In a move foreshadowed by Twitter board member Fred Wilson’s blog post earlier this week, Twitter has announced that it bought third-party Twitter client Tweetie.

According to the company, Twitter has entered into an agreement with Atebits and will be renaming the app “Twitter for iPhone”, which will be available for free, instead of $2.99, in the iTunes AppStore.

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Just earlier today, Twitter also announced Twitter for Blackberry and Fred Wilson’s blog post earlier this week discussed precisely this direction – Twitter moving to fill in the gaps it had left for others to fill.

As part of this agreement, Atebits president Loren Brichter will join Twitter’s mobile team, helping to create “Twitter for iPad” as well.

With Apple’s announcement yesterday of its new mobile ad platform, iAd, we can see Twitter finally coming through with its own ad platform in the near future. Having its own native app for the iPhone is certainly a smart move in that direction – and it isn’t as if we haven’t been expecting Twitter to go in this direction.

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Google and Apple have clashed a number of times in recent months, and a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer is poised to ensure that the two companies butt heads yet again.  Asus has indicated that it will challenge the iPad with a tablet PC powered by either Android or Chrome OS.

Elizabeth Woyke talked to Asus chairman Jonney Shih and reported afterward, "Shih said one Asus tablet will likely run Google software, such as the upcoming open-source operating system, Chrome, or the mobile operating system, Android."

"There will be an Apple camp, but Asus always tries to address the open camps of Google and Microsoft," Shih explained.  He also stated, "Content will play a very important role on tablets.  The Google tablet will have a lot of media."

Considering that Android is doing rather well against the iPhone (the most recent AdMob report puts their U.S. market shares at 42 percent and 44 percent, respectively), this could be a smart move for Asus.  For Google, too.  It just seems certain that Google’s relationship with Apple will suffer as a result.

We’ll see what happens.  The new tablet PCs from Asus should debut sometime this year, and probably sooner rather than later.

News broke yesterday that popular online Q&A startup Formspring.me had raised some $2.5 million in venture funding and would be relocating to Silicon Valley from Indianapolis. As a user and fan of the service, I am happy to see the company rewarded for its success, and I am excited to see how they can improve their already great product. However, as a follower of the national and global startup culture, it is a little disappointing to see the company leave their home and head west to the Valley.

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Formspring.me was spun out of Formspring.com, a platform for creating online forms, when users began creating forms to answer personal questions. According to the New York Times’ Brad Stone, Formspring.me has raked in $2.5 million from investors based solely in Silicon Valley. VC firms Baseline Ventures and Freestyle Capital teamed with angels Kevin Rose, Dave Morin and Ron Conway’s SV Angel to provide Formspring.me with some well deserved, and high profile funding.

Silicon Valley is certainly the mecca of venture capital and social web applications, and in many ways, moving the company to the Valley is a smart move. As we mentioned back in January, Formspring.me plans to rewrite its application to scale more efficiently as the product grows in popularity – something that requires talented programmers. The company has already listed four job openings in San Francisco for a pair of developers, a designer and a data analyst.

By moving to the Valley, Formspring.me will be able to tap the enormous talent pools to find top tier programmers and designers to take their app to the next level. If they want to build out an API and create mobile applications for their app, they are in the right place to do it. When the time comes to look for further funding, having set up shop in the Valley will certainly benefit the company in their efforts.

For other cities outside of the Valley looking to build competitive startup and venture capital communities, these are unfortunate truths. It is not uncommon to see successful startups leave their cities of birth for the Valley to find talented employees and raise their chances for finding funding. We recently discussed Chicago’s growing startup scene, which is not far from Indianapolis, but the opportunities in the Midwest do not yet compare to those available in other booming startup cities.

Had Formspring.me been founded in a city like Austin, Boulder, New York or Boston, they would have likely remained there upon receiving funding. That is, perhaps, if they received funding locally. While the Midwest is growing its startup culture, there are far fewer VC firms, and far smaller talent pools when compared to other locations. Until more cities have their own thriving startup scene, stories like Formspring.me’s will continue to play out across the country.

The fact that Formspring.me attracted funding from the Valley before relocating raises the question of whether the decision to move was theirs or if it was a recommendation or stipulation of the investors. We have reached out for comment on this question and will update this post as more information becomes available. In the meantime, let us know what you think of Formspring.me or any other startup moving to the Valley in the comments.

Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb

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Google Wave didn’t do so well when it came out of the gate, and Buzz’s privacy problems stole all of the attention not too long after.  But now that Google’s addressed most of Buzz’s faults, it’s trying to move forward again by rolling out an extensions gallery for Google Wave.

Interestingly, this initial version is still a little rough around the edges in terms of functionality.  Also, there are just 18 extensions listed at the moment, and Google’s suggested design tweaks are on the way.  We’ll let you decide whether the company’s gotten ahead of itself or made a smart move by involving developers and users as soon as possible.

As for what’s available, the extensions represent an interesting mix of useful and fun/frivolous stuff.  One’s called Wave Sudoku, while others function as poll gadgets, phone and video chat aids, and a weather forecast provider.

Anyway, Dan Peterson, Google Wave’s Product Manager, explained on the Google Wave Developer Blog, "The gallery is simply a set of waves containing extension installers (the puzzle pieces).  The first wave, ‘Read me first‘ contains an introduction to extensions and how to use them.  In many cases, those particular waves won’t maintain their read/unread status in Google Wave preview; we’re working on this."

It should be interesting to see how long Google takes to make its tweaks, and how quickly the extensions gallery is populated.

Google Street View has made a few headlines at RWW lately – once for getting itself into hot water in Europe and once, notably, for bringing Street View’s photo-tour features into retail outlets.

Now, we’ve learned that Street View will also begin to feature user-submitted photographs. According to a recent Google Lat Long blog post, “We began integrating user photos into Street View last year. User photos allow you to view locations from entirely new perspectives, whether through the eyes of a talented photographer with a knack for capturing architectural detail, or simply taken from locations we couldn’t get to… We’re making it easier to navigate through these images in a way that should feel similar to how you’re used to exploring within Street View.”

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Users can submit pictures from Picasa, Panoramio and Flickr that show different views, times of day or pedestrian-only areas. Here’s an example of what the interface looks like; the square in the top right corner indicates there are user-submitted images for that area.

And here is the photo navigation interface. Users can also navigate through photos using new click-and-drag controls to see images from nearby areas, or different angles or crops of the same area.

Some have speculated that Google has chosen to highlight and integrate this feature because of competition with Bing. The Next Web recently called Microsoft’s Photosynth, a similar product launched in 2008 and integrated into Bing Maps, “the killer app of the Bing suite” that differentiates Bing from Google in a positive way.

“The feature,” wrote Jacob Friedman , “displays collections of photos stitched together into a panorama[...] The results, to put it bluntly, can be spectacular.”

While Google’s offering may not have the 3D-esque quality of Photosynth, allowing for more creative images and photos from a larger geographical area to be shared in Street View is a smart move for the company. Let us know what you think in the comments.

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As you might imagine, conversations tend to be more productive and enjoyable when they’re not interrupted and cut short all the time.  Google’s made a smart move, then, by upgrading Google Talk in several respects.

The upgrades actually pertain to one of Google Talk’s most advanced features: the voice and video chat plug-in.  As for what they do, users should experience fewer crashes when newer Macs are in the mix and benefit from increased webcam compatibility.

On the Google Talkabout blog, Google also promised increased plug-in stability and “fixes to the infrastructure used to set up and connect your video calls.”
 
This update would be something of a big deal under any circumstances; the last post on the Google Talkabout blog was made in September of last year, so the search giant’s proven that it hasn’t forgotten about this product.

But here’s a (big) added bonus: Jessan Hutchison-Quillian and Mikael Drugge, who are software engineers, wrote “From users who have chosen to ‘Report quality statistics’ in their chat settings, we can see a substantial increase in call connection rates and a big decrease in the call drop rate (see chart below).”

Google Talk looks to be much more useful now.

We often hear how cloud computing makes it more affordable for customers to use services that in the past would have been packaged as software and required buying, installing and maintaining on any number of individual machines.

But we often forget how it is also much cheaper for the vendor to produce and distribute services through the cloud. Cloud vendors do not need to test software on any number of operating systems. Version control is a nagging task. it’s unnecessary when the service is cloud-based. The idea of a software disc seems almost antiquated.

IBM seems to get this whole concept pretty well. The company has realized that it can use a cloud computing infrastructure to market its web-based services. Their target right now are college students and professors who are being offered the use of IBM software and databases through a cloud infrastructure IBM calls the “Academic Skills Cloud.”

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Programs now available to college students and professors include IBM Rational, WebSphere, and Informix. Services to be added to the cloud over time will include Cognos, Lotus and Tivoli.

This is a smart move by IBM. It shows how deeply ingrained cloud computing has become at Big Blue. It leverages the power of the cloud to offer IBM technology at minimal cost. Plus, it reaches students who will go on to associate IBM with cloud computing as they begin their professional careers.

The Academic Skills Cloud provides students with access to leading cloud computing technology and new methods for developing applications. Courses and work material can be accessed anywhere the student is located.

Professors can teach practices that students will see in the workforce once they graduate. Machines do not need to be continually updated with new software. It’s all available online.

Students who learn about cloud computing today stand a far better chance of adapting to a world where working with online services will be the way business is conducted. IBM is making guarantees that they will be top of mind for students once they move on to the professional world.

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A little less than a month ago, Google announced that it might shut down Google.cn and its offices in China.  The search giant may not be giving up on the country entirely, however, as a new report has indicated that it’s part of a group attempting to invest in a large Chinese media and advertising company.

According to George Chen and Melanie Lee, Disney is leading a consortium that includes Google, and said consortium would like to buy a 30 or 40 percent stake in Bus Media for about $100 million.  Negotiations are supposed to be in progress right now.

Such an investment could be a smart move, considering that notable entities like CCB International, China Renaissance Capital Investment, IDG, and the Yangtze Fund have all put some money behind Bus Media.

Bus Media apparently enjoys the support of China’s government, too, as it’s "the exclusive partner of state broadcaster CCTV and the official Xinhua news agency for in-bus media content and advertising."

But that brings us back to the touchy issue of Google, China, and censorship.  Whether Google’s changing its attitude or has found some solution that complements its moral stand remains to be seen.

Related Articles:

> Google Partners With NSA On Cyber Attack Analysis

> China Won’t Stand In The Way Of Google’s Android Business

> Bill Gates Sides With Ballmer, MSFT On China

A little less than a month ago, Google announced that it might shut down Google.cn and its offices in China.  The search giant may not be giving up on the country entirely, however, as a new report has indicated that it’s part of a group attempting to invest in a large Chinese media and advertising company.

According to George Chen and Melanie Lee, Disney is leading a consortium that includes Google, and said consortium would like to buy a 30 or 40 percent stake in Bus Media for about $100 million.  Negotiations are supposed to be in progress right now.

Such an investment could be a smart move, considering that notable entities like CCB International, China Renaissance Capital Investment, IDG, and the Yangtze Fund have all put some money behind Bus Media.

Bus Media apparently enjoys the support of China’s government, too, as it’s "the exclusive partner of state broadcaster CCTV and the official Xinhua news agency for in-bus media content and advertising."

But that brings us back to the touchy issue of Google, China, and censorship.  Whether Google’s changing its attitude or has found some solution that complements its moral stand remains to be seen.

Related Articles:

> Google Partners With NSA On Cyber Attack Analysis

> China Won’t Stand In The Way Of Google’s Android Business

> Bill Gates Sides With Ballmer, MSFT On China

Facebook is now offering its users the ability to receive their friends’ status updates via text message on their phones. If you click on the "subscribe via SMS" link below your friends’ profile pics, you get their latest updates this way.

Sound familiar? That’s probably because you can do basically the same thing with Twitter. This is just the latest example of Facebook acknowleging (without coming right out and saying it) that they view Twitter as a major competitor. If this wasn’t evident enough upon the last major redesign change, which switched to a Twitter-esque real-time status feed, it’s even more clear now.

Facebook is certainly the dominant force in social networking currently, but there was a time when you might’ve said the same about MySpace. Twitter continues to grow rapidly (despite retention issues). It’s not really showing any signs of slowing yet, and Facebook is well aware of this.

The option to subscribe to Friend updates via SMS is a smart move on Facebook’s part. It has been, after all, a big contributor to the success of Twitter in the first place. As more and more people are using their mobile devices to use their social networks. It’s simply just a logical step, and frankly an overdue one.

It is a good thing they did it on a friend-by-friend basis, because I can’t see too many people being incredibly stoked about the chance to receive every update in their news feed via text message. It would be going non-stop.

When you receive a text message of a status update. You can simply reply to the message to leave a comment on the update. And in addition to receiving updates from your friends, you can do the same with Facebook Pages.

"If you already have Facebook Mobile activated for your phone or device, then you will begin receiving the text message updates after confirming your subscription," notes Phil on the Facebook blog. "If you haven’t yet set up Facebook Mobile, you will be taken through a series of steps to activate it before receiving text messages."

If you decide you don’t want to receive text messages from anyone you subscribed to, you can unsubscribe by:

- replying directly from your phone with "unsubscribe"

- returning to the friend’s profile (or Page) and clicking the "unsubscribe from SMS updates" link

- Editing your mobile texts settings from the Facebook mobile app.

The feature is available in 18 countries right now, but Facebook says it is expanding it around the world. The service is free on Facebooks’s end, but obviously standard fees from your provider will still stand. In other mobile social news, Google released a mobile app for Orkut.

Update: Facebook launched the App Directory, App Verification Program, and ne App Profile Pages today.

Original Article: In the coming weeks, Facebook will formally launch its App Verification program, a new Application Directory, and new App Profile Pages, a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews. Each of these will allow users to more easily discover and interact with the applications that are most relevant and valuable to them, they say.

This all makes perfect sense considering the company is getting ready to test a payments system that would allow for the exchange of currency through third party apps on Facebook. Facebook is going to want such a system to get huge in the future, so making apps easily accessible to the people who would be interested in them the most is a smart move.

Current Application Directory

Facebook’s Application Directory boasts over 52,000 apps that have gone live since Facebook Platform was opened up two years ago. The new directory will include: 

Improved categories – A refreshed list of categories that more accurately represents the apps listed within

Updated App Profile Pages – These will look like public profile pages, including the tabbed structure that will let developers communicate with fans of the app in the news feed. This will make sending out updates easier.

Stream of Application Stories: The new directory homepage will feature a stream of stories that users’ friends generate from apps. "This stream will expose applications in a socially-relevant way and help the millions of users who visit the Application Directory each month stay updated with their friends’ activity on Facebook," says a post on the Facebook Developer Blog.

These changes should greatly affect how Facebook users engage with applications, which is exactly what Facebook needs to do if it plans to monetize a payments system that is based on apps. It’s also great news for the app developers because the new changes should provide a better means of engagement from users, and an overall better sense of visibility.

In the coming weeks, Facebook will formally launch its App Verification program, a new Application Directory, and new App Profile Pages, a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews. Each of these will allow users to more easily discover and interact with the applications that are most relevant and valuable to them, they say.

This all makes perfect sense considering the company is getting ready to test a payments system that would allow for the exchange of currency through third party apps on Facebook. Facebook is going to want such a system to get huge in the future, so making apps easily accessible to the people who would be interested in them the most is a smart move.

Current Application Directory

Facebook’s Application Directory boasts over 52,000 apps that have gone live since Facebook Platform was opened up two years ago. The new directory will include: 

Improved categories – A refreshed list of categories that more accurately represents the apps listed within

Updated App Profile Pages – These will look like public profile pages, including the tabbed structure that will let developers communicate with fans of the app in the news feed. This will make sending out updates easier.

Stream of Application Stories: The new directory homepage will feature a stream of stories that users’ friends generate from apps. "This stream will expose applications in a socially-relevant way and help the millions of users who visit the Application Directory each month stay updated with their friends’ activity on Facebook," says a post on the Facebook Developer Blog.

These changes should greatly affect how Facebook users engage with applications, which is exactly what Facebook needs to do if it plans to monetize a payments system that is based on apps. It’s also great news for the app developers because the new changes should provide a better means of engagement from users, and an overall better sense of visibility.

Beginning today, people who sign up for YouTube will be given a Google account. Given that Google has owned the popular video service since 2006, it is a little surprising that this happened in the past, but it certainly makes sense that they would do it sooner or later. Note: I am not yet seeing an indication of this news on the YouTube sign up page, but I assume it’s in the process of rolling out.

It’s a smart move because it opens the door to other Google services that YouTube users may not have otherwise been privy to or taken the time to acknowledge. Things like iGoogle, Google Reader and Google Docs for example.

Really, the move could provide a tremendous boost to Google’s social media efforts, which it has seemingly been taking much more seriously lately. As I’ve discussed before (though I cited Gmail as the central point), Google itself has kind of been a social network for years, and many just haven’t realized it.

Now in recent weeks, they have put much more emphasis on the Google Profile, which is now showing up in search results, and offers the option of vanity URLs for easier visibility. YouTube has long been a huge social network (not to mention the 2nd largest search engine). Why not incorporate that more into the rest of Google? It’s arguably the company’s biggest and most well-branded social media entity.

Users can still sign up for YouTube with any email address, and they’ll still pick a unique username. "So why are we doing this?" asks James Philips of the YouTube Team. "We feel that by jointly connecting accounts, you can take greater advantage of our services both on YouTube and on Google, especially as we start to roll out new features in the future that will be powered by Google technology."

Those who already have a YouTube account but no Google account will still be able to enjoy YouTube just the same, but Philips says they will be rolling out features that will require a Google account in the future. Such features are not elaborated on, but I am very eager to see what these will be.

I would not be surprised to see a prominent YouTube link start showing up on Google alongside things like web, images, maps, news, and Gmail. There is already one for video that goes to Google video of course, but I have often pondered why YouTube would not be featured here. It’s obviously the more popular video engine.