Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have all carved out very powerful positions for themselves in the social networking space, so it was inevitable that eventually they would start to bump up hard against each other.
And it’s Twitter that seems to be making some powerful enemies fast. At least that’s the interpretation Business Insider is making of the recent Facebook/Yahoo patent settlement deal.
In case you missed it, Facebook and the struggling portal company appear to have come to terms over the patent argument kicked off by former CEO Scott Thompson who lost his job a few months back after it was revealed he had been padding his CV.
Now, BI has read between the lines of this recent deal. BI explained, “Buried in the press release announcing the settlement of Yahoo's big patent-infringement lawsuit was this interesting nugget: Yahoo and Facebook will also work together to bring Yahoo’s large media event coverage to Facebook users by collaborating on social integrations on the Yahoo site. Large media event coverage: Where have we heard that before?”
The article asserted that this is a direct challenge to Twitter’s stated objective to aggressively pursue coverage of large media events.
Twitter is finding it’s not a good idea to poke a giant in the eye, even when you’re growing heavier by the day yourself. Remember only last week, Twitter pulled the plug on its tweet stream cross sharing deal with LinkedIn.
Business Insider said, “Twitter and Yahoo inked in a series of partnerships in 2010. How long before Twitter flips Yahoo the bird, too?”
You may not be reading this right now
If you’re reading this story, the good news is you can stop right now. The FBI is shutting down the domains affected by the DNSChanger malware, reported <i>Mashable</i>. The malware sent users to internet sites running advertisements for the Trojan’s creators, and for a while they made out like bandits until they were caught and arrested — also like bandits.
Rather than rip out the boxes and compromise the Web experience of almost 300,000 affected machines, the FBI has spent months warning people to check their systems, including providing a simple site for consumers to see if they were affected. We could point you to those tools, but what’s the point? If you can read this, you won’t need them, and if you can’t well... you get the picture.
<i>Gigaom</i> also gets in on the action, by pointing out that this is not the first internet doomsday scenario by a long shot. Under the headline “5 Doomsdays from the Internet's past”, the site recounts stories of the Melissa virus in 1999, the infamous Y2k bug, also in 2000 the I Love You virus, the 2009 the April Fool’s day Conficker worm, and finally the 2010 Here You Have virus. It’s worth a read, if only to brush up on your trivia when Christmas party season rolls around.
Honour among thieves
Finally, <i>PandoDaily</i> has a couple of talking heads discussing a tweet by tech writer MG Siegler about catching people who steal his stories by simply rewriting his copy. Let’s hope no-one’s looking too closely or Grok and half the tech media will be out of a job.
Andrew Birmingham is the CEO of Silicon Gully Investments. Follow him on Twitter @ag_birmingham.