Microsoft Believes PS4 Announcement Won’t Reach U.K
Microsoft believes that the PS4 announcement will go straight past the U.K audience, and that the PS4 reveal will not affect the Xbox 360 in the short term. Microsoft Senior Regional Director Jonathan Grimes said the following:
“Whatever gets announced on February 20th, the majority of consumers in the UK won’t know. They’ll still want to buy the devices out there, so in terms of noise our job will be to ensure that the consumers that are going into stores, going online, still see and experience Xbox, rather than get lost in the industry chatter. Whatever is announced is important from an industry perspective, but we must remember who is buying right now.”
My biggest question is: How can they not know about it? Granted, not everyone is interested in gaming but for the most part, Sony is pretty big. It’s not like people don’t have an internet connection, either. Even if they do not follow various gaming sites, don’t underestimate the power of various social media. I know about things I have no interest in due to YouTube recommendations, Facebook friends share and discuss things, and so forth. Sure, they may not exactly be following every single piece of information that gets released, but if a major announcement is coming, I do honestly believe they will hear about it, one way or the other.
Facebook Reaches 1 Billion Active Users
Facebook has hit yet another milestone. This time around the social media giant has reached 1 billion active users.
“This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month. If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you.
Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life. I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg in an official blog post.
It was reported that Facebook had 955 million active users as of July this year. In perspective, it seems like it took the giant quite some time to reach 1 billion active users. But hey, 1 billion active users!
LinkedIn Reaches 175 Million Members
LinkedIn has reached 175 million users.
The website had 161 million members back in May, and 150 million in February. The increase created a boost in LinkedIn’s stock prices, which has increased with 48.5% since the beginning of the year. Additionally, the company reported on its second-quarter earnings, in which they stated they make $0.03 per share on revenues of $228 million.Analysts were slightly off with their prediction of $.01 per share and revenues of $216 million.
Want to take a guess on how many of the users that are actually active?
Facebook CTO Leaves Company
Facebook‘s CTO, Bret Taylor, is going to leave the company.
The verge reports that Taylor is leaving Facebook in order to join “an unnamed start-up”. However, the departure has apparently been planned, or at least talked about for a long time. Taylor stated that he has always been upfront with Zuckerberg regarding his intentions to leave and join a start-up. Taylor has been involved in very central projects, both for Google in which he helped create Google maps but also in Facebook itself.
Taylor’s spot will be filled by Mike Vernal who will be leading the “platform-centric efforts”. Cory Ondrejka will be handling the mobile duties. Both of these work assignments were previously on Taylor’s table, so it’s a safe to say that he will be greatly missed.
Taylor also issued a statement through Facebook which reads as following:
“I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be leaving Facebook later this summer. I’m sad to be leaving, but I’m excited to be starting a company with my friend Kevin Gibbs.
While a transition like this is never easy, I’m extremely confident in the teams and leadership we have in place. I’m very proud of our recent accomplishments in our platform and mobile products, from Open Graph and App Center to Facebook Camera and our iOS integration. I’m even more excited for the world to see all the amazing things these teams have coming.
I’ve learned more than I ever imagined in my time at Facebook. I’m also extremely grateful for my relationship with all of the amazing people I’ve worked with here.
I want to give a special thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. You’ve not only been my boss for the past three years, but my mentor and one of my closest friends.
Thanks to all of you at Facebook for the most incredible three years of my life.”
Apple Shuts Down Ping
Apple is going to shut down Ping.
The attempted social network created by Apple in 2010 pretty much fell flat, later on the strategy was changed to a “social-music strategy”.
According to Hollywood Reporter, Ping is still present in the 10.6.3 update of iTunes, but it will be gone in the next update. The social network failed to inspire users to use it due to various reasons. Billboard‘s Glenn Peoples gave three reasons as to why it flunked.
“For one it encompasses only a sliver of what a typical social network offers. You can’t share a wide variety of items on Ping like you can on Facebook. Second, iTunes added in a social layer without fundamentally changing iTunes to be more social. iTunes users are still within a walled garden (even though they can invite their Facebook friends to join Ping). Thus, it misses what has made Facebook so successful: it’s where everybody goes to hang out. Third, Ping captures only part of the online word of mouth involved with digital music. People like to share links to videos, web pages and webcaster channels — none of which need involve iTunes.”
The demise of Ping shouldn’t come as a surprise since Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said the following at D10: ”We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said, ‘this isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into.’”
In the future we can look forward to a deeper integration with already established social networking sites, such as twitter and Facebook.
LulzSec Reborn Hacks Twitter App
LulzSec Reborn has been taking responsibility for leaking data from 10, 000 users from a twitter-based app called “TweetGif“.
The app requires users to share various information such as “real names, passwords, bios, locations and secret tokens”. The app itself is merely there to let users share GIFs. LulzSec Reborn made all of the required information public.
The hacker group even leaked account information from about 170,000 members of the dating site, millitarysingles.com, which targets singles from the military. As to why LulzSec did what they did, has not been revealed, Mashable reports.
The representatives of TweetGif couldn’t be reached for a comment regarding the matter.
Finns Use Facebook Less Than Swedes
In a poll conducted by online investment portal Nordnet it was revealed that only 64 percent of the citizens of Finland got a Facebook account. In comparison to the country’s neighbors, Norway and Sweden, which had 86 and 73 percent respectively using the social media site.
Additionally, the minor group in Finland that does use Facebook, it’s mostly females in between the age of 18 to 24, living in the Southern or Western parts of Finland. According to Yle.fi, the least common to have a Facebook account were males between 56 to 70 year old, living in the Eastern parts of the country.
The poll also showed that there’s 18 percent of Finland’s population interested in buying Facebook shares. Both Swedes and Norwegians equally had 25 percent willing buyers.
Finally, the poll was taken by 1000 Finns and it had an error margin of 3 percentage points.
- Donate via PayPal
