Philip "Pud" Kaplan Talks About Blippy–the Twitter of $$

To start, let’s just dispense with huffing and puffing angst over whether or not people should broadcast their credit card transactions online. Because that’s what you can do on a new site, with the unlikely name of Blippy, headed by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Philip “Pud” Kaplan. In other words, a kind of Twitter for spending–the next step in the inevitable trend toward radical transparency online.
blip

Congress Readies an “Opt-In” Privacy Bill, and the Web Industry Cringes

Here comes the battle the online ad business has been dreading: Congress is drawing up a bill that would require users to sign up to let advertisers track their online behavior–and, if you believe online publishers, more or less destroy the online ad business.
privacy

Does Real-Time Search Make Twitter a Google Killer? Its Fanbots Think So (BoomTown Not Quite Yet).

According the latest meme to sweep the digerati over the last several days, here are the words that should make the brainiac satraps over at Google very, very nervous: “See what’s happening–right now.” That’s the motto right below the box on Twitter’s search engine–which is essentially a light-blue-colored design rip-off of Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” mantra. Posits the new theory: It’s Google that should perhaps not be feeling so lucky when it comes to Twitter search because it is becoming the place for what is now being called “real-time” search. But the verdict on whether Twitter can kill the search star is still way, way out.