TWiST #197 News By cbedgood1  [10 more lists]

The iPhone 4S just broke Apple's sales records. The company's latest smartphone, which was unveiled last week, sold over 1 million units in its first 24 hours of being available to pre-order.

When the iPhone 4 launched last year, it set a record for Apple by racking up 600,000 pre-orders in a single day. Apple's latest gadget has smashed the company's previous single day sales record by more than 66 percent. In terms of first day pre-orders, the iPhone 4S is the most successful product Apple has ever released.

SOURCE: ReadWriteWeb

Google engineer Steve Yegge wrote an extended rant on the social networking service bemoaning what he calls Google's "failure to understand platforms." Yegge meant to just share the missive internally with other Google employees, but accidentally published it to the general public.

Much of the discussion centers on Yegge's years with Amazon and complaints about that company's organization and culture. But he definitely gets in some attacks as well on the failures of Google+.

Key quote:

"Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone."

Later, he calls Google Plus a "pathetic afterthought." The original post has been deleted, but has already been reshared repeatedly and thus is pretty simple to find.

QUESTIONS: Do you agree with Yegge's assessment, that Google doesn't understand platforms, and that they haven't put enough time, resources or care into Google+? If you were his manager at Google, how would you deal with this situation?

SOURCE: SiliconFilter

In a post on the official Google blog, Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz announced that the company planned to axe a number of products in the coming weeks. Included in the purge:

- Code Search and the Code Search API, designed to allow users to search for open source code around the Web

- Jaiku, the micro-blogging and social networking community Google purchased in 2007

- iGoogle social features, which will go so Google can emphasize the Google+ social network

- Special university-only Google search features

- Google Buzz, which will integrate its data back in to the Google Profile account

QUESTIONS: Anything here you think people will miss? How did Jaiku manage to hang on so long?

SOURCE: TechCrunch

Zynga unveiled a new game platform at its "Unleashed" event in San Francisco that will compete directly with players’ time now spent on Facebook. The platform, which will launch sometime soon, is code-named "Project Z," and will be hosted on Zynga’s own site.

Project Z was one of 10 announcements made today, including five new mobile games and Facebook games, too. The event marks the first time Zynga hosted a major press conference, which is notable given that it is preparing for a $1 billion IPO.

SOURCE: AllThingsD

According to Business Insider, Google is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at TV and other video content creators, hoping to fill YouTube up with premium content

An executive who has found himself bidding against Google for video content told BI, "They're fronting production costs to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per deal"

Larry Page talked obliquely about this plan during today's Q3 earnings call, saying, "We're in a good position to help users find the content and media they're looking for. We're in a great position to help those companies and publishers and content creators and find the right users and get paid both through advertising and directly. That's a logical place for us to be"

SOURCE: Business Insider