Is E-Commerce Next For Facebook?

A group of e-commerce start-ups, backed by some of the tech world’s most respected financiers, are hoping that Facebook Inc will become an e-commerce powerhouse to rival Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

As the world’s largest social network moves toward a $5 billion initial public offering, it will come under more pressure from Wall Street to generate new sources of profit growth and reduce its reliance on advertising, which accounted for 85 percent of its 2011 revenue.

Some entrepreneurs and investors increasingly think “f-commerce” – meaning e-commerce on Facebook – is the answer. Start-ups such as BeachMint, Yardsellr, Oodle and Fab.com are coming up with novel ways to persuade Facebook users to not just connect with friends on the social network, but to shop as well.

Backed by tens of millions of dollars from venture capital firms like Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and other big investors like Goldman Sachs, these start-ups are pushing out shopping apps, hosting online garage sales and testing out new business models on Facebook.

“E-commerce is a huge category with very strong tailwinds and it’s a natural move for Facebook,” said Sam Schwerin of Millennium Technology Value Partners, which owns Facebook shares and has a stake in BeachMint.

Amazon revolutionized online shopping by crunching lots of customer and purchase data to come up with relevant, personalized recommendations. In the same vein, Facebook’s combination of data, analytics and payment technology could fuel the next generation of e-commerce, Schwerin said.

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Yahoo To Release Secret Documents

Yahoo has ceased its efforts to keep documents related to Microsoft’s failed bid to buy the firm sealed.

Yahoo tried to keep documents relating to the failed 2008 buyout attempt by Microsoft sealed from investor Dan Loeb. Loeb, who runs the Third Point hedge fund with a five per cent stake in Yahoo led a shareholder’s revolt against Yahoo’s board and wanted to see documents related to Microsoft’s bid to buy the company.

Microsoft tried to take over Yahoo in 2008 with an offer of $31 a share, over double Yahoo’s share price now. According to Loeb, the documents will highlight the then Yahoo board’s “misjudgments and failures”.

Loeb is after documents that made up part of a shareholder lawsuit that was settled. According to Yahoo, its decision to cease efforts at keeping the documents sealed was due to the lawsuit being settled and unable to be reopened.

Loeb had tried to get his preferred board members onto Yahoo’s board or directors including himself, however the firm announced that it had appointed three new board members, none of which were on Loeb’s list.

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Google Pressuring Developers

Google Inc has been leaning on applications and mobile game developers to use its more expensive in-house payment service, Google Wallet, as the Internet search giant tries to copy the financial success of Apple Inc’s iOS platform.

Google warned several developers in recent months that if they continued to use other payment methods – such as PayPal, Zong and Boku – their apps would be removed from Android Market, now known as Google Play, according to developers, executives and investors in mobile gaming and payment sectors.

Developers say the Internet search giant is trying to simplify consumer payments, hoping apps-buying will rise and offset their higher costs. Google’s payment service charges a higher cut per transaction than some rivals’. But the move also suggests Google is using its powerful position in the mobile apps market to promote an in-house offering.

“Although this move by Google might seem high-handed, it reduces the friction for purchases inside Android apps and therefore makes users more valuable,” said Hugo Troche, chief executive of Appsperse, a cross-promotion network for app discovery.

Android Market, or Google Play as it is now known, is the company’s answer to Apple’s apps store, where consumers browse and buy or download everything from games and music to individual software or applications. Google wants Google Wallet to be the dominant way that people pay for anything on this platform.

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Apache Finally Goes To The Cloud

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced Hadoop 1.0.

The open source software project has reached the milestone of its first full release after six years of development. Hadoop is a software framework for reliable, scalable and distributed computing under a free licence. Apache describes it as “a foundation of cloud computing”.

“This release is the culmination of a lot of hard work and cooperation from a vibrant Apache community group of dedicated software developers and committers that has brought new levels of stability and production expertise to the Hadoop project,” said Arun Murthy, VP of Apache Hadoop.

“Hadoop is becoming the de facto data platform that enables organizations to store, process and query vast torrents of data, and the new release represents an important step forward in performance, stability and security,” he added.

Apache Hadoop allows for the distributed processing of large data sets, often Petabytes, across clusters of computers using a simple programming model.

The Hadoop framework is used by some big name organisations including Amazon, Ebay, IBM, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo.

Yahoo has significantly contributed to the project and hosts the largest Hadoop production environment with more than 42,000 nodes.

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Stratfor Security Hit By Anonymous

The Stratfor, security firm whose website was compromised over the weekend by members of the anarchic computer-hacking group Anonymous, has reported that victims of the attack have had their credit cards used again.

Victims of the attack, mostly employees of major companies or agencies which use Stratfor’s, learnt at Christmas that their names, addresses and credit card details had been published online. The cards were then used to make large donations to major charities.

Now it seems that Stratfor is warning that the cards were being used again if the victims complained to the press. On another webiste Anonymous used another website to mock victims who spoke to the Associated Press about their experience. Its said “We went ahead and ran up your card a bit.”

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Hitachi-LG Executives Plead Guilty

Three executives at Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) have agreed to plead guilty and serve prison time in the U.S. for their participation in a number of conspiracies to rig bids and fix the prices of optical disk drives sold to large computer manufacturers, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Young Keun Park, Sang Hun Kim and Sik “Daniel” Hur conspired with others to suppress competition by rigging bids for optical disk drives sold to Dell and Hewlett-Packard and to fix prices for optical disk drives sold to Microsoft, the DOJ said. The conspiracies happened at various times between November 2005 and September 2009, the DOJ said.

Under a plea agreement in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Park and Kim each have agreed to serve eight months in prison and Hur has agreed to serve seven months in prison. Each has also agreed to pay a US$25,000 fine.

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Hackers Plan To Go After Fox

Anonymous plans to take out the Fox news network because of its coverage of the Wall Street Protests.

Dubbed “Operation Fox Hunt”, Anonymous announced the plans on YouTube to attack the Fox News website on the anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day. Anonymous is also planning to target former Fox News personality Glenn Beck as well as current Fox News representative Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly during “Operation Fox Hunt”.

Anonymous said that it has had a gutsful of “right wing conservative propaganda” and “belittling the occupiers” of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Anonymous recently a distributed denial-of-service attack against the Oakland police department’s website after a 24-year-old wounded Marine home from serving two tours in Iraq was critically injured in the Occupy Oakland protest. Police allegedly threw an object that fractured the marine’s skull landing him in the hospital.

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Will AOL Merge With Yahoo?

AOL is trying to engineer a merger with Yahoo in order to lower costs.

AOL’s CEO Tom Armstrong reportedly has been working hard to generate support from shareholders for a deal with Yahoo. According to Reuters, Armstrong is presenting the deal as an alternative to going it alone as an internet media company in order to reap cost and advertising reach benefits.

Apparently Armstrong is claiming that a merger with Yahoo, which itself is at the centre of acquisition rumours, would bring in savings of between $1bn and $1.5bn by combining datacentres and consolidating content on areas such as news, sports, entertainment and finance.

Since AOL was spun out of its disastrous merger with Time Warner, the firm has been trying to remake itself into an internet media company by buying popular websites such as The Huffington Post and Techcrunch. While many question whether that is a workable plan, the financials can’t mask the deep trouble AOL is in, with the company reporting a $11.8m loss for the second quarter.

While talk of AOL being bought up has cooled considerably in the last few months, the firm still has a few worthwhile assets. According to Reuters’ sources, shareholders like the idea of merging with Yahoo but are not convinced that Armstrong can pull it off.

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Microsoft Goes After Yahoo

Just three years after a failed attempt to acquire Yahoo, Microsoft may be considering whether to give it another shot, Reuters reported today.

According to the report, Microsoft executives are split on whether the company should bid for Yahoo. A final decision has not been reached, the report noted.

Citing an unnamed “high-ranking Microsoft executive,” the report said Microsoft is evaluating whether to pull in a partner for a joint effort to buy Yahoo.

Microsoft said it doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation. Yahoo didn’t respond to a request for comment on the report.

“As long as Microsoft is committed to growing its online presence, this makes sense,” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. “Yahoo has a large number of subscribers and regular visitors, many of whom are not considering going elsewhere. And that would be a good boost for Microsoft.”

He also noted that Yahoo Mail, Yahoo’s popular free email service, would combine well with Microsoft’s own Hotmail service to create a very large base of email users.

In 2008, Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo. Yahoo’s argument that the bid was tool low prompted Microsoft to finally give up.

Since then, Yahoo has been dealing with some significant problems.

No longer the high-flying Internet pioneer of its heyday, Yahoo last month fired Carol Bartz, who had joined the company as CEO with high hopes that she could return the company to its past glory.

Once Bartz was out the door, industry analysts began speculating that Yahoo’s board might be open to a solid acquisition offer.

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WebOS Lives

HP is aiming to keep WebOS alive by putting it on printers.

The firm has discontinued its WebOS devices such as the Touchpad tablet and Pre 3 smartphone but WebOS will appear on new products, according to Pocketlint. The operating system (OS) will come on the Designjet line of HP printers.

An HP spokesperson said, “HP is currently investigating using WebOS on its Designjet range of professional printers.”

It’s likely that the OS will come on consumer printers at some point in the future, too. The following statement also hints that it could appear on products other than printers.

“HP is 100 [per cent] committed to producing print solutions that meet our customer needs and we will continue to drive innovation to ensure our products and solutions meet market demand. We built our printing franchise based on being OS agnostic – we have been and will continue to be agnostic to meet our various customer needs. As webOS plans develop we will continue to evaluate how and if we incorporate it into our future products.”

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