By Gilbert Falso :: 1:17 AM
A scathing article in TheNextWeb accuses technology giant Samsung of misleading a group of bloggers and threatening to strand them thousands of miles from home at a conference that the company paid their travel to.
Samsung runs a blogger outreach program, called Mobilers, in India, where they work with tech bloggers and journalists to get their products promoted in the marketplace. Mobilers ran a contest where the prize was round-trip air travel and conference tickets to the IFA Consumer Electronics Conference in Berlin, Germany.
Clinton Jeff, a blogger for the site, Unleash the Phones, entered the contest and won, along with another unnamed blogger. Once Jeff flew from India to Germany to attend the event, however, things began to get weird.
Samsung had asked for Jeff’s clothing measurements right before the trip. Jeff was skeptical, but provided his information, only to find that Samsung wanted him to don company clothing and promote their products in the Samsung booth on the convention expo floor. If Jeff refused, he said, the company would cancel his return ticket to India.
Jeff told the company’s PR representative that, under no terms, was he going to act as a company representative in the booth. The agreement, he explained, was for him to be there as a blogger, not a shill. Upon hearing this, Samsung’s PR department immediately cancelled his return airfare.
After some discussion and giving in on Jeff’s part (he wore the shirt and skulked around the booth for a day), he thought things would be patched up, but that appears not to be the case, Samsung has revoked not only his return ticket home, but also his hotel stay for the duration of the conference. Another company, Nokia, has swooped in to provide hotel accommodations and a return ticket home for Jeff.
The moral of the story? Bloggers should be wary of tech firms bearing free trips – at least unless they have their own way to get back home!
By Cynthia Herbert :: 1:24 AM
Twitter no longer displays the name of the application used when a Tweet is posted – at least not on the web version of Twitter.com.
Although the app name had been removed from Tweets in Twitter’s mobile app, yesterday’s move on Twitter.com only adds more fuel to the fire that Twitter is building under its developer community. Like the API changes of the last several weeks, this move is most likely designed to send a message to all the third-party Twitter client developers – “your time is limited.”
Before this change, users could click on the detail link of a Tweet (the day/time stamp) and open the Tweet on its own link, where the exact day and time of the Tweet would be shown, as well as the service used to post the Tweet – such as TweetDeck, HootSuite, Sprout Social, etc. Now when a Tweet is expanded, the date and time are still visible, but the application name is removed.
While this may seem like a minor, trivial point, this was no doubt the way that many people learned of the availability of third-party applications to access and interact with Twitter. Many Twitter newbies start out on the web client, and graduate to a more robust Tweeting solution, such as TweetDeck or YoruFukurou when they find the need to organize the people they are following, or when they attempt to follow multiple topics or from multiple accounts.
It is still too early to tell how much of a blow this will deal to the third-party application developers, already reeling from a tough couple of weeks under Twitter’s slowly closing death grip. That death grip has one mission – to drive all Twitter users to experience Twitter content the way that Twitter wants you to – not the way that you want to.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 5:43 AM
Microblogging platform Tumblr is the latest social network to fall victim to Twitter’s increasingly hostile API requirements.
Tumblr confirmed late on Wednesday that the feature to find and follow your Twitter friends on Tumblr has been removed from the service. They issued the following statement:
To our dismay, Twitter has restricted our users’ ability to “Find Twitter Friends†on Tumblr. Given our history of embracing their platform, this is especially upsetting. Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets, and we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter’s first partners.
Tumblr is not the only social network to run afoul of Twitter’s draconian regime change. Recently, similar friend find functionality was pulled from Instagram.
Twitter’s reasons are that it is trying to enforce a new stance on the use of Twitter data and how its API is implemented by third-party applications and services.
Developers across the industry are reacting negatively to Twitter’s actions – some calling them a form of bullying. Instapaper’s founder, Marco Arment, threatened to cut Twitter functionality out of his product entirely if Twitter pulls a similar move to limit Instapaper’s access to find Twitter friends.
“If Twitter cuts off Instapaper’s “find friends†access, I’ll probably remove all Twitter functionality. It’ll hurt, but it’ll feel right,” Arment Tweeted on Wednesday night.
By Gilbert Falso :: 12:28 AM
The Federal Trade Commission announced on Wednesday that it has closed its investigation of Facebook’s proposed acquisition of Instagram, without taking any action. At this time, the purchase deal may now proceed as proposed.
The Commission voted 5-0 to close the investigation. Closing letters to the companies can be found on the FTC’s website.
FTC actions like this do not mean that the deal has fully closed, but it does mean that the FTC won’t be coming after Facebook with any type of antitrust regulatory actions or injunctions.
Hurdles still lie in the way for the acquisition – Facebook and Instagram must attend a “fairness hearing†at the California Department of Corporations in San Francisco next week. This will help to expedite the share issuance process – Facebook’s purchase terms included cash and shares of Facebook stock. The deal, originally valued at $1 billion, has slipped along with Facebook’s sinking stock price, and is now valued around $740 million.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 3:36 PM
The next release of Apple’s iPhone / iPhone 5 / new iPhone, whatever they decide to call it, will likely happen on Friday, September 21st.
A Verizon employee has leaked details of a vacation blackout period for employees from September 21st through the 30th. Vacation blackouts, times when employees are not allowed to schedule or take vacation, are typically used when the wireless carrier needs all hands on deck for the launch of a new product – in this case, the next iPhone. The blackout was leaked to industry blog TechCrunch.
As with previous iPhone launches and vacation schedules, the timing of the blackout strongly suggests that the new phone will go on sale that Friday.
Many speculate that the new phone will feature a longer (taller) screen, and a new connector for the charge/dock cable. It is also thought that it will have 4G LTE capabilities, NFC and a thin case measuring in at 7.6 millimeters.