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Rakuten to make Viber ‘more successful’ before integrating the app into its e-commerce business

Mar27
by on March 27, 2014 at 4:40 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Asia, e-commerce, Japan, Profiles and Interviews, Singapore

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There’s no doubt to it — mobile e-commerce is on the rise, with an IDC report predicting that by 2017 purchases on mobile devices will exceed $1 trillion. And Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten knows this clearly, which is why it is keen to fold messaging and calling app Viber into its “key priority” — mobile commerce. Last month, Rakuten announced that it was buying Viber for $900 million. As Rakuten launched its service officially in Singapore today, Shin Hasegawa, the global vice chief marketing officer, tells TNW that the company is “aggressively” working to integrate Viber into Rakuten. Mobile commerce is for sure a key priority…

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It’s official! Klout has been acquired by Lithium Technologies

Mar27
by on March 27, 2014 at 4:29 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

As Recode foretold back in February, Klout is being acquired by the social marketing company Lithium Technologies. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, although yesterday Fortune reported the price was around $200 million. It’s official! So proud of the Klout team and excited to be joining @LithiumTech. http://t.co/sVtd4BIAez — Joe Fernandez (@JoeFernandez) March 27, 2014 In a blog post, Klout co-founder Joe Fernandez said Lithium was the right partner for its influence-focused platform. “I want you to know that our mission has not changed — Lithium shares our passion for empowering every person to understand and maximize their…

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Yahoo received 21,425 government requests for data impacting 32,493 accounts in the second half of 2013

Mar27
by on March 27, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Yahoo today updated its Transparency Report, revealing it received 21,425 data requests from various law enforcement agencies around the world during the second half of 2013. Those requests impacted a potential 32,493 accounts, according to the company. Since Yahoo only released its first Transparency Report in September 2013, we can’t compare to see how these results compare to previous years. We can, however, compare against the first half of 2013, as well as get a total for the full year. The numbers for the second half of last year are slightly lower than those for the first half (29,470 requests…

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India slaps Google with $166,000 fine for not cooperating in antitrust investigation

Mar27
by on March 27, 2014 at 4:01 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, India

Google has been facing an antitrust investigation in India since late 2011, but apparently it didn’t comply with directions to hand in information and documents – and now the Indian government has slapped a 10 million rupee ($166,000) fine on the Internet firm. As spotted by TechCrunch, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) issued a statement saying that the government has been investigating Google’s alleged abuse of market power in online search and search advertising. Google is facing a fine of up to $5 billion for its alleged anti-competitive behavior, stemming from a complaint that advocacy group CUTS International filed in late…

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Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter launch WebScaleSQL, a custom version of MySQL for massive databases

Mar27
by on March 27, 2014 at 3:55 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Google, Social Media

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Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter today announced WebScaleSQL, a collaborative project bringing the engineers from these companies together to solve challenges working with massive databases. As its name suggests, WebScaleSQL is a custom version of MySQL designed for large scale Web companies. The four companies will share a common set of changes to the upstream MySQL branch, available via open source. The project will include contributions from MySQL engineering teams at all four companies, and since it will be open, others who have the scale and resources to customize MySQL will be able to join in the efforts and provide…

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