Let me be frank for one second, auctioning off your company’s private stock is nothing more than a ploy to raise the company’s valuation far beyond what it is actually worth. When stock is auctioned company’s wanting to acquire shares will over value their purchase, leading to higher stock prices and inevitably an inflated valuation. This week Twitter did just that, auctioning off enough company stock that the websites valuation how now skyrocketed to $7.7 billion.

So why would Twitter do such a thing? For one they have been the target of possibly acquisitions by Facebook and Google who have both showed an interesting in the micro-social program and will now have to pay with many more buckets of cash if they are to succeed in their takeover attempts. On a secondary level, Twitter now has more cash to acquire other social media company’s, allowing them to procure talent buys and drive new functionality to the website, an important consideration when you look at the acquisitions made by Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other larger tech firms over the last 12 months.

The new total is nearly double what the company was worth in January and at last check I haven’t seen them grow at a 100% visitor base or for that matter role out any groundbreaking technologies that will revolutionize the way people interact or advertise using the program. read more

Facebook has pushed hard to consolidate your presence across multiple websites to one login through Facebook Connect. Most sites only allow you to login or comment using Facebook Connect and the recent revamp of how content is shared to your friends brings what you do on the web in to what was a personal space. Facebook’s unification of logins and comments may be killing your authenticity.

Steve Cheney thinks Facebook’s move to broadcast your every move on sites that supports its Connect feature puts you in to a crowded arena where your voice must compete to be heard:

Facebook is no longer a social network. They stopped being one long before the movie. Facebook is really a huge broadcast platform. Everything that happens between its walls is one degree away from being public, one massive auditorium filled with everyone you’ve ever met, most of whom you haven’t seen or spoken to in years.

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If you’ve ever lost a link you’ve shared or saved then Trunk.ly could be the answer. Released from beta early in response to Yahoo’s planned divestment of Delicious, the site offers an easy way to keep track of what you’ve shared on the social web. The founders say:

“By connecting into your social networks, Trunk.ly monitors and collects the links that you find interesting across the social web. More importantly, it indexes the web pages these links point to and builds a personal search engine, so you never have to tag or describe a link again, you just search and Trunk.ly will find it again for you.” read more

AOL is pushing hard in the news sector, first by purchasing Huffington Post for $315 million and now by adding a new company to their Patch blog network roster, this time a startup called Outside.in.

Backed by the likes of CNN, Milestone Venture Partners, Betaworks and Union Square Ventures, Outside.in is a local news aggregator which will be added to Patch’s network of more than 800 local blogs.

It’s still unclear how AOL will choose to use Outside.in. The company could be used to feed local news to already existing blogs or it could remain as a hyper-local geographically based properly of it’s own. Then again with the number of “talent buys” these days, the move could be viewed as a more strategic means of bringing in top aggregation talent. read more

Google Profiles is looking a whole lot more snazzy today after the company released a complete redesign with pictures and user information added to the mix.

Using the program users can set their profile as “visible to everyone” which will then show their information at the top of Google Search results when someone searches for their name, given they don’t have a common name like mine (James Johnson).

Google obviously stole a note from Facebook, featuring the users photo at the top left corner of their page, with their most important information directly below those photos. Users can then navigate down the main middle part of the profile page to find more photos, employment info, education and the users location.

If you want to use your Google Profile you can visit profiles.google.com but don’t expect any type of Facebook rival type page to be displayed, it’s a nice redesign but far from groundbreaking. read more

WordPress.com, the host of many popular WordPress powered Blogs including TechCrunch, has been hit with a massive DDOS attack taking down the service. Blog owners are reporting slowness when logging in or loading their WordPress powered sites.

Graham Cluley, Senior technology consultant for Sophos Tweeted an email sent to VIP customers such as TechCrunch:

WordPress is currently being targeted by a extremely large Distributed Denial of Service attack which is affecting connectivity in some cases. The size of the attack is multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second.

We are working to mitigate the attack, but because of the extreme size, it is proving rather difficult. At this time, everything should be back to normal as the attack has subsided, but we are actively working with our upstream providers on measures to prevent such attacks from affecting connectivity going forward.

We will be making our VIP sites a priority in this endeavor, and as always, you can contact us [REDACTED] for the latest update. We will also update this post with more information as it becomes available.

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Content and social media company Demand Media, Inc. has acquired CoveritLive, a provider of real-time commentary, instant reader polling and question and answer capabilities to companies like ESPN, Ford, News Corp. and BBC. Terms of agreement of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Demand Media has a minority interest in CoveritLive since 2009. Today’s announcement of the acquisition will position CoveritLive as one of Demand Media’s portfolio of social solutions, along with Pluck.

Events hosted on CoveritLive attracts an audience of over 60 million people every month, 60% of which comes from outside the United States. Just recently, the company powered conversations during the Academy Awards for People, TMZ, Entertainment Weekly, Variety and the Daily Beast.

CoveritLive’s reach, coupled with the more than 100 million monthly visitors from Demand Media’s vertical web properties, is expected to strengthen the company’s original content offerings.

My pity goes to those who bought iPad yesterday.

As we were expecting, Apple has introduced iPad 2 with an entirely new design that is 33 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter than the original. While maintaining its 9.7-inch LED-backlit LCD screen, iPad 2 boasts of having Apple’s new dual-core A5 processor for faster performance. It now has two cameras for FaceTime and Photo Booth and for capturing 720p HD video. Despite all the new features, battery life remains at 10 hours. The new tablet also runs on both AT&T and Verizon’s 3G networks. Black or white? They have both colors. The new iPad 2 Smart Cover with self-aligning magnetic hinge is also an innovative piece of product by itself. Prices stay the same.

What was more stunning was the presence of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is currently on medical leave, to present the new product. The obviously ill head of Apple received a standing ovation from the throng of press people who witnessed the event.

“With more than 15 million iPads sold, iPad has defined an entirely new category of mobile devices,” jobs said. “While others have been scrambling to copy the first generation iPad, we’re launching iPad 2, which moves the bar far ahead of the competition and will likely cause them to go back to the drawing boards yet again.”

Would I buy iPad 2? I doubt. I’ll wait for iPad 3 which we expect to be better than iPad 2.

There is a large segment of the adult population, those above 50, who for different reasons cannot or will not attend classes in a classroom. With this new offering from SeniorNet, a nonprofit organization, seniors who are homebound or have limited mobility now have the opportunity to access 200 online courses on computer skills at affordable prices.

The SeniorNet Online Learning Center is an addition brought forth by feedback from prospective and existing members. The new offering is expected to push ahead SeniorNet’s mission which is to provide older adults education for and acces to computer technologies to enhance their lives and enable them to share their knowledge and wisdom.

Mimi Witcher, a tech savvy senior instructor and former Teacher of the Year at Richland College in Dallas, TX designed the curriculum. It is a virtual campus, available at any time of the day, divided into three sections.

In the Computer section, students can choose from 200-plus senior-friendly computer and Internet lesson plans written specifically for them that have been taught in a college classroom or SeniorNet Classroom Learning Center. The Get Connected section teaches students how to share their love, thoughts or photos. The Explore the World section has numerous departments containing hundreds of faculty recommended websites for students to visit.

The boys and girls at Yahoo! have released their second official Flickr app, which courts not only Windows Phone 7 but also tablets sporting Microsoft’s latest OS too.

Back in January, we let you know about some exciting mobile developments we had in store for you, and some of you may have already caught a sneak peak of the newest member of our family here at Flickr. Today, we’re excited to officially introduce Flickr for Windows Phone 7® and Flickr for Windows Phone 7®!

While it’s not surprising to see Yahoo! courting Microsoft’s smartphone (especially after the latter assimilated Yahoo! search in August of 2010), their creation of a Flickr app for Windows 7 tablets is puzzling (since they are already running the full OS).

Yahoo! has not indicated on whether they will consider embracing other platforms (like Android, webOS or even Blackberry), although the company may consider releasing official apps in order to help expand their global influence.

Flickr’s embrace of Windows Phone 7 should come as a healthy sign that Yahoo! is committed to keeping their photo social networking service alive (as opposed to “sun setting” it like they are doing with MyBlogLog and Delicious).