mark cuban

Facebook caters to businesses, others with separate news feed

As Facebook works to keep its users happy by minimizing the number of promotional posts that appear with friends' posts in the News Feed, businesses have asked for a new way to reach fans.

Enter a separate "Pages Feed," rolled out today.

Unlike the standard News Feed, which mixes posts from friends with some posts from promotionally oriented Facebook "Pages" that users have Liked -- and that Facebook's spam filter has deemed relevant -- the Pages Feed is unfiltered and features only the promotional posts. Users can click to it from a button on the … Read more

Mark Cuban: An Apple box designed for TV would be game-changer

Apple's plans for television will have nothing to do with killing cable companies and everything to do with playing nice with them, famed investor Mark Cuban believes.

Speaking to Adweek in an interview published today, Cuban said the idea that Apple would invest its bundles of cash in trying to "blow up cable companies" with its own deals with programmers is pure nonsense.

"I think there is zero chance of that happening," Cuban said. "Apple tries to do everything on commission. It's not big on upfront deals, and I don't see that … Read more

Mark Cuban lead VC in online-influentials startup Little Bird

A new service aiming to help media and PR companies determine which influencers can best amplify their messages launched today, with Mark Cuban as lead investor.

Known as Little Bird, the San Francisco startup was founded by former ReadWriteWeb reporter Marshall Kirkpatrick. Cuban led the $1 million round, along with additional investment from the Social Leverage Group, Hubspot co-founder Dharmesh Shah, and former Twitter engineer Blaine Cook.

For now, Little Bird is in private beta. In an e-mail to CNET, Kirkpatrick explained that the service is mainly used to help companies with their social-media or content-creation strategy. "For example, … Read more

Mark Cuban dumps his Facebook stock

The Dallas Mavericks' losses this year weren't the only ones that upset Internet mogul Mark Cuban.

The sports franchise and billionaire entrepreneur owner told CNBC that he sold all 150,000 shares of Facebook stock he owned after suffering through the stock's weak initial showing.

"I already sold it, I took my hit, my thesis was wrong. I thought we would get a quick bounce just about the excitement about the stock. I was wrong, and when you are wrong you don't wait, you just get out. So I took a beating and left," he … Read more

Mark Cuban leads funding of video startup Switchcam

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is leading a round of seed funding in a new video startup called Switchcam that has technology that can be used to stitch together different videos of the same event so viewers can switch camera angles as they wish.

Other investors in the $1.2 million round, raised via AngelList, include Dave McClure's 500 Startups, Turner Media Camp, Vikas Gupta, Niket Desai, Reed Morse, David Beyer and Jeffrey Schox, Switchcam announced today.

Switchcam CEO Brett Welch told CNET that he got the idea while using his phone to take video of live music concerts. Unlike … Read more

Mark Cuban flings funding at Flingo

Smart TV software company Flingo announced today it has received a $1 million dose of Series A funding from billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and venture capitalist Gary Lauder. This money will go toward helping the company expand its presence with smart TV and device manufacturers around the world.

That financial injection brings Flingo's Series A funding total to $8 million, and comes just weeks after August Capital led a $7 million round of financing.

The idea behind Flingo is smart TV technology that mixes social networking with broadcast content on both TVs and second screens, such as tablets, laptops, … Read more

Silicon Valley has Facebook's back in Yahoo knife fight

This much is clear about the patent showdown between Yahoo and Facebook: Yahoo is losing friends left and right.

Last month, Yahoo sued Facebook, claiming the world's largest social-networking company had infringed on 10 of its patents. And yesterday, Facebook countersued, arguing essentially that it hadn't done anything wrong, but hey, as long as we're on the subject, Yahoo violated 10 of our patents.

For many in the technology business, this is just the latest chapter in a battle that most would like to see wrap up -- and quickly as possible, please. But since Yahoo was … Read more

Where does Google TV go from here?

Those beautiful Sony television sets featuring Google TV are starting to look a lot like high-priced door stops.

Google TV enables users to view Web sites and Internet video on their home TVs. However, consumers are prevented from accessing content from the four major broadcast networks on the software platform as Fox announced Wednesday it would join ABC, CBS, and NBC in blocking access to their content.

While some Google TV enthusiasts are cautioning people not to panic, noting that Google TV still offers such fare as "The Jersey Shore" and other popular shows from the likes of … Read more

Mark Cuban: Netflix's streaming success unsustainable

Sounds like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings can count Mark Cuban among his fans.

"Netflix has been brilliant at monetizing previously unmonetizable content," Cuban said this week. The founder of high-def cable station HDNet and owner of pro basketball's Dallas Mavericks, Cuban made the statements as part of a blogging debate he's engaged in with Newteevee reporter Janko Roettgers.

Cuban is skeptical that Netflix or any other Web video service are serious long-term challengers to cable companies. On Monday, Cuban wrote a blog post called "The Future of TV is TV." He was talking about … Read more