Matt Asay says, “Google should be leading HTML5 development, but it’s not. No, that honor goes to Apple, the company that has done more to trumpet the virtue of native apps than anyone else. Apple isn’t known for being a champion of open source or open standards, but with iOS 8 it has become both. Among a host of consumer-facing improvements to performance and the user experience, Apple has also introduced significant improvements for application developers, including WKWebView, a new browser engine that promises to make hybrid apps sing on iOS 8. Ironically, Apple’s one-time... [...]

Selena Larson says, “Reddit, one of the most popular sites on the Internet for sharing news, memes, and stories of inspiration, has raised $50 million in funding, and members of the community, known as “redditors,” might be getting a piece of it. People on Reddit have made the site the massive success it is today—it’s played an integral role in spotting Internet trends long before the masses do. So Reddit CEO Yishan Wong said in a blog post that investors are prepared to give 10% of their shares back to community members. How, exactly, that works remains to be seen”. Reddit... [...]

Helen A. S. Popkin says, “In an ever-escalating battle to own the Internet, Facebook is going after Google’s digital advertising empire, using your personal information as ammunition. Atlas, the ad-serving platform Facebook purchased from Microsoft in 2013, will apply Facebook user data to sell ads on websites outside the social network. That’s not as creepy as it might sound—rather, it’s not any creepier than anything else that happens to your not-so-personal-anymore info that’s already free-floating on the Internet. Facebook’s repository of humans will provide... [...]

In his latest article on re-code.net, Peter Kafka reports, “Investors and analysts spent years clamoring for Facebook to start up an ad network, andearlier this year it obliged them. And now Facebook is rolling out another one. Caveat — this isn’t an ad network in a formal sense. But it’s going to be viewed as one, because in the big picture, it does the thing people outside Facebook wanted an ad network to do: It lets advertisers buy ads, via Facebook, on properties Facebook doesn’t own. Some of the details about Facebook’s plans have been leaking out for months, starting with a... [...]

Matt Asay says, “Big Data may finally have arrived. Not “arrived” in the sense that everyone isswimming in data lakes and discovering actionable insights and other buzzwords. After all, most companies, including yours, are still baffled by Big Data and how to derive value from it. But for the first time in years, the Big Data fence-sitters have decided to get into the action. According to recent Gartner data, Big Data experimentation has hit 73% of enterprises, suggesting that too much is at stake with big data to sit it out”. Big Data’s Fence-Sitters Are Starting To... [...]

Kurt Wagner & Jason Del Rey say, “Facebook first began testing a “Buy” button within the News Feed in July, and payments startup Stripe has been tasked with powering the technology, Re/code has learned. The “Buy” button, which allows Facebook users to purchase goods that are featured in ads or posts on the social network, is still in its test phase, but multiple sources said Stripe’s technology was supporting the button. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed Thursday that Stripe is the sole Facebook payments partner behind the test. A spokesperson for Stripe declined to comment”. Facebook... [...]

Selena Larson says, “The news business is increasingly dependent on social media to reach an audience, and it’s changed a great deal as a result—not always in good ways, either. That’s what led the Pew Research Center to take a deeper look at how social platforms shape the way people get their news. To no one’s big surprise, Facebook is the big kahuna for driving traffic to news sites. According to the Pew study, almost half of U.S. adults that use Facebook—that is, roughly 30% of the general population—also find news there”. Facebook Delivers News To 30% Of U.S.... [...]

Selena Larson says, “When text messaging first spread, we got 160-character texts. Then multimedia messaging added photos to the mix—if you were lucky and your carrier supported it. The skyrocketing popularity of messaging apps around the world signals a shift in the way we communicate. Now we can share more than a simple thought rendered in text. We can share cartoon characters, disappearing selfies, our current location—even our phone’s battery life. The new Apple Watch’s forthcoming messaging app has us imagine a world where we tell our loved ones we’re alive in a literal... [...]

Jason Del Rey says, “Back in March, Re/code took the wraps off of Clinkle, the secretive payments startup that raised more than $30 million and hired and lost almost its entire executive team — all before launching publicly. The company hasn’t talked to us (or anyone) since our story, but in the past week or so,Clinkle redesigned its website, providing more information to potential users on what the service provides as it gears up for a rollout on some college campuses. It’s the first public sign of what they’re up to, and a lot of it confirms what we had previously reported. Here’s... [...]

Ari Levy says, “In the world of Internet startups, taking on Google’s main business has been a fool’s errand. The graveyard of failed search engines is long and deep, and while there are still challengers promising safer or more relevant results, Google’s market share only goes in one direction: Up. But when it comes to mobile, the market is playing out very differently (a topic to be explored at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference next month). At least that’s the wager that youthful companies such as URX, Deeplink and Branch Metrics are making. They’re all operating with a fairly simple... [...]