From Yahoo Finance -

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, May 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A - News and CBS - News) has entered into an agreement to acquire CNET Networks, Inc., it was announced today by Leslie Moonves, President and Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corporation. Under the terms of the agreement, CBS will make a cash tender offer for all issued and outstanding shares of CNET Networks for $11.50 per share, representing an equity value of approximately $1.8 billion. The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month, and approximately 200 million users worldwide.

COMMENTS -

This acquisition will provide CBS a big push on its Internet strategy and capitalize the new generation of Internet users. Forward thinking leaders in the media industry has also probably recognize that the Internet is here to stay and Internet growth patterns will continue to entice more investors and businesses to grow in this space.

From CNET -

“…I think a lot of companies have what I call ’strategitis.’ Instead of launching a product, which would apparently make too much sense, they come up with a ’strategy.’ There’s a strong temptation for companies that don’t have strong social networking franchises to roll out social networking ‘features’ instead of products, and in reality, consumers like to have products.”

COMMENTS -

Consumers like to have products? That’s pretty subjective in my opinion. At the end of the day, users will weigh the available benefits on the products/features. If that thing gives me more power and flexibility with no extra cost — that will be the winner for me. Whether you like it or not, it’s time to innovate if Ning wants to survive its own “nuclear winter”(a quote being used by its own founder) .

COMMENTS:

Again, Big Brother is trying to dominate everything. With Google Friend Connect, every website can scale itself to become a social network website (by using the Google Friend Connect “Gadgets”) . It’s really amazing how this cool application works and it really does give power back to the user.

It almost feels like Google had come from a long way to make this happen with the previous efforts to make existing social networks more open (with Google Open Social campaign, etc) . Then again, it wasn’t really too long ago and Google has taken another step closer to make branded/existing social networks irrelevant and saturated.

What about Ning? As some of you might know, Ning is a popular white label social network that allows users create their own social networks. With Google Friend Connect, anybody can do the same without using Ning. Plus, Google Friend Connect allows more flexibility and allows users to leverage on existing social network without any extra charge. As apposed to Ning that requires you to pay for more control over your social network website.

My guess is that Ning needs to innovate quickly before they become obsolete. Google is gaining more momentum to make social network open and non-exclusive. If users feel they prefer a more open platform, then Ning will soon be in serious trouble. After all, Ning had just raised another USD$60m last month and I am sure a lot of us (especially investors) are expecting good things to come from them.

The video about Google Friend Connect:

From Arstechnica-

During Nokia’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo seemed to change the direction of the entire company. “Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an internet company,” Kallasvuo told his shareholders. “Companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with. Make no mistake: We are taking on these challenges seriously and aggressively.”

COMMENTS -

This makes sense as the Internet is becoming more and more like a second layer of every day life. It could be very well in the future where everyone will live TWO lives - the real world and the virtual world on the internet. And the virtual life becomes more significant to connect with people all around the world and globalization is the Internet.

There is a rumor going around that a new iPhone will be out in the coming days.

Reason being is that outlets/retailers are told to stop selling the old iPhone and thus preparing for the new launch!

So are we looking at the next generation iPhone this week? I surely hope so

From CNET -

Amid speculation that Microsoft is looking to make an acquisition, Powerset launched a public beta of its Wikipedia search engine. It brings a new, rich semantic dimension via natural language query processing to Wikipedia that greatly improves the search and reading experience.

The company calls it a first step in changing the way users search and consume Web content. “It’s a complete shift. You see this and you want to experience all content in this way,” Barney Pell, co-founder and CTO of Powerset, told me. “And, as an introduction, it will drive huge investment in semantic and linguistic technology, just as investments were made in information retrieval and scalable databases in the past. People working in this space will be very marketable.”

COMMENTS -

I hope they will quickly solve these setbacks and I wish them Good Luck! (I am sure they are going to need a lot of it if they are planning to go solo and emerge to be the next search giant)

Take a ride on YouTube’s memory lane and watch how it was founded: