Is Twitter going Hollywood? Production companies Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment have inked a deal with the micro-blog site to create an unscripted television show that will focus on celebrities and ordinary people who use Twitter. No word on what the show is about, but it is meant to be pithy. Each person is only allowed to speak 140 characters at a time.
Facebook landed $200 million in funding, Valuing it at 10 billion dollars. The new backers? Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian based holder of popular Internet startups such as mail.ru, Forticom Group, and Vkontakte.ru. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, " a number of firms approached us, but DST stood out because of the global perspective they bring." Global perspective? Or a lot more zeroes? After all, the funding comes just a month after reports said U.S. private investors were valuing Facebook as low as $2 billion. Whatever the case, all money is green, and Facebook has now raised $600 million of it.
See:Russian firm invests in Facebook
Speaking of Facebook, which is known as the "Frangelina" of the tech world these days. My mother is not on the site but if she were to go on, she would likely leave soon enough. A recent study found that the site is losing the 55 and over crowd. Maybe that's a good thing. I cannot imagine getting a stream of updates from my mother.
See:Facebook too confusing for older folks?
That's funny. My mom is on Facebook (but I'm not). However, Russia actually ranks up there in innovation (there's a very large installed base of PhD equivs in highly quantitative disciplines there). That's one of the residual effects of having the 2nd oldest full-scale nuclear program and perhaps the oldest human space program.
Thanks for another entertaining episode!