Bebo solded to Criterion Capital Partners by AOL.

Originally acquired by AOL for $850 million back in 2008, Bebo has clearly been a colossal flop for AOL, and as the company refocuses on content, makes little sense strategically. Along those same lines, AOL unloaded ICQ to DST a little over a month ago.

The buyer of Bebo is said to be Criterion Capital Partners, a hedge fund.

The Internet company has been publicly looking for an acquirer for some time, and in April, news leaked that AOL would likely shut down the site if a buyer was not found.

Bebo solded to Criterion Capital Partners by AOL.

YouTube Launches New Video Editor Tool.

YouTube has just released a new video editor that lets you create video mashups and edit down clips from your library of existing video uploads. The feature should be rolled out to all YouTube users by the end of the day.

The new service enables you to edit together separate clips, as well as add or change the background music using YouTube’s commercial AudioSwap library of licensed songs. As of right now, the service and its features are pretty basic, but could prove valuable for users that either want to create longer montages or playlists, or do basic editing jobs.

YouTube Launches New Video Editor Tool.

TweetMeme’s Retweet Buttons Auto-Translate Tweets.

Two parts of the button have translation features,

Firstly the button itself and the pop-up you get when you click to do the retweet are now translated into 7 languages English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese. We will then be putting up an area to crowd source the translations to other languages.
Secondly we have integrated Google Translate to automatically translate any stories you retweet into your own language. This automatically detects if translation is required and prompts you when it has made the change, it is a simple one-click to revert the translation if that is not what you desire.

The new language support is on top of an impressive feature set,

TweetMeme’s Retweet Buttons Auto-Translate Tweets.

Twitter unveils New Ads in Trending Topics Section.

Now the twitter is got in some serious business. Twitter was very strict at third party advertisement but as of now you can see some promoted topics i mean sponsored Topic(links) in Trending Topics section.

These promoted trends are rumored to sell for tens of thousands of dollars. When a user clicks on the trending ad, he is directed to a search results page with the advertiser’s promoted tweet listed at the top.

Twitter unveils New Ads in Trending Topics Section.

Wikipedia introduces edit mechanism.

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia says it has taken an "important step" towards making it easier to edit some of its most controversial articles.

Up to 2,000 articles, including a page about former US President George W Bush, will have their strict editing restrictions relaxed.

Users will now be able to submit changes to the selected pages for review by senior editors.

It is part of Wikipedia's ongoing efforts to curb vandalism of the site.

Wikipedia introduces edit mechanism.

Bin Laden on Twitter!?

Here to provide us with his regular updates and opinions, the fake Osama Bin Laden is the newest to join Twitterrati.

Going by the name of "FakeBinLaden", the man in demand already has a plethora of fans on social networking site FaceBook. Reveals an inside source "Following in the footsteps of our many celebrities - the fake Bin Laden is here to entertain us with his thoughts and opinions. He already has created a stir on FB and is now here to take micro blogging site Twitter by storm"

You can find this fake Osama Bin Laden on http://twitter.com/FakeBinLaden.

The identity of the face behind the "FakeBinLaden" is kept under wraps but he will regularly tweet his opinions and other news on an upcoming film also inspired by him

Bin Laden on Twitter!?

Rogue Facebook App on the spamming spree.

Over 190,000 people have so far clicked on a link sent by a rogue Facebook application, which tempts users into giving the application access to their Facebook profile in exchange for seeing a "shocking video" of what is alleged to be a teacher physically assaulting a boy.

Clicking on the bit.ly link redirects Facebook users to a page promoting a Facebook application called "Teacher nearly kills a 13 year old boy. SHOCKING!", which offers what appears to be a video thumbnail of the attack and the encouragement to "Click here, then ALLOW, to see the shocking video".

However, if you are tempted to follow the on-screen instructions to view the video you will also be allowing the third-party application to gain access to your profile, and to repost the spam message to your own wall.

Rogue Facebook App on the spamming spree.

Twitter Launches “Places” Feature with Foursquare Integration.

Twitter is ready to unveil its new and major foray into the world of geolocation: Twitter Places.

This feature will highlight tweets around a given location. Starting now, Twitter.com desktop and mobile users can tag their tweets with existing Twitter Places and add new Twitter Places, too.

Twitter Places can be explored and will reveal a list of recent, public tweets from that location. Twitter will also show you nearby locations and points of interest, including restaurants and shops.

Twitter Places will be integrated with Foursquare and Gowalla), as well. ” Location is a key component of these tweets, so we worked closely with both companies to associate a Twitter Place with Tweets generated by these services,” wrote Twitter geo head Othman Laraki today on the company blog. Location data will also work with more browsers, including Safari and Internet Explorer .

Twitter Launches “Places” Feature with Foursquare Integration.

MTV is looking for a Twitter Jockey.

MTV officials say the search is on for a new social media maven who will engage with the MTV audience and serve as a liaison between viewers and network honchos.

MTV General Manager Stephen Friedman called the TJ position "a natural evolution of how we connect with our audience."

The network has identified 18 potential candidates and is asking its audience to find two more. The 20 hopefuls will compete in a series of online challenges this summer designed to reveal their personalities and demonstrate how they connect with Twitter followers.

Five finalists will ultimately compete on a live show on Aug. 8, when fans will pick who gets the new job.

MTV is looking for a Twitter Jockey.

Facebook Fans Spend More Money.

A social media marketing company called  surveyed surveyed  4,000 people who have “Liked” the top 20 brands that have pages on Facebook and figured out exactly how valuable those “fans” are.

The study (“The Value of a Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review”) estimates that someone who has Liked a brand will spend an average of $71.84 more each year on that brand’s products or services than will someone who has not Liked it on Facebook, for a total average annualized value of $136.38.

This method is very different than the one employed by Vitrue in another fan value study a month ago. Vitrue’s method valued fans by figuring out how much it would cost to buy advertising on a website to reach the same people.

Facebook Fans Spend More Money.

World Cup related traffic can crash twitter.

Twitter, which has suffered a series of outages this week, has warned that there could be more problems amid heavy World Cup traffic.

Mr Jean-Paul Cozzatti, a Twitter engineer, said on the Twitter blog that the micro-blogging service's problems this week were due to an internal network being over-capacity.

Mr Cozzatti said Twitter was doubling capacity and re balancing traffic on the network to redistribute the load.

When Twitter goes down, a picture of a whale — known as the "fail whale" — appears on Twitter.com and Mr Cozzatti said his engineering team was hoping for fewer appearances by the creature.

"You may still see the whale when there are unprecedented spikes in traffic," he said on Friday.

World Cup related traffic can crash twitter.

Private data from Austria, Denmark, Ireland deleted: Google

Google has deleted private wireless data mistakenly collected by its "Street View" cars in Austria, Denmark and Ireland, the Internet giant said in a letter to US lawmakers.

Google, in the letter posted online Friday on the website of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the US House of Representatives, also reiterated that the data was never used in any Google product or service.

Google also repeated an apology for the gathering of personal information sent over unsecured wireless networks by the Street View cars used to create the panoramic pictures featured in Google Maps

The letter from Pablo Chavez, Google's director of public policy, was in response to questions posed by US Congressmen Henry Waxman, Joe Barton and Edward Markey to Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.

Private data from Austria, Denmark, Ireland deleted: Google

Google ends background image experiment.

It looked horrible, and users hated it. Even so, Google persisted with it for hours - and only stopped it because of a 'bug'

Google ended its experiment to put a picture on its front page – whether you wanted on or not – only 14 hours into its 24-hour experiment, blaming the decision on a bug which meant that an explanatory link wasn't included.

The problem was caused when it added a World Cup doodle - which of course would look like a mess of pottage if you had chosen a picture for your background.

Google ends background image experiment.

Google helps build trade case over Web censorship.

Google Inc is working with U.S. and European officials to build a case that would argue Internet censorship acts as a trade barrier, a top company executive said on Friday.

Robert Boorstin, Google's director of corporate and policy communications, said the company is working with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the State Department, Commerce Department and European officials to build a case to take to the World Trade Organization.

Such a case could help U.S. tech companies seeking greater access to Chinese consumers while furthering the U.S. government's human rights agenda.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her technology advisers have promoted Internet freedom as a basic human right.

Google helps build trade case over Web censorship.

Twitter Launches Official World Cup Tracking Page.

The FIFA World Cup 2010 is officially opened and football fever is touching its new height. In order to make it easier to follow news and updates about specific teams and matches, Twitter has launched a brand new World Cup portal page.

The new page is smartly designed, displaying upcoming matches, the most interesting tweets (as determined by Twitter’s algorithm) and Twitter staff picks for relevant users to follow.

Twitter Launches Official World Cup Tracking Page.

Yahoo World Cup Shootout Game to Raise $100k to Fight AIDS in Africa.

World Cup 2010 is officially underway and to celebrate, Yahoo and (RED) have teamed up to donate $1 for every goal scored today via Yahoo Penalty Shootout to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.

Yahoo’s Penalty Shootout online game launched in May. The game tasks users to try their hand at winning a penalty shootout against friends or strangers. You can choose your country and challenge one of your Yahoo or Facebook friends to a shootout duel. For each shootout, you’ll play the part of both the striker and the goalie, selecting a portion of the goal to either attack or defend.

Yahoo World Cup Shootout Game to Raise $100k to Fight AIDS in Africa.

New facebook design being tested.

Facebook confirmed they are testing this new look in an email to us this afternoon, writing, “we’re currently testing different variations and designs of our Publisher. As with many of our features and products, we’re constantly making tweaks to test performance and usability.”

New facebook design being tested.

Twitter crashes explained by their engineers.

Twitter explaines the causes of — and remedies for — its multiple and massive failures over the past week.

The high number of errors and generally poor performance , this summer’s problem has been one of scale: Twitter is growing so much and so quickly that the engineering team has been challenged when trying to keep up with the sheer volume of data going through the service’s internal network.

What happened that caused this week’s Twitter issues, wrote engineer Jean-Paul Cozzatti, is that the engineering team made three critical mistakes:

• The team put two important, fast-growing, high-bandwith components on the same segment of Twitter’s internal network.
• The network wasn’t being monitored the way it should have been.
• The internal network was also temporarily misconfigured.

To ensure the same mistakes aren’t repeated, Cozzatti continued to outline what Twitter will be doing to fix the problem. He wrote that the company has doubled the capacity of its internal network, improved how it’s monitored and rebalanced its traffic.

Twitter crashes explained by their engineers.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter joins twitter for world cup.

Blatter's account, @seppblatter, went live on Thursday on the eve of the tournament's opening game and the 74-year-old Swiss had already amassed almost 3,000 followers by the early evening.

Blatter is more fortunate than many of the players at the tournament in being able to use the micro-blogging service.

Netherlands players have been banned from using Twitter during the World Cup after Eljero Elia sparked a racism row with comments on a live streaming video.

Src & Text: [reuters]

FIFA president Sepp Blatter joins twitter for world cup.

Collecta Raises $5M for its upgrade.

Real-time search outfit Collecta has just announced a $4.7 million Series B round of funding from Dace Ventures.

Funding will be used to help grow the company’s team, strike more content partnership deals, and increase the level of engagement and time spent on its sites. The company’s products include user-friendly widgets, custom Site Search and several APIs.

Collecta will also be moving its headquarters to LA, advantageous for creating and strengthening relationships with big, traditional media companies. To date, one of the company’s greatest strengths has been its ability to broker deals with and create value for companies such as CNN and FOX. We look forward to seeing what kinds of partnerships are forged once the staff has settled into its new home.

Collecta Raises $5M for its upgrade.