I have been following the discussion about social lending since reading a November 2006 Center Networks post in which CN blogger Allen Stern called social lending the “next Web 2.0 phenomenon.” I’ve followed Prosper in the US, Zopa in the UK and Kiva’s international philanthropic P2P service.
When I saw that one of my favorite Tech [...]

1. TechCrunch reports on a possible deal between Nokia and Facebook. Duncan Riley says, “The investment side isn’t that surprising given how many companies have now bought into the Facebook phenomenon. The remarkable part is how many companies are willing to invest in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation.”
2. A guest-written post on GigaOM by [...]

BusinessWeek has an interesting report asserting that US tech companies with a strong international presence will weather the recession much better than US-centric companies.
As BW’s Olga Kharif, Spencer E. Ante and Roger O. Crockett report:
One key factor in how these companies perform will be geography. While tech spending in the U.S. is expected to slow [...]

comScore has released its findings from a study of the most trafficed sites in December 2007. It’s interesting to see which retail and non-retail sites garnered the largest audience of US Web users during the peak holiday shopping season. Here are the top 50 trafficked sites:

Amanda Mooney, i5invest Boston
Social Bookmarking

Strathclyde Partnership for Transport has partnered with Arqiva to bring mobile and wi-fi access to commuters in 15 Glasgow subway stations. Plans are already underway to provide the same access to commuters in London. This is a major step in making digital data truly portable.
This move is also a huge opportunity for wireless carriers [...]

The UK’s Computer Which? magazine has named Bebo as the best social network on the Web. Although Bebo falls quite short of social networking giants Facebook and MySpace in terms of the size of its user base, Bebo was cited as the leader because of its “responsible networking” practices including its easy-to-manage privacy [...]

The European Commission, in an ongoing push to create a centralized marketplace for Web and media services, challenged Apple, saying that the disparity in its pricing of iTunes music in the UK is out of line with EU regulations.

Apple, one of the biggest players in the tech sector, fully complied with the Commission and [...]

Duetche Welle has produced the following video on the future of work trends. You can find more Duetche Welle videos on its YouTube channel.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxTiu4VJfxo&rel=1]
At i5invest, we’ve definitely seen the effect of digital communications on our work. We have a network of developers, business and communications colleagues and partners that extends across Europe and the US. [...]

Stowe Boyd of /Message linked to this article from the Washington Post. It outlines the global societies most and least under surveillance by government, business and technology. “Malaysia, Russia and China ranked worse, but Great Britain and the United States also fell into the lowest-performing group… Greece, Romania and Canada had the best records [...]

Markus Wagner linked to this BusinessWeek article that describes the new European tech boom. We thought you’d be interested in reading it if you haven’t already. BusinessWeek writer Gail Edmondson says, “Fueled by plentiful venture capital, plus cheap talent from Eastern Europe, tech entrepreneurs are pulling in U.S.-size profits.”
Amanda Mooney, i5invest Boston
Social Bookmarking