ReadWriteWeb

How do you build the next billion-dollar company? Easy. Think of a basic human need and put it online.

It was expected to cause the “destruction of community because [it encourages] far-flung operations and far-flung relationships.” At the same time, it was called the “antidote to provincialism.” It's not Facebook. It's not Google. It's not even a technology invented in this century - or the last.

Now that Yahoo is gradually untangling itself from Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba, does the U.S. Web portal's future look any brighter? Not really.

Facebook's Open Graph is too tempting for app developers. All they need is the slightest bit of permission from the user, and then they can go nuts posting all kinds of app activity for all that person's friends to see. Some apps can't resist the chance to promote themselves, and they run the risk of disrespecting their users. Here's a case study.

Now it's easier than ever to nosh while you're posting a status update. Ordr.in, a Google Ventures-backed startup, offers a Facebook app that turns ordering food for delivery into a social experience.

Today's theme is wild technology. We homo sapiens-type people are proud of our technology, but we'd better give credit where credit is due. Lots of other species can literally eat us without having to invent any weapons to help them.

Some can even outsmart us.

Twitter was blocked in Pakistan for much of Sunday because it would not remove tweets that were considered "offensive to Islam." The tweets were encouraging the Draw Muhammad Day (#DrawMuhammadDay) competition, which prompted users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad to Facebook. Even though some of the images posted were favorable, many Muslims regard any depictions of the prophet as blasphemous.    

With the lackluster first day issue of Facebook on Friday, we thought we would take a moment to look at the memorable tech IPOs of the past and see how they have fared over the years. While the first day "pop" of some companies can generate news, what is more important is the longer-term performance of the stock - say, after three years of trading. The chart above shows some of these percentage gains – and losses.

When your job is to be open to everyone's ideas, sometimes the hardest part for you is to just go with the right one. In Part 2 of ReadWriteWeb's interview with Internet Society (ISOC) senior public policy manager Sally Wentworth (Part 1 of which was published on Thursday), we discuss how difficult it can be to navigate the routes of change in Internet architecture, especially when everyone out there - ICANN, Comcast, Russia, etc. - seems to have a different idea.

The idea behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is pretty simple - break programming work down into bite-sized chunks, and put it in front of a large workforce that can do the work quickly and cheaply. Part of the challenge of that is making it easy for requesters to create the bites that workers are chewing on. The new categorization app from Amazon removes some of the hurdles of creating HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) that ask workers to pick the best category for items. The result could make the crowdsource coding marketplace even more usable and popular.

Why does founding a startup sometimes feel like the loneliest journey on the planet? Yes, you may be surrounded by family and friends who want to support you emotionally, but do they really understand what you’re going through?

The answer: Find yourself a mentor.

This is Part Two of a two-part series on Disassembling Android. 

"Android is open for disruption.” That's what Stewart Putney, CEO of the mobile gaming company Moblyng, said last August. He was talking about the potential for HTML5 Web apps to disrupt the Android Market (now Google Play), but he may have been oddly prophetic. Android has not been riding high in 2012. More than one competitor is lining up to strike a decisive blow.

Startups like SocialCam and Viddy, two of the fastest growing social networks for sharing video on smartphones, may be on a collision course with Google-owned YouTube. While initial indicators are far from conclusive, rumblings of a possible market tsunami are afoot.