Facebook is widely expected to go public in the very near future with a valuation north of $75 billion. It’s a moment that tech watchers have been anticipating for half a decade and will make millionaires out of many, many early Facebook employees.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is a great search company. They defined how we enter the great brickyard of knowledge for most of this decade because they provided fast and clean to fresh information. But that stopped being enough when Facebook became large enough to threaten the search giant’s core advertising business.…

About two years ago, Fred Wilson and I were talking about which startups we found interesting and I mentioned offhandedly that Foursquare was far and away the one that I thought had the most potential to be a huge, meaningful business. I’m sure Fred (and Union Square Ventures) had many…

Book-readers’ social commerce site aNobii has got the relaunch for which three book publishers invested in it back in March.

I love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is definitely one of those things. The companies are called Instapaper, Longreads, Longform. I love the material they find for me and I’m in the debt of…

You know things aren’t going well for a website when it has to come out and deny rumors that it’s traffic has fallen 50 percent over the last few months by sharing its actual Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Analytics numbers. It’s even worse when these numbers, while better than the rumors,…

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has attracted near-universal critical acclaim. It is a slick, well-constructed and generously proportioned instalment in one of the most revered military shooter franchises in history. There is just one problem. Everyone on the internet hates it.

When it comes to marketing, some things are obvious: Twitter is important. Facebook is more important (at least so far). Holding onto those “follows” and “likes” are important. And authentic consumer relationships? Those are important too. But once you establish these generally accepted ideals, how do you use them to…

Companies blitzing consumers with messages on Facebook and Twitter in a frantic attempt at engagement are about to learn a tough lesson: It’s a lot easier to get people to Like and Follow you the first time than to win them back after they’ve un-Liked and un-Followed you.

The TV engagement product co-founded by ex BBC iPlayer chief Anthony Rose launched on Thursday evening to ride the booming trend in two-screen social TV interaction.

If you read about the impact of social networks and deal sites on how people shop and what they buy when they are shopping, you would think that everyone is doing it on a regular basis.

Hyperlocal startups in a crowded marketplace are testing new ways to stand out, and they discussed their strategies at the Street Fight Summit in New York City this week. Here are some lessons learned.

Pushing regulatory rules has become de rigeur when American internet firms prepare to go public. The infamous Playboy interview with Larry Page and Sergey Brin published during the “quiet period” before Google’s 2004 flotation, and more recently Groupon’s leaked memo spring to mind.It should be no surprise, then, that one…

Gannett’s MomsLikeMe hyperlocal parenting network will cease operating on Friday and its 100-plus town-specific sites will go dark and the content will be deleted. The move comes as the company prepares for more difficult economic times and last week’s news that Gannett (NYSE: GCI) CEO Craig Dubow had resigned following…

New initiatives from Open Road Integrated Media and Wattpad hope to draw teen readers in with webisodes, music videos, “triggered events” and other digital goodies. The strategy for Open Road’s project: Everything is new. The strategy for Wattpad’s project: We’re taking something old and making it new and free.

—Bravo Digital Media Suejin Yang has been named VP of Bravo Digital Media. She’ll manage strategic development, content, operations and new business opportunities for BravoTV.com and report to Lisa Hsia, EVP of Bravo Digital. Previously, Yang was VP of product development for MTV and VH1 Digital. —Bookish: Caroline Marks has…

The emerging local news ecosystem looks as chaotic as ever. But a few patterns are emerging in the way online community news startups develop or stall out. Here’s my latest attempt to make some sense of what I am seeing. In these Five Stages, I attempt to cover both the…

Facebook has had a lot of scrutiny over how it uses information about you to market to you—something that has only been heightened the introduction of “frictionless” sharing launched at this year’s f8 developer conference. Well, get ready for more. Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s global VP of marketing solutions, said at…

As if to prove that Facebook’s F8 announcements were truly seismic we are still feeling the aftershocks now. Interestingly, though, it is Spotify that is feeling most of the effect of Facebook’s moves towards becoming a 21st Century Portal.