Windows Phone, Microsoft's newest mobile operating system. That's a huge jump from the 11,500 apps Microsoft reported back in March, but still far short of industry leaders, iOS and Android.

Discussion: Light Reading, The Windows Blog and Softpedia News

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Techmeme Sponsor Posts:

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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: