founders

Apple fans celebrate Steve Jobs' 57th birthday

Today is the birthday of Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple.

Jobs passed away last October, succumbing to a battle with pancreatic cancer. Had he lived, this would have been his 57th birthday.

Fans remembered him on Twitter today, with "happy birthday Steve Jobs" quickly becoming one of the service's top trends. According to the New York Post, an unofficial birthday party for Jobs is also planned outside outside Apple's flagship retail store in New York.

Following Jobs' death, interest piqued about the technology visionary and inventor. Jobs was the main topic and namesake of … Read more

Three founding execs depart Demand Media

Three founding executives at Demand Media announced their resignations today after six years with the content farm.

Larry Fitzgibbon, Joe Perez, and Steven Kydd, who were all executive vice presidents, are leaving the company they helped create, a company representative told CNET, confirming a story first reported by PaidContent.

Fitzgibbon oversaw international operations, while Perez was in charge of product and Kydd handled video. Michael Blend, Demand Media's executive vice president of Media & Marketplace for the company, will assume most of their duties.

A company representative said their simultaneous departures were merely a coincidence.

"The three of … Read more

Facebook's most-shared articles of 2011 shows babies, banks, and brats

As the year draws to an end, Facebook is revealing the news articles that grabbed the most attention on the social network in 2011. Unsurprisingly, the wrap-up spans a range of subjects from celebrity deaths to weather disasters, and even a few viral videos that you may have forgotten.

The most shared article on Facebook this year came from The New York Times, which published exclusive satellite photos of the Japanese tsunami disaster back in March, along with the subsequent nuclear fallout in the months following.

A different story from Yahoo's Lookout Blog also made it into the top 10, but equally memorable footage shows a shivering dog refusing to leave another injured canine stuck in the rubble; a follow-up article on CNN documents the same dog's rescue from the shores of the Miyagi prefecture.… Read more

Sean Parker thinks Silicon Valley is in trouble

Tucson, Ariz.--Sean Parker, a big reason for Facebook's success (remember Justin Timberlake) and a now a partner with Founders Fund, thinks Silicon Valley is in big trouble. His beef: Too many angel investors are throwing way too much money--albeit in little drips--at aspiring entrepreneurs who aren't up to the task of building a company.

The subject came up during a panel Parker was on at Techonomy 2011, a conference that took place this week in Tucson, Ariz. It's a hot-button issue -every young coder in the Valley, it seems, is either doing a startup or toying … Read more

Peter Thiel's Founders Fund reportedly raising $600 million fund

Founders Fund, the venture firm started by Peter Thiel that has backed such companies as Facebook and Spotify, is raising up to $600 million for its fourth fund, according to Bloomberg, which is citing anonymous sources.

Bloomberg says that the San Francisco firm is raising the money to invest in both early stage and more established startups. Founders Fund plans to close the fund this month. It comes after the slowest quarter for venture capital in eight years.

This fund would dwarf the previous Founders Fund, which closed in July and raised $250 million to invest in Internet and engineering … Read more

Quid pros land $10 million in funding

New Zealander and former decathlete Sean Gourley says it's only a matter of time before his company Quid will know more than the United States government. "How much is information worth?" he asked rhetorically during at a recent lunch meeting with CNET, as he showed off Quid's software that uses data, math, and visualizations to help clients make billion-dollar decisions.

Based on today's news from the company, the answer to Gourley's question is "a lot." Quid announced it has secured $10 million in series C funding from some heavyweights in the Silicon … Read more

Twitter and YouTube trends of '10

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Twitter releases its top trends of 2010, and I sit down with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to discuss them

YouTube releases its top video views of 2010

Google finally launches a Latitude app for iPhone

T-Mobile says a 4G tablet is on its way

Google indexes search results by reading level

The 404 685: Where we get the Fflick outta here (podcast)

Our guest on this morning's episode of The 404 Podcast is Ron Gorodetzky, CTO of Fflick.com, a new site that uses Twitter to aggregate public opinion on popular movies. We're anxious to talk to Ron about the new site, but first Wilson grills him about his former position as Systems Engineering Manager at Digg.

Ron is certainly not a newcomer to the world of start-up Web sites. Back in 2004, he was asked by Kevin Rose to be part of a small social news site you might have heard floating around the Internet: Digg. After helping build Digg into the ubiquitous powerhouse it is now, Ron left and joined up with three other former Digg employees to found Fflick.com, a new online tool that uses Twitter to show you instant movie reviews from your online social circle.

Here's how Fflick works: the first step is to log into your Twitter account on the Fflick home page that also shows all the newest movies in theaters and opening soon, and a small percentage rating that represents the public's general sentiment about the film.

If you see a particular title of interest, you can click through to see public tweets and even filter through your friends' posts as well as positive tweets, negative tweets, interesting tweets, and the latest tweets. There's also a convenient menu on top that routes you to information on show times, ticket purchasing, Netflix queuing, and more.

Ron tells us about the team of engineers who work in the background to ensure the site stays populated with opinions, including the learning machine that scans for keywords to help Fflick recognize a title within a tweet and quality it for the site. Not to worry though, as much as it sounds like Skynet, Ron assures us we're safe...for now.

Ron also gives us a quick preview of the long-term road map for Fflick, and while the site focuses only on movie reviews for now, the engine behind Fflick can theoretically be used for scanning the public sentiment for a variety of issues, including political opinions, music reviews, and more. There are lots of exciting things in the works for a company that's been around for less than two months, so start Fflicking and be sure to tell your friends you heard about it on The 404 first!

Episode 685 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Facebook invites members to vote in developer competition

Facebook members can now vote on the second round of finalists for its FBFund seed funding competition, which will give out a total of $225,000 to five grand prize winners. The 25 companies currently in the running have already pocketed $25,000 apiece for the applications they have proposed for Facebook's third-party developer platform.

This is the second annual FBFund competition, but the first one in which members have been able to vote on their favorite apps. They can vote once per day, and can watch promotional "commercials" about what each one of them does. Voting … Read more