After spinning off from Expedia and debuting on... (show more)

After spinning off from Expedia and debuting on the NASDAQ in December, trip reviews site TripAdvisor posted fourth quarter 2011 revenues of $137.8 million, a 30% increase over fourth quarter 2010. Full year 2011 revenues were $637.1 million, a 31% increase over full year 2010. Fourth quarter 2011 GAAP earnings per share ) was $0.16 per diluted share compared to $0.14 for the fourth quarter 2010. Net income was $22 million, a 19% increase over fourth quarter 2010. TripAdvisor, which was founded in 2000, was originally bought by IAC in for $212 million in 2004. IAC spun off Expedia, which included TripAdvisor, in 2005. With 50 million unique monthly visitors and 20 million members, TripAdvisor is the giant in the travel reviews space. The site publishes 25 new contributions every minute and also features over eight million candid traveler photos. The reviews site operates in 30 different countries, including in China under the site Daodao.
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In ComScore's report on The State of Online and...

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In ComScore's report on The State of Online and Mobile Banking, it cites social networks as a space where banks are creating a presence, and improving their capabilities. But do any of the banks' customers even know about this? Apparently not.

Even though financial institutes have increased social networking activity, ComScore says that only 18% of customers knew that their financial institutions had a presence on social networks. A total 59% had no idea, and 24% were unsure of what their financial institutions were doing on social media sites.

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The data shows that customer visits to banks' Facebook pages have increased by nearly 25%, whereas on Twitter and LinkedIn that number has enjoyed less much less growth.

For institutions that are creating a presence on social media sites, take heed: customers are not interested in solving customer service issues on those sites. If Facebook did update its brand pages to include private messaging options, this might change. For now, however, customers who do follow their financial institutions on social networking sites are mostly interested in retail, credit card and online shopping offers.

As social commerce continues to try and find its place on Facebook thanks to new social apps, and payment services like PayPal build a presence on Facebook, will banking be the next move? Or are social networking sites just a place for banks to build their brand? Tell us what you think in the comments.

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Some people might say that there's no way Googl... (show more)

Some people might say that there's no way Google could be more aware of your browsing habits. Not true! There is much they don't know. But it's not because they don't want to know. Last night Google rolled out two programs aimed at increasing their awareness of how people use their browsers — what sites they visit, for how long, for what purpose, etc. They'll pay you for the privilege, a bit like being a Nielsen family. They even give you a little box!
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Marketing software company HubSpot has brought ... (show more)

Marketing software company HubSpot has brought on a new leader today?Akamai CFO JD Sherman. Sherman has been chief financial officer at Akamai for over 6 years. Prior to Akamai, Sherman served as the chief financial executive of IBM's $21 billion Systems and Technology Group. Over the course of 15 years at IBM, Sherman held senior executive positions in Finance, including Vice President, Finance and Planning, zSeries Server Division, and Assistant Controller of IBM Corporate Financial Strategy and Budgets.
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Technology blog GigaOM has agreed to purchase ...

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Technology blog GigaOM has agreed to purchase ContentNext Media, which owns paidContent, mocoNews, and several other websites with odd capitalization choices, the company announced today.

The move will help GigaOM increase its presence in New York City and Europe. The …

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I’ve spilled enough ink over whether or not Zun... (show more)

I’ve spilled enough ink over whether or not Zune is dead, barely breathing, or vibrant. I’m tired of the lack of information released into the market. As a media whole...
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All smartphones do not depreciate equally. 18 m... (show more)

All smartphones do not depreciate equally. 18 months after purchase, iPhones can be sold for 53% of their original price, while Androids can only be sold for 42% and BlackBerries for 41% on average according to a study by Y Combinator second-hand price guide startup Priceonomics. The study also offered tips on memory upgrades and models for maximizing your phone's resale value.
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After an enterprising hacker discovered a priva...

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After an enterprising hacker discovered a privacy problem in beloved new social app Path yesterday, its creators have issued an update and an apology. "We commit to you that we will continue to be transparent and always serve you our users, first," CEO Dave Morin writes.

Path was uploading iPhone users' address books to its servers without asking. Today's update, version 2.0.6, now prompts users to opt-in to the "Add Friends" feature, which is not mandatory. Path has deleted all the existing contact info from its servers.

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This apology is full of refreshing self-consciousness. "As we continue to expand and grow we will make some mistakes along the way," Morin reminds us. Everybody makes mistakes. And as we wrote yesterday, this was mostly just a procedural mistake. Path added the feature without asking its users first. If it had only alerted its users before uploading their contacts, most would probably have said "yes."

There are some additional security measures Path could use with this contact information, as Matt Gemmell suggested in yesterday's thread with Morin. The app could hash the information locally and then upload it. Path hasn't taken that step yet, but it assures users that the connection is encrypted, and the data are stored behind a firewall. And now that it's all opt-in, users are in control again.

So Path recovered as gracefully as possible. Do you accept its apology? Or did yesterday's revelation do too much damage for you to trust the company again? It's important to remember that you pay for free apps with your data. They're going to do what they can to collect it, because that's how they make money.

They should always ask the user for permission first. Apple requires app developers to ask the user for permission before gathering location data, and perhaps it should do the same for contacts. But the bottom line is that responsibility for user data starts with the user.

How much do you care about privacy when it comes to data like this? Is the price of free apps worth it? Share your responses in the comments.

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You'd be excused for not paying much attention ... (show more)

You'd be excused for not paying much attention to Thismoment or Position2. They do the dirty work a lot of entrepreneurs don't want to do, namely run marketing promotions and, in their wake, figuring out how many people actually paid attention to those things. In a world of "organic eyeballs" and viral va-va-voom, there's little place for Mad Men style commercial promotion... or is there? Thismoment just paid an undisclosed sum for Position2 and will begin folding Position2's technology into its offerings. Thismoment began life as a photo-sharing site ("It was Facebook Timeline before Facebook timeline," said founder Vince Broady) and pivoted do supply content management tools for major brands.
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Walgreens has decided to partner with Local Res... (show more)

Walgreens has decided to partner with Local Response, a startup that “helps marketers respond to real-time consumer intent.” With the partnership, Walgreens can now auto-send foursquare users a Halls cough drop ad...
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It looks like Path has heeded the words of inve... (show more)

It looks like Path has heeded the words of investor Michael Arrington. Yesterday, the startup faced a major privacy backlash when it was revealed that the social app was uploading user's address book data without actually telling the user. Co-founder and CEO Dave Morin was apologetic, and there was a lot of argument about how big a deal this was (especially since the practice was in-line with Apple's policies), but Arrington had a simpler suggestion: "Just nuke all the data."
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With the release of Tweetbot for iPad earlier t... (show more)

With the release of Tweetbot for iPad earlier today, we thought that this would be a good time to kick off an ongoing series of interviews with developers, designers and...
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I love it when a startup I've been covering for... (show more)

I love it when a startup I've been covering for literally years suddenly finds itself in the spotlight, and for the right reasons. In this case, Skimlinks, originally from London but now with a growing US base, has been revealed as powering the affiliate links behind Pinterest, one of the hottest startups on the map right now. For some that appears to be a little bit of scandal, at least for Pinterest.
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We've written earlier about Grovo, an online vi...

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We've written earlier about Grovo, an online video e-learning site that conducts a lot of celebrity interviews. Some of them are more interesting than others. Today they have a new series with Zach Ciperski, the Director of SEO for EliteSEM and also serves as Vice President of CoffeeForLess.com. He has built sites for some major retailers and teaches SEO at New York University, among other places. His series is on How To SEO, and is worth watching if you are still struggling with the basics, or need some help before you go forth and try to hire an SEO specialist. Here is one five-minute segment on making small tweaks to your site.

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There are some very basic tips in this video segment, such as keeping titles short, using keywords in the filenames in the actual URL, constructing meta tags and meta descriptions, and how SEO has changed over the past decade. "SEO at the end of the day is an art form. But you want to test it and give it a shot and see what happens when you put extra keywords there," he says. You can watch the rest of his series here at Grovo's site.

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If you have any doubt about the growth of conte... (show more)

If you have any doubt about the growth of content marketing in today’s market then you’ve simply not been paying attention. In a few words, content marketing is defined as...
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