Worldcrunch
GAIBANDHA DISTRICT — In remote areas of Bangladesh, the Internet can arrive in unpredictable ways. Take for example, Shathi, who rolls into a small village, ringing the bell on her bike – and soon the kids are running to tell their parents, screaming “Hello! Hello!” And so the women of the village come out of […]
Worldcrunch MENLO PARK – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is spearheading a new initiative to bring Internet access to “the next five billion people,” those too poor or disconnected to be able to get online. The new global partnership, Internet.org, launches Wednesday, and also includes several major mobile phone companies. Here’s an introduction video: “Everything Facebook […]
BERLIN – Denise from Sossenheim does it. “Mmm…,” it says under the picture of ochre-yellow lentil soup. David from Berlin does it too. On his Facebook page he shows what looks like the pizza he ordered for lunch with the words “Super Pizza” written underneath the image. For many young people, photographing their food and […]
A German writer is fed up with the hypocrisy of an exhibitionist society outraged by the limits of privacy. Yes, you are being monitored. Now get back to your celebrity Twitter feed.
-Op-Ed- Andrés Gioeni, a 41-year-old Argentinian man, served as a priest in Mendoza, Argentina, for more than two years before giving up the cassock. Now working as an actor, director and writer of children’s plays, he lives with his boyfriend of more than nine years, Luis, in Greater Buenos Aires’ San Isidro. He recently wrote […]
After top tech companies were shown to be dodging taxes in several European countries, similar questions have now emerged in Israel. An exclusive from top Israeli business daily Calcalist.
-Essay- GENEVA – Have you ever heard of Dan Rollman? If so, you are spending way too much time on your computer – just like me. Dan is a Canadian native who now lives in New York and works in media. On May 28, he caught the attention of Internet addicts when he went viral […]
Google+, the social network of the American web giant is, in fact, a lot more than a social network. Larry Page, the web giant’s CEO, describes it as “the social backbone” of a company whose ambition is simple, if not the least bit modest: to control the Internet. “If Google+ was just a social network, […]
Founded in Latvia, Ask.fm is exploding around the world. Its users communicate with questions and answers. Here’s one: How cruel can young people be with each other?
ISTANBUL – “The media have sold out! The media have sold out!” several thousand protesters chanted in front of NTV offices. Their beef with the Turkish news channel was that it had stayed silent too long about what was going on in and around Gezi Park in Istanbul. The protesters feel the press has let […]
BUENOS AIRES – Argentina’s capital has a new problem: the growing number of “underground” parties in improvised nightclubs and bars – a sector that is thriving in utter illegality. In the past two months, authorities have closed down 15 so-called mega-parties, where alcohol was being sold without a license and which operated without a city […]
LES ECHOS (France), EU OBSERVER (Belgium), BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP (USA), WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, DATA PROTECTION IN EUROPE Worldcrunch BRUSSELS – This week, more than 90 leading academics across Europe launched a petition to support the European Commission’s draft data protection regulation, reports the EU Observer. The online petition, entitled Data Protection in Europe, says “huge […]
LA CRÓNICA, EXCELSIOR (Mexico) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – Ciudad Victoria, a city in one of the most dangerous states in Mexico today, Tamaulipas, was recently flooded with brochures offering money for information on the people behind a project called “Valor por Tamaulipas” (Courage for Tamaulipas). The project is indeed courageous, aiming to diffuse information regarding […]
Facebook is the upstart, Google is the grizzled veteran — and still the powerhouse — in the massive battle for online advertising dollars. But when the cash register rings, who gets the credit? That is the billion-dollar question in advertising these days—particularly in Internet advertising, where it’s easy to track clicks and links, but often […]
SAINT-NAZAIRE- “Business is slow these days, too slow…” says 34-year-old restaurant employee from Saint-Nazaire in western France, Cedric Derouin. As he dries drinking glasses, he talks about the consecutive closings of dozens of local businesses, the laying off of his only coworker a few months ago. He shares his uncertain future with the workers from […]
MADRID – Spanish has become the most spoken language in the world after English – in real life as well as on social networking sites. It is the second most used language on Twitter, after English, ahead of Portuguese and Japanese. These findings were presented in Madrid last week by the head of the Cervantes […]
Facebook rolled out a new feature for the Messenger app on iPhone that lets you make free phone calls to your friends using a WiFi or cellular data connection. There are, of course, a few caveats: But the calling feature in Messenger hints at the grander plans Facebook has for you phone. Just like Facebook […]
BBC, THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch NEW YORK– Dan Brown, the bestselling author of the Da Vinci Code, is set to release a new novel on May 14. According to The Guardian, Dan Brown’s dapper, tweed-suited symbologist Robert Langdon, the man who cracked The Da Vinci Code and found The Lost Symbol, is about to embark […]
GOMA – While the Congolese government was keeping the public in the dark about the fall of Goma to the M23 rebels in mid-November, here the news had already gone viral on Facebook. Soon after the rest of Congo was checking in on a variety of social networks to follow news updates and the latest […]
GENEVA – To distinguish themselves from Facebook and Twitter, new social networks are trying to find a different economic model. A trend is emerging – the return to paid subscriptions. From App.net to Diaspora, here is a short review of these new actors. App.net, the paying Twitter “We are selling our product, not our users.” […]
LONDON- We’re at 70 Lower Clapton Road, northeast London, where David and Eleanor are manning the register. While the clock approaches noon, the machine passes the 500-pounds mark (more than $810). It’s been ages since the two owners of independent bookshop “Pages of Hackney” managed to tally such amount, all done without any special marketing […]
European law may require right to anonymity. Will Zuckerberg’s ad-based business model “crumble”?
Online nvitation was for Dec. 21, the Mayan calendar’s fateful day…
Seniors Demographic Reaches Social Media Tipping Point.
RUSSIA TODAY (Russia), BLOOMBERG, REUTERS, FOREIGN POLICY (USA), GLOBALWEBINDEX, TECH WEEK EUROPE (U.K.), IRISH TIMES (Ireland), DER SPIEGEL (Germany), MAIL AND GUARDIAN (South Africa) Worldcrunch PARIS – Facebook reached one billion users today. Now that one out of seven people on earth log on, the ubiquitous site has changed habits and affected lives worldwide. Here’s […]
KOMMERSANT (Russia), FACEBOOK, TWITTER Worldcrunch MOSCOW – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg met with Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev to discuss the possibility that the social network’s presence in Russia expand from the virtual to physical world. The two talked business development at the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a Silicon-Valleyesque tech center near the city of Samara, […]
LES ECHOS, METRO, 20 MINUTES (France), BBC, THE TELEGRAPH (UK) Worldcrunch Facebook has been forced to deny reports that private messages have been appearing publicly on the social networking site, as millions of users panic and company share prices plummet. France’s leading business daily Les Echos reports that the French government has summoned Facebook managers […]
EL NACIONAL, LA JORNADA (Mexico) Worldcrunch MEXICO CITY – What if that kidney you needed for a transplant showed up, but the surgeon didn’t? That scenario is too often a reality in Mexico, says Arturo Dib Kuri, the director of the country’s National Transplant Center (CENATRA). Dib Kuri warned that Mexico loses around 20 percent […]
PARIS – If you go by its website, Mars Kebab is the only fast-food restaurant in Paris that delivers sandwiches to the planet Mars. In the real world, Mars Kebab doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t keep it from having an excellent reputation on the web. Its promotional video has been viewed 105,000 times on YouTube, […]
Los Angeles 12:53 PM: a steak topped with pieces of pineapple, three girls showing off their necklines, a black convertible sport car and a black mug shot in low-angle. São Paulo, 4:53 PM: a manicure seen close-up, a SpongeBob cup, a diamond tattooed on a thigh and three friends drinking champagne. Tokyo, 4:53 AM: a […]
JAKARTA GLOBE, ANTARA NEWS (Indonesia), AAP (Australia) Worldcrunch JAKARTA – A new Islamic social networking site will be launched in Indonesia in November, and will offer “better protection” for young Muslims from “harmful content” reports the Jakarta Globe. According to the Indonesian newspaper, the Beta version of the site is currently being tested by 1,000 […]
Over 150 years ago the Gold Rush began in California. It made some people very rich, but most people who were a part of it were only enriched by the experience. Today, the state is making people dream again – but this time it’s silicon, not gold, that’s making them see big. The half-metal is […]