This Week in Online Evidence – June 24th 2011
Highlight: Forget everything you thought you knew about domain names
Our highlight for this week is a change which will have an enormous impact for years to come: the decision by ICANN to introduce a new regime for top-level domain names. ICANN is the top-level governance body for Internet names and numbers, primarily meaning the domain name system which is the foundation of web browsing, email and other Internet services.
In recent years ICANN has approved the creation of additional top-level domains (or “TLD’s”)such as “.aero”, “.museum” and “.asia”, however real-world of these new TLD’s has been limited and for most Internet users the web still revolves around “.com”, with perhaps limited usage of other long-standing TLD’s such as “.org” or “.edu”. This week’s announcement means that arbitrary names can now be used for TLD’s for the first time, irrespective of objective need or overlap with existing TLD’s.
This Week in Online Evidence – March 4th 2011
Highlight: Facebook acquire Beluga
This week Facebook acquired Beluga, the group messaging application for smartphones with the slogan “It’s instant, intimate and simple”. Beluga users can create private groups (“pods”) of friends to stay in touch with or coordinate plans. You can send and receive instant updates, location information and photos all via push notification. Although Facebook’s acquisition of this very small and young company is notable it should not come as a shock to Facebook followers since the company has clearly identified mobile services as a key growth area. To that end they are currently rolling out a new unified messaging system (the upgraded “Messages” tool) and within the past year they have added a new Groups feature to their iPhone and Android apps. At its core Facebook is now a communication service and per Craig Moffett Bernstein Research “the move to acquire Beluga makes this explicit. Beluga puts Facebook squarely into competition with carriers for the first time.”
