Yahoo Buys Citizens Sports

Yahoo said today it is acquiring social sports site Citizen Sports in an effort to strengthen its strategy of aggregating and distributing social content online. Terms of the acquisition were not released.

"Yahoo! is in a unique position to combine our deep expertise in content and aggregation technology to offer a highly personalized social experience," said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president, Consumer Products Group, Yahoo!.

"Sports has been among the earliest online categories to experience rapid social proliferation, and the combination of Citizen Sports leading products with our world-class sports experience on Yahoo! Sports is a win-win for sports fans globally."

Citizens Sports offers users social and mobile applications to play fantasy sports, fill out brackets, check live scores and read news on sports including football, hockey, soccer, baseball, racing, ruby, hockey and cricket.

Yahoo Sports content will be integrated into Citizen Sports, creating a consistent experience for sports fans. On Yahoo Sports, users will be able to create or join a conversation with other fans and root for their teams via Citizen Sports' applications.

Yahoo Sports is the most popular online sports destination with more than 39 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S. according to comScore. Citizen Sports' network of popular applications for Facebook, MySpace, hi5, iPhone and Android, includes professional, college and high sports.

Citizen Sports was founded by Mike Kerns and Jeff  Ma in 2004. Yahoo said its set to close the deal in the second quarter of 2010.

 

Droid Beats iPhone In Sales Comparison

There's good and bad news for Google this morning with respect to Android and the mobile market.  In terms of how many units were sold during their first 74 days of availability, it seems the Droid beat the iPhone to the million-unit mark, but the Nexus One is lagging far behind.

That's the state of things according to Flurry, which claims that applications using its analytics tools have been embedded in more than 80 percent of iPhones and Android devices.  And anyone who's suspicious of the firm's stats should know that Goldman Sachs has used them as the basis for some forecasts, too.

So on to the comparison.  You can see the results below.  FYI: Flurry picked a 74-day period because that's how long Apple said it took for one million iPhones to sell.

Flurry noted that the Droid enjoyed several advantages here.  First, the iPhone had already taught consumers about the benefits of smartphones.  Verizon also boasted more subscribers than AT&T, and the Droid launched towards the start of the holiday shopping season.

Android can definitely compete with the iPhone, then.  The Nexus One's lack of success just makes it hard to judge what sort of circumstances are needed to even the odds.

Google Hires XML Co-Inventor

Today, Tim Bray started working for Google, and had the search giant just put out a one-sentence press release stating this fact, the development would be worth reporting.  But what makes this move especially noteworthy is that Bray announced it in a 1,260-word blog post mentioning an absolute hatred of the iPhone.

Bray is a rather important person in a lot of tech circles.  Two interesting details regarding his accomplishments: he's the co-inventor of XML, and spent several years serving on the W3C Technical Architecture Group.

Here's what the respected developer had to say about the iPhone, though: "The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what.  It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger. . . .  I hate it."

In turn, Bray's a huge fan of Google's mobile operating system.  He wrote, "The reason I'm here is mostly Android.  Which seems to me about as unambiguously a good thing as the tangled wrinkly human texture of the Net can sustain just now."

So it looks like the Android-iPhone war is about to get a lot more fierce.  Although for what it's worth, Bray was careful to say that his opinions don't necessarily reflect his new employer's stance on anything.

Google Product Search for Mobile Showing When Items are in Stock

Users of the mobile version of Google Product Search can now see if items are in stock at a local store from select retailers. These retailers include: Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm.

Product listings from these retailers will have blue dots that can be tapped to see an "in stock nearby" link, which takes you to a seller's page where it will either say "in stock" or "limited availability". In addition, these pages will show you how far away the store is from your location (assuming you have My Location enabled or have manually specified your location).

The feature is available for iPhone, Palm WebOS, and Android users in the U.S. Users can hit the "more" link, and select "Shopping" or find the "Shopping results" section in Google's Universal Search results when searching from Google.com.

Google offers a form for retailers who are interested in participating in this program. Google says to make sure you have your Local Business Center data up to date and to ensure your Product Search data is in "great shape."

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