Screenshot of Foodie (click to enlarge)

Glam Media, the online media company that produces content and serves ads for a primarily female audience, on Thursday is launching a new website, Foodie.com, its first foray into the culinary space. Social networking features will be built into the new Foodie website, making it the first site from Glam that deeply incorporates the technology acquired when it bought Ning in late 2011.

A launch with great expectations

In an interview this week, Glam CEO Samir Arora said he expects Foodie to very soon become one of his company’s top most highly trafficked sites. “One year ago, we discovered that our top ad category in revenue during the first quarter of 2011 was food. We didn’t even have a dedicated food category at that time,” Arora said. “That really drove us to sequence Foodie as an important launch.” Glam expects Foodie.com to attract 10 million monthly uniques soon after it debuts — a very impressive draw by most standards.

At launch, Foodie will feature content from prominent chefs, restauranteurs, established food critics and bloggers, and ads from companies including Betty Crocker and Dannon Activia. The real key news about the site, though, is that readers of Foodie will be able to fill out complete social profiles to let them interact with each other and Foodie’s content creators and brands. Glam describes Foodie.com like this: “A full social network for consumers to directly discover, connect and follow top foodies.”

Still an appetite for social media

But will people really want to create yet another social media profile? Glam certainly thinks so. According to CEO Arora, that’s because sites like Facebook are just too general to help us connect with our individual interests like food. The people with whom you’re friends on Facebook may not be the same people with whom you’re interested in sharing recipes. “When I connected my Facebook graph to my Yelp account, I found that I have nothing in common with my friends in terms of our restaurant tastes,” he said.

It’s a fair point — as popular as general social networking sites have become, people still go to specialized content producing sites on the web. Facebook’s Timeline and Open Graph is trying to turn Facebook into a central place where people can customize their ideal web experience content and all, but perhaps people will still want to keep separate online niches where they deal with people who align with them along very specific interests. Foodie.com wants to be the place people go to read and connect with like-minded people about all things culinary.

Food may be just the beginning

Arora said this push toward social was always the direction in which Glam planned to go, and that the Ning acquisition which closed in December accelerated the process. “Otherwise, if we had to build it ourselves, we’d probably take five years.” If Foodie is a success it’s expected by the company to be, other verticals in Glam’s portfolio could go the social route as well.

It’s an ambitious move to make, but Glam already has such a massive audience — 220 million unique visitors a month, 90 million of them in the United States — that if anyone besides Facebook is going to turn itself into a totally social content web destination, it’s them.

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Logos from the new Timeline app makers

Facebook on Wednesday unveiled a host of new apps — more than 60 in total — that integrate with its new Timeline user interface. The social networking company also announced it will begin approving Timeline apps running on its Open Graph API from all developers.

“The apps launched at f8 in the music, news and video verticals have seen tremendous success so far. But really, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Our vision for Timeline is that whatever you love, whatever story you want to tell, you can add to your platform.”

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While 2011 was a very busy year for the technology industry, the constant rate of innovation and activity in the market shows that things probably won’t slow down in 2012. Below, we’ve rounded up some of GigaOM’s biggest stories of the year — roughly in the order that they occurred — with a bit of insight on what each could mean for 2012.

• AT&T’s billion bid to buy T-Mobile
• Facebook makes its data center details public
• Google and Facebook battle for the social networking crown
• Netflix screws up — again and again
• Spotify launches in the US
• Google buys Motorola Mobility for .5 billion
• Solyndra crashes and burns
• Hewlett-Packard’s soap opera
• Steve Jobs dies at age 56
• The tech IPO makes a big comeback

AT&T’s billion bid to buy T-Mobile

Sunday mornings are usually pretty sleepy in terms of business news, but March 20th, 2011 was an exception. That’s when AT&T announced its plan to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG for a whopping billion. A deal that huge naturally catches the attention of everyone: The media, consumer groups, industry competitors, and perhaps most importantly, federal regulators. After nearly nine months of back-and-forth about the legality of the merger that came to be known as AT&T-Mo, the deal fell apart: On December 19, AT&T ended its bid to buy T-Mobile as its CEO Randall Stephenson pledged to “continue to be aggressive in leading the mobile Internet revolution.”

What this means for 2012: As GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham pointed out, despite the failure of AT&T-Mo, major changes in the wireless space are inevitable and consolidation will continue:

Now that the deal is off the table, the industry can return to solving the big question that plagues wireless in the U.S.: How the heck will operators get the spectrum and build the networks they need to support robust demand for 4G wireless services and still make money. … AT&T’s bid to get more spectrum wasn’t just an attempt to take out a competitor; it really did need more spectrum for its LTE network, and having T-Mobile’s AWS airwaves ready for an LTE deployment would have made AT&T’s migration path a lot simpler. As operators move from 3G to 4G services such as LTE, they are learning the costs associated with remaking and upgrading their networks are substantial. And as they look ahead to spectrum-hogging standards such as LTE-Advanced, they need more megahertz.

Facebook makes its data center details public

Facebook's Prineville, Oregon datacenter

Most big Internet companies spend a lot of time and money on designing and maintaining data centers. But typically, these companies keep the nitty-gritty details of how they manage the servers that power their operations to themselves — the makeup and quantity of servers that run Google has long been some of the search company’s most highly-guarded secrets, for example (though Google has been sharing that data as of late). Facebook, however, decided to start telling the world about its data center details.

In April 2011, the social networking company debuted the Open Compute Project, in which it provided full specifications of its computing infrastructure. The reason, Facebook says on its OpenCompute.org website, is to help improve technology as a whole:

“We want you to tell us where we didn’t get it right and suggest how we could improve. And opening the technology means the community will make advances that we wouldn’t have discovered if we had kept it secret.”

What this means for 2012: More sharing in the infrastructure space, particularly around how to reduce energy consumption of data centers. Executives from Intel, RackSpace, Arista Networks and Goldman Sachs all joined the Open Compute Project’s board of directors. Of course, pledging to be “open” is almost always good PR, but with this particular initiative Facebook is leading the way with concrete efforts for real transparency in a major industry issue.

Google and Facebook battle for the social networking crown

In June, Google launched Google+, its newest answer to the social networking space that in recent years has been dominated by Facebook. That move seemed to spark renewed vigor from Facebook to maintain its social edge and the next week at a quickly-assembled press event for a new in-Facebook video chat app powered by Skype, Mark Zuckerberg kicked off what he called his company’s “Launching Season 2011.” This season also seemingly culminated with the September debut of Timeline, a dramatically different new Facebook user interface. Google, meanwhile, directed increasing amounts of its attention on trying to make Google+ a success.

What this means for 2012: Even more competitive activity and expect the year to be cut throat. Facebook and Google are showing no signs of backing down from the battle, and with its own bold new redesign, Twitter has thrown its cap into the ring to be the social networking site of choice.

Netflix screws up — again and again

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

What a year it’s been for Netflix — and not in a good way. It all began in June, when the company announced changes in its pricing structure (splitting its DVD rental business from its online streaming business) that would significantly boost prices for the vast majority of customers. Not surprisingly, that didn’t go over so well. So in September, CEO Reed Hastings apologized for the changes and took back the price hike. Instead, he said, Netflix’s DVD rental business would be rebranded as Quikster and essentially put up for sale as the Netflix brand moved to a streaming-only model. That didn’t go over so well, either. So less than a month later, Netflix once again backtracked, killing the Quikster proposal and electing to keep DVD rentals in its core business. Wall Street analysts lauded Netflix’s ultimate decision to keep DVD rentals alive, but Wall Street punished the company nevertheless: Netflix share price dropped from nearly 0 earlier this year to about now.

What this means for 2012: Netflix has its work cut out for it, having closed out 2011 with its lowest customer satisfaction ratings in company history. GigaOM’s Ryan Lawler recently put it thusly:

“Netflix is still the clear leader in the online streaming space, with about 24 million subscribers. But for years Netflix has relied on the virtuous cycle of positive word-of-mouth to help propel its growth. With customer satisfaction declining rapidly, it’ll have to work harder to retain existing customers and to win new ones.”

Spotify launches in the US

Spotify, the popular Europe-based on-demand music streaming service, finally made its highly anticipated debut in the United States in mid-July. A couple months later, the service got an extra boost with a deep integration with Facebook that let users easily listen to songs on Spotify and share them with friends through the social networking service.

What this means for 2012: The buzz around Spotify seems to have spurred other online music services to bring their A-games to the space. Expect more innovation from Pandora, MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody and others.

Google buys Motorola Mobility for .5 billion

Andy Rubin (Google) and Dr. Sanjay K. Jha (Motorola) onstage at Mobilize 2009

Google shook up the dog days of mid-August when it announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility for .5 billion. Once the deal is closed (it’s expected to go through in early 2012) Google will have bought access to Motorola’s portfolio of 17,000 current patents and 7,500 patent applications across wireless standards and non-essential patents on wireless service delivery.

What this means for 2012: The deal is such a huge one that all of its ramifications will take a while to become clear, but Google’s ultimate goal is to further strengthen the mobile strategy it built with the Android mobile operating system. With some 700,000 Android devices being activated daily, Google is already well-positioned in the mobile space — the Motorola investment shows that the company is in it for the long haul in mobile.

Solyndra crashes and burns

Solar panel maker Solyndra was one of the highest profile companies the cleantech space has seen in recent years, garnering visits from President Obama, and applause from Vice President Biden, DOE Secretary Steven Chu and then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company even received a 5 million loan from the U.S. government.

So when the company filed for bankruptcy in August 2011, laid off more than 1,000 employees, and essentially lost the entire tax-payer funded loan, it was a huge blow for a number of industries: Technology, venture capital, and of course solar power. Ucilia Wang wrote in-depth about the story behind Solyndra’s rise and fall for GigaOM.

The bigger trend behind Solyndra has been global crashing solar prices. Thanks partly to Chinese solar companies flooding the market with low (and below) cost solar panels, solar panel makers throughout the world have been struggling and have been going out of businesses. While that’s not good news for those firms, it’s great for consumers, businesses and utilities that are buying solar  panels — solar has never been cheaper.

What this means for 2012: Being that the Solyndra implosion will go down as one of the biggest venture capital losses in history, VC firms will be understandably hesitant to invest in solar companies for quite some time. Also, the federal grants awarded to Solyndra have become a punchline of sorts in the political arena, so the U.S. government may also shy away from supporting solar companies for a while.

Hewlett-Packard’s soap opera

In August, Hewlett-Packard raised eyebrows when it announced plans to spend billion in cash to acquire Autonomy, a UK-based software and services company and said it would look into selling off its billion-a-year PC business. Investors and the industry at large were stunned by both moves which, apparently, were the last straw for HP’s board as well. A month later, HP fired Leo Apotheker, the CEO who brokered the deal and set the PC change in motion, and brought in former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman as his replacement.

What this means for 2012: As GigaOM’s Barb Darrow writes, 2012 is a crucial time for HP to work to “repair its reputation and restore itself to the status of IT icon.” Whether the company will succeed in doing so remains to be seen.

Steve Jobs dies at age 56

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ death on October 5 was a big story for the world even beyond the tech community. Although his passing was not completely unexpected — Jobs had suffered from pancreatic cancer and related complications for some time, and had stepped down from the CEO role at Apple in August because of his health — his death deeply affected many people. Jobs was hugely influential through his work at Apple and as a tech industry figure in general.

What this means for 2012: WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg recently told GigaOM that he thinks Jobs will affect tech in the months and years to come:

“Steve Jobs’ passing affected me more than I expected. I think we’re going to enter a golden age of design, just by virtue of thousands and thousands of founders and designers asking themselves, ‘What would Steve do?’ The things that these people will create will be even bigger than Apple. That’s part of his legacy.”

The web IPO makes a big comeback

A number of venture-backed web companies made their stock market debuts this year. LinkedIn (LNKD), Pandora Media, Zillow, Groupon, Zynga, and TripAdvisor- all went public in 2011. While not all of these companies had stellar post-IPO stock price performances, the very fact they got out the gate is a win in itself for investors and founders.

What this means for 2012: By the looks of it, the IPO wave is just getting started. Analysts say 2012 promises to be another big year for tech IPOs, and in the spring 2012 public offering expected from Facebook will likely be the star of the show.

Some images courtesy of HackingNetflix, whiteafrican, hyku, jdlasica, and Mathieu Thouvenin.

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Nowadays, nearly everybody has a cell phone. Surprisingly, people who attested the uselessness of a cell phone have acquiesced to the convenience mobile phones and technology allow. What other way would you explain the trend of the pay as you go cell phone? Google’s Android phone is ranking high as one of the crowd-pleasing cell phone models available on the market. Its smart phone technology gives the competition a lot to keep up with. With such a huge selection of Android Phones, how do you know which phones are the leading Android Phones? Here are some of the phones that got the best reviews. Take out the time to go visit some of the other topics which have been explored by this author who is willing to aid his readers get one of the most out of their efforts – cell phone accessories. Ensure that you go by means of this extremely useful info as there’s surely something new that you simply are going to be able to find out.

The Motorola Quench is a highly rated Android phone. A later model Motorola that has been enhanced with the Android operation system is the Quench. This is one of eight Motorola phone models, which utilizes the Android system. The phone has a screen that is only slightly larger than three inches, however the screen has high definition (320 x 480). By using Motoblur technology, this phone was designed specifically to enhance the experience had by social network users. It uses the Android 1.5 operating system and comes with Wi-Fi capability, GPS, a camera that is five megapixels and a bunch of apps that users will love. One Motorola phone that functions with the Android operating system is the Motorola Cliq. This phone is for sale thought T-Mobile. It has a keyboard that slides out. One of the things that makes this phone so popular is that it allows the user to keep long logs of e-mails, text messages and social networking updates. You can use this phone for managing your Twitter and Facebook accounts. It also allows you to access the data on the phone remotely.

One crowd-pleasing model of the Android phone is the Samsung Beam i8520. As the phone runs on Android technology as its operating system, it has a pico projector. This means the owner of this phone can use it to project just about anything in their phone onto a wall. It makes bringing a portable projector a simple convenience. It also has smart phone technology in it—the aforementioned Android operating system as well as the Touch Wiz skin that was created by Samsung. The camera this phone features is 8-megapixels, which makes it even better than a majority of handheld digital cameras!

It is a wise idea to consider what you will be using your cell phone for, when choosing among the top Android phones. If your main goal is being able to make phone calls, you probably don’t need a phone with so many bells and whistles. If, however, you plan on using your phone for all of your mobile entertainment and contacts you will need smart phone technology to keep you in touch with your friends, family and hobbies. Choose carefully!

Geeks in Occupy Wall Street think it’s time to build open versions of the social networking tools they’ve used to gather support and get out their message. Think Facebook for the dedicated 99%.

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Zynga executives and investors ringing the NASDAQ opening bell

Zynga held its initial public offering on Friday, raising billion in a stock market debut that valued the company at some billion at the height of the day’s trading. However, Zynga’s stock did not have the day one share price “pop” seen by some other recent web IPOs such as LinkedIn and Groupon: The stock closed Friday afternoon at .50 per share, a pretty significant drop from its IPO price of . Predictably, that’s left the door open for speculation about what this means for the viability of Zynga itself and the tech IPO market in general.

But it’s important to remember that IPO day is literally just the beginning for Zynga’s new life as a publicly traded company. Now that its ownership is shared by a much larger group of investors, Zynga will be subjected to closer scrutiny than ever before: The judgement does not stop here. There are several important events on the near-term horizon that pertain to Zynga, and checking in on the share price at those times could be even more telling as to how investors value the social gaming business.

The way I see it, the potential events to look out for are:

• When Facebook goes public
  This is a biggie. Facebook is said to be preparing to hold an IPO in the spring of 2012, and Zynga’s business as it stands today is hugely dependent on the social networking giant. In fact, Zynga’s S-1 filing to the SEC minced no words in outlining the risks inherent in the closeness of this relationship. If Facebook’s IPO performs strongly, that could be great for Zynga — but if it’s lackluster, Zynga may well feel the crunch. Or Facebook’s IPO could do well and Zynga’s stock price could suffer. (The stock market is an unpredictable thing.) Either way, Facebook’s IPO day will almost certainly have an effect on Zynga’s market valuation.

• When Zynga declares real independence from Facebook
  For all of Zynga’s reliance on Facebook today, the company is working hard to become more successful as a standalone gaming destination. Zynga made a major step towards independence in October when it unveiled “Zynga Direct,” which CEO Mark Pincus said is an over-arching strategy for the company to establish a direct relationship with its users. The first part of Zynga Direct is an upcoming social games platform, codenamed internally Project Z, a web platform in which users will be able to play any Zynga game within the same environment on any browser — rather than within Facebook.

  It’s a delicate balance, but it may just be a matter of time before Zynga makes more concrete steps toward autonomy, such as only releasing the lower-budget older versions of games on Facebook so users who want to play the newer ones have to go to Zynga directly. Independence for Zynga will mean it gets to keep a lot more money — Facebook charges a 30 percent commission on all third-party app revenue. And of course, more money is something investors usually like very much.

• On May 29, 2012
  Every company that goes public is subject to a “lock-up period” that typically lasts up to four months after an IPO. During this time, the company’s employees, early investors and founders are not allowed to sell shares of stock they hold in the company. The day a lock-up period ends, a significant amount of new shares can enter the market if those insiders decide to cash out. If demand doesn’t keep up with that boost in supply, share prices can take a hit: LinkedIn’s stock dipped a full seven percent when its lock-up period ended last month.

  Zynga’s lock-up period is 165 days long, ending on May 29, 2012.

• If regulators crack down on Zynga
  Now, this is a big “if.” But there are some people who are concerned about the way that people get “hooked” on Zynga games, and some Wall Street analysts are whispering that it’s only a matter of time before this draws real ire from governmental regulators here in the U.S. and abroad. Just this week, for instance, a woman in Maine was convicted of embezzling 6,000 from her employer to feed her addiction to Zynga games. The larger media loves these kinds of stories, and in the future some politicians may well seek to regulate the industry in the name of “protecting consumers.”

  This may be far-fetched, though: Zynga games are just entertainment, unlike gambling, in which real money flows both in and out. Games such as World of Warcraft have similarly addictive qualities, and they have not come under too much scrutiny, at least from U.S. officials. But Zynga games are arguably more likely to be in the spotlight because they appeal to a more mainstream audience than other online games have in the past. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the months and years ahead.

In all, Zynga has lots of potential for growth now that it’s got the money and larger respect that comes with being a public company. Its story does not end with this week’s IPO: As interesting as it has been to watch the company over the past few months, the road ahead promises to be even more interesting.

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