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Facebook IPO filing looming on the horizon

Facebook may be preparing to file papers for its initial public offering in the United States as early as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal . The social networking titan is reportedly preparing to file papers with the Securities Exchange Commission as early as this week, in what analysts are anticipating will be one of the biggest debuts for a U.S. company ever. Facebook’s long anticipated IPO is expected to raise as much as $10 billion (

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Major tech companies join forces to stop phishing

Some of the biggest tech enemies have set aside their differences in the name of stopping phishing. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and eleven other email providers, social media properties, email security companies and financial institutions have announced a broad new alliance to combat email phishing known as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance – or, DMARC for short. The goal of DMARC is to create new email standards to help stop spammers from tricking email and web-users into providing sensitive information, like credit card numbers and bank account details. To date, phishing has been relatively easy to do. Spammers simply simulate data in an email so that it looks like it came from a legitimate sender. Most phishing messages are caught by users’ spam folders, but many people still open emails that look real – leaving their personal and financial information vulnerable to theft. “One of the worst experiences for a user is being phished,” Adam Dawes, a Google product manager and DMARC representative said

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Major tech companies join forces to stop phishing

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Blogger haven Tumblr takes in $85m investment

Tumblr is the latest social outlet to see a surge in spending cash, as venture capitalists – including Sir Richard Branson – poured $85 million into the start-up. First reported by the New York Times and subsequently confirmed by the company itself, Tumblr found the financing through Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, the Chernin Group, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital in addition to Branson. “This additional capital allows us to continue to scale our business and give real focus to the further development of Tumblr,” chief executive and founder David Karp said in an email. Tumblr launched just under five years ago as a more social alternative to traditional blogging services. Incorporating features such as simple ‘reblogging’ – similar to retweeting, only on a larger scale – the site has grown to become a powerhouse in the social media sphere. A report published by Nielsen earlier this month confirmed the surge of the social standout, saying it had nearly tripled its number of unique US visitors in just one year – and purely on word of mouth advertising. The New York-based firm also recently eclipsed 10 billion total posts, based on nearly 30 million unique blogs, and all signs lead to an IPO for the company some time in 2012

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Blogger haven Tumblr takes in $85m investment

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Yahoo! launches new results pages as Silver Lake consider buyout

Despite the recent firing of its CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo! is adopting a business-as-usual approach by launching improved search engine results pages [SERPs]. A cleaner design for the pages has been implemented with navigational filters and tabs showing related content such as videos and images. “At Yahoo! , we’re always looking for ways to make the Yahoo! Search experience even more organized and streamlined while serving the most relevant content,” Paul Ko, Girish Ananthakrishnan and Caroline Tsay wrote on the company blog . “We have been working to unify the search experiences across web, multimedia, and vertical search results pages with a design that is clean and intuitive.” However, much bigger changes may be in store for the company as investment firm Silver Lake Partners is reportedly mulling an acquisition offer for Yahoo! Bloomberg reported yesterday that Silver Lake’s plan includes the liquidation of Yahoo’s assets in Asia and focussing the firm’s core business elsewhere in hope of attracting a new buyer.

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Yahoo! launches new results pages as Silver Lake consider buyout

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Yahoo! says bye-bye to Bartz

Carol Bartz has been fired from Yahoo! as chief executive officer. She will be replaced by Yahoo!’s chief financial officer Tim Morse, effective immediately. In a press release , Yahoo! said: “The Board of Directors has appointed Timothy Morse interim chief executive officer, effective immediately, replacing Carol Bartz, who has been removed by the Board from her role as chief executive officer.” “The board is commencing a search for a permanent chief executive officer and expects to engage the services of a nationally recognised executive search firm to help it identify candidates for the position as expeditiously as possible.” Bartz was named CEO in 2009, taking over from Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, but her tenure was marked by struggle and, despite job cuts and a management team shake up, the company was unable to regain lost ground against search giant Google . Rumours about a potential management switch-up began circulating in Silicon Valley months ago and came to a head at Yahoo!’s annual shareholder meeting in June. When asked to address reports that Yahoo! was looking for new leadership, chairman Roy Boystock denied rumours and reiterated that the board was “very supportive of Carol and the management team.” Following the news of her departure, Yahoo! shares jumped 6 per cent in after-hours trading, an increase of 81 cents to $13.72 According to the New York Times , Bartz sent an email to employees informing them of her departure: “I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo!’s chairman of the board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.” After rejecting a $44.6 billion cash-and-stock offer from Microsoft to buy the search engine in 2008, rumours are beginning to circulate about Yahoo! putting itself up for sale hot on the heels of Bartz’s departure. According to the Wall Street Journal , a company insider said Yahoo! is “open to selling itself to the right bidder.” The board of directors is expected to initiate a strategic review to evaluate the company’s current situation and discuss the possibility of acquisitions and partnerships in future

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Yahoo! says bye-bye to Bartz

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Google Invests in New York Property

Google announced Wednesday that it has expanded its facilities in New York by purchasing property in the Chelsea district at 111 Eighth Avenue. The Wall Street Journal reports that according to sources familiar with the deal, the search giant purchased the building for close to $1.9 billion — representing the largest deal for a single building in the U.S. in 2010.

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Google Invests in New York Property

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Google to Roll Out Music Service Tied to Search Engine

Google is attempting to tie everything else to its industry-leading search engine, so why not music? The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Google will roll out a music download service later this year that is tied to its search engine, with an online subscription service coming in 2011.

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Google to Roll Out Music Service Tied to Search Engine

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YouTube Launches New Video Editor

The engineers and developers at YouTube have created a new video editing tool that will make editing videos on YouTube faster and easier, without having to worry about installing and learning new software. Available in TestTube — where users can test new tools and provide creators with feedback — the new online video editor allows users to combine multiple videos to create a new longer video, edit the beginning and/or ending of videos, and add soundtracks from YouTube’s AudioSwap library of tens of thousands of songs.

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YouTube Launches New Video Editor

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Bing Search Engine Now an Opera Browser Option

Microsoft’s Bing search engine received a small boost from an unexpected source on Friday, as The Register reports that Opera Software has added Bing to its list of available search engines from a drop-down box within its Internet browser. While Google will still be the “default” search engine used in the new Opera 10.6 search engine, it’s interesting to note that Opera has added Bing at all.

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Bing Search Engine Now an Opera Browser Option

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Google to Launch Digital Bookstore This Summer

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will be launching a digital bookstore this summer, jumping into a market that already includes such major industry players as Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble.

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Google to Launch Digital Bookstore This Summer

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