This article was published on July 30, 2012

Olympic tweets, bad ads, and startups that didn’t make it: What you missed on TNW this weekend


Olympic tweets, bad ads, and startups that didn’t make it: What you missed on TNW this weekend

Been offline for most of the weekend, or just not kept up? Here’s what you missed on The Next Web.

Olym-picks

The Olympics dominated the mainstream news this weekend, and we had our fair share of it on TNW too. Perhaps most importantly, we brought you 25+ ways to watch and keep track of the action.

The opening ceremony attracted 9.66 million tweets on Twitter. That’s more than Twitter saw during the whole of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but nothing compared to the astounding 119 million posted about the ceremony on China’s Sina Weibo. Not all tweets are equal though, and we took a look at things Olympians shouldn’t tweet.

Organizers of some events would even prefer that no-one tweets, as heavy mobile phone use was blamed for disrupting communication of timings during a cycling race.

In the news

Apple debuted a new batch of TV ads in the US, focusing on the services that its in-store ‘Geniuses’ can help with. However, our own Matthew Panzarino described the ads as “Well targeted but poorly exectuted.” Choice quote: “The Mac owner is clearly a simpleton who puts computer help ahead of his own laboring wife and apparently can’t operate a phone. And why is he taking a random Apple employee along to the hospital?”

Meanwhile, Korea’s KT Telecom admitted this weekend that hackers infiltrated its system to steal and sell personal details belonging to an estimated 8.7 million members of its customer base.

Elsewhere in the mobile industry, Microsoft should be celebrating as Windows Phone reportedly saw a 23.5% leap in European market share. That’s still only 1.68% of the total market, but better than a kick in the teeth.

Good reads

Y Combinator is perhaps the most well-respected acceleration program out there for startups, but that doesn’t mean every team that takes part goes on to glory. We looked at 10 Y Combinator startups that didn’t make it but should’ve.

Figuring out the return on investment in social media can be a minefield for businesses. Step in the wrong direction and a ‘vanity metric’ could blow up in your face. This weekend we took a look at Altimeter Group’s Social Media ROI Cookbook, which aims to help.

Did you know that Foursquare wants the world to call it foursquare with a small ‘f’, and that ‘Tweet’ is a trademark belonging to Twitter? We explored the brand protection guidelines issued by some of the technology companies we cover every day here on TNW.

Oh, and don’t miss…

The TNW team was stunned by a video we posted this weekend of singer Tom Waits being interviewed on Australian TV. He bears a striking resemblance to Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight. No, seriously – it’s uncanny.

Image credits: Shawn Carpenter and Paul Miller

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