Live Gamer has bought out Twofish. Twofish is an in-game analytics and virtual payment company. This is the second acquisition that Live Gamer has made in the last month. The last acquisition Live Gamer made was Korean in-game payments company N-Cash.
The acquisition was made in cash and stock. Twofish’s investors will retain stake in the combined company. Twofish’s investors include Rustic Canyon Partners, Triple Point Capital, and Venrock. Twofish’s revenue has been doubling month-over-month.
Facebook Inc. is planning to aggressively this year as a result of the economic slump. “No one else has been hiring” stated Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “It’s been a great environment for us because the economy has helped out.”
Facebook plans to expand their employees by about 50% this year as there are a surplus of engineers available in the job market.
Facebook has around 1,000 employees. But Zuckerberg also wants to maintain costs in order to reach positive cash flow by next year. The company is still researching innovative ways to prove themselves to advertising companies.
Facebook has about $716 million in funding and has made a couple of acquisitions in the last two years. Earlier this month Facebook acquired FriendFeed for $47.5 million.
TweetPhoto is a company that competes with TwitPic. The developers of TweetPhoto were waiting to get approved on the Apple App Store for about 4 weeks before they were rejected. The reason why they were rejected is quite bizarre. Apparently TweetPhoto’s logo has an icon that resembles a snapshot taken from those old school Polaroid cameras.
While I think this was a lame reason to get rejected, it does not surprise me. This story reminds me of when PocketGod was rejected for using an icon that resembled an iPhone.
“We’ve reviewed TweetPhoto and determined that we cannot post your application because it appears to include features that resemble Polaroid photographs. Polaroid has previously objected to other applications that include features that resemble Polaroid photographs, and believes that such features infringe its rights,” wrote Apple in a message to TweetPhoto.
TweetPhoto pointed out that an application called Polarize actually uses a Polaroid photo as their icon. Polarize even gives photos taken on the iPhone a “Polaroid look.”
Its possible that Polarize slipped through the cracks and TweetPhoto was reviewed by someone that is uptight. I believe Apple should reconsider rejecting TweetPhoto.
Nokia Corporation made a big announcement today by unveiling the Booklet 3G mini laptop. The 3G mini laptop specs are very netbook-like. The Booklet has an Atom processor, 10.1″ display, and has a high-resolution screen.
The mini-laptop also has an integrated 3G wireless SIM card. The mini-laptop will be powered by Windows 7. Other features include aGPS, Ovi Maps, HDMI output, 12 hour battery life, Bluetooth, and WiFi. The weigh is only 2.7 lbs. and aluminum body is 2cm. thick. Those measurements make it comparable to a Macbook Air.
RealNetworks’ streaming music software Rhapsody-To-Go will be submitted to the Apple App Store for approval this week. When the application gets approved, Rhapsody customers will be able to access on-demand streaming of over 8 million tracks within the company’s library through 3G and WiFi connections.
The application will work with the Apple iPhone and the Apple iPod Touch. Currently a Rhapsody membership costs about $14.99 per month, but the application itself will be free. Next RealNetworks will be working on a Google Android version of their application.
Spotify, a Rhapsody competitor submitted an application back in July too. Currently Spotify is not available for download in the U.S. The announcement was made on the Rhapsody blog.
It was inevitable that Fred would eventually be replaced on YouTube as the most subscribed YouTube channel. Fred is the kid played by Lucas Cruikshank that edits his voice to be high-pitched and sped up. Fred is also one of the most searched kids on the web.
Fred was replaced by Nigahiga over the weekend. Nigahiga has about 1.392 million subscribers and Fred has about 1.36 million. Above is a video that Nigahiga made to celebrate their victory.
A 29 year old girl by the name of Rosemary Port (pictured left) was the author of a blog called Skanks in NYC. The blog heavily criticized model Liskula Cohen (pictured right). On the blog, Cohen was called an “old hag” and other defamatory comments. As a result, Cohen decided to send an injunction to Google subsidiary Blogger.com to reveal the identity of the anonymous blog writer.
Cohen won the injunction last week. Cohen decided to tell her lawyer Steven Wagner to drop a $3 million lawsuit against Port because she was willing to let by-gones be by-gones. “This is about forgiveness,” Cohen said. “It adds nothing to my life to hurt hers. I wish her happiness.”
Port is upset at Google for revealing her identity and felt that her privacy has been tampered with. Port is also scared that her name is public. The reason why Port wrote defamatory comments against Cohen is because Cohen supposedly talked negatively about Port’s boyfriend Daniel Dimin.
Micro-payment service Tipjoy attempted to sell itself, but it turns out that they will be shutting down instead. Facebook even offered Tipjoy $5 million in stock. Facebook walked away from the deal and Tipjoy shut down shortly after.
Even though Tipjoy decided to shut down, Facebook was able to hire one of the company’s executives. Facebook hired Tipjoy co-founder and CTO Ivan Kirigin. Although it is uncertain about what Kirigin will be working on, it is expected to be something related to Facebook Payments.
The reason why Tipjoy shut down was because Kirigan was not around after Facebook made him an offer. PayPal and Twitter were both interested in buying out Tipjoy too. Y-Combinator, Chris Sacca, The Accelerator Group, and Betaworks invested over $1 million in funding.
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