Slide

News Byte

From the Rubble of Google’s Slide Shutdown Comes Prizes.org Crowdsourcing Apps

Liz Gannes in Social on October 24, 2011 at 11:28 am PT

Prizes.org, the sole product of Slide that Google is not shutting down, today released mobile apps for Android and iOS. Built by Slide’s China-based team, Prizes.org is a crowdsourced platform for contests with cash prizes that launched in August.

Law Firm Won’t Pursue SuperPoke Pets Shutdown Class Action Suit Against Google

Liz Gannes in Social on October 18, 2011 at 12:47 pm PT

Avid users of Slide’s SuperPoke Pets yelled, begged and left angry blog comments, but so far no law firm wants to represent them in a class action lawsuit.

Will RIM Not Disappoint Again This Quarter?

Kara Swisher in Mobile on September 15, 2011 at 11:43 am PT

Research in Motion reports its earnings later today and many are hopeful that the results won’t be as awful as previous quarters.

News Byte

Google Officially Shuts Down the Neglected Aardvark

Liz Gannes in Social on September 2, 2011 at 12:37 pm PT

Google will close its social search tool Aardvark, which had been seemingly left untouched since being acquired in February 2010. The move comes as part of a larger housecleaning that includes cutting Google Labs and Slide. The Aardvark founders said in a blog post that they are excited that Google+ is already a bigger “place to share knowledge online” than vark.com was.

SuperPoke Pets Saga: What’s the Long-Term Value of a Virtual Good?

Liz Gannes in Social on August 29, 2011 at 4:47 pm PT

Does an item purchased with virtual currency inside an online game have long-term value? Or is it more like a Halloween costume, relevant and exciting for the moment but unlikely to be reused?

Exclusive: Max Levchin to Leave Google as Slide Is Shut Down

Liz Gannes in Social on August 25, 2011 at 5:35 pm PT

Slide, the social apps company that Google bought just over a year ago for about $200 million, will be dissolved; its well-regarded leader Max Levchin will depart Google.

Not-So-Chart-tastic Picture of Yahoo’s Q2 Display Disaster

Kara Swisher in Media on July 19, 2011 at 3:43 pm PT

Paging Ross Levinsohn — leader of Yahoo’s Americas region and its ad efforts — stat!

Who’s to Blame for Yahoo’s Q2 Revenue Rout? The Line Forms Around Back…

Kara Swisher in News on July 19, 2011 at 2:02 pm PT

What happened to Yahoo revenue? Display sales in the U.S. gets the blame this quarter. While coming up with a new thing to blame for Q3, Yahoo execs try to explain it all for you.

Yahoo Revenues Down Again in Q2, With Weakness in Search and U.S. Display Ad Sales

Kara Swisher in News on July 19, 2011 at 1:19 pm PT

Yahoo turned in another flat performance in the second quarter, with $1.08 billion in revenue, which was slightly below Wall Street expectations. Earnings per share were right on target, though, at 18 cents each, an increase of 18 percent.

Google Elevates Social From the Search Results Ghetto (But Only When Deemed Worthy)

Liz Gannes in Social on February 17, 2011 at 7:00 am PT

Google is making some careful tweaks to weave social signals into search–most notably, bringing social search results up from the bottom of the page and parsing links shared by friends.