Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey, had a vested interested in Instant Messaging which soon led to the birth of Twitter in 2006. Dorsey was captivated by the status update function of AIM and constantly changed his status while following his friend’s status changes (sound familiar yet?) The idea of updating your status to a group of friends — the first concept of Twitter — was cultivated from the chronological timelines of LiveJournal posts and consecutive status updates:

I loved seeing at a glance my friends status updates. But I also really appreciated at the same time the dispatch aspect, where you’re out in the world doing something away from the keyboard and IM did not allow that,” said Dorsey. “I had a RIM pager, the 850, the first email device. I programed a system where I could fire off an email from that and set my status from anywhere. And it worked! And I was able to also at a regular interval pull my buddy list and get those updates sent to my email address. It was awesome! But the number of people who had those mobile devices was so minimal that the timing was just not right. This was 2001.”

Accessing Amazon’s cloud player through an iOS device required the use of a third-party browser but recently gained native Safari support. However, there are some interface issues that you need to be aware of:

Amazon has since updated the web client to work with iOS devices. While it isn’t quite as nice as an actual app, it provides nearly all of the functionality that you could ask for. Even the multitasking music controls work flawlessly. Sound quality is said to be “great,” and the only part of it that is a little buggy seems to be the scrubbing capability.

Unfortunately you can’t upload music directly from iOS which is a limit of the mobile OS and Safari rather than Amazon’s fault. While Amazon has enabled expanded iOS support for its cloud-based music player, the interface is meant to be viewed on a laptop or desktop. Accessing the player on your iPhone will require some panning and zooming while the iPad may provide a more comfortable view.

The latest attempt at a Wikileak clone comes from the Wall Street Journal. Dubbed SafeHouse, the site will allow users to anonymously upload sensitive data which will be dispersed and presented online.

In a perfect world any information uploaded to SafeHouse would be completely anonymous, you wouldn’t have to fear retribution for your loose lips and I’d be driving a Porsche along the beautiful Southern California coastline while sipping a margarita. Sadly this isn’t a perfect world, I don’t own a Porsche nor can I drive drunk and the Wallstreet Journal has no problem reporting you to the authorities for information uploaded to their Wikileaks competitor:

“Except when we have a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement… we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others.”

As if the fear of being turned into a government with a bone to pick wasn’t bad enough, SafeHouse’s security mechanisms are less than stellar. Applebaum, one of the lead developers of the Tor anonymity network called out SafeHosue for a poor implementation of SSL. Despite the option to browse using a secure connection over HTTPS, the site doesn’t actually switch from the insecure connection. This opens up the possibility for data interception which could give a man in the middle an almost clear picture of who you are which completely destroys any anonymity associated with SafeHouse.

Around 1 AM as a US helicopter closed in on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, an IT consultant some miles away live Tweeted the entire raid unaware of what was really going on. Sohaib Athar under his handle @ReallyVirtual Tweeted that a helicopter was hovering around the area and later crashed from gun fire.

It would take another few hours for the impact of what happened to reach Athar but his name quickly spread like wildfire for live Tweeting the assassination of Bin Laden and the aftermath. Athar’s Tweets gave everyone a new perspective of the raid that transcended jubilant praise and analysis from news anchors and took viewers to the local’s reaction which ranged from confusion to celebration.

The operation had created a significant impact on the Internet and was a trending topic across Twitter. News of the raid and the White House’s following responses were retweeted and regurgitated across Facebook and Twitter multiple sources confirmed Bin Laden’s assassination. The height of the buzz came around Obama’s speech which officially confirmed the success of the military operation. Over 4,000 Tweets were generated per second. An image released by Twitter reveals the impact the news made on Twitter.

The last major assassination of a threat deemed significant by the US was Saddam Hussein in late 2003. Twitter had yet to be conceived and it would be months before Facebook would be launched. The fallout of Hussein’s capture was extraordinary as news outlets reported Hussein’s eventual capture but today the Internet plays a more significant role than it did almost 8 years ago. Social Media gives us access to realtime events and gave us an up-front view in to the raid against Bin Laden and the eventual impact his assassination made online.

Amazon working on a tablet has yet to be officially confirmed but has been talked about in tech circles. The tablet is purportedly being built by Samsung, destined for a summer launch and will be running a highly customized version of Android instead of version 3.0 Honeycomb. So what else will the tablet pack? Peter Rojas talked about the tablet’s purported specs:

Let’s start with a critical question about this tablet: What version of Android will it run? I think there’s an assumption that any Amazon tablet will run Android 3.0, Google’s tablet-specific version of the OS. However, given Google’s recent moves to tighten how OEMs can use Honeycomb, this might not be so likely. In fact, it’s entirely possible that Amazon’s tablet, like the NOOK Color, will use Android as a base upon which to build a totally customized experience that tightly integrates Amazon services. That integration would let Amazon charge a lot less for its tablet than it would otherwise. The reason Barnes & Noble has been able to price the NOOK Color so aggressively ($250 versus $350 to $450 for comparably-sized and spec’d Android tablets) is because they’re assuming you’re going to buy a bunch of books from them over the course of owning it.

The question is, does the world need another tablet, especially one that aims to go head to head with the iPad? Amazon may be banking on integration with its music and book services to boost revenue in those departments. Apple took the opposite approach of using digital stores to boost sales of the Hardware but since Amazon has an established media store, tablets that leverage those purchases may give it some ammo against other tablets.

The meet was broadcasted live on Ustream and can be re-watched here. Obama took the time to address budget issues in regards to the health and tech sectors, why math and science are so valuable in today’s economy and stressed the real job generators in the field of technology and the web:

“I always hear stories about how we can’t find engineers, and that’s why we’re emphasizing Math and Science … We want to start making Science cool. I want people to feel about the next big energy breakthrough and the next big Internet breakthrough the same way they felt about the moonwalk.”

When speaking about immigration reform Obama brought up Intel founder Andy Grove as a prime example of why the US should and will welcome immigrants who want to pursue science and math:

“We’ve got ambitious people from all around the world, that come here because they have a new idea … If we’ve got smart people who want to come here and start businesses, who’ve got PhDs in math and science and computer science. Why wouldn’t we want them to stay? … These are job generators,”

While most of Obama’s town hall speech could be considered preaching to choir, he does highlight a very valid point about the growing Internet revolution. The president likened the massive achievements made thanks to the power of the web to Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon.

Obama further stressed the importance of a race to the top approach with science, space and math as smarter minds outpace their less tech-savvy counterparts.

The high level of checkins were a record breaker for Foursquare’s daily checkin count. To put that in perspective the 100 Millionth checkin was made in July of last year.

City support for Foursquare Day tripled when compared to last year’s numbers. Over 300 cities officially declared April 4th to be Foursquare day and massive city-wide celebrations took place. Fans and supporters got together to host Foursquare related parties which encourage checkins and helped the service reach 3 Million checkins for the day.

How did Foursquare day originate and why isn’t it the launch day at SXSW? The day was determined by Tampa, Florida resident Nate Bonilla-Warford by finding the square of 4 which is 16. 4 and 16 were matched to April 16th and was unofficially declared as Foursquare day.

The theory behind more social interactions happening later in the week is the quantity of content being published that day. It’s thought that posts, videos and other media is more sparse on Friday than the rest of the work week but not as low as the weekend. However, there isn’t a clear shift of content creators and socialites moving their activity to Thursday and Friday. Many brands and business still need more research done on social trends throughout the week and may opt to rely on data they’ve compiled about their demographic.

If anything, the notion has been people tend to interact with content before work, during lunch and after work but the increase in social interactivity on Friday makes sense. People tend to shift from work mode to fun mode and are looking to fill their weekends with events, activities or catch up with information they didn’t have a chance to look at during a stressful work week.

However, business looking to engage other businesses through social channels may luck out on Friday. At the end of a work week, employees and bosses are looking to shed their job for a few days off. Events, gathering, press releases will be pushed back to Monday when the entire office checks back in to work.

YouTube is taking on streaming live video through a new channel called YouTube Live which aims to bring more original content to the site and give users another reason to stay on longer. YouTube detailed the new feature in a Blog post:

Today we’re announcing the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page (www.youtube.com/live), where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage.

YouTube’s venture in to streaming video isn’t likely to usurp big content providers anytime soon but is starting to make online media more and more attractive. Existing video streaming sites such as Ustream, Livestream, Justin.tv and Stickam should be worried as YouTube, with the help of Google can recruit big names such as Arcade Fire and U2. If you’re worried about any user being able to stream live putting the video sharing site with the likes of Chat Roulette and its clones, don’t fret. Only trusted partners will be graced with the privilege of live streaming and the new feature is in Beta mode being rolled out slowly but gradually.

Branded pages, through which advertisers could deliver tailored messages, are under consideration, along with other plans to increase the long-term revenue potential of the social network, according to sources familiar with the subject.

Twitter’s move to woo advertisers and brands could be the next big thing for the microblogging service. While Twitter currently offers promoted accounts and suggested profiles to follow, it pales in comparison to how Facebook treats brands with custom ads, extensive page editing and the much proclaimed ‘Like’ button.

Would a Facebook style page for brands make sense on Twitter? Yes and no. It would give brands a point of consolidation for most of their Social Media activities but would go against the purpose of Twitter which have been used by brands for quick updates not meant to stick around for very long. This could be Twitter’s response to Facebook’s growing brand support.

The problem with Google +1 is the entire implementation. Search and social have had an odd relationship: sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t. This is one of the cases where Google’s treading the social waters with a tool that’s useful for a small subset of users.

Google relies on your friends searching for content and sifting through search results marking it with a +1 for their approval. The problem is your friend’s interests may not align with yours and their ratings may be buried in result that you’ll never see. More importantly, why would you wait to stumble upon your friend’s recommendations on sites or content they dug up through searches?

Social networks have excelled at promoting the best content found by users whereas Google wants to take the social aspect and apply it to search. This leads to rating and reviews being forgotten for days, weeks and months instead of being promoted as they become relevant. Despite the usefulness and good intentions of +1, i’d rather consult friends about their thoughts and ask their knowledge instead of hoping to find their recommendations by chance.

Google may have an interesting relationship with search and social in the coming months. One of its more social savvy features is promoting content pulled from your online friends on Buzz and Twitter that’s relevant to your search. Right now I don’t see Google +1 having a dramatic impact on the social sphere and I doubt its potential. It lacks speed and its usefulness is being squandered by a lack of sharing or cross promotion between friends.

Huffington Post Erects PayWall For NYTimes Employees

The New York Times has faced some retaliation from readers and Bloggers over erecting a paywall. While the publisher has tried to make good by allowing incoming links from social channels to sidestep the wall, backlash hasn’t eased.

Recognizing the opportunity to poke fun and mock the New York Times was AOL/HuffPo’s own pay wall. This pay wall is exclusive for New York Time’s Employees and mocks the restrictions placed on article viewing.

Dear New York Times Employee, thank you for visiting The Huffington Post!

We hope you’ve enjoyed your one free article this month.

As you may know, we are now charging New York Times employees for unlimited access to our content. You can come back next month for another free article or choose one of our NYT Employee Digital Subscription Plans ®.

In our most popular plan, Times employees can view the first 6 letters of each word at no charge (including slideshows of adorable kittens). After 6 letters, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber.

Subscribing is quick and easy.

If you’re a New York Times employee, we can’t see any reason not to subscribe! Just keep a look out for The Blog Herald’s own digital subscription service coming in the next few days.

Google Motion

In typical Google fashion is another fake feature coming to one its products. This year its Google Motion which allows you to control Gmail using only body motions and other gestures.

Motion is billed as a Beta product (for those who still don’t get the gag) and portrays a sarcastic view of office life and the tediousness of responding to emails

Angry Nerds

Angry Birds took the Blogosphere by storm. This year comes the amazing April Fools spinoff Angry Nerds. You get a random choice from six nerds: The Front Ender, The Hacker, The Outsourced, The Agilista, The Founder and The Dev Manager. The nerds feel like a spinoff of The Oatmeal’s take on Angry Birds.

What’s great about this gag is that Angry Nerds is playable in your browser for as long as you can endure the same level, characters and repetitive motion of the nerds.

Of the 1,000 or so cities that applied to be a part of Google’s 1 Gbps Fiber initiative, Kansas City beat them out. Google said the ability to work with local organizations was key in helping the search engine giant spread the wonder of 1 Gbps Fiber Internet. If you don’t live in Kansas City and are tucked in the outskirts of town, don’t worry. While Google has no intention of bringing Fiber services to other cities, it does have an eye on the surrounding communities should Kansas City prove to be a success.

Despite Google’s bold moving in becoming a local Internet Service Provider, it has no intentions of taking on the big guys such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T. In a blog post, Google reassured everyone it wasn’t making a crazy foray in to something way over heard its head but instead wanted to be a model for the future of Internet connectivity by starting small:

In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We’ve found this in Kansas City. We’ll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext and the University of Kansas Medical Center to help develop the gigabit applications of the future.

According to TechCrunch, the new feature is being rolled out to select users. The new ads will be chosen based on your email habits. Say you and a friend exchange information about an upcoming concert, Google is likely to choose ticket resellers, hotels and night life oriented Ads:

With features like Priority Inbox, we’ve been working hard to help sort through the ‘bacn’ in your messages — the unimportant messages that get in your way. Soon we’re going to try a similar approach to ads: using some of the same signals that help predict which messages are likely to be important to you, Gmail will better predict which ads may be useful to you. For example, if you’ve recently received a lot of messages about photography or cameras, a deal from a local camera store might be interesting. On the other hand if you’ve reported these messages as spam, you probably don’t want to see that deal.

Google used the same system that powers AdWords to display ads by perusing keywords in your mail. Basing ad searches on important mail, Google hopes its new system will display more relevant ads. However, some privacy concerns have been raised as Google takes on a bigger role in personalizing ads. You can lay those fears to rest as a robot only sifts through keywords in priority inbox.

An unnamed intern who was managing the Marc Jacob’s Twitter account until a replacement was found let out some revealing Tweets about Jacobs and the job. Last month a search was held for anyone interested in running Marc Jacbob’s Twitter account. Applicants were required to Tweet something clever and about 50 were chosen then dismissed according to the Twitter rants below:

“Rober won’t tweet anymore. He took it all to seriously. It upset him if anyone was mean. I’m gonna find someone by next week that he likes.”

“Spelling is hard for me. I hate this job. Hope they find someone soon. Robert is picky! We have presented him with 50 people. He’s not happy.

“Yea. Robert gets these urges to change all the stores on Bleeker St. around. (All the time). He thinks if he’s bored, so are the customers.?”

“Oh no! Robert wants to change around all the stores on Bleeker St. NYC. Again! Your guess is as good as ours. He’s gonna drive us all crazy!”

“You guys and gals have no idea how difficult Robert is. I am only an intern. My last day is tomorrow. I wouldn’t be tweeting this if not!”

“Good luck! I pray for you all. If you get the job! I’m out of here. See ya! Don’t want to be ya! Roberts a tyrant! Seriously! He is tough!”

“I can call him out! I’m out! Won’t work in this town again! I know that! Learned a lot. But, I don’t have the energy for what is expected”

Yea, walk in my MJ shoes! Don’t judge me! I’m alone in this office having to try and entertain you all. This isn’t easy. I have tried. Done!”

Early Saturday morning the offending Tweets were purged from MJ’s account and downplayed as nothing more than a disgruntled employee using Jacob’s phone without permission.

What puzzles me is why a temp or intern was entrusted with a such a high profile brand on a Social Media channel no less. Not being serious about your online presence has serious ramifications if the people running it are not trained to handle your brand or become discouraged with the company.

The unnamed intern has yet to be outed publicly but we have a feeling he or she will have a hard time finding another internship or job soon.

The new payment system would use NFC for transactions and surprisingly, Google won’t take a cut of the money being sent. Instead the search engine giant will be tapping customer information, data that has been largely neglected by most mobile payment processors. What Google intends to do with customer and mobile payment data remains unknown but it could be integrated into its shopping services to give buyers a more accurate reading of how popular a product is based on number of purchases.

Google is partnering with payment processing heavyweights and a who’s who in the mobile payment landscape such as Citigroup, Verifone, Mastercard and Vivotech. The new payment system would be baked in to the Android OS and mobile payment functionality would initially be available to Citigroup users. Verifone and Vivotech would provide retailers with NFC readers to accept payments from Android phones.

The Nexus S sold by Samsung has NFC built in which is used to send information between compatible devices and in the future mobile payments when Google rolls out its Android based payment system.

Google hasn’t given an exact time frame of when its NFC based payment system will be rolled out but reports say New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C will be test cities and a system should be rolled out in the next four months.

What’s interesting is the perspective of Firefox 4′s downloads over the first 48 hours. The 15.85 cumulative downloads is larger than the population of Los Angeles, California and the Internet in 1995.

What kind of life can I live where the toughest decision of my day is to choose whether or not I should sit in the front or back seat of a car? Evidently not the one I’m living now.

The song came under fire for its simple lyrics, horrible auto-tune, cheesy production and numerous flaws. The song was first uploaded to YouTube in early February to show friends and family and perhaps highlight Rebecca’s possible music career. Her mom did spend $2,000 on a music and media package, the end result being the Friday video. Over 40 Million views later and it’s the target of mockery and laughter. This the worst case scenario of viral content – when it works against you.

Every content creator dreams of driving massive amounts of traffic to something they created. It’s natural, heck I get a buzz when I see the RTs stack up on a post I write but as I’ve said before, Social Media is an amplification of what you do whether it’s good or bad. In this case Rebecca Black took up a microphone and screamed loud enough for large masses of the web to pass judgment which sadly was not in her favor. Her future career (if any) in music may have been annihilated before it could even start.

The backlash over Black’s video is the power of Social Media. Anything you do is amplified and even more so when it catches someone’s attention. However, you are held to a much higher standard and in Rebecca’s case, her lack of experience worked against her. Long story short, she wasn’t ready for primetime and faced the chopping block.

Automattic which owns WordPress.com, flipped the switch on its iPad optimized interface allowing Bloggers to create a custom mobile experience that doesn’t sacrifice content and formatting because a mobile device is accessing the Blog.

Instead, Automattic focuses on the advantages tablets have over laptops and desktops such as a custom touch interface and full screen browser. OnSwipe worked closely with Automattic to support touch gestures such as “swiping, rotation, and many other features of the iPad.”

The new iPad optimized Blogs take on a magazine like interface that focuses on content and takes advantage of iOS’s unique features. The new iPad friendly interface is modular and highly customizable. Users can change the font on their mobile layouts and change skins.

WordPress’s new focus on mobile devices, especially the iPad shows a greater explosion of support for mobile Blogging. In addition, WordPress boasted great growth numbers for its service. Speaking at SXSW, founding developer Matt Mullenweg revealed WordPress had grown from 10.5 million Blogs last march to 18 million today and it now powers 10% of the web.

The $315 Million acquisition of Huffington Post is part of a new path for AOL. In the past few months, Tim Armstrong released an internal company document detailing the new content direction AOL would be taking. The document came under fire for exploiting popular trends and churning out knee-jerk Blog posts in favor of increased traffic and revenue.

Huffington Post, which is powering AOL’s new content revamp has folded or absorbed 30 AOL brands. In the aftermath, 900+ AOL employees have been laid off and more face the axe. Freelancers employed by AOL are left wondering what their fate in the new company is.

In a company call by HuffPo’s newest Editor, Peter Goodman, a call for professional journalists was made. Those who weren’t Bloggers and could be considered Journalists but worked as freelancers were invited to join the HuffPo Media Group for full-time work.

Goodman also stressed the company isn’t looking for freelancers and Bloggers but focusing on journalists. Whether AOL’s current Blogs such as TUAW, Engadget and other online properties will receive a journalistic makeover remains to be seen. Goodman is taking action now by hiring journalists form major publications such as John Montorio from the New York Times.

In addition to AOL’s staff and content refresh, the company is consolidating its office with new hires. AOL’s New York, LA and Dulles offices will be seeing more journalists and taking on a newsroom atmosphere.

If you run your own site and don’t know what Google Analytics is, you’re missing out on vital information. The wealth of data Google tracks when visitors come to your site gives you a very accurate profile of your target demographic and what they’re looking for. Here’s how you can supercharge your Blogging by using Google Analytics.

Are Visitors Really Reading Your Content?

As Bloggers we love it when readers not only share content but well, read it. I’m not talking about lightly skimming through the post and picking out the most important pieces of information but actually reading it. When you log in to Google Analytics and select the dashboard for your site, you’ll notice the Content Overview box in the lower right hand corner. The information in the section shows the top performing content on your site.

Clicking on the top links — which are hopefully Blog posts — shows how long a visitor had that page displayed. You’ll have to estimate how long it would take you to read your post at a normal rate and see if it matches the time reported by Google Analytics. If it’s close (everyone reads at different speeds) then you’ll have a better idea of how your readers are interacting with your content.

Social Media Campaigns

One of the coolest tricks I learned while using Google Analytics on a daily basis was creating custom tracking links that can be used with a Social Media ‘Marketing’ strategy. This is the same tracking link you would build for a traditional Google Adwords run but can be condensed using bit.ly or your favorite URL shortening service.

Building a Google Tracking URL is extremely simple and will give you a better understanding of which Blog posts are the most popular in the social sphere.

Here’s how I set up my tracking URLs

Campaign Source: Where is the content originating from? Hint: It’s most likely your Blog
Campaign Medium: Where are you sending the content? Twitter, Facebook or just a general Social Network submission?
Campaign Term: Always left blank
Campaign Content: Short name of the Blog post.
Campaign Name: What major category would it fall under? Is it part of your campaign on tracking tutorial posts or opinion pieces?

The results are available for each site under Traffic Sources > Campaigns.

Using these links when posting on Facebook, Twitter or any network will give you a more accurate reading of how the Social Sphere responds to your content. When working with clients and using Google’s tracking URLs, it showed me which post categories were popular and how I should improve on them. Just as important, Google Analytics also showed which posts failed to capture attention and frankly turned off followers.

Google Analytics packs a treasure trove information about your site. When used in creative ways, it can reveal much more about your site, your brand and how it’s being perceived online. Combining Google Analytics with your existing analytical tools can energize any social strategy.

The new iPad friendly addition is a change to the light box. When browsing the site on your iPad you’ll be able to access a full screen photo viewer and initiate a slideshow:

We’re happy to announce some big improvements to the photo light box for iPad users! The light box is a handy, full browser photo viewer available from any photo page. From a photo page on Flickr, simply tap on a photo to view it larger (if available) and on a clean, dark background.

While Flickr has a native iPhone App that taps in to the power of iOS and the hardware, no native iPad exists yet. Flickr may opt to focus on its site and continue improving it for iPad users instead of releasing an official App. As fellow Blog Herald author Darnell Clayton mused, Yahoo’s growing commitment to the service and expanding features to mobile devices hints Yahoo! doesn’t want to shutdown the service like it’s doing with Delicious.

The channel dubbed YouTube Person Finder launched March 18th and its aim is to collect video messages of those most affect in the disaster. At launch, messages shot by a major TV Station in Japan — TBS — will be shown. More videos will be added as the infrastructure improves. Major stations such as TV Asahi are expected to help the victims record their own messages as well to send to the channel.

Kevin’s departure comes in the wake of continued user outrage over the new Digg redesign and a mass exodus of users to competing social site Reddit. Management decisions and disagreements between former Digg CEO Jay Adelson and Kevin led to a botched launch of Digg V4. During this time Kevin began experimenting with other startups.

TechCrunch’s sources also said Kevin Rose was closing a round of funding for a new startup he is working with. In recent years Kevin has shied away from Digg to lead a more active role in the startup scene. In mid 2007 during his prolonged absence from Digg, Kevin founded the microblogging service Pownce which was later sold to Six Apart.

At this time it is unknown which startup Kevin is a part of. It will be interesting to see the fate of Digg and whether Diggnation, a weekly Podcast that showcases the best stories on the Social news site will continue. We wish Kevin Rose the best of luck in his newest ventures.

UPDATE

Kevin Rose has confirmed his departure from Digg:

Wow, tons of questions – I’ll continue advising Digg / on the board of directors, & taping Diggnation (as i have been since @mwdigg joined).

The buyout can only lead to positive things for all YouTube users as Green Parrot Pictures’ expertise is improving video quality on content such as streaming movies. Google aims to not only improve the quality of uploaded videos but also the speed at which they are streamed.

Storing Terabytes upon Terabytes of just video is no easy task. Making the site scale and streaming so much content without missing a beat is a monumental task. Being more efficient is how video is encoded and streamed is YouTube’s big goal for 2011:

Today, we’re pleased to announce we’ve acquired Green Parrot Pictures, a digital video technology company founded by Associate Professor Anil Kokaram at the Engineering School of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. In the last six years, their small team of engineers has built cutting-edge video quality improvement technology that has been used in major studio productions from Lord of the Rings to X-Men to Spider-Man. Their technology helps make videos look better while at the same time using less bandwidth and improving playback speed.

If you’ve found an amazing video yet turned off by shoddy camera work or the terrible quality of the camera used, you’ll start to see a massive improvement. Green Parrot’s advanced algorithms focus on video stabilization, de-blotching, removing flicker and color correction. Green Parrot has some great examples on its site of how its technology works.