Yahoo! to shut-down its social networking site

Finally, Yahoo! have decided to move out of social networking space. As an (inactive) member of Yahoo! Mash, I  received a mail  (below) from Yahoo! team,  saying that they are going to shut-down the portal on 29th September, 2008. 


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Dear Yahoo! Mash member, 


Thank you for trying out our Mash Beta service. We hope you had fun with it.


Please note that we will shut down Mash on September 29, 2008. As a result, your current profile on Mash will no longer be available. We strongly recommend that you return to http://mash.yahoo.com and copy the content that you wish to save onto a separate document.


For a list of FAQs, please refer to the Mash Help Page.


Thanks for trying out Mash!


Matt Warburton

Yahoo! Community Manager

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Seventymm.com receives Rs 50 crore funding

Seventymm.com, an online movie rental company, has received Series C funding of Rs 50 crore from NEA-Indo US Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Bengaluru and the US.Matrix Partners India, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and ePlanet Ventures have also invested in the company in the earlier rounds of funding.[Source: Afaqs!]

Indiatimes.com reworks its content strategy

Indiatimes.com, a portal owned by Times Internet, has been revamped. The site will now give priority to entertainment and leisure based content to cater to the demand of young users.

As part of the re-prioritisation of content, Indiatimes.com has shifted the position of various sections on the home page. For instance, news based sections, which were at the top of the page earlier, have been pulled down below a feature based section called Showcase, which now appears at the top of the page. The stock market section has been moved to the right corner. [Source: Afaqs!]

Why Kijiji.in rebrand itself to Quikr.com?

Kijiji.in was earlier solely owned by a subsidiary of eBay Inc., Kijiji International, which runs various classified portals across different regions of the world. In February 2008, the Mumbai based venture capitalist (VC), Matrix Partners India, invested in the Indian venture, Kijiji.in, as a result of which Kijiji.in was moved out of the global network of Kijiji International and restructured as a separate and independent company, which is now jointly owned by Matrix Partners and eBay Inc. In order to create a separate identity for this independent company, it is re-branded as Quikr.com. [Source: Afaqs]

Google launches website for Beijing Olympics 2008

Google has launched a website, dedicated to Beijing Summer Olympic Games-2008. Its a mashup site, powered by various Google tools or applications like Google maps, YouTube and news to offer Olympics related news, events schedule, track  medal counts and 3D videos of venues. A channel on YouTube is also created which is offering various videos related to Olympics 2008. A widget is also available, which a user can add to his iGoogle page and keep a track of medal counts, news and scheduled events.[Source: Official Google Blog].

You can also check out the official website for Beijing Olympic games here.