web 2.0

Jingle Networks, operator of the 1-800-Free-411 service, just announced that they now control 6% of the U.S. market in 411 calls. This is up from 1.5% a year ago.About 2.6 billion 411 calls are made in the U.S. each year, and is a $7 billion/year market. Jingle reports that they received 17 million calls in [...]

News is just breaking that Cisco has agreed to aquire WebEx for $3.2 billion in cash. In 2006, WebEx generated nearly $50 million in profit on $380 million in revenue. They have $300 million or so in cash on hand, so the net deal value is $2.9 billion.Webex is still ubiquitous (I am asked to [...]

Yahoo Brickhouse, a new semi-autonomous business unit to foster new product development, is yet to be formally launched. They’ve been busy, though. Yahoo Pipes, which launched on February 7, is a Brickhouse project.Tomorrow they’ll announce that Salim Ismail, a non-Yahoo entrepreneur, has been hired to run Brickhouse. He takes over from interim head (and [...]

Those familiar with Paris-based RadioBlogClub were greeted with a service outage this morning. You may remember it from the comments in our coverage of the web iPod emulator, Blogmusik, which is also down. The music streaming service’s traffic has busted the seams of their old web server and they’re moving on to a beefier one. [...]

Google just announced integration of their instant messaging service, Google Talk, with Google IG, their personalized home page. The flash-based widget plugs into your Google Personal Home Page as an integrated buddy list and IM window. The new widget can be added to your page here. Google IG is still only 1/7th or so the [...]

Click To PlayI think I’d rather fight the MPAA and RIAA than piss off the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They’ve absolutely destroyed Michael Crook, the man who placed a fake Craigslist sex ad and then published as many personal details as possible about the people who responded. Crook got the attention he wanted, including a spot [...]

Microsoft announced the acquisition of Tellme this morning, confirming the two week old rumors. The Price, previously rumored in the $800 million range, is undisclosed. The WSJ says “up to $800 million” and Gigaom is saying “over $800 million but below a billion dollars.” My bet is that GigaOm has the better information. The core [...]

Symbian Series 60 users should take a look at MyStrands mobile, a compelling music sharing app that creates social playlists - you and your buds can share music - and discovery though tags and search. It even supports multiple languages so you and your friends in France can share your Serge Gainsbourg playlists.The service accesses [...]

I sometimes say regretful things when speaking off the cuff at conferences. Last month at The Future of Web Apps conference in London I (jokingly) called for the dissolution of the BBC because some of their online ventures are, in my opinion, stifling private sector startup initiatives in the UK and Europe. As a publicly [...]

The founding team of new music service Slacker, which launched this morning, includes three former music startup CEOs (Dennis Mudd, Musicmatch, acquired by Yahoo), Jim Cady (Rio) and Jonathan Sasse (iRiver). And they’re going to need these guys and their connections, because Slacker isn’t just some new music service. They have broad reaching goals that [...]