Yahoo’s Product Runway: Are You In or Out?

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.
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Spooking Flipboard: Yahoo’s Livestand — Followed by Google’s Propeller — Set to Launch Next Week

Memo to Flipboard, Pulse, CNN’s Zite and AOL’s Editions: You might want to make some room in the crowded news and social reader space — you’re about to get some bigfoot company.
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It’s Called Google Propeller and It’s Aimed at Flipboard (and Facebook, Too, Natch)

Whhhheeeeeeeee! Up, up in the sky, its Google’s Flipboard killer, which also might strafe Facebook, too!
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Exclusive: Flipboard Confirms $50 Million Funding at $200 Million Valuation

Late last month, BoomTown posted about a huge venture funding effort by the high-profile and even more highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, Flipboard. Today, its co-founder and CEO Mike McCue confirmed a $50 million round at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, in a wide-ranging interview at the start-up’s Palo Alto, Calif., HQ.

When Media Giants Attack! Cease-and-Desist Letter to News Reader Zite Claims All Kinds of Copyright Damage

A panoply of big media giants sent a cease-and-desist letter today to Zite, the Apple iPad news reader app. The Washington Post, AP, Gannett, Getty, Time, Dow Jones and many other media organizations were part of the copyright violations action, which you can read all about after the jump.

How About #Dontvoteforme, So BoomTown Gets the No. 140 Spot in Time's Tweet-Off

Yes, it is perverse, but I really want to come in dead last in Time magazine’s “140 Best Twitter Feeds.” Why? Well, there’s no way I am getting near the top with the likes of Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga in the same list, so I felt the 140th–get it?–slot on a Twitter poll is the next best thing to aim for.

Video: The Pulse Boys-to-Men Talk About Huge Growth of Visual News-Reading App

Today, BoomTown braved the floods and skippered All Things Digital‘s S.S. Minnow through a Noah-like rainstorm in Silicon Valley to visit offices of Pulse. Less than a year ago, the nifty visual news-reading app was publicly praised by Apple’s Steve Jobs for innovativeness and slapped by the New York Times for misusing its RSS feed on the same day. Dramatic, for sure, but they have made nice with the Times since then and have also raised more than $1 million in funding and grown to three million users since then.

Seesmic Raises $4 Million in Funding From Salesforce.com

In an interesting social enterprise move, popular social networking collaboration tool Seesmic is taking a $4 million investment from Salesforce.com, as well as from Softbank. The San Francisco-based Seesmic has one of the top desktop and mobile applications for monitoring a consumer’s various feeds from Twitter, Facebook and more.

Here's a Better Name for RockMelt: The FaceBrowser (Plus BoomTown's Two-Dude Video)

At the end of this video interview with BoomTown about RockMelt–a new social browser that debuted in beta last night–the two founders politely tried to gloss over my calling it a “Facebook browser.” Except, um, it is. Sure, there are Twitter and other news apps present. And I even like the mantra for RockMelt, which “re-imagines the browser around friends, feeds, and sharing.” But that would be–for the most part right now–friends on Facebook, feeds from Facebook and sharing with Facebook.

The My-Fill-In-the-Space Reset Is Here, as Struggling Social Network Morphs Into Entertainment Hub

Empty bracket or no empty bracket: Will it work? That’s pretty much the big question at News Corp. tonight, as its much beleaguered social networking site, Myspace, rolls out a new beta version aimed at shifting its fortunes. And how will it do that? By moving dramatically away from its roots as a social networking site–and far, far away from powerhouse Facebook–and becoming a “social entertainment” hub aimed directly at the Gen Y audience.

Goodbye FeedBurner, Hello MailChimp

The D8 Site Is Now Live

The D8 Site Is Now Live