Amazon threw down the gauntlet against terrestrial competitors today by announcing that Kindle and Kindle app customers can borrow and purchase Kindle books from more than 11,000 local libraries in the United States.
In essence, these first 11,000 local libraries just became a chain of local bookstores for Amazon's catalog of virtual books.
Facebook estimated global ad revenues will jump to $3.8 billion, more than double the social networking giant's 2010 total.
Ad revenue for the site, which has over 750 million registered users, will miss the expected $4.05 billion mark, according to analysts, but the slowdown in growth is explained as a diversification into other revenue streams like Facebook Credits.
Facebook made significant changes to how it delivers your friends' news and updates today by releasing a ticker feature and a news feed format that arranges missed updates in a newspaper-style format.
The move is an improvement in relevancy of information feeds in social profiles and it demonstrates an intelligent system for delivering information and encouraging interaction on the world's largest social network.
Over 40% of a brand's Facebook page fans "unlike" the page as soon as a campaign ends, suggesting that a lot of follower activity on the social network is driven by agency interaction, not a real loyalty to the brand, according to a new study.
The study by DDB reveals that two in five brand followers surveyed are not interested in engaging with Facebook pages after a marketing engagement ends.
Disqus is quietly testing an interface that allows site owners to rank and give credentials and labels to their commenters. The feature takes advantage of a trend towards being able to find experts through social search.
The project is called Disqus Ranks, and it should be rolling out shortly. Disqus did not return a request for information about the timing of the rollout.
App developers who launch their projects on the Facebook platform have created 235,644 jobs and contributed $15.7 billion to the economy, says a study released by the University of Maryland.
Using statistical evidence provided by Facebook and apps developers, researchers at the Smith School Center for Digital Innovation, Technology and Strategy show that the boom in games like Farmville and the creation of productivity apps are boosting at least one corner of the economy.
Pearson, the world's largest education publisher, acquired Connections Education, one of the country's largest online learning providers, last night for $400 million in cash.
The bid for Connections, which has been growing at 30% year-over-year, shows that online learning is being driven by the private sector.
Improved mobile phone cameras and the ability to live stream anything from a phone has proved threatening to police who don't like to be filmed, but an app used by the University of Maryland police department could be the future of 9-1-1.
The University of Maryland police department is testing an app that will allow police to monitor live video of an emergency situation and will allow a mobile user to beam video to the police station in a time of need.
Amazon.com announced today that Kindle and Kindle 3G with Special Offers customers will receive AmazonLocal offers on their screensavers when they are not reading.
This turns the e-reader into a handheld daily deals billboard and a competitor to the kinds of daily deals and flash redemptions iPhone and Android phone users can get through Foursquare and Groupon. Amazon has been steadily increasing its competition against daily deals contenders this year. This the latest development is another step in that direction.
Klout revealed a beta version of its new topic pages today, which it hopes will turn the company into something more like a Nielsen-type rating service rather than a vanity metric for people using social media.
The pages are Klout's way of scanning the Web looking for influential discussions and the people who are leading those discussions.
