Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

If it seems like Twitter is growing faster and faster each day, that is because it is. ComScore has released its March numbers for the U.S., and it estimates that unique visitors to Twitter.com grew 131 percent between February and March to 9.3 million visitors. No wonder Twitter is more popular than Britney. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/boom-twitter-more-than-doubles-unique-visitors-to-93-million-in-march 4/15)

After shopping the fast growing unit, eBay announced Tuesday it would spin off its Skype internet-based calling service via an initial public offering during the first half of next year. eBay purchased Skype back in 2005 for $2.6 billion, but never delivered on its promise to integrate the calling software with its international auction sites. Yet the calling service has continued to grow in leaps and bounds in terms of its user base, with over 400 million registered users to date. Skype added nearly a half a million new users since launching its controversial iPhone app, downloaded by 2 million users in its first week of release. (Cynopsis 4/15)

The days of offering free live video coverage of major sporting events to everyone online may be coming to end. NBC will offer cable MSOs, telcos and satellite providers exclusive access to live streaming of the 2010 Winter Olympic games in Vancouver, reports Sports Business Journal. The broadcaster plans to introduce an authentication system to limit live broadband viewing of the games only to paying subscribers of the providers who agree to license the service. (Cynopsis 4/15)

Microsoft says that Live Search Products and Live Search Cashback have now been unified into a single experience. You can now access Cashback on Live Search Products page, which is Microsoft’s comparison shopping vertical site. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/microsoft-tries-to-re-energize-cashback-by-plugging-it-into-its-products-engine 4/15)

Earlier today The Business Insider reported that CNN may have acquired the massively popular CNNbrk Twitter account, which is currently in a heated race with Ashton Kutcher to attain 1 million followers. Thing is, up until recently CNN didn’t actually own that account, which made the story’s coverage on the cable network over the last few days all the more bizarre. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/confirmed-cnn-acquires-cnnbrk-twitter-account 4/15)

The 13th Annual Webby Award nominees were announced yesterday across a range of categories with familiar names such as the NYTimes.com (13 nominations), NBC.com (12), The Onion (8) Guardian.co.uk (6), PBS (5), NPR (5), The Sundance Channel (5) garnering multiple nominations. (Cynopsis 4/15)

Officials from 38 states have sent a letter to the Obama administration saying, in effect, that they want to be in the driver’s seat when it comes time to allot more than $7 billion in funding from the economic-stimulus package that has been set aside for broadband expansion. But that isn’t sitting so well with some national consumer groups, which are fretting that an unfair share of the money could go to firms with strong ties to local officials. The Wall Street Journal (4/14)

Kosmix, the universal search engine that dynamically generates guides to search queries using dozens of different content sources, is quickly gaining momentum. According to today’s latest comScore numbers, the site has jumped up to 3.2 million monthly uniques in March – a 419% growth since February. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/universal-search-takes-off-kosmix-posts-419-growth-in-march 4/15)