Anyone who s even bothered knows that there s not a single day that goes by without a myriad things making it into the headlines when it comes to tech, so bear with me will I do a shabby attempt at summarizing what I would consider the prominent bits (ergo consider this a valid conversation check list for your first morning of the week at the office water break )
Google glitches
Gmail slows down to a crawl, Gmail admits to the fault naming a latency issue found on one of its datacenters which would affect 2% of its user base (4 million people approximately).
Google voice scrambles and dies out for a few hours, no official reason given so far (feel free to correct me on this one).
Google employee files sexual harassment claim against twitter employee.
On the bright side the Google Android OS reaches three years of age this week, blows its cake’s candles wishing to retain the market share superiority over IOS.
In your Facebook
Gmail slams the door on Facebook’ s face claiming a need for reciprocity, it effectively blocks Facebook’ s ability to fetch friends thru Gmail alleging a lack of response from Facebook to follow suit on sharing the info ; in plain terms what Gmail is asking for is dead simple: “if you want to import my data to your platform, you better start letting me do the same”.
This may seem harsh to the naked eye but a closer look at the situation reveals that most users seem to be oblivious to the fact that you simply can’t export friend lists to (your favorite online communication service here).
Although targeted at Facebook, the move comes in the form of an alteration to the terms of service for Gmail s contact API and applies from now on to any third party wanting to liaison with Gmail
Congress got into a little chitchat with Facebook about privacy of user data, due to alleged reports of leaks of personal information to third parties.
This spurs from a single media article of a company that notwithstanding has commercial common dependencies with myspace, which just matter of fact re-re-launched itself in an attempt to not crash and burn.
In the mean time, Facebook launches a line of Facebook “credits”, virtual currency to be used within its apps and games, which you can purchase in meat space.
Skyfire Backfires
The by now übber famous, misleadingly branded “Flash player for IDevices” (for my take on why I think the assertion is misleading check this link) Skyfire debuts; the success of the apps offering mixed with its resource dependency forces its makers to pull the plug on the downloads barely 5 hours after launch.
Since, they have used a drop counter approach to commercializing the app, enabling downloads for limited periods of time, while scaling the server clusters needed to provide the service accordingly. Nothing like castrating the potential clients to provide a fulfilling user experience.
Tablet Galore
Everyone and their dog is taking on the tablet format in an attempt to grab a piece of the iPad action, even Kindle who stubbornly insists they aren’t in the same market as the iPad got a suspiciously tablet looking product, the Nook color, out on the shelves, other offerings include models from mostly all mayor computer hardware manufacturers, with assorted dimensions and operating systems.
One has to wonder why did they all have to wait on Apple, having all the tech already available, and after pondering on the issue for some time, the only conclusion is that Apple has become the only company capable of knowing if its own products are cool, before launch, granted, there were some half decent attempts before, but they all failed from lack of support from their own companies, Apple stands its ground behind all its products. It’s like all the other companies started looking like gnu s on a river crossing, waiting for someone else to get their caskets wet first.
Social Money
Within the craze for monetizing on the Social Media, the consensus so far is quite clear: “we don’t know how exactly, but the money is there”, this comes as the last stand for advertising companies to try to turn away from the unavoidable, mainly that in social media, consumers are not the target, but the enabling component of successful promotion, watch as advertising companies try to wrap their minds around the paradigm shattering concept.
Already some light at the end of the tunnel is shinning;
Twitter may have become one of the most ubiquitous social media tools of our times, but it has been the least keen on generating profit, till now. Tweeter has started toying with inserting adds in users streams.
Google is dropping the sponsored links in favor of plain good old adds, rumor has it that its due to better conversion rates. The buzzword for this whole issue seems to be R.O.I (Return Over Investment).
The real Twitter FailWhale? that would be its CEO
On a recent interview twitter s CEO Evan Williams admitted to various screw ups from which he says he has learned a lot, among the fails he counts;
late comer’s syndrome, causing power struggles between him and Jack Dorsey.
Failing to be assertive, just took him too long to too late when it comes to making decisions.
Alienating coworkers; the guy never filled the necessary paperwork to grant his employees shares when they were about to sell blogger.
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