At the beginning of the year, Facebook filed a complaint against Power.com accusing them of copyright and trademark infringement and unlawful competition. Power.com was attempting to act as an aggregated social network where users can enter login information for MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hi5, Orkut, and Facebook and all of their contact information would be updated at once amongst all the networks.
Facebook blocked access and sued them in January as a result. Now Power.com has responded with their own lawsuit alleging that Facebook is trying to monopolize the social networking industry.
Power.com started in Brazil and tried to capture the U.S. audience this past December with help from investors such as DFJ and Esther Dyson. Power.com wanted “to be the center of the world” according to CEO Steve Vachani. Power.com has a huge spike in traffic, but then it died out.
At one point there was 8 million users and just last month there were only 14,000 U.S. users that visited their website according to analytics web company Compete.com. Power.com claims that they received 250,000 unique visitors in the U.S. last month.
Power.com stated that Facebook is stifling competition by blocking access to their service. But Facebook made a statement saying that they made many attempts to work with Power.com but claims that they continued to put user data at risk.
Seesmic, the video commenting and Twitter platform company founded by Loic Le Meur has developed a new browser that will be debuted at the Real-Time Street CrunchUp event today. The Seesmic Browser looks very similar to GMail when it comes to the user interface and has support for Twitter.
At the top of the browser is a messages button to read direct messages that you have been sent. Next to that is an text field for users to update their status. And then there is a search engine next to the text field for finding tweets.
Although the Seesmic Browser currently only supports Twitter, Facebook integration will be added to the browser soon. Different columns in the browser represents different functions. For example, one column may have direct messages, another column will have replies sent, and another column will have the ability to message or follow/unfollow a user.
CoTweet is a startup that has built a Twitter platform for helping companies reach and engage customers. CoTweet has several prominent companies using their platform such as Ford, Starbucks, Microsoft, Sports Illustrated, Zendesk, and Dish Network.
CoTweet announced earlier this week that they have raised $1.1 million in first round funding from Baseline, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Maples Investments, and Freestyle Capital.
The company platform has the ability to manage multiple tools and accounts at once. Several people also have the ability to post to a single account using the CoTweet platform.
CoTweet is available for free as of right now but the company will eventually charge for their services. “CoTweet is an essential tool that allows us to manage multiple accounts from a single dashboard, or have a single account with multiple people managing it,” stated Scott Monty, the digital and multimedia communications manager at Ford Motor Company in a press release. “We can also identify who’s responsible for Tweets, which gives us the flexibility to pull experts into the discussion, and to keep a human face while doing so.”
Warren Buffett auctioned a lunch on eBay recently. The proceeds of the auction would go to charity. Initially the winning bidder remained anonymous, but now it has been revealed that Canadian wealth management firm Salida Capital was the winner. The Salida CEO and several other employees will be sharing the lunch which the firm’s partners bought for $1.68 million and 300 dollars.
“We think we will be able to gain invaluable insights from his years of experience and current insights and perspectives,” stated Salida CEO Courtenay Wolfe. “We think lunch with Warren is going to be a once in a lifetime experience.”
The problem with the lunch is that it may take a year to get on Buffett’s calendar. Salida’s decision to bid on the lunch was at the last second. The company bid $100 more than the next highest bidder. The donation will be going to the San Francisco Glide Foundation.
The world’s largest bookstore Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS?) has designed an iPhone application that is available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Users can read book reviews and find store information. In order to build the application, Barnes & Noble partnered with LinkMe Mobile and Spotlight Mobile.
One of the built in features allows users to take a picture of a book and immediately see reviews and other information about it. While it is just as easy to use a Google search to find the information, this feature just makes the application more intuitive.
There are several other useful features. There is a local store events section that shows up after searching for a local store. There is also online purchasing so you don’t have to use the website directly anymore. For those of you interested in individual authors, there is a section called B&N Studio where there are author interviews. Another feature is a reservation system that allows you to have a store hold books, music, or movies for you.
The application is available for free and was created because the company wanted to increase their store mobile traffic.
Dennis Liu is a short film director that have made viral videos for Apple and Miller High Life. This time Microsoft has hired him to make a funny short film about Office 2010. The movie talks about the old Office mascot Clippy and features several Matrix-like characters.
Microsoft is expected to make a major announcement on Monday which is possibly why Google wanted to make the Chrome announcement this week despite the release date of the operating system actually happening in late 2010.
Amazon.com has decided to cut the price of the Kindle from $359 to $299. The Kindle 2 was introduced back in February. Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener said that the company is dropping the price because they are decreasing costs to manufacture the device. However the Kindle DX will remain at a price of $489.
The success of the Kindle will add about $310 million in revenue and $70 million to the bottom line for Amazon.com. This will give the company a rise in $2 billion in revenue and $560 million in profit by 2012 according to Sandeep Aggarwal, a research analyst at Collins Stewart.
Currently there are about 300,000 books available for download on the Kindle. When the first generation Kindle was introduced, there was about 90,000 books available.
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