Mt. Gox, one of the first bitcoin exchanges, is down after an apparent long-term operation bled the company of 744,408 BTC - about $350 mill...
While consumers around the world are debating the merits of Samsung's latest product roster, which debuted at the MWC in Barcelona yeste...
Shape Security — the enterprise startup that emerged from stealth last month with an enterprise product that fights automated malware and bo...
It's not often I see news that surprises me, but Facebook paying nearly $20 billion for an instant messaging app had me scratching my head. People have been paying too much for properties for some time, but this is crazy money for a class of product that stopped being trendy nearly a decade ago. I've come up with three reasons, none of which are mutually exclusive, as to how Facebook was tricked into massively -- boy, that word is just not adequate to describe this -- overpaying for this property. This should be a wakeup call for Yahoo, Microsoft and Aol.It's not often I see news that surprises me, but Facebook paying nearly $20 billion for an instant messaging app had me scratching my ...
The National Security Agency has reportedly been surveilling senior German officials after it was ordered by President Obama to cease spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel. The report comes from German paper Bild am Sonntag, which claims its informant is a “high-ranking NSA employee in Germany,” as described by UK Reuters, which translated the original report.
Among the 320 target individuals are Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière. “We have had the order not to miss out on any information now that we are no longer able to monitor the chancellor’s communication directly,” one NSA employee is reported to have said.
An interior ministry spokesman declined to comment on the allegations. The US incurred significant international disapproval after previous leaks about surveilling the German Chancellor, which President Obama never officially disavowed.
Part of the issue with this current leak is that it’s difficult to verify. The original NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, came out publicly and the NSA only months later admitted some details about the controversial phone record collection program (on a Tumblr page, no less). An anonymous source leaking information about much lower profile activity may not incentivize agencies to release details either confirming or denying Bild am Sonntag‘s claim.
Certainly, this new leak will not help US-European relations. For a bit of levity, let me leave our readers with Saturday Night Live’s take on the Merkel spying scandal:
The National Security Agency has reportedly been surveilling senior German officials after it was ordered by President Obama to cease spyin...
Security pros weren't very kind to mobile applications last week. Several firms knocked apps produced for the smartphone market for all kinds of risky behaviors that could lead to trouble not only for mobile device owners, but also for their employers. Android has been a poster child for misbehaving apps in the past, but Apple's apps aren't as pristine as is commonly believed, suggests an Appthority report. Ninety-one percent of the top 400 free and paid iOS apps exhibited risky behaviors, according to its Winter 2014 App Reputation Report.Security pros weren't very kind to mobile applications last week. Several firms knocked apps produced for the smartphone market for al...
Big international news today for LinkedIn, the social media site for professionals to network with each other: the company is launching its first official site in China — in Simplified Chinese, in beta. Derek Shen, president of China for LinkedIn, notes in a blog post that the site will be branded “领英” and will aim to offer more localized content for Chinese-speaking users.
LinkedIn is not starting from zero: the company already has some four million registered users in the country from some 80,000 different companies, although they all currently only use an English language site that has been accessible in the country for over 10 years already. The state of affairs, Shen notes, is one of LinkedIn still in a “start-up phase” in the country.
But this new venture will not be forged alone: Shen says that LinkedIn has established a joint venture with Sequoia China and CBC “to explore expanding our business here.” This potentially means not just how the the site itself will grow, but could include the launch of new services and potential investments into local companies that can help LinkedIn develop more localised services.
Some of those local tweaks are already a part of the site: social platforms Sina and Tencent are already integrated — meaning users can link up their accounts on these to cross post with LinkedIn; users can import contacts from Weibo. Users of WeChat can also link their accounts to share content.
For a company of 277 milion users that has been criticised of late for slowing growth, the move is significant: China represents an opportunity of some 140 million professionals, or one in five of all knowledge workers globally, according to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. And given how strong the GDP is growing in China — currently the world’s second-fastest — the number of potential users is sure to go up.
“Given the rapid acceleration and development of China’s economy, the expansion of our offering in China marks a significant step forward in our mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful,” Weiner writes in a blog post.
While a move into China will help the company tap into a rapidly expanding base of new users, it will not be without its challenges. Weiner notes that the decision to move into China is one that the company has been weighing up for a while, balancing the opportunity against the fact that companies that operate in the country are subject to censorship and much more government control than they are in the U.S. For a company that effectively relies on user-generated content, conversations, and a general level of trust and engagement, this is a huge deal.
Weiner says that its workaround is to put into place a list of requirements for how it intends to proceed:
– Government restrictions on content will be implemented only when and to the extent required.
– LinkedIn will be transparent about how it conducts business in China and will use multiple avenues to notify members about our practices.
– The company will undertake extensive measures to protect the rights and data of our members.
“Within this framework, I believe that the benefits of LinkedIn’s evolution in China will prove compelling to our members, who are based in China, as well as members around the world,” Weiner writes. He says that LinkedIn will continue to talk to partners, policy makers and others to reassess how it is proceeding in the country. Those parties include Sequoia China and CBC, and our President of China, and LinkedIn’s head of China Derek Shen.
Big international news today for LinkedIn, the social media site for professionals to network with each other: the company is launching its ...
