Infotrade

Twitter has experienced  tremendous traffic growth , and more importantly has permeated into the collective consciousness with constant Twitter quotes by news organizations and entertainers. Twitter’s valuation has gone up as people expect it to monetize its traction with both consumers and brands. Here are a few of the features that would seriously inflect the Twitter revenue curve. Bring on the banners Twitter has struggled to scale advertising revenue, because like most social sites it tries to inflict  strange ad units  on both its users and advertisers. From the users’ perspective, things like promoted tweets or Facebook’s social ads are intrusive to their content experience. From the advertisers’ perspective, they can’t use their normal ad units and track results the normal way. This is easily addressed by supporting normal ad units such as right rail skyscraper banners.  As Myspace proved early in the social years , banner advertising works on social networks...

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You  is a must-read for pretty much anyone who uses the Internet. Eli breaks down troubling trends emerging in the World Wide Web that threaten not only individual privacy but also the very idea of civic space. Of key concern to Eli is "web personalization": code that maps the algorithms of your individual web use and helps you more easily find the things that the code "thinks" will pique your interest. There's a daunting amount of information out there, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming to even begin sorting through it. Personalization can help. For instance, I can find music that fits my tastes by using Pandora, or movies I like through Netflix. The services provided by companies like Pandora, Netflix, Amazon, et al are designed to study us —to get to know us rather intimately—to the point where Netflix can now predict the average customer's rating of a given movie within half a star. Eli paints a p...

Source: Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Your elementary school history teacher was a liar. Sure, she looked all sweet and assuming and maybe she even had a major role in some of your pre-pubescent fantasies, but while you were listening to her praise the accomplishments of Christopher Columbus by day, she was laughing behind your back the whole time. Want proof? 10. Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin A lot of famous names in history are wrongly attributed to their supposed creations simply because their names match: Col. James Bowie and the "Bowie" knife, Thomas Crapper and the flush toilet, Ron Jeremy and cockfighting. Credit for the invention of the infamous French "guillotine" has long gone to Dr. Joseph Guillotin when, in fact, he had no hand in creating or developing the machine. Sure the machine bears his name, but  he merely suggested the French government use it  as a more humane form of execution in the 1790s. In fact, he was staunchly against corporal punishm...

YouTube has just  announced  some startling new figures: two days worth of video are uploaded every minute to the service, and it’s now achieving 3 Billion views per day. The figures coincide with the Google-owned service’s sixth birthday. 48 hours of video uploaded every minute is a 37% increase over the last six months and 100% over one year ago. 3 Billion views per day, meanwhile, is a 50% increase on last year. YouTube’s continued growth, detailed in the rather small infographic below, shows how online video’s importance is still on the rise. YouTube itself is in the process of expanding its brief, with the recently launched  live streaming service  (currently only for pre-approved partners),  sport coverage  and an expanding movie rentals  business. YouTube continues to hold fast as the leader in online video. Providing it can make a success of its expansion into new areas, it won’t be at all surprising if its usage stats climb ever higher over t...

Apple has recorded the receipt of over 200 patents and patent pending applications from Freescale Semiconductor, most of which pertain to computer hardware and wireless devices. According to a  report  by  PatentlyO , while it is "unclear from the information now available whether Apple obtained full title to the patents and whether Apple purchased the rights or obtained them through some other type of transaction" the blog notes that "a cash purchase is likely because Apple has a large multi-billion-dollar cash surplus while Freescale has a large multi-billion-dollar debt that has come due." The report notes that "the patents were previously mortgaged and a release of the security interest has not yet been recorded." Freescale was once part of Motorola, and some of the patents originated at that company. Apple partnered with Motorola and IBM in the early 90s to develop PowerPC, and continued to use Motorola as a CPU supplier for its Macs through 200...

We could soon be listening to Spotify within Facebook, according to reports from sources close to the deal. Forbes  is reporting that the integrated service is going through testing, but when it drops (in as little as two weeks), Facebook users will see Spotify’s icon appear on the left-hand side of their newsfeed. Once you click on the image, the service will be installed on your desktop, allowing you to listen to Spotify’s catalog via Facebook. Users will also be able to listen to music with friends via Facebook. One downside, though, should this service come to pass: It will only be available in countries with access to Spotify — tough luck, U.S. Forbes  also reports that a Spotify spokesperson claimed not to know about the new music deal with Facebook. “We have a Facebook integration. We’re continuously working with them to make that as good as it can be. But that’s the extent of our relationship,” the spokesperson said. Spotify tells us that it continues to work with Fac...

The eG8 brought together some of the world’s most influential technology leaders this week for an open discussion about the future of technology. Hosted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the eG8 attempted to establish a dialogue between the government and technology luminaries. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, HTC’s Peter Chou, DST’s Yuri Milner and Google’s Eric Schmidt were just some of the high-powered speakers that graced the stage at the event. What was the big buzz from the summit? Social media monitoring firm  Synthesio  analyzed the Twitter buzz behind the event to find out who was talking about the eG8 and what quotes captured the most attention. Many of the 25,000 tweets about the forum focused around comments from Sarkozy, who  called  for tighter regulation of the Internet. The web’s response was critical of his comments, and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt warned that governments should “stay away from regulating brand new industries.” Here’s a sum...