Leonard Kleinrock Contributor Share on Twitter Leonard Kleinrock is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. When my team of graduate students and I sent the first message over the internet on a warm Los Angeles evening in October, 1969, little did we suspect that we were at […]
View More Fifty years of the internetCategory: social networking
Tencent moves into automotive with $150M joint venture
China’s internet firms are getting pally with giant state-owned automakers as they look to deploy their artificial intelligence and cloud computing services across traditional industries. Ride-hailing startup Didi Chuxing, which owns Uber China, announced earlier this week a new joint venture with state-owned BAIC. Hot on the heels came another entity set up between Tencent and the […]
View More Tencent moves into automotive with $150M joint ventureThe next phase of WeChat
Thousands of people gathered Wednesday night in a southern Chinese city for Zhang Xiaolong, Tencent’s low-key executive who built WeChat eight years ago. It’s no longer adequate to call the app a messenger, for it now enables myriads of functions that infiltrate Chinese people’s private and public lives. It wasn’t just the tech circles tuning […]
View More The next phase of WeChatFacebook redesigns Life Events feature with animated photos, videos and more
Facebook today announced a redesign of its “Life Events” feature, which allows people to share significant milestones in their life, like an engagement, graduation, a new job, a move to a new city, and more. The feature has existed since the launch of Timeline, but has to date offered a fairly nondescript type of post. […]
View More Facebook redesigns Life Events feature with animated photos, videos and moreLooking back at Google+
Google+ is shutting down at last. Google announced today it’s sunsetting its consumer-facing social network due to lack of user and developer adoption, low usage and engagement. Oh, and a data leak. It even revealed how poorly the network is today performing, noting that 90% of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds long. […]
View More Looking back at Google+Openbook is the latest dream of a digital life beyond Facebook
As tech’s social giants wrestle with antisocial demons that appear to be both an emergent property of their platform power, and a consequence of specific leadership and values failures (evident as they publicly fail to enforce even the standards they claim to have), there are still people dreaming of a better way. Of social networking beyond outrage-fuelled […]
View More Openbook is the latest dream of a digital life beyond FacebookFacebook, Google face first GDPR complaints over “forced consent”
After two years coming down the pipe at tech giants, Europe’s new privacy framework, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is now being applied — and long time Facebook privacy critic, Max Schrems, has wasted no time in filing four complaints relating to (certain) companies’ ‘take it or leave it’ stance when it comes to consent. […]
View More Facebook, Google face first GDPR complaints over “forced consent”Cryptocurrency and a stock market boom pushes TradingView to $37 million in new funding
Fueled by last year’s greed-inducing visions of a crypto-currency boom and a stock market largely untethered from classical economics, TradingView, a developer of social networking and data analysis tools for financial markets, has raised millions in new venture funding. The New York-based company just scored $37 million in funding led by the growth stage investment […]
View More Cryptocurrency and a stock market boom pushes TradingView to $37 million in new fundingTelegram hit with block in Russia over encryption
A Russian court has ordered a block on access to the Telegram messaging app — with the block coming into force immediately, according to the BBC. The messaging platform has been under pressure to hand over encryption keys to Russian authorities so they can access user data — which they claim is needed for counterterrorism […]
View More Telegram hit with block in Russia over encryptionInterfaith social network Pray.com raises $14M Series A to add new features to its mobile app
Pray.com, an interfaith social networking app for members of religious communities, has raised a $14 million Series A led by TPG Growth. Previous investors Science Inc. and Greylock Partners also returned for the round, which brings the Santa Monica-based startup’s total funding, including a seed round announced last June, to $16 million. Founded in 2016, […]
Momo buys Tantan, China’s Tinder, for $600M as Chinese social networks consolidate
WeChat is far and away the biggest messaging platform in China at the moment, and that is helping to drive a push among the smaller players to get together for better scale. Today, Momo, the Chinese location-based social networking app that has m…
View More Momo buys Tantan, China’s Tinder, for $600M as Chinese social networks consolidate