Web 2.0 news stories on Newser

Facebook, Google Could Fall Apart

Kevin Spak — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:51:03 CDT

Right now, Google and Facebook seem invincible, but in five to eight years they could well be gone, argues Eric Jackson in Forbes . "Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone." After all, it's happened to loads of web giants before them. The more you look at the Internet, the more "it...

Ask.com Hires Real People to Answer Questions

Kevin Spak — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:57:55 CDT

Big news: Ask.com still exists! Bigger news: It’s going to start ripping off Yahoo Answers, Quora, and all the other Web 2.0 question-answering services! The search site, which apparently still gets a lot of traffic, has launched a beta service called “Ask the Community.” Users can pose a...

5 Ways Facebook Could Fail

Emily Rauhala — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 05:11:31 CDT

Facebook, which this week welcomed its 500 millionth user , is the undisputed king of the Internet. But, warns Ryan Singel on Wired , other giants (think: Friendster, Geocities) have fallen. Here are some of Facebook's potential foes: Open Sourcing —New ventures like Diaspora, OneSocialWeb, the Appleseed Project, and WebFinger are experimenting...

Yelp Turns Down $550M Google Bid

Harry Kimball — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:48:50 CST

Crowd-sourced local business review site Yelp has backed out of a $550 million acquisition by Google that was thought to be almost certain just days ago. Michael Arrington, writing on TechCrunch , is uncertain as to why the deal fell apart, but surmises that “someone” came up with a counteroffer for...

Would You Friend This Fake Person? Probably

Harry Kimball — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:05:23 CST

If someone you don’t know, represented only by a photo of a rubber duck, tries to friend you on Facebook, you’ll probably...accept. That’s the conclusion of a study by a security firm that created two fake accounts—the fictitious woman behind the duck was named Daisy Feletin—and sent...

Contributors Flee Wikipedia's Stricter Rules

Harry Kimball — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:18:31 CST

In an attempt to rein in the lawlessness and veiled opinion running rampant among its volunteer editors, Wikipedia may have shot itself in the foot. In the first 3 months of this year, there's been something of a stampede of contributors exiting the crowdsourced online encyclopedia, leading to a net...

Online TV, Movie Guide Impresses

Harry Kimball — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:24:37 CST

The Web is so rich with TV and movie options that organizing the content is a daunting task. “You could browse multiple sites, including crowd-pleasers like Hulu, but that's too slow and tedious,” Jeff Bertolucci writes. Enter Clicker , a new aggregating website its CEO calls “one part directory, one part...

Facebook Is Now Offering Alibis

Harry Kimball — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:57:00 CST

We’ve all read about bonehead criminals getting caught because of social networks, or people’s online lives coming back to haunt them in divorce proceedings—but can Facebook actually help you in court? The answer is yes, at least for one New York teen, who is free after he provided probably...

Facebook Gives Death a Makeover

Harry Kimball — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:08:04 CDT

Facebook has responded to yet another qualm arising from its revamp last week. This one was actually sort of serious: Users were inundated with suggestions that they “reconnect” with friends who—though their Facebook pages were still active—had in reality shuffled off this mortal coil. “Would that I could,...