The Next Web’s Weekly Recap

Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Next Web’s Weekly Recap.

We’ll be going through the week’s tops stories that we covered as well as some of those we didn’t. We will be refining the outline and approach to this post over the next couple of weeks with your feedback. Please feel free to comment below on what you would most like to see in this Weekly Recap post and the format you prefer.

News Corp to block Google?
Rupert Murdoch hinted in a interview that News Corp’s properties could be opting out of Google and refuse to be indexed. This created a flurry of analysis in the blogosphere as Jason Calacanis hinted at the possible genius of the move while Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan was quick to challenge Jason’s idea. Our own Alex also chimed in offering his thoughts in light of Mark Cuban’s post which praised Murdoch’s comments. It will be interesting to see how this situation evolves, the latest news reveals that Murdoch may put up his pay wall and block Google within months.

Deals and more deals
The week saw a flurry of big deals. EA acquired social game maker Playfish for $400 Million. Google acquired mobile advertising giant AdMob for $750 million in stock as well as VOIP startup Gizmo5 for a rumored price of $30 million. During the week, HP also acquired 3com for 2.7 billion.

This week in Twitter
Twitter this week began to launch the new retweet feature but soon pulled back on the launch after numerous bugs were being experienced by users. The feature will likely be re-launched soon has been relaunched although not without controversy. Many users dislike the implementation of retweets as it no longer allows for commentary to be added to the retweet. In Twitter client news, TweetDeck released their new and improved iPhone app which now includes support for Facebook. This will likely bring back the debate on the iPhone’s best Twitter client. Most people agree that Tweetie 2 is the best app out there but TweetDeck’s new iPhone app certainly re-opens the debate. Finally, LinkedIn announced that status updates on their service now offer a two-way sync with Twitter.

Droid takes on iPhone
After a week in the wild, the overall impressions most users have of the Droid are positive. It was reported that 100,000 units were sold over the initial launch weekend and that the Droid has already captured 1.44% of US mobile browsing market share. Although it may not be the “iPhone killer” as many had claimed, it’s definitely the most formidable opponent the iPhone has faced to date. In other Android news, Dell just announced that they will begin selling Android based smartphones in November.

Quick Hits

• The latest rumors have it that the launch of Google’s highly anticipated Chrome OS appears to be imminent.
• What websites have the biggest street cred out Twitter? TweetMeme launches Retweet Leaderboard and lists the top retweeted sites.
• Citizen Journalists and those who live stream from mobile devices rejoice as Qik launches DVD-quality live video streaming.
• Travelers get a break on being ripped off from airport WiFi until January 15th as Google offers free WiFi across US airports.
• Looking for Facebook Fan Page inspiration? Make sure to check out these Custom Facebook Page galleries which aggregate the most inspiring Facebook Fan Pages.