A war between Google & China this week, while the social media world helped raise money for victim’s of Haiti’s earthquake. Find out all the details in today’s social media news brief. (more…)
Social Media made a presence at CES, while Twitter starts nominations for the Shorty Awards! Find out all the details in today’s Social Media News Brief. (more…)
We have all at least seen Skype. Oprah uses it to talk with guests from around the world! In case you aren’t familiar with Skype, it’s a free service which allows you to video chat with other Skype users or lets you pay a small fee to call land line and mobile phones worldwide. As of last count, the service had more 527 million users, that’s more than Facebook’s impressive 350 million users.
This week at the Consumer Electronic’s Show, which starts Wednesday in Las Vegas, Skype is expected to show off Skype for your HDTV. Right now the service only works on computers, and several smart phones. So moving it to you television would be a new experience. (more…)
eBay is being sued by the founders of the free online phone service, Skype for copyright infringement and claim damages are growing at a rate of at least $75 million a day. Earlier this year, eBay announced they were looking to sell Skype, after they had purchased it in 2005 from founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom for over $2.6 billion.
Although the site was sold to eBay, Friis & Zennstrom, who have since started Joltid, still own the source code and the actual rights to the software of Skype. The two are accusing eBay of sharing the software’s code to third parties, interested in Skype, who have copied and altered it without permission.
According to a New York Times article, the founders have shown interested and have tried raising money to purchase the service back. However, eBay has since made a deal to sell 65% of Skype to Silver Lake, a private equity firm in Canada, while holding onto the remaining 35%.
eBay said in a statemtent that Friis & Zennstrom’s “allegations and claims are without merit and are founded on fundamental legal and factual errors.”
Om Malik, reporter for Gigaom.com reported Sunday that the case may be coming to an end according to inside sources. “The ongoing legal scuffle between Skype, a division of eBay, and its founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, may soon see a resolution, according to someone familiar with the situation. The parties are in discussions to resolve the various issues. The talks are described to be at a sensitive stage and can break down without any conclusion. If the founders and the company can come to an agreement, Skype will be able continue to use JoltID’s technology to power Skype and not disrupt the service that is currently used by hundreds of millions consumers.”
