Whether you call it Web 2.0, social media, or a complete waste of time, businesses seem to like where it’s all going. A new survey of nearly 1,700 businesses by McKinsey & Company finds that using Web 2.0 technologies can lead to increased communication and productivity, more successful marketing strategies, and—surprise—even better products… Tweet This [...]

What’s the point of Google’s new FastFlip reader? Not to change the way you read news on the Web — it’s too ugly and simplistic for that. But because it loads pages very fast — and requires minimal effort to navigate — it could be useful for portable devices. Specifically, tablet-like gadgets with 3G modems [...]

According to a Nielsen report this week, Microsoft’s new BingBing search engine is growing faster than any of its search competitors in the top 10… Tweet This Post

Fresh off the news that Google is buying reCAPTCHA, another major acquisition rumor has emerged. According to a tweet from Mark Glaser, Executive Editor of PBS MediaShift, “Brightcove in talks with Google about buyout in $500m to $700m range.”… Tweet This Post

Google has acquired reCAPTCHA, an open source technology that provides CAPTCHAs to prevent spam and fraud. Captchas are those security questions you find on Web sites that require you to decipher and type words or numbers and detects whether the user is a human… Tweet This Post

Facebook has two very big pieces of news that they announced today at TechCrunch50. The first: They have crossed 300 million users worldwide now, extending their lead as the biggest social network. The second: They are now cash flow positive. Yes, from this point forward, Facebook is making money… Tweet This Post

A team of ex-Google employees won the top prize at the annual TechCrunch50 startup contest. Their company, Redbeacon, is sort of a modern-day Yellow Pages. It lets you search nearby service providers — plumbers, painters, personal trainers, etc. — and schedule appointments online… Tweet This Post

The 50 startup presentations are over, the judges votes are in, Michael and Jason chewed over the top contenders, and the winner of this year’s TechCrunch50 is RedBeacon. The startup aims to help consumers find local service providers such as plumbers, bakers, and contractors. As we described in our initial write-up:… Tweet This Post

Yesterday Adobe announced they had reached a deal to acquire Omniture for $1.8 billion, with Adobe expecting the deal to close in the fourth quarter. While on the surface it may seem odd that Adobe would buy a company and get into the Web analytics space, if integrated correctly, Adobe has the potential to provide [...]

n the ongoing game of Internet exec musical chairs, Greg Coleman (pictured here), who has been a top exec at both Yahoo and AOL, is poised to become president of the Huffington Post, as well as chief revenue officer, several sources said… Tweet This Post

If only creating a wire service was as easy as pundits blabbering about creating an alternative to AP. CNN’s nascent wire service, launched for newspapers and online, is already tinkering with its business model a few months after its launch: it has launched a text-only online store, at CNNWireStore.com, to start offering a la carte [...]

On Tuesday, Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, unveiled Apps.Gov, a Web site where federal agencies will able to buy so-called cloud computing applications and services that have been approved by the government to replace more costly and cumbersome computing services at their own locations… Tweet This Post