Warner Bros. Acquires Social Movie Site Flixster (And Rotten Tomatoes) Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group has acquired social movie discovery site Flixster. The acquisition also includes Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review site Flixster acquired from News Corp. last year. Under the terms of the deal, Flixster will continue to operate independently and will expand its services beyond movie discovery. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Warner’s interest was originally reported by AllThingsD in March, and the price of the site was valued at between $60 million and $90 million. Flister has raised a total of $7 million in funding. From the release: Warner Bros. Bing launches a massive new Facebook integration. Facebook alternative Diaspora eyes launch date. 27 August 2010Last updated at 11:38 Many believe that it will be difficult to challenge Facebook An open alternative to Facebook will be launched on 15 September, the developers of the project have said.
Diaspora describes itself as a "privacy-aware, personally-controlled" social network. The open-source project made headlines earlier this year when Facebook was forced to simplify its privacy settings, after they were criticised for being overly complex and confusing. The project, developed by four US students, raised $200,000 (£140,000). "We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th," the team wrote on their blog. The team said they had spent the summer "building clear, contextual sharing". "That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their co-workers and what goes to their drinking buddies. The project was started by three computer scientists and one mathematician from New York. Google+ challenges Facebook in social network battle.
29 June 2011Last updated at 02:50 Google+ has been released for use by a small, selected number of users Online search giant Google has launched a new social networking website in its latest attempt to take on Facebook, which now claims more than 500m users. Google+ allows individuals to share photos, messages and comments but also integrates the company's maps and images into the service. It also aims to help users easily organise contacts within groups. But some analysts say Google has simply reproduced features of Facebook while adding a video chat function. Google, which handles roughly two out of every three internet searches in the US, has taken several stabs at Facebook in recent years.
But its previous efforts ended in failure, with both Google Wave and Google Buzz proving unpopular with users. New functions The company is now boasting that four features in Google+ could help make the company a permanent player in social networking: Continue reading the main story “Start Quote End Quote. Google+ Project invites you to ditch Facebook, plus others. Inside the DNA of the Facebook Mafia. A lot of things about Facebook have been impressive, even by the Silicon Valley standards. Almost no other Valley company has reached so many people around the world so quickly. Few Valley companies have been considered important forces in causes as disparate as planning a party or a political uprising. Rarely has a kid in his early 20s held onto the CEO reins this long. And of course, no other Valley company has been made into a star-studded, over the top Oscar-nominated film.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that the Facebook mafia– made up of high profile alumni responsible for building companies like Quora, Cloudera, Jumo, Asana and Path– has also emerged so early and become so distinct, well before Facebook has come close to a major liquidity event. But before we get to the specifics of the Facebook mafia, it bears noting that not all companies produce bona fide mafias. Excite@Home spawned another mafia. Of course, the most written about Valley mafia was the PayPal mafia.