Facebook’s Never Had A Big User Data Breach, But May Never Recover When It Does

It’s not if, but when. Between crooks, hackers and foreign governments, Facebook probably can’t avoid a serious user data breach forever. When it happens, Facebook may never be able to quiet fears that “personal data isn’t safe there.” That could cause a chilling effect on sharing, jeopardize its future in commerce, and cut short its lifetime.

This isn’t to say Facebook’s not doing everything in its power to prevent this. It has a sizable security team of top talent, infiltrates hacker rings to thwart their schemes, and offers cash bounties to white hats who identify bugs or holes.

Yesterday, though, Facebook announced something very unsettling. A “sophisticated attack” uploaded malware onto the computers of several Facebook engineers when they visited a hacked mobile developer site. Facebook quickly quarantined and scrubbed the devices, called the police, and kicked off an investigation. So far, there’s been no evidence that any user data had been compromised. Perhaps the attackers were after Facebook’s trade secrets or information about partners. Regardless, it was a very close call.

To date, Facebook has managed to keep what is possibly the world’s largest repository of private information from falling into the wrong hands. Its fellow social networks haven’t been as successful. Twitter most recently saw 250,000 accounts accessed by hackers, and last year the passwords for 6.5 million LinkedIn accounts were stolen and published online.

But there’s a huge difference between those social networks getting hacked, and someone getting into your Facebook account. Most data on Twitter and LinkedIn is public by default. Sure there are direct messages, or the few misguided souls who keep their profiles locked down. On Facebook, though, privacy is the default. That means Facebook has a lot more to lose from getting hacked.

The absolute damage of an eventual breach might not be too severe. Perhaps some photos and messages will be stolen, or at worst some credit card information. Facebook would likely respond quickly by quarantining affected accounts until users changed their passwords and reclaimed control.

It’s the psychological damage to Facebook’s brand that will be the real killer. The world’s news outlets would be all over a breach. Though it looks like no user data was accessed, yesterday’s announcement brought swift coverage from the New York Times, BBC, ABC News, The Guardian, and just about every tech news blog.

The world will know, and the fear will sweep across the news feed. Quick to jump to the worst conclusions and re-share sensational stories, Facebook will be filled with people advising friends to cease sharing, pull out all their data, and shut down their accounts. Most won’t go that far, but the looming worry that nothing is safe on Facebook will permeate the world population and slam its stock price.

Facebook already struggles to fight a perception that it creeps on people’s data, and that its privacy controls are so confusing that people accidentally expose their own information. The emergence of vulnerability to outside attack will compound these issues. Together, they could derail Zuckerberg’s Law — the theory that the amount of content we share doubles every year.

Facebook’s business model is a value exchange. It offers a free, powerful, unified communication tool, and to access it, users trade in their data and allow Facebook to monetize it through advertising and other methods. But that exchange requires that we trust Facebook to keep our private data safe. If that trust is shaken, adding your most private thoughts, media, contact info, and financial data becomes more of a conscious decision about risk.

Injecting that hesitation into the sharing process could be the biggest threat to Facebook’s long-term success outside of a rising social network that refuses to be acquired. In other words, no matter how well Facebook plays the security game, the odds are stacked against it, and the stakes have never been higher.

As Patent Drama Continues, 3D Printing Provides A Way Out For Mashup Creators

Editor’s note: Michael Weinberg is vice president at Public Knowledge where he focuses primarily on copyright, issues before the FCC and emerging technologies like 3D printing. Follow him on Twitter @mweinbergPK.

Mashups are one of the great art forms of our time. Easy and accessible digital tools have allowed anyone to remix videos, music and photographs into their own original works: Mashup culture has produced fantastic music, critical video, and delightful cultural artifacts of all kinds.

However, mashups are ultimately limited by the nature of their source material. The types of things that mashups draw from - videos, music, photos - are also the types of things that are protected by copyright, which means mashup creators need to take copyright into account when creating their works. Sometimes, because of rules such as fair use, the creator does not need permission from the person who owns rights to the source material. Other times, mostly because the work falls outside of the scope of fair use, the creator does need permission. The requirement for permission inevitably prevents some mashups from being seen by a wide audience and makes it harder for creators to make money.

Enter 3D Printing

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about 3D printing, but one of them is that it moves beyond the world of things protected by copyright. When you step away from your computer screen and look around, you realize that the physical world - the real world - is full of real, physical things that are not protected by copyright. In fact, the world is full of things that are not protected by any sort of intellectual property right at all. That means that you can take them and do whatever you want with them. And that includes mashing them up.

One of the best examples of this so far is the Free Universal Construction Kit (below). The kit remixes 10 different construction toys into adaptors that make them interoperable. These toys are functional objects so they are outside of the scope of copyright. While some of them were patented when they first came to market, patents only last 20 years. That means that most of the toys are no longer protected. As long as you stick with the toys that are no longer protected by patent, you can remix them to your heart's content.

The Free Universal Construction Kit is just the beginning when it comes to remixing things. Easy-to-use tools like meshmixer allow people to remix things just as easily as they remix songs or videos. And unlike those songs or videos, many of the things will not be protected by copyright.

One of the keys to this next generation of mashups will be a strong understanding of how copyright interacts with physical objects. While copyright will not protect functional objects, it will protect decorative ones. Understanding functional vs. decorative will mean the difference between a mashup encumbered by copyright and a mashup that is in the clear.

Public Knowledge’s latest whitepaper, What's the Deal with 3D Printing and Copyright? should help everyone begin to understand what is protected by copyright and to start thinking about what is not protected by copyright. That second category includes a lot of things just waiting to be remixed and mashed up.

[Image: F.A.T. - Free Art & Technology]

Lies, Damn Lies, And Robots

While it gives me little pleasure to call out New York Times writer John Broder for his clearly weird Tesla S test-drive, I do appreciate the way Elon and the team at Tesla called him to task for seemingly falsifying his experience in the car. I’d like to give Broder the benefit of the doubt – range anxiety is a real and frightening thing – Tesla’s Nate Silver-esque retort is quite illuminating and could change the reviewer dynamic.

Full disclosure: I write for the Times every few months and they’re nice guys, mostly.

I won’t bore you with more detail on the case (Darrell did that here) but I will note the value of the data provided by Tesla essentially destroys Broder’s punditry.

Broder is a car guy, and an opinionated one. He once wrote “yet the state of the electric car is dismal, the victim of hyped expectations, technological flops, high costs and a hostile political climate," a line that Musk quotes in his blog post as proof-positive that Broder is biased. While his argument in that piece is far more nuanced, that’s what sticks out. A look at his other stories hows a skeptical eye towards electric cars. He also claims that his side of the story is far simpler than Musk describes: . He writes:

Virtually everyone says that I should have plugged in the car overnight in Connecticut, particularly given the cold temperature. But the test that Tesla offered was of the Supercharger, not of the Model S, which we already know is a much-praised car. This evaluation was intended to demonstrate its practicality as a "normal use," no-compromise car, as Tesla markets it. Now that Tesla is striving to be a mass-market automaker, it cannot realistically expect all 20,000 buyers a year (the Model S sales goal) to be electric-car acolytes who will plug in at every Walmart stop.

Perhaps his experience was just as he described it – a muddle of confusion, fear, and poor planning. But Musk fights back with actual numbers and the outcome isn’t pretty. In fact, Musk claims that Broder drove the car around in tight circles for a little while just to get it down to zero range. Broder came at his test from the standpoint of a dude who likes to hop in a nice sedan and expects to drive a few hundred miles on a tank of gas. That’s not how you drive the Tesla… yet.

To be clear, Musk seems a little testy. Tesla has been burned once by Top Gear and getting a negative “review” by the NYT is a bad feeling (even if this wasn’t quite a review). But the most important aspect, and an aspect that may soon change the way we review almost everything electronic, was the ability for Tesla to pull logs right from the vehicle.

The Tesla S is a big computer. It’s also an experiment and, like any good experiment, produces data that is later assessed by experts. In the past, Broder could have driven a “dumb car” 100 miles an hour through the desert, run over a cactus, filled the car up with kerosene, and then slashed the tires. He could have then written a story about how the vehicle was sub par and the manufacturer would have little to say on the matter. Now, in an era where punditry rules the data will out.

No matter what Broder says in his defense, he can be proven wrong by the data. This should give tech reviewers pause. In a world when an objective review from one of the big boys can make or break a product, it is in the manufacturer’s best interests to spy on the reviewer. While I’m not saying this is right or particularly tasteful, I’m almost positive it will happen again.

We live in an era where almost everything we own is overpowered. There are plenty of extra cycles left on any common laptop, tablet, or other device to store a running log of performance and activity, a log that manufacturers should and will use to ding us. That this hasn’t happened more often in the electronics world suggests that marketing managers just didn’t think of it first. You can say that a product sucks, but you can’t argue with a robot when your review process is faulty.

I don’t feel bad for Broder. If what Musk showed is true, he elided quite a bit in this assessment and he got called out. I also don’t feel bad for Musk. He and his cars need to take their lumps. You can claim “big gas conspiracy” or “bias journalisms” all you want, but anything new is frightening and it’s the journalist’s job to warn us of potential danger. Proving that a journalist drives donuts in a parking lot for fun could be relevant to the value of his coverage, but what would have happened if Musk had handed him a thumb drive with all of the data on it after the test was over? Had Tesla explained all of the data to the journalist as a matter of course, Broder would probably singing a different tune. He would also be far more careful about his drive, just like a real Tesla owner would.

I understand the impetus to “get back” at a journalist. Using the robot to play gotcha is satisfying but it’s no better than a reviewer who fakes a review and gets away with it. A middle ground can, and must, be found.

NJ Accelerator TechLaunch Is Looking For Its Next Batch Of Great Garden State Startups

New Jersey's nascent startup scene is wedged between more established communities in Philadelphia and New York, but that hasn't stopped some ambitious teams like those at Princeton's TigerLabs and TechLaunch from trying to give the state a kick in the entrepreneurial pants. After putting on quite a show last November, TechLaunch is now looking for another 10-12 early-stage ventures to mentor and fund in a bid to put New Jersey on the startup map.

Participants in the incubator's 16-week LaunchPad program will get co-working space at Montclair State University, infusions of legal and accounting know-how and (perhaps most importantly) up to $25,000 in seed funding to get the project off the ground. Interested Garden State startups can apply to the program through February 22, though you'd best be prepared to stay in New Jersey for a while if you plan to throw your hat in the ring - TechLaunch is looking for startups that will stick around for awhile and help boost the state's economy (though the team won't resort to any Soprano-esque tactics if you eventually move out).

I really didn't know what to expect when I drove to Montclair State for the accelerator's first Demo Day, but the strength and polish of some of these early-stage ventures was a bit surprising, especially considering that co-founder and investor Mario Casabona is still fairly new to the startup scene. Some of them have already started picking up some traction to boot - Echolocation announced in mid-January that it locked up another $200K in seed funding in its bid to create a super-local version of Twitter to help locals communicate with each other, and CodeSquare's dead-simple mobile-reward redemption scheme has attracted over 600 local clients and attention from chains like Dunkin' Donuts.

Ask A VC: Kleiner Perkins’ Chi-Hua Chien Talks About Mobile First, The Future Of Ecommerce And More

Kleiner Perkins’ partner Chi-Hua Chien was in the hot seat for this week’s Ask A VC series.

Chien, who has helped led investments in Spotify, Klout, Path, Twitter, and Zaarly, among others; discussed his thoughts on mobile-first, and how startups should approach iOS and Android vs. mobile web. We also chatted about e-commerce and what’s next for online retail, as well as some of his favorite faith-based tech initiatives.

Check out the video above for more.

SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung On Building A Startup With An International Footprint [TCTV]

All too often, tech startup founders feel like they have to move their headquarters to an industry hub such as the San Francisco Bay Area in order to really be successful. But while it’s good to be in touch with the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley or New York City, there can also be big benefits to building your startup outside of these typical tech epicenters. A great example of this is SoundCloud, the popular audio distribution platform that has scaled up quite nicely while maintaining its home base in Berlin, Germany.

SoundCloud was recognized at the 6th annual Crunchies last week as the “best international startup” of the year, so we pulled aside co-founder and CEO Alex Ljung after he came offstage for a brief talk about how the company has grown. Watch the video embedded above to hear about how SoundCloud kept its international roots even after raising funds from Silicon Valley and New York City investors, what his advice is to other international founders looking to grow, what his favorite things on SoundCloud are right now, and more.

We also talked to Ljung before the show started, when SoundCloud was just a Crunchie nominee and not yet a winner — and that was a pretty enlightening conversation too. Watch that in the video embedded below to hear about the perks of building a company in Berlin, what SoundCloud’s official language is, and what’s up next for the company.

Next-Gen Xbox Protection Rumor Raises The Question Of Always-On DRM

According to an Edge report, the rumored next Xbox will have a game registration system that will prevent the 50GB Blu-ray titles from being resold on the secondary market. The Edge writes:

Sources with first-hand experience of Microsoft's next generation console have told us that although the next Xbox will be absolutely committed to online functionality, games will still be made available to purchase in physical form. Next Xbox games will be manufactured on 50GB-capacity Blu-ray discs, Microsoft having conceded defeat to Sony following its ill-fated backing of the HD-DVD format. It is believed that games purchased on disc will ship with activation codes, and will have no value beyond the initial user.

I am at once skeptical that this is true – it sounds wildly far-fetched to me, even given the horrible decisions made by CE makers in the past – but it also points to a focus on a networked console with loads of storage space more akin to a Steam box than an optical disk player.

My problem with this rumor is that it makes no economic sense for Microsoft. It immediately alienates buyers, game resellers, and even game rental outfits. While there are instances where you must license a game in order to play online, always-on DRM that negates the value of optical media sounds ridiculous and has been proven again and again to be unworkable.

This story could have come from a grumpy developer who used a feature made available by Microsoft for next-gen console developers but it sounds less like a possibility than an alternative, terrible future.

And yet… if you had told the 2001 version of myself that in a little over a decade I’d download all of my music and never buy a paper book again I’d have laughed you out of the Internet cafe. It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to focus its efforts on downloadable gaming. Optical media is an obvious attack vector for console pirates and although the DRM will be hacked in the end, this gives Microsoft a head start against piracy for newer games. I can definitely see a day when I will no longer want or need a stack of game disc cases near my television set – but I’m loath to believe Microsoft (or at least its gaming division) would do something so ham-handed.

We are entering a fascinating stage in gaming. With consoles like Ouya and the aforementioned Steam Box, manufacturers are slowly training consumers to accept the possibility of a console without physical media. While we, in our mental models, find the concept to be abhorrent, I would say that the future will bring an Xbox without a disk slot at all, thereby rendering the thought of used game sales moot. This, I’d wager, keeps GameStop executives up all night in a cold sweat and, in turn, upsets the kid in us who still wants to borrow his buddy’s copy of Demon’s Souls.

Dropbox Unveils Sync API For Mobile Developers, Allows Apps To Work With Cloud-Based Files As If They Were Local

Dropbox is unveiling a brand new API for developers today that should give mobile app makers an excellent new tool to work with. The Dropbox Sync API allows apps for iOS and Android to treat files stored on a user’s Dropbox account as if they were local, managing syncing, caching, offline access and tracking changes easily so that developers only have to worry about building an app, and not the storage and management of the files users create with said software.

I spoke to Dropbox Product Manager Sean Lynch about the new API and what it can offer developers. Essentially, Lynch said this is yet another attempt by Dropbox to simplify the lives of developers when it comes to creating apps that can work seamlessly across platforms with remotely stored files, just like the Dropbox Chooser the company unveiled back in November 2012.

“Dropbox’s mission is really to let users access their data wherever they are, and that’s not necessarily geographically speaking,” he said. “Whatever device, whatever platform, whether their computer at home, their smartphone or their tablet, iOS or Android, it doesn’t matter; what we want users to be able to expect is whatever device they plug into, they can access their files on Dropbox when they get there.”

That means that helping developers integrated Dropbox access into their apps is of crucial importance to the company’s overall mission, Lynch explained.

“How do we simplify the story of integrating with Dropbox so that we can get developers everywhere integrating with the service?” has been the main question driving new product development on the API side, Lynch said. “The chooser was definitely the first step in that… We released it on a Thursday, and over the Friday and over the weekend we saw developers go home and paste a couple of lines of JavaScript, integrate the Chooser, and launch the following Monday with Dropbox integration.”

The Sync API essentially simplifies the process of integrating Dropbox storage into apps. Using the previous API, as a developer you’d have to download the file, re-try it if it fails, store it somewhere and set up that location, and then also handle re-uploads. Plus, if a user came offline, you’d also have to figure out a way to track the changes and re-upload them when a mobile network connection is available once again.

Now, the Sync API takes care of all of that for developers, handling inconsistent network connections, offline caching, automatic uploading and offline storage all in one. In a release about the news, Squarespace Note developer Chris Cox said the new Sync API cuts the amount of code it takes to integrate Dropbox into his app in half.

Lynch says that Dropbox is excited about what developers will do with the Sync API, beyond the more obvious use cases of making sure that documents edited on mobile devices remain up-to-date and accessible from other platforms. We could very well see some uses similar to how devs have employed the iCloud syncing API from Apple, but with content saved on a user’s own Dropbox account and therefore accessible not just to iOS and Mac devices, but to virtually any computing platform.

From 3G To 4G: U.K. Telecoms Regulator Consults On Liberalising All Spectrum Licences In 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz Bands

The fallout from Ofcom’s March 2012 decision to allow the company now known as EE to refarm existing 2G spectrum to build a 4G network continues. That decision paved the way for the launch of the U.K.’s first 4G network, 4GEE, up and running at the end of October 2012. Now EE’s rivals, Vodafone and Three, have asked the U.K. telecoms regulator to liberalise their existing spectrum holdings to allow them to run 4G services too.

Ofcom has gone further — and is proposing to liberalise all mobile licences in the 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,100 MHz bands for 4G — kicking off a consultation today. Here’s what it’s proposing:

to liberalise all mobile licences in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands to permit the deployment of 4G services (where such licenses have not already been liberalised). This will align the permitted technologies across all mobile spectrum licences, including the existing licences at 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz and the licences to be awarded by auction in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands. This will meet a long standing objective to liberalise all mobile licences so that there are no regulatory barriers to the deployment of the latest available mobile technology;

The consultation document includes a table detailing the current breakdown of U.K. spectrum holdings — which shows that only EE and Three (H3G) currently have liberalised spectrum (in the 1,800Mhz band), and also underlines how EE, the joint network entity formed by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, was able to use existing spectrum holdings for 4G because it held such a large tranche of spectrum (2 x 45MHz). Other carriers aren’t so well furnished:

All the U.K.’s major carriers are currently bidding to acquire new spectrum — in the 800MHz and 2.6 GHz bands — which would enable EE’s rivals to launch their own 4G networks by late spring/summer. Despite Ofcom’s proposal to liberalise more existing spectrum licences for 4G use, it’s unlikely that EE’s rivals would be able to launch new 4G networks in their existing spectrum for a variety of reasons.

For one, Ofcom’s consultation on the liberalisation runs until March 29, after which the regulator would need time to consider the responses it has received before making and implementing its decision. Additionally, carriers would need to ensure they have cleared existing users of the liberalised spectrum before being able to deploy 4G services. Whereas the spectrum bands going under Ofcom’s hammer at present are being prepared for an imminent 4G launch — talks between the carriers, Ofcom and TV broadcasters last fall resulted in a speeding up of the clearance schedule for the 800MHz band, for instance.

Assuming Ofcom does go ahead with the proposed liberalisation, Matthew Howett, telecoms regulation analyst at Ovum, reckons it could be years before these existing spectrum holdings could be put to use for 4G.

“Despite operators being able to deploy 4G services in these bands previously restricted to 2G and 3G technologies, most are unlikely to do so in the short term,” he said in a statement reacting to Ofcom’s consultation. “They would first need to be cleared of their existing use through a process of refarming that would probably takes years rather than months, and so the spectrum that is currently being auctioned by Ofcom will most likely be used for Vodafone, O2 and Three's initial deployment of 4G services.”

Howett added that Ofcom is moving away from a “command and control” approach to spectrum policy towards a “market-based management mechanism that lets the users of radio spectrum decide its real economic value and the best way to use it”. So, while the near-term impact on U.K. carriers’ 4G deployment plans might not be that great — the longer term move to free up spectrum licences to support speedier deployment of future technologies could have a much more significant impact.

“As mobile technologies advance and demand for mobile data traffic increases, regulators have acted to liberalize certain spectrum bands from previous technological restrictions,” Howett added. “Many regulators have updated the conditions of the licenses to accommodate the principle of technological neutrality, which removes restrictions on spectrum use and allows operators to deploy other technologies in these bands. This is a positive move.”

Discussing the medium term consumer benefits of liberalising spectrum licences for 4G, Ofcom’s consultation document refers to the increased “flexibility” it will offer carriers to decide which technology to deploy in which band, and ultimately, therefore, to better tailor services to customers’ preferences:

In the medium term, liberalisation may give operators greater flexibility to decide which technology to deploy in which bands. This may allow them to supply services that better meet their customers' preferences.

… we recognise that operators may not immediately deploy 4G services in the newly liberalised bands. If so, then the consumer benefits associated with liberalisation would not occur immediately. However, it is likely that the operators will take advantage of the increased flexibility, and that consumer benefits will flow from this, in due course.

Leaks Reportedly Detail More Of HTC’s 2013 Android Line, Peg M7 For Release Soon After Unveiling

HTC is set to show off something at a special press event in NYC on February 19 (the day before Sony’s, it turns out), and it’s quite likely that the company will debut its rumored new flagship phone, the M7. And now new leaks from the generally dependable Evleaks suggest the company has a multi-device lineup planned to follow the M7 with retail availability in Spring.

The two phones detailed by Evleaks on UnwiredView suggest that HTC will follow-up the M7 with a device with slightly more moderate specs, akin to how the One S was designed to complement the One X last year. And there will also be a down-market device, called the G2, that will be 2013′s equivalent to the HTC Desire C.

The M4 will reportedly pack a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, with a 4.3-inch 720 p display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of onboard storage and a 13 megapixel rear camera. It’ll have a fairly limited 1500 mAh battery (but fewer pixels to push compared to the M7), and should run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

The HTC G2 (which is unrelated to the previous HTC phone of the same name) will have a 1.0GHz ARM Cortex processor with 512MB of RAM, a 3.5-inch HVGA (480 x 320) display, with a 5 megapixel rear camera and no front shooter, a 1400 mAh battery and Android Ice Cream Sandwich as its operating system.

Once again, HTC looks set to deliver a trio of solid Android handsets designed for various consumer budgets, but I am a little concerned that this won’t be different enough from the status quo to really excite consumers and propel sales to higher than HTC’s rather disappointing performance overall in 2012. That said, it’s still very early to be judging these phones considering they haven’t even been made official yet, so maybe there’s more to HTC’s 2013 lineup than what’s apparent from the spec sheets.

RebelMouse Hires Former CNNMoney And VaynerMedia Talent To Build Out Its Content And Partnerships

RebelMouse, a content aggregation and curation site that lets users set up a profile and pull in content from their social networking accounts, as well as other sources, has hired some key former employees from CNNMoney and VaynerMedia.

Since launching to the public last June, RebelMouse has had 240K sites created and is hitting 1.5 million unique monthly visitors to its landing pages. The company tells us that it has seen a big demand from publishers, and has partnered with TIME magazine for its person-of-the year campaign. Additionally, it worked with C-Span for the presidential inauguration, will power an ESPN Magazine online experience for the Super Bowl and continues to bring in movie and television properties to create their own “portals.”

To help RebelMouse build out these partnerships and plans for the future, it has hired former CNNMoney social product lead Niketa Patel as Director of Content and Stephanie Bagley from VaynerMedia as Director of Partnerships. This is an interesting hire since Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of VaynerMedia, is an investor and advisor in RebelMouse. Both will report to Sam Epstein, RebelMouse’s VIP of Platform, who previously worked at Google and HuffingtonPost. Yes, this is the beginning of a power team in content curation and distribution.

In addition to these roles, the RebelMouse development team is now at 24, and has added both iOS and Android specialists to build out its mobile offerings. I spoke with RebelMouse CEO, Paul Berry, about where the company is now and what we can expect from it in the future.

TC: What direction do you see RebelMouse heading?

Berry: RebelMouse is solving a core problem with publishing on the realtime and social web. Everyone’s efforts are fragmented working on each network, and everyone needs to bring it all together to show who they are and highlight their efforts and the best of their community. We believe enterprise and individuals are increasingly using the same tools and this is a perfect example for that. Big publishers and brands will use RebelMouse to power more and more sections of their websites. RebelMouse will stick with a freemium model where rebelmouse.com/You is always going to be free, but you can pay as you use RebelMouse to power your domain and engage with more sophisticated features. RebelMouse should be the solution everyone uses, from companies with massive revenue or traffic to small companies. We believe we can apply a network effect to the open web. This year we are focusing deeply on building more and more network dynamics and engagement into the product while helping gain significant scale with partners and directly with consumers.

TC: What is it about content aggregation that makes the space so interesting to you?

Berry: I don’t see RebelMouse as a simple aggregator. Its the combination of curation plus content creation that is so interesting. Everyone’s struggling with their blogs because of what realtime and social have done to us. Five years ago if your last blog post was three weeks ago you were totally fine with that. Today it starts to get embarrassing. So when you can have your site constantly fresh with the work you’re doing on these vital social networks then you begin to also publish more original content.

TC: How do companies like Twitter and Facebook react to what you’re doing? Basically you’re stealing some eyeballs from their destination sites.

Berry: Our mission is to prove that a Twitter user who joins RebelMouse finds Twitter more vital and essential to them than ever before. Now instead of just reaching the people who are following them at the time they tweet, they know that these interactions are populating their website, not as a widget but as a core part of the content that shows who they are and who loves them and what articles support their thesis of the world. We work very very hard to make sure we are adding value to these networks. We push follows back to the networks they came from instead of asking them to follow only on RebelMouse. We believe that as astounding as the scale and growth of these networks has been, they are still nascent and we can be a strong partner to them, helping give more ROI on efforts to engage. We were one of the first companies to move onto the new Twitter API and to officially match new display requirements. We’ll always iterate and work quickly with them as they grow.

TC: How are you working with social networks right now and how will you work with them in the future to display things in a beautiful way for your users?

Berry: We are working with each to help users get into latest best practices on engagement and display. For example because Facebook is a mix of private and public, we look carefully at the permissions of each post and only publish what is marked clearly as public and send stuff that is just for your friends to draft so you can decide to make that public or not. One of the fundamental features of RebelMouse is the ability to freeze stories into a spot, so something that is particularly meaningful to you as an individual or as a company isn’t just lost in the stream.

TC: What’s next for the product?

Berry: We’re tremendously excited about the updates we have coming. We’ve reached a critical point where instead of having aspirational hopes about how what we were building could be used, it’s being used by some of the smartest people in the world and in high-traffic, high-impact situations. So we’re iterating with them, taking their feedback and looping it back to make RebelMouse sophisticated but simple.

In particular we’re really excited about adding contributions to Rebel Nav because essentially people are able to create topic-based front pages on the fly and invite guest editors and meet new people as they organize and create content. We’re working on sponsored content solutions, turning on revenue where it makes the product durable and focusing on creating network dynamics at every level of the software.
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We all share a lot of things, and it’s hard to put all of our favorite content into one place, displayed in a way that’s consumable by anyone who isn’t completely obsessed with the inner-workings of the Internet. At its very core, RebelMouse lets you curate your own magazine, full of photos, stories and videos that you choose to share, in the order that you’d like them shared. It’s a nice breakaway from the current model of reading a constant stream of information on Twitter or Facebook.

Think of RebelMouse as your Internet mixtape. While it’s not a completely new concept, it is very relevant in the age of people collecting items on Pinterest so it’s the right time for this product. Plus, it’s kind of fun to play with.

Another Potential Suitor For RIM As Lenovo Ponders An Acquisition

Research In Motion is once again the target of a rumored acquisition. Lenovo’s CFO Wang Wai Ming said in an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that the Beijing company is eyeing the BlackBerry maker as a potential acquisition target or strategic alliance partner.

The news comes less than a week after RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told German newspaper Die Welt that RIM is still undergoing a strategic review, with the possibility of licensing BB 10 to other manufacturers and selling its hardware production unit. And last August, Bloomberg reported that IBM “made an informal approach” to acquire RIM’s enterprise-services unit–the heart of BlackBerry’s business–amid intensifying rumors of an acquisition.

“We are looking at all opportunities–RIM and many others,” Wong told Bloomberg. “We’ll have no hesitation if the right opportunity comes along that could benefit us and shareholders.” Wong added that Lenovo has already spoken to RIM and its bankers about various combinations and strategic ventures, though it is unclear when exactly Lenovo would put in a bid.

RIM has been looking at its options since last year, when its market share took a beating from the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. On Lenovo’s side, a shrinking PC market has kept it from growing after it bought IBM’s PC unit in 2005.

RIM’s stock price fell to a low of $6.22 in September, but has since nearly tripled due to speculation over the results of a strategic review and buzz over RIM’s long-anticipated BB 10 phones, which will finally debut in less than a week. If the BB 10 takes off as RIM hopes, one option is to focus on licensing the OS to rivals like Samsung.

Other rumored suitors for RIM over the past two years have included Amazon back in 2011, and Samsung, which repeatedly denied rumors of a deal last year.

A takeover of RIM by a Chinese company would certainly raise security questions–especially for the company once described as a Canadian “crown jewel” by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And back in July, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said that the company has pulled back from expanding its China operations because of concerns over protecting its sensitive networks.

The deal could also face regulatory hurdles in the U.S., where government investigations into spyware have already created massive hurdles for two other Chinese telecommunications manufacturers, Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. But a deal focused on just hardware instead of key IP and software might have an easier time making it past regulators.

Lenovo has been on an acquisitions kick lately as it seeks to pump new life into its business as PC sales wane. This month it completed a purchase of Brazilian computers, moible and tablets maker CCE. Its other five acquisitions in 2011 have included the purchases of Essen, Germany-based maker Medion, and the PC unit of Tokyo’s NEC Corp.

RIM has been emailed for comment.

New Google Image Search Is Faster, Gets Rid Of Obnoxious Landing Page For Metadata

Google announced that it has revamped its image search to be faster and more effective. The changes, which will be rolled out over the next few days, include image results displayed in an inline panel, allowing users to flip through a set of images by using their keyboard and view metadata without being redirected to a separate landing page.

Here is more information from Google’s announcement on what the upgraded image search means for webmasters:

We now display detailed information about the image (the metadata) right underneath the image in the search results, instead of redirecting users to a separate landing page.
We're featuring some key information much more prominently next to the image: the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it comes from, and the image size.
The domain name is now clickable, and we also added a new button to visit the page the image is hosted on. This means that there are now four clickable targets to the source page instead of just two. In our tests, we've seen a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website.
The source page will no longer load up in an iframe in the background of the image detail view. This speeds up the experience for users, reduces the load on the source website's servers, and improves the accuracy of webmaster metrics such as pageviews. As usual, image search query data is available in Top Search Queries in Webmaster Tools.