Research firm eMarketer estimates that more than half of adult internet users in the US were logging on to Facebook at least once per month at the end of last year. In 2011, the company forecasts that 132.5 million US web users will use the site monthly. Twitter, it adds, will enjoy faster growth rates in the near future but continue to attract ‘relatively few’ online Americans.
An increase of 13.4 percent in the number of users would mean Facebook will reach almost 9 in 10 social network users and 57.1 percent of Internet users this year. → Read More
Now that the news about the new MacBook Pros is out there, one thing that may disappoint someone just reading the spec sheet is battery life. Across the board, the Pro is now rated at 7 hours. While still very solid, this is actually a step down from the previous versions which were rated at 8 to 9 hours for the 15 and 17-inch models, and 10 hours for the 13-inch model. So what gives?
Well, just as they sort of quietly announced with the new MacBook Airs late last year, Apple has begun using a new method of battery life testing. And they feel it’s much more accurate in real world scenarios. Specifically they call this the “Wireless Web protocol testing”. → Read More
And it all comes to a head. After a few days of teasing out of Sprint’s Twitter account with promises of a big unveil today, they’ve confirmed what we all suspected: they’re finally getting a Windows Phone 7 handset, and it’s the HTC 7 Pro (albeit dubbed the “HTC Arrive” in this case). Look for it to hit the shelves on March 20th for $200 bucks after a mail-in rebate (yeck!) and a 2-year contract. Want to know what’s inside? Check out the specs after the jump. → Read More
Payvment, a startup that allows anyone to create and operate a retail storefront on Facebook, is unveiling the first virtual shopping mall on the social network. Comprised of all the stores that use Payvment’s retail app for Facebook, the Mall offers over one million products from 50,000 retailers in a centralized place.
Payvment’s Facebook App, which launched in November of 2009, lets anyone create a retail store on the social network. The app lets you set up products, categories of products (i.e. shoes, T-shirts, sweaters), import photos, list terms of service and shipping options and more. Once you set up your online shop on Facebook, it will show up in a separate tab on your profile or page under “storefront”. → Read More
GOGII, maker of the social messaging app textPlus, is announcing a $15 million Series C round led by GRP Partners this morning. GRP will be joining existing investors Matrix Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
textPlus is in a super crowded arena, with upstart apps GroupMe, Fast Society, FreeText, and now even Facebook getting into the group messaging space. textPlus does have the advantage of being a first mover, at least in the free SMS space, having launched in June 2009. → Read More
Cloud storage and collaboration startup Box.net has raised $48 million in new funding led by Meritech Capital Partners with Andreessen Horowitz, Emergence Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Scale Venture Partners and US Venture Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to $78 million.
Over the past four years, Box has evolved from a simple cloud storage platform to a collaborative enterprise offering with mobile and social capabilities. The company now stores 300 million documents on its platform (more than the Library Of Congress) and has accumulated 5 million users (up from 4 million last year). → Read More
Yahoo will soon kill off MyBlogLog, the service it acquired from the eponymous company behind it back in early 2007.
Here’s the message that was just emailed to all users (myself included): → Read More
Two days ago, we first reported that Apple was likely to release a developer beta of OS X Lion “soon”. Well, how’s this for soon? This morning, alongside their new MacBook Pros, Apple has announced the developer preview of the latest version of OS X. And the most interesting aspect may be how Apple is releasing this developer preview: through the Mac App Store.
Again, to be clear, this initial test version of the OS will be for developers only. The final version of Lion is still on track to be released this summer, Apple notes. → Read More
We’re quite big fans of Airbnb, the “community marketplace for space” here at TechCrunch, and we’re far from the only ones.
This morning, the young company announced that it has hit a fairly big milestone: one million nights have been booked through the service since its launch (including a couple by TechCrunch staff, I might add). Airbnb also says it has registered month-over-month growth of 65% in January 2011. → Read More
Syncapse, which bills itself as a social media technology company, has landed $25 million in financing from growth equity investor ABS Capital Partners, $20 million of which has already been closed.
This is Syncapse’s first institutional investment – the company earlier raised a $3.3 million round and $2 million in financing from the Business Development Bank of Canada. → Read More
Mediabistro.com, a division of online media and conferences company WebMediaBrands, this morning announced that it has acquired the assets of the Twittercism.com blog from founder Shéa Bennett.
As you can tell from the name, the blog focused exclusively on micro-sharing service Twitter, providing tips, tricks, tweaks, tools and tutorials, as well as news, articles, opinion and rumors. The site has been around for about two years. → Read More
How To Watch The Space Shuttle’s Last Flight Tomorrow Review: Motorola Xoom – The Android Tablet Redefined Automower 305 Is Latest Mower From Husqvarna, Will Help Win Neighborhood Contest For Best Lawn Joystickers: For When You Wish Your iPhone (Temporarily) Had More Buttons Little Magic Stories: Interactive Art With The Kinect → Read More
You could see this one coming from a couple of miles away: ChaCha, the questions and answers service provider, is suing smartphone maker HTC over trademark infringement. The lawsuit is obviously the result of HTC’s decision to name its recently unveiled ‘Facebook phone’ the ChaCha.
Sure enough, ChaCha Search, Inc., as the company is officially named, owns the ‘ChaCha’ trademark in the United States (and Europe for that matter). → Read More
There’s been a lot of speculation in recent months about where Twitter would put down a European base in its efforts to expand its operation. Certainly I’ve been bugging them in the last few weeks about whether they would come to London. But now we have the answer: London it is – at least for five people whose jobs will be largely about sales and commercial partnerships. → Read More
On Monday, we’ve just shown you some leaked pictures, but we can now confirm the world’s thinnest smartphone, NEC Casio Mobile’s MEDIAS N-04C, is real. And provider NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, doesn’t want to lose time in bringing it to market: it will hit stores over here as early as March 15. → Read More
As you’re undoubtedly aware by now, tomorrow (in just a few hours, really), Apple is expected to unveil their latest line of laptops. News has already started to trickle out about what’s getting upgraded and what’s changing. Noticeably absent in this talk is the MacBook itself. And that begs the question: is it the end of the line for the product?
Simply put: it should be. → Read More
Microsoft has decided it’s time to show us their future vision for smart display technologies. Steven Bathiche, director of Microsoft’s applied sciences group (the guy responsible for Surface), shows us some new prototype tech in this demo video. He talkes about a few different technologies “after touch” and just how close Microsoft is to getting this stuff to the market. → Read More
A freight brokerage is a service that brings together someone who wants to to transport goods (like oranges, or iPods) with the trucking company that wants to transport them. Open Mile, which is today announcing a $6 million round of Series B funding, is the first such service that attempts to bring these relatively unglamorous transactions online, tapping into a $60 billion industry which is heavily phone and fax based. Read: It’s disruptive.
The financing was led by Globespan Capital Parters and rounded out by existing investor Charles River Ventures. → Read More
After the 3DS debuted, we saw that the UK pricing was a little… off. Even considering VAT, the £229 prices we were seeing seemed rather high. They’ve been dropping, though, and now many retailers are going below £200 — still quite a bit more than the $250 we’re going to get it for here in the states, but getting on towards reasonable. → Read More
Short Version Few tablets have met with such widespread anticipation as the recently-announced Xoom. It is the closest anyone has come to an iPad equivalent for the Android set. I was impressed with the speed, design, and quality of the device, and although there are a few caveats, I came away optimistic for the new crop of Honeycomb devices that will follow this one. → Read More
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