What was hot on the web this week? Get up to speed on the latest trends, news and services with some of our favorite new stories.
LinkedIn To Acquire SlideShare For $119M Cash And Stock
Professional social network LinkedIn announced Wednesday that it will acquire presentation-sharing startup SlideShare for $118.75 million in cash and stock.
The acquisition makes sense for LinkedIn, which is by far the largest business-oriented social network, with 161 million members worldwide. In addition to connecting with business folks, finding new hires and reading professional-focused news and content, LinkedIn users will now be able to share presentations across the web via the social network.
The acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2012.
Read more here.
Prismatic Wants To Be The Newspaper For A Digital Age
The supply of information we have available to us is almost never-ending, but we still need an easy and efficient way to filter it, find what is interesting, and share it with others. The field is filled with players who think they can solve that problem, including News.me, Flipboard and Zite. One of the newest is San Francisco-based startup Prismatic.
What Prismatic does it analyze as much as it can about you when you connect to it with your Twitter account (co-founder Bradford Cross says support for Facebook and other networks will be coming, as will a mobile app – for now it’s desktop only) and then start recommending things to you based on what it thinks your interests are.
So what makes Prismatic special? Cross says it is the data analysis and algorithms and other processes that it is able to apply to that massive stream of content that flows through a user’s social graph – and hence, the quality of the suggestions that it can make about topics or stories of interest.
Read more here.
Facebook Messenger Apps Get More Life-Like, Now Show If Someone’s Read Your Message
Facebook thinks mobile messaging should feel like you’re having a face-to-face conversation, so it has updated its Messenger for iOS and Android apps with the ability to see if someone’s read your message, and easier ways to tell if someone’s typing and where they’re messaging from.
The updates are “mobile first”. They’ll start by appearing in the standalone Messenger apps, and slowly roll out to Facebook’s primary mobile apps and the web interface.
These updates underline Facebook’s goal of a smooth transition away from being a web-focused company.
Read more here.
Pinstagram! How Two Friends Merged Pinterest And Instagram In Two Days
Friends Pek Pongpaet and Brandon Leonardo were discussing how many startups are pitched to VC firms with phrases such as “We’re an X for Y.” The two realized a “Pinterest for Instagram” would be the most extreme example, and thus, Pinstagram was born.
After connecting your Instagram account, you view your photo stream in the waterfall layout Pinterest is known for. You can like and comment on photos, as in the Instagram app. At the same time, you can pin photos to your Pinterest pinboards.
In addition to desktop browsing, Pinstagram improves Instagram’s search feature, adding a search tab in the top left corner.
Read more here.
