Sponsored stories will begin appearing in the Timeline. That was the intent behind removing the straight chronological river (newsfeed), to be able to place ads into your stream in a way that looks more natural.
I think the point is there is a romantic ideal of building product first, just make it cool, no ads, don't focus on revenue. If you need cash, raise a venture round.
But that actually puts a lot of strange stresses on a company, because the need to find a exit for a multiply of the money they raised.
In this case, the company figured out how to monetize and attract users, but not retain them (a lot of churn). Now they are trying to build a stickier, more engaging product.
The story conflates the problems with walking dead VCs, many of which were formed during the dot-com bubble, with what is going on in the early stage startup world.
There are more deals and more cash going to Internet startups than ever before. The lower valuations and struggling companies are a natural and healthy end result of the boom in early stage funding for social/local/mobile companies that took place during 2009-2010.
I believe under the new law you would need to show you employed your invention as part of a business prior to their filing in order to have a case for prior art.
I heard from a few friends at google that there are pretty intense discussions going on right now about what they can demand from their partners.
They had to bend over backwards for the carriers and manufacturers at first because they were the new kid on a very crowded block. but now they are the market leader and should use that leverage to demand a certain standard for Android units.
Exactly. The price is well above expert estimates. While these tech giants can afford that extra cost, the same tension is playing out for smaller startups that cannot.