Techmeme: Twitter's CEO Just Confirmed An $8 Billion Valuation (Matt Lynley/Business Insider)

11:55 AM ET, October 18, 2011

Top Items:

Victoria Barret / Forbes:

Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup — Here's that rare Steve Jobs story, one that's never been told, about the company that got away. Jobs had been tracking a young software developer named Drew Houston, who blasted his way onto Apple's radar screen when he reverse-engineered …

Discussion: MacRumors, TechCrunch, CNET News, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, TiPb, Softpedia News, @pkedrosky and Venture Capital Dispatch

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

After Rejecting An Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs, Dropbox Raises $250 Million To Defend Itself Against iCloud — It's officially official. — After months of press leaks, Dropbox announced it raised $250 million at a $4 billion valuation. — Even though the company says its profitable …

Discussion: Business Wire and silicontap.com

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Twitter Is At 250 Million Tweets Per Day, iOS 5 Integration Made Signups Increase 3x — Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has just dropped some numbers at a dinner here at Web 2.0 Summit. Costolo revealed that the company has gone from 100 million tweets per day to 1/4 billion tweets per day — a billion tweets every 4-5 days, he said.

Matt Lynley / Business Insider:
Twitter's CEO Just Confirmed An $8 Billion Valuation

Discussion: Hillicon Valley, AppleInsider and Fast Company, Thanks:docceng

Amir Efrati / Digits:
Twitter CEO Costolo on Apple, Privacy, Free Speech and Google; Far From IPO

Discussion: VatorNews, Telegraph and @mathewi

Andrew Ross Sorkin / DealBook:

The Missed Red Flags on Groupon — This summer, Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, flew to Chicago to personally pitch his firm to underwrite what was supposed to be the hottest initial public offering of the year: Groupon, the fledgling online coupon company that was being valued at around $30 billion.

Discussion: CNET News, Business Insider, Fortune and The Pondering Primate

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

iPhone 4S Sales Now Reservation-Only at Apple Retail Stores in U.S. and Canada — Apple has updated its “how to buy” page for the iPhone 4S to note that Apple retail stores in the United States and Canada are now selling the device on a reservation-only basis.

Daniel Ruby / Localytics:
iOS 5 Already Powering 1 in 3 Eligible Devices

Discussion: TechCrunch, SlashGear and GigaOM

Dan Frommer / SplatF:
Apple's 4-million-iPhone-4S weekend in context

Discussion: DSLreports, Softpedia News, Consumer Reports News, Inside Mobile Apps, Gadget Lab, Mercury News and TechSpot

Jon Pielak / Vectorform Labs:

The impact of Apple's Siri release: From the former lead iPhone developer of Siri — OCT, WED 12TH, 2011 POSTED IN : Technical, User Experience BY : Jon Pielak Comments — The Siri application released with the iPhone 4s has the potential to radically impact how we interact with technology.

Discussion: 9to5Mac, eWeek, TechPinions and Daring Fireball

David W. Martin / Cult of Mac:

Preliminary Reports Surface About iPhone 4S Screen Quality Issues — There is an open discussion on Apple's discussion forum where iPhone 4S owners are reporting problems they are having with their new phones display. The majority of complaints are about how the display has a yellow tint …

Discussion: Inquirer, PC Magazine, TG Daily and T3 News

Jared Newman / PC World:
Early iPhone 4S Problems

Discussion: GigaOM, VentureBeat, The Register, Reuters, Neowin.net, TechEye, Ars Technica and O'Grady's PowerPage

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Lookout Finally Brings Intelligent Smartphone Security And Tracking Application To iOS — Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms has long catered to the mobile security need of Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry users but has not offered an iOS app.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, mocoNews, CNET News, AllThingsD, PC World, VatorNews, Bits, VentureBeat, MobileBurn.com, The Technology Chronicles, The Official Lookout Blog, Softpedia News and Lifehacker

Jon Mitchell / ReadWriteWeb:

4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong — Chris Poole delivered the most powerful 10 minutes of Web philosophy of the afternoon at Web 2.0. The man formerly known as moot - founder of anonymous image sharing den 4chan and its new, better-lit cousin, Canvas …

Discussion: Betabeat, GigaOM, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, The Register and Digits

Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:

Nexus Prime pic, specifications outed by NTT DoCoMo? — Samsung's official press event in Hong Kong to debut the Nexus Prime smartphone isn't until Wednesday morning, but a Japanese carrier appears to have shared details of the phone on Tuesday. NTT DoCoMo has reportedly shown a picture of the phone …

Kellex / Droid Life:
DROID RAZR Revealed Early from Teaser Site

Josh Ong / AppleInsider:

Samsung accused of lifting iPhone screenshot for Galaxy Player promo — Consumer electronics maker Samsung appears to have used a nearly three-year-old screen capture of the Maps application on the iPhone to promote its own Galaxy Player 50 portable media player.

Discussion: The Next Web, Daring Fireball, Gizmodo, TUAW, FOSS Patents, PadGadget, Android Police, IntoMobile, PhoneArena, Techie Buzz, Pocket-lint and Electronista

Artem Russakovskii / Android Police:

[Exclusive] Ice Cream Sandwich Will Finally Bring Native Screenshot Capabilities To Android — In what will probably be the last melting drop of the Ice Cream Sandwich leaks (oh the puns), we wanted to highlight one highly desired little feature ICS is finally going to bring to Android …

Discussion: 9to5Google, PhoneArena, Android Phone Fans, Phones Review, GottaBeMobile and AndroidGuys

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Khosla, Founders Fund, and Eric Schmidt Put $10 Million Into BillGuard — The other day, I mentioned in passing that Khosla Ventures invested in BillGuard, a TC Disrupt finalist from last May. Here are more details. It turns out that Khosla led the round, a $10 million series B …

Discussion: Business Insider, Betabeat, Digits, GigaOM and Venture Capital Dispatch

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Social Navigation And Traffic App Waze Raises $30M From Kleiner Perkins And Li Ka-shing — Social mapping and navigation company Waze has raised $30 million in new funding from Horizons Ventures Hong Kong (the fund that manages the private venture investments of Facebook investor Li Ka-shing) …

Discussion: Search Engine Land, VentureBeat, Guardian, GigaOM, AllThingsD, Forbes.com and Mashable!

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Hold on to your pants: Microsoft ‘PocketTouch’ enables device input through fabric — Microsoft researchers have come up with a way to make devices sensitive to touch input through fabric — for silencing a phone or even entering text without taking the device out of a pocket or bag.

Ben Berkowitz / Reuters:

From a single hashtag, a protest circled the world — (Reuters) - It all started innocuously enough with a July 13 blog post urging people to #OccupyWallStreet, as though such a thing (Twitter hashtag and all) were possible. — It turns out, with enough momentum and a keen sense of how to use social media, it actually is.

Discussion: VentureBeat

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

HP aims for bigger chunk of cloud transformation pie — Summary: HP steps up its data center services and systems rollout. “All clouds reside somewhere in the data center,” says exec. — HP on Monday rolled out a series of services and systems designed aimed at enterprises looking to revamp data centers for cloud computing.

Discussion: Data Center Knowledge and Virtually Speaking Blog

Katie Linsell / Bloomberg:

Losing $13.5 Billion to Piracy Spurs Microsoft-Led Europe Legal Push: Tech — Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) are among software companies that lost $13.5 billion to program pirates and counterfeiters in Europe last year. Their message to lawmakers: Learn from the U.S. and punish the thieves.

Discussion: WinRumors and Neowin.net

Sharif Sakr / Engadget:

HTC Titan review — We knew as soon as we first clapped eyes on this hulk of a phone that it'd make a brave purchase. It's not just the 4.7-inch screen that requires a leap of faith, but also the Windows Phone operating system, which is presented here in all its Mangofied glory but is still very much an early adopter's ecosystem.

Steven Russolillo / Wall Street Journal:

‘Dark Pool’ Looks to Bring Pre-IPO Firms to Institutions — Liquidnet Inc., a so-called dark-pool operator that specializes in keeping big investors' stock-market bets out of the public eye, plans to launch a platform that will enable trading in privately held companies like technology firms Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.

Discussion: Financial Times

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

HTC to acquire children's apps developer Inquisitive Minds for $13 million — Taiwanese smartphone giant HTC continues its content push with an announcement that it has agreed to acquire children's app and interface designer Inquisitive Minds Inc. for $13 million.

Discussion: Dow Jones Newswires, AndroidOS.in, Reuters and Electricpig

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: Yahoo CTO Out, But Stays EIR at Company — Yahoo CTO Raymie Stata is stepping down as CTO of the Silicon Valley Internet giant, the company confirmed this afternoon, after I made a query about the change. — He will be replaced by Ash Munshi, Yahoo said. — In a statement, the company said:

Discussion: The Register, CNET News, ITworld.com and paidContent

Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:

Five things to watch for in Apple's earnings tomorrow — Apple is once again expected to top Wall Street's estimates when it reports its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings tomorrow. — The maker of iPhones, iPads, and Macs is expected to post earnings of $7.27 per share on revenue of $29.3 billion …

Discussion: BGR, Digits, Fortune, AllThingsD, DigiTimes, AppleInsider and Reuters, more at Mediagazer »

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