Naked Newsletter
» In US: Yahoo! Inc. is poised to lay off hundreds of employees after experiencing slow revenue growth this past year. Precisely how many of Yahoo’s roughly 14,000 employees will lose their jobs hasn’t been determined. The final decision is expected to happen on January 29, after executives review the company’s Q4 results. This round of layoffs may be Yahoo’s most extensive since 2001 due to the dot-com bust.
» In China: New statistics predict that China will surpass U.S. as nation with most Internet users in the coming months. China’s total number of Internet users rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007 up from 137 million at the end of 2006. China is now just five million users shy of surpassing U.S. as the world’s largest Internet market.
» In Japan: Otetsudai Networks allows teens to sign up for jobs via mobile phones. Teens can describe skills and focus, take a GPS reading on their phones, and simply wait. For example, if someone is looking for 3 hours of dishwashing, they will send request to Otetsudai Networks, and within minutes the network will show list of available people. The list shows what each person is qualified for, how others have rated their work and exactly how far away they are. The wonders of GPS technology!
» In UK: In spite of the credit crisis and rising inflation, Britain is reporting that unemployment is down and wages are growing at a moderate pace. The number of employed people increased by 175,000 in the last three months of 2007, the strongest outcome for over a decade. At 29.3 million, UK’s workforce is currently at its largest since records began in 1971.
» The Translations application allows users from all over the world to help translate Facebook into different languages (though it’s currently limited to beta users only). Spanish, French and German versions are available now.
» Google’s Online Marketing Challenge invites groups of students from colleges and universities worldwide to spend on AdWords campaigns for local businesses. Each group will be given $200 and will have three consecutive weeks to outline a strategy, run a campaign, and assess results for its designated business. By the end of the three-week period, students are obligated to provide their local business clients with recommendations to further develop their online marketing plans. While Google clearly benefits from the influx of new business, the goal was “really just about creating an interesting teaching and learning opportunity.”
» Netvibes is a customizable start page that lets you add any RSS feed, as well as other apps in the form of widgets. It’s opening up the beta for its Ginger release, which uses a new Ajax user-interface. It also now lets you create own public “Netvibes Universe” page so you can star items as a bookmarking feature and see what your friends are publicly starring and sharing.
» IPartee, an event and venue-centric social network, has released a widget that allows users to share event details through their blogs, social networking profiles, and websites. Event info can also be syndicated to Facebook, Wordpress, Typepad, and Blogger.
» Yahoo is testing the integration of Delicious user generated bookmarks into Yahoo search results pages. Some users will see the Delicious icon as part of their normal search results, which tells them how many people have bookmarked those pages, as well as the tags people have supplied for those pages.
» MySpace launched MySpace Russia and plan on launching in Turkey next. Turkey is attractive because 30% of the population is under 18 years old - giving them a huge pool of potential users. MySpace is now localized and translated in 23 international territories, with offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Sydney, Mexico City, Sao Palo, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Tokyo, and Beijing. Offices will be opening up soon in Mumbai, Moscow, and Istanbul.
» Crowdsourcing video startup Kaltura is partnering with the Wikimedia Foundation to put its video-mashup technology on Wikipedia. The program will allow people to create collaborative videos on Wikipedia and other wikis. Kaltura’s video-editing technology allows multiple people to collaborate in creating a video.
» Urban Outfitters has a new effort to combine their fashion and homeware products with a music consumption element. Their in-store music partnership with Carbon music just came to an end, so now the fashion outpost is launching an online element.
» Philips has just launched the WAC3500D - a new Wireless music center with 80GB hard disk that lets you stream music from your PC, dock your iPod, plug and play from USB devices, and enjoy HDD playback and internet radio. MTV was chosen as the key launch partner online.