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Twitter Plans To Launch Photo-Sharing Service

The rumor mill has been churning Monday afternoon with reports that Twitter is working on its own photo-sharing service that would compete with the likes of Twitpic and Yfrog.

TechCrunch first reported the tip, citing multiple unnamed sources, Monday afternoon. And now All Things D seems to have confirmed the story as well, going so far as to say the service will be announced this week. ATD‘s story also cites unnamed sources, but claims the announcement will be made at its own conference, D9, this week in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Read More: Twitter Plans To Launch Photo-Sharing Service

New iPhone To Be Called iPhone 4S?

Speculation continues to swirl around the next iPhone, and now an analyst claims he has new information about the highly anticipated smartphone from Apple.

It will be called “iPhone 4S” when it’s released in September, according to Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek. He adds that Apple will announce “distribution deals for the iPhone with Sprint and T-Mobile in time for the holidays.”

In addition, the new iPhone will have a dual-core A5 processor under the hood, helping it keep up with numerous dual-core smartphone competitors already on the market such as the Motorola Atrix 4G and HTC Sensation.

Misek added that the iPhone’s design will remain the same except for “minor” cosmetic changes, but he did write that its front and rear cameras will be improved to an unspecified extent.

Read More: New iPhone To Be Called iPhone 4S?

Just Weeks Away, A Preview Of The Google +1 Button For Websites

Today at the Google I/O conference, Google gave developers a preview of how the Google +1 button can be inserted into websites, some of the stats it will offer and said it would be available “in a matter of weeks.”

The button will have a counter display similar to how other buttons from Facebook and Twitter work. The image over on the right is a mockup of how it might look at the Huffington Post, as created by Google.

+1 Button Comes In “Weeks”

No, the Huffington Post doesn’t yet have this button. No one does yet, Google said. But Timothy Jordan, the developer advocate from Google who lead the developer session, said it’s only weeks away.

Button Generation Form

Installation for most people will be done by using a simple code generator that allows setting of size, whether to include a count and other options.

Read More: Just Weeks Away, A Preview Of The Google +1 Button For Websites

Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.5 Billion

After rumors that first Facebook and then Microsoft were in talks to acquire Skype, the latter announced that it has acquired the VoIP giant for $8.5 billion in cash.

Skype will be integrated into Microsoft devices and systems such as Xbox and Kinect, Xbox Live, the Windows Phone, Lync and Outlook, Microsoft said in a statement. The company has pledged to continue supporting and developing Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms as well.

The deal, which was spearheaded by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with assistance from Charles Songhurst, the company’s head of corporate strategy, was completed Monday evening, AllThingsD reported earlier.

The acquisition is an expensive one for Microsoft. Not only is it the largest price Microsoft has paid for a company in decades, Skype is not yet profitable. Despite revenues totaling $860 million last year and operating profits of $264 million, the company lost $6.9 million overall, according to documents filed with the SEC. And the company carries $686 million in debt.

Read More: Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.5 Billion

Facebook sharing sending readers to big news sites

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is influencing what news gets read online as people use the Internet’s most popular hangout to share and recommend content.

That’s one of the key findings from a study on the flow of traffic to the Web’s 25 largest news destinations. The study was released Monday by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Facebook was responsible for 3 percent of traffic to the 21 news sites that allowed data to be tracked, according to the study’s co-author, Amy Mitchell. Five of the sites studied got 6 percent to 8 percent of their readers from Facebook.

The referrals typically came from links posted by friends on Facebook’s social-networking site or from the ubiquitous “like” buttons, which Facebook encourages other websites to place alongside their content.

The Facebook effect is small compared with Google’s clout. Google Inc.’s dominant search engine supplies about 30 percent of traffic to the top news sites, according to Pew.

But Facebook and other sharing tools, such as Addthis.com, are empowering people to rely on their online social circles to point out interesting content. By contrast, Google uses an automated formula to help people find news.

Facebook is at the forefront of this shift because it has more than 500 million worldwide users. That’s far more than any other Internet service built for socializing and sharing.

Read More: Facebook sharing sending readers to big news sites

iPhone OS updates could soon come wirelessly

iPhone users generally have things pretty good –– varied selection of apps, solid data service, seamless connectivity with most computers. What iPhone users do not have is the ability to wirelessly update their operating system. Until now! (Maybe.) Over at the usually-reliable tech site 9 to 5 Mac, Mark Gurman reports that Apple and Verizon are in the process of bringing this functionality to the iPhone, perhaps as soon as this fall.

As Gurman notes, wireless updates are already commonplace in the Android ecosystem, and why not? It’s easier and simpler to push updates directly to handsets –– much easier than the current Apple set-up, which requires users to sync up their iPhone with iTunes. Gurman says it is unclear whether or not Apple is negotiating a similar wireless functionality with AT&T; right now, it looks like Verizon users would get the feature first.

Read More: iPhone OS updates could soon come wirelessly

First Tweet Sent From Top of Mount Everest [VIDEO]

British mountain climber Kenton Cool used a 3G connection to make a call and send a tweet on the summit of Mount Everest.

This was made possible when the Nepali mobile network operator Ncell installed the first 3G station at the base camp of Mount Everest in October 2010.

Now, in a nifty marketing trick, Samsung sponsored Cool to use its most powerful smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S II, to make the first 3G call and tweet from the summit.

Read More: First Tweet Sent From Top of Mount Everest

Facebook To Buy Skype? [REPORT]

Two reliable sources say Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is talking to Skype about either buying the company or forming a joint venture, according to Reuters.

One of the sources said Facebook is considering a buyout of Skype at a price of between $3 billion and $4 billion.

The other source told Reuters the deal won’t be a purchase by Facebook but rather a joint venture between Facebook and Skype.

Skype and Facebook are no strangers. In October, when Skype released its version 5.0 software for Windows, it included a Facebook tab that let users chat or call Facebook friends via Skype, right from the Facebook newsfeed that can be viewed from within the Skype application.

Read More: Facebook To Buy Skype?

Facebook: Now Serving Over 500 Million Users and 346 Billion Ads

ComScore is reporting today that Facebook doubled the number of ads it delivered during the same period last year and crushed all other online publishers, serving a whopping one in three online ads in the U.S. Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google rounded out the top five (AOL’s display advertising, in fact, has been a bright spot in the company’s otherwise dismal financial performance). The ranks of the top online advertisers were dominated by finance and telecom: AT&T finished first, followed by the credit information company Experian, the online trading and investing company Scottrade, the accounting software company Intuit, and Verizon (we were surprised the acai berry people didn’t make the cut). In all, America’s internet users were flooded with over one trillion ads during the quarter.

Read More: Facebook: Now Serving Over 500 Million Users and 346 Billion Ads