San Francisco
– Twitter has launched a new feature called Local Trends, which allows users to
see which topics are popular on the microblogging service in their area. At
launch, Local Trends is available in 15 U.S.
cities, and five countries besides the U.S. "We’ll be improving this
feature over time to provide more locations, languages, and data through our
API," the company said.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7j9c
(Twitter blog)
Los Angeles
– AT&T (NYSE: T) is launching a user-generated business reviews service at Buzz.com, aiming
to compete with established players in the space like Yelp — which announced a
$100 million investment on Wednesday, Fortune.com reports. Buzz.com, currently in
an invitation-only "alpha" phase, aims to "help you tap your
social net for business recommendations from the people you trust most — your
friends and family." Unlike Yelp, according to Fortune, Buzz.com will
provide space for very brief, only positive reviews of businesses.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7jae
(Forbes.com)
Cannes, France – 24-7 Entertainment, an operator of
digital music download services in Europe,
said it delivered a total of 150 million tracks to consumers in 2009, an
increase of 32% from the previous year. The company said that December saw its
highest volume, at 22 million tracks. 24-7 operates 45 music download stores,
for customers such as TDC Play, in 16 countries.
Related Links:
http://www.247entertainment.com/newsroom#news_104
San Francisco – After a federal judge last week reduced the
amount of damages convicted file-swapper Jammie Thomas-Rasset must pay from
$1.92 million to $54,000, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
on Wednesday offered to accept payment of just $25,000 — provided Thomas-Rasset
ask the judge to "vacate" his reduced damages decision, CNET News.com
reported.
Thomas-Rassett’s attorneys reportedly rejected the settlement offer
"almost immediately."
The RIAA said in its letter to attorneys Kiwi
Camara and Joe Sibley that if Thomas-Rasset refused the settlement offer, that
it would challenge the judge’s ruling lowering the damages.
However,
Thomas-Rasset’s attorneys said last week they planned to continue their
challenge of even the judge’s reduced damages award as unconstitutional.
Related Links:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10442482-261.html
http://snipurl.com/u7jj4
(DMW previous coverage)
Los Angeles
– The digital-only benefit album featuring live performances from last Friday’s
"Hope For Haiti Now" telethon will be the top-selling album this week,
boasting sales of about 171,000 units. The album, which has
been on sale for just three days, will become the first digital-only album to
hit the top chart spot in the U.S.
Hypebot’s sources said the album will also
debut in the top spot in some 20 countries, and become one of the top weekly
sellers in iTunes’ history.
The album features live performances from artists
including Madonna, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Jay-Z and Wyclef Jean.
Reuters reports
that the Friday broadcast drew 83 million U.S. television viewers, and was
streamed 5.8 million times online.
Early estimates showed that the benefit has
so far raised over $65 million.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7j2b
(Billboard)
http://snipurl.com/u7iuo
(Hypebot)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60O5YY20100126
http://snipurl.com/u7j3c
(iTunes)
Los Angeles – Dating site
eHarmony on Tuesday agreed to pay $500,000 and make its site more
"welcoming" to gay and lesbian customers, as part of the settlement
of a class action lawsuit brought by gays and lesbians in California, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In
an unrelated but similar case last year in New Jersey, eHarmony was ordered to
include gays and lesbians on its service, and in response launched a
separate dating site specifically for gays, called Compatible Partners.
The company
was founded by Neil Clark Warren, a psychologist and evangelical Christian, and
had previously claimed that its match-making technology was designed only for
heterosexual couples — rejecting users seeking same-sex partners.
Under terms
of the California
settlement, which is still pending court approval, eHarmony will add a "gay
and lesbian dating" category to its main website, which will in turn
direct users to the Compatible Partners site.
The company also agreed to place
the eHarmony logo "in a prominent position" on the Compatible
Partners site, and change the branding from "powered by eHarmony" to
"brought to you by eHarmony."
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7iw9
(Los Angeles Times)
Beijing – Amid tensions
between Google (NASD: GOOG) and China
over the fallout from a hacking incident, China said on Wednesday that it
would not place restrictions on the use of Google Android-powered cell phones,
provided Google complies with all regulations, the Associated Press reported.
"As
long as it fulfills Chinese laws and regulations and has good communication
with telecom operators, I think its application should not have
restrictions," Zhu Hongren, a spokeman for the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology, said at a news briefing, according to AP.
The statement
did not apparently refer directly to the Nexus One, Google’s own smartphone,
but to handsets from other manufacturers that run Google’s Android operating
system for mobile phones.
AP noted that state-owned China Mobile is even
developing its own Android-powered device, the OPhone.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7irv
(AP)
San Francisco
– Yelp, a service that lets features user-generated reviews of local
restaurants, businesses and service providers, announced on Wednesday that it
has received an investment of up to $100 million from Elevation Partners.
Under
the terms, Elevation will purchase $25 million in shares, and seek to increase
its total investment to $100 million through a planned purchase of shares from
vested employees and other eligible shareholders.
Founded in 2004, San
Francisco-based Yelp counted 26 million unique visitors in December, and said
that users have written more than 9 million local reviews on its site.
In 2009,
the company launched in eight new U.S.
markets, as well as in the U.K.
and Ireland,
and also released mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and
Android.
The company plans to use the investment to expand in the U.S., Canada
and Western Europe, as well as to continue
development of mobile applications.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/u7iqy
