Tech Week in Review 6-18-2010

Twitter Adds Places. Should Foursquare Care?

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Twitter adds another layer of context to your tweets with the new Places feature. This allows you see where a tweet originated from, as well as what other tweets came from the same location. Places will also be pulled from Gowalla and Foursquare tweets. Location information in your tweets is also now supported in all major browsers.

Google Makes Doc Sharing Easier

Google has made some important new feature changes in Docs which give you more flexibility and more simplicity in your doc sharing. Documents can now be Private, shared only with people who have the link, or Public (indexed in search engines). See document sharing and privacy settings right in the docs list. Google has simplified the three-tab interface down to one, provides bulk changes in the docs list, and will let you reset the document’s URL if it gets into the wrong hands.

Finally, Bebo Gets Bought

First, Bebo tried to stay relevant and gain some traction by biting off FriendFeed, a move that worked great for Facebook. A year later, showing no improvement and with Facebook and Twitter taking the spotlight, AOL announced they would sell or close down Bebo. They finally found a buyer in Criterion Capital Partners, a hedge fund. If you recall, AOL bought Bebo for $850 million. Rumors say they are selling it for about $2 million, but the exact terms of the deal have not been disclosed at this time. At least they can claim the hefty loss on their taxes.

Facebook CEO Disses iPhone, Deletes Post

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Mark Zuckerberg shared his frustrations with his new iPhone on Facebook, complaining that he had to buy four chargers to keep the phone charged everywhere and that he had to resort to a land line to actually make calls. He later deleted the post or possibly made it more private. Some speculated that this was actually the new iPhone 4, but later comments from Zuckerberg contradict that. In any case, Apple needs to get Zuck a longer-lasting iPhone 4 immediately before he switches to Android.

Sonicbids Acquires ArtistData and Offers Free Premium Access All Summer

Sonicbids, a service that helps artists find gigs and helps promoters find artists, has acquired ArtistData, a company that helps artists engage with fans across all social networks without wasting a lot of time. The merger seems like a match made in heaven for indie artists. Find places to play and then promote your upcoming shows all in one place. To add icing on the cake, Premium ArtistData features will be free for the entire summer until September 1st so get your account now.

I Like Your Comment

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Just as Facebook’s Like button is gaining steam across the web, they’ve introduced a new feature that lets you like each comment within a thread. This is something often requested on FriendFeed and other similar services. Sometimes, a comment is more insightful or entertaining than the original post. You will be able to like comments and see which users have liked which comments. I wonder if we may see some type of comment promotion system in the near future.