Apple IPhone 4G

Apple iPhone 4G

Google Chrome Browser Has 200 Million Users

Google‘s 3 year-old Chrome browser just hit the 200 million user mark, CEO Larry Page announced Thursday.
The fast-growing browser had about 160 million users in May, up from 120 million in December 2010, according to eWeek, which correctly predicted Chrome would hit 200 million users in October.
Chrome’s growth had been noted elsewhere. The browser has about 15% market share and in some markets, like the UK, it has surpassed Firefox’s share to become the second most popular browser after IE. Among Mashable readers, meanwhile, Chrome is the most popular.
The huge installed base for Chrome is good news for Google, which just started rolling out its first Chromebooks in June.

By Todd Wasserman at Mashable

Zynga’s Project Z: A Facebook-Powered Social Network for Games

Social gaming juggernaut Zynga has announced “Project Z,” a platform for playing social games and chatting with friends powered by Facebook Connect.
Project Z, also known as “Zynga Live” and “Zynga Direct,” lets users start their games on Facebook and bring them to Project Z without interruption, and vice versa. It is essentially a social network designed specifically for games and chatting about games, but one that is powered by Facebook Connect.
One key component of Project Z is that it will utilize a username system called zTags, similar to the system used by Xbox Live. Users can register their names starting Tuesday at ztag.zynga.com.
“It’s a platform for a direct relationship with consumers whether on the web, or on mobile, to give you a whole sandbox and create socialness about the games and not just within the games,” Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said of the service.

By Ben Parr at Mashable

Spotify And Boxee Let You Access Streaming Music Service From Your TV

Spotify and Boxee have teamed up to let you access the social music streaming service though your TV using the media center. The Boxee Box allows you to watch many of your favorite movies and shows that are online through your TV. The Spotify integration will now allow you to listen to your favorite music through Boxee too.
There is a caveat here, in that you’ll need to be a Premium Spotify subscriber to take advantage of the Spotify Boxee app. However, if you have signed up to the $9.99 per month Premium offering, you’ll be able to enjoy on-demand access to Spotify through your TV.
This follows on from Spotify’s partnership with Western Digital, which allows owners of the manufacturer’s WD TV series of media players to access Spotify on their TVs too.
Usage of Spotify soared following its removal of invites and the announcement at the f8 conference that it was one of the launch partners for Facebook‘s music dashboard. While linking Spotify to your Facebook account meant that the songs you listen to are automatically shared on the new ticker, the music streaming service added a feature that allows you to stop sharing this information with your Facebook friends.

by Kris Holt at Scribbal

Google Kills Off Buzz To Focus On Google+

Google has hammered the final nail in the coffin of its previous major social project, Google Buzz. The company is closing Buzz to focus its social efforts on Google+.
Bradley Horowitz, the search giant’s vice president of product, said in a blog post that Buzz and the Buzz API will be shut down in the next few weeks. While you will not be able to add new posts to Buzz after that time, you’ll still be able to view your Buzz posts on your Google profile and download content you posted on the service using Google Takeout.
Google is closing several other products, including Code Search, The University Research Program for Google Search, Jaiku and the social features of iGoogle. The move underlines the company’s focus on Google+ as a major product. It was revealed on Thursday that the social network now has more than 40 million users less than 4 months after launching.
Buzz was launched at the start of last year, but failed to become a success. The service perhaps did not handle user privacy as well as it should have. In March, Google reached an agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission — it apologized for the mistakes that were made with Buzz and is required to obtain user consent before changing how personal information is shared.

By Kris Holt at Scribbal

The Much Awaited IPhone 4 Will

The much awaited iPhone 4 will

StumbleUpon Doubles User Base in 16 Months, Surpasses 20 Million Users

For a service that some say drives more traffic to websites than Facebook, StumbleUpon is not well known. However, user data that the company has released suggests that “stumbling” is on track to enter the mainstream vernacular.
In the past 16 months, the personalized discovery engine has doubled its user base. It now has more than 20 million registered users who “stumble” (click a button to load a webpage the site has picked out based on users’ preferences and behavior) more than 1 billion web pages every month.
StumbleUpon‘s growth spurt coincides with a hiring spree — it doubled its number of employees from 40 to 80 — and aggressively launched its first mobile apps. Since August 2010, the company has launched iPhone, iPad and Android apps, with help from a $17 million round of funding that closed in March.
“It’s only been a year and we’ve gone from really just being at your desk to a whole new group of people who only use it on their phones. They don’t even know there’s a website,” StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp told Mashable. “Next year we’re going to be as much on mobile as we are [on desktop].”
StumbleUpon’s 20 million users still don’t make it quite comparable to other popular social sites that it might be tempting to group it with. Tumblr has 31 million blogs; LinkedIn has more than 100 million users; Twitter has 200 million registered users; and Facebook has 800 million users.
But it’s gaining steam that could someday put it in that group. The next step, Camp says, will be international expansion.
“We’re just exploring it now,” he says. “Hopefully next year.”
Click the chart to enlarge. 

 

Via: Mashable