ReadWriteWeb

Is it easier to talk to your online buddies than your friends out there in the "real world?" Do you feel like you know more about what's happening in the lives of your Facebook and MySpace friends than with those who don't have accounts or don't bother to update them? According to a recent UK MySpace study of over 16,000 social network users, these sorts of feelings are common among today's younger generation. The study revealed that a good portion of this group admits to feeling more comfortable sharing and communicating with friends online than they do when logged out of cyberspace.

Twitter can't catch a break these days. Still reeling from the ongoing denial-of-service attacks that hit late last week (and have yet to let up), the company soon faced yet another threat: the return of Koobface. The Koobface internet worm, a deadly little piece of internet malware which got its start on Facebook, has long since spread to other social networking sites including MySpace, Bebo, and Twitter. But the latest variant - the "new and improved" Koobface - is even more devious than before. And Twitter's recently launched malicious URL filtering feature couldn't put a stop to the worm's spread.

We've been writing a lot about Internet of Things this year. It's when everyday objects become connected to the Internet - taking us beyond the Social Web where people talk to each other, into a Web where things talk to each other (and us) as well. We've analyzed some of the theory, and experiments from the likes of MIT, but it's also interesting to track emerging commercial products.

The iPhone just happens to be a fertile ground for Internet of Things, as a product called WideNoise shows. WideNoise is an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels, displaying them on an interactive map.

The list of URL shorteners just got shorter.
According to a blog post by Nambu, the company is shutting its doors on URL shortening tool, Tr.im. After a number of attempts to sell the service, no companies in the Twitter space stepped forward to purchase and operate it in its existing form. Says the company, "There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening -- users won't pay for it -- and we just can't justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner."

Publicis Groupe SA announced today the acquisition of Microsoft's Razorfish advertising agency for $530 million dollars. In a joint press release, the group announced that the deal will increase Publicis' ability to deliver digital campaigns and further elevates Razorfish's status as a leader in online marketing. According to Bloomberg, in exchange for Razorfish, Publicis will give Microsoft 6.5 million in shares - a deal that makes Microsoft a 3% owner of the advertising company.

We started tracking VC funding in October 2008, as the financial markets were melting. What caught our eye in those dark and gloomy days was True Ventures' announcement of its Series A investment in Syncplicity. The more we looked, the more we found that the headlines were wrong. It was not all doom and gloom, not in our corner of the universe: early-stage Web tech ventures. So we figured that getting (and passing on to you) good reliable data on a timely basis would be a good idea. Searching for that turned out to be harder than we thought, and herein lies a tale.

Twitter went down last week. So did Facebook, LiveJournal, and Blogger.

They were all victims of a denial of service attack that was, depending on who you believe, either the work of Russian nationalist hackers targeting a Georgian economist, a clever ploy by the United Economists of Georgia to garner sympathy by feigning an attack by Russian nationalist hackers, or an attempt by Paramount Pictures to divert attention from reviews of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to explore the latest Web technology products and trends. We're fortunate to have a great group of sponsors who support this goal. So, once a week, we write a post about them; about who they are, what they do, and what they've been up to lately. We hope you'll pay them a visit as a way to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site.

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In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we analyze the impact of real-time information on the Web, investigate 'web squared' (when web 2.0 meets Internet of Things), tell you why cloud computing is the future of mobile, look at Delicious' new Twitter re-design, check out Digg's read/write API plans, and more. We also check in on our two new channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

The summer is over halfway over now, but we've still got some exciting events in our schedule. Once again, we've put our events into a calendar for you to keep track. Download the calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.