Business

Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and startups. Previously, he was a staff technology writer at Adweek, worked as a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and was also a reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing.... ? Learn More Blake Commagere, who’s probably best known for building early, popular Facebook apps like Zombies and Vampires (hey, remember those?), has started a new company called MediaSpike to tackle one of the big problems he faced as a developer: Integrating sponsored product placements into the games. Commagere says those placements were one of the most effective and popular ways to monetize — in fact, when some of those campaigns ended and the sponsored content disappeared, “Users would actually complain.” On the other hand, he says that managing the process was “incredibly difficult.” Without any tools to help wi...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More When Evan Williams and a bunch of other Obvious Corp teammates suddenly follow a snazzy, un-launched product called Medium, you know something big’s about to happen. For now, Medium.com is a website that lets you easily drag in or upload a photo and annotate it with overlaid text, but we hear there are bigger ambitions for the product. Medium’s Twitter account describes it as “The new thing”, and its only tweet is “Getting antsy”, which was posted last night and seems to foreshadow an imminent launch. We couldn’t find other details, but Medium’s placeholder product...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More Facebook’s acq-hiring like crazy and retaining plenty of top talent, but today marks another post-IPO departure as Director of Product Management Carl Sjogreen told friends that he’s heading out to take some family time and “plot my next adventure”. However, he tells me there’s “no concrete ideas yet”. Sjogreen’s exit follows director of corporate communications Barry Schnitt taking the top comms and public policy role at Pinterest, and CTO Bret Taylor leaving to found a new startup. Many suspected the social network’s IPO was designed to give liquidity to long-tim...