twitter™

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

The 140-character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind of shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shortening services such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.

Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet"[3] since the use of Twitter's application programming interface for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter.

What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it's not a social network, but it's an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.
—Evan Williams

Twitter emphasized their news and information network strategy in November 2009 by changing the question it asks users for status updates from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?". Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic analysis. Although estimates of the number of daily users vary because the company does not release the number of active accounts, a February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network[8] based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a monthly growth of 1,382 percent, Zimbio of 240 percent, followed by Facebook with an increase of 228 percent. However, only 40 percent of Twitter's users are retained.

History

Twitter began in a "daylong brainstorming session" that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo in an attempt to break out of a creative slump. At that meeting Jack Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group, a concept partly inspired by the SMS group messaging service TXTMob.[11]

The working name was just "Status" for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on ... We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere.

We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word "twitch," because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But "twitch" is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was.
—Jack Dorsey

The original product name or codename for the service was twttr, inspired by Flickr and the fact that American SMS short codes are five characters. The developers initially experimented with "10958″ as a short code, though later changed it to "40404″ for "ease of use and memorability." Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST): "just setting up my twttr".

The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees, later launching publicly into a full-scale version in July 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo and all of its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and other shareholders. Twitter later spun off into its own company in April 2007.

The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. During the event usage went from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it. Soon everyone was buzzing and posting about this new thing that was sort of instant messaging and sort of blogging and maybe even a bit of sending a stream of telegrams." Reaction at the festival was overwhelmingly positive. Laughing Squid blogger Scott Beale said Twitter "absolutely rul[ed]" SXSW. Social software researcher Danah Boyd said Twitter "own[ed]" the festival. Twitter staff accepted their prize for the festival's Web Award with the remark "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"

In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. The exact amounts of funding have not been publicly released. Twitter's first round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between $1 million and $5 million.[20] Its B round of funding in 2008 was for $22 million and its C round of funding in 2009 was for $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and Insight Venture Partners. Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.

The Industry Standard has remarked that Twitter's long-term viability is limited by a lack of revenue. Twitter board member Todd Chaffee forecast that the company could make money from e-commerce noting that many users may want to buy items directly from Twitter since they already use it to get product recommendations and since companies already use it to promote products.

Some of Twitter's documents covering revenue and user growth were published on TechCrunch after they were retrieved by a hacker. These contained internal projections that in 2009 they would have revenues of $400,000 in the third quarter (Q3) and $4 million in the fourth quarter (Q4) along with 25 million users at the end of the year. The projections for the end of 2013 were $1.54 billion in revenue, $111 million in net earnings, and 1 billion users. No information about how Twitter plans to achieve those numbers has been published. Biz Stone published a blog post suggesting legal action for revealing the details was a possibility.

About Kaspersky Lab

Some companies put on a big show, while others simply create great products. In any area of business only companies that are fully dedicated and remain focused on one thing achieve success. For us this means the battle against computer malware. For 12 years, we have worked on exposing, analyzing and neutralizing IT threats. Along the way, we have amassed a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge about malware and how to deal with it.

The company today

Kaspersky Lab is an international group that employs over 1500 highly-qualified specialists, has central offices in Moscow, as well as regional headquarters overseeing the activities of local representatives and partners in five global regions: Western Europe; Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa; North and South America; the Asia-Pacific region; and Japan. The company currently works in more than 100 countries across the globe. The company’s products and technologies provide protection for over 250 million users worldwide.

The group’s main decision-making body is the Board of Directors, responsible for setting out an overall development strategy and appointing senior management figures. The Board is made up of nine shareholders and top managers representing the central headquarters and global regions.

Unique experience and knowledge

In 2009 Kaspersky Lab celebrates its twelfth anniversary, though Eugene Kaspersky’s group of experts has been developing antivirus software for nearly twice as long. Undoubtedly, the company’s most valuable asset is the wealth of experience and knowledge it has gained in those years of combating viruses and other IT threats, enabling us to pre-empt trends in malware development. This helps us to remain one step ahead of the competition and provide our users with the most reliable protection from new types of attack.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus

Due to its high level of professionalism and dedication, Kaspersky Lab has become a market leader in the development of antivirus protection. The company’s main product, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, regularly receives top awards in tests conducted by respected international research centers and IT publications. Kaspersky Lab was the first to develop many technological standards in the antivirus industry, including full-scale solutions for Linux, Unix and NetWare, a new-generation heuristic analyzer designed to detect newly emerging viruses, effective protection against polymorphic and macro viruses, continuously updated antivirus databases and a technique for detecting viruses in archived files.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 is a new Kaspersky Lab product that provides complete protection of personal computers from all Internet threats. The solution includes HIPS (Host-based Intrusion Prevention System), an advanced application activity control technology which assigns security ratings to new, as yet unknown programs. It is the first antivirus product to include sandbox technology, which uses virtualization to provide a secure isolated execution environment for applications. Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 also offers users the advantages of Kaspersky Security Network, an innovative distributed malware control system.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 is a product intended for advanced users. It includes proven antivirus technologies that provide effective protection to millions of users across the globe. The release of Series 2010 personal products is scheduled for June 2009 in Europe and for the third quarter of 2009 in other regions.

Kaspersky Mobile Security 8.0 is a user-friendly and reliable solution that protects mobile devices from network attacks, malware targeting mobile platforms and SMS spam. In the event that the smartphone is lost, the data in its memory also remains protected.

It is hard to imagine what the antivirus industry would be like today without the numerous technologies devised by Kaspersky Lab. This is reflected in many respected security software developers choosing the Kaspersky Anti-Virus engine to drive their own products, including Aladdin (Israel), Alt-N (USA), Blue Coat (USA), Check Point (Israel), Clearswift (UK), Communigate Systems (USA), Critical Path (Ireland), D-Link (Taiwan), Finjan (USA), GFI (Malta), IBM (USA), Juniper (USA), LANDesk (USA), Microsoft (USA), Netasq (France), Netgear (USA), Parallels (Russia), Sonicwall (USA), WatchGuard (USA), ZyXEL (Taiwan).

Integrated security

When it comes to providing reliable protection against viruses, spam and hacker attacks, Kaspersky Lab has solutions for every customer. The company delivers a comprehensive range of products to protect home PC users and corporate networks from the increasingly complex, multifunctional malware systems that permeate the Internet.

Kaspersky Anti-Spam is designed to protect both users of company mail systems and Internet providers from unsolicited mass mailing or spam. It employs intelligent spam detection technology, which was developed using Kaspersky Lab’s extensive experience in protecting large-scale mail systems.

In 1999, Kaspersky Lab was the first to introduce integrated antivirus software for workstations, file servers and application servers running on Linux/FreeBSD operating systems. Today, the company offers a whole range of effective IT security solutions for the most popular Linux/FreeBSD systems, protecting both server and client applications.

Kaspersky Lab also offers a new range of IT security outsourcing services for corporations of any size. Kaspersky Hosted Email Security ensures that email threats – viruses, spam, hacker attacks, and phishing – are neutralized before they even reach a company’s servers. The Kaspersky Hosted Web Security service provides protection from IT threats that penetrate the corporate network via Internet gateways. Kaspersky Hosted IM Security protects instant messaging (IM) systems, as well as controlling the use of IM by employees.

Using the entire range of Kaspersky Lab products ensures an unprecedented level of protection from malware and other external threats.

Kaspersky Lab customers have access to a wide range of additional services to ensure the most effective operation of our products. The company releases antivirus database updates on an hourly basis and anti-spam database updates 12 to 24 times a day. We provide round-the-clock technical support in several languages (by telephone and email). We also design, deploy and support customized antivirus solutions and information security systems for corporate customers.

Customers

Although the majority of our corporate customers are small and medium size business, our clients include many large Russian and international governmental and commercial organizations.

Financial Performance

Sales bookings (2008, mln.USD): 329

IFRS revenues (2008, mln.USD): 239

Regional split in sales bookings (2008, mln.USD):

• Europe: 196
• EEMEA: 90
• Americas: 19
• APAC: 22
• Japan: 2

Segment split in sales bookings (2008, mln.USD):

• Consumer: 200
• Corporate: 99
• Technology alliances: 30

History of PayPal

PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. PayPal serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders.

A PayPal account can be funded with an electronic debit from a bank account or by a credit card. The recipient of a PayPal transfer can either request a check from PayPal, establish their own PayPal deposit account or request a transfer to their bank account. PayPal is an example of a payment intermediary service that facilitates worldwide e-commerce.

PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. It sometimes also charges a transaction fee for receiving money (a percentage of the amount sent plus an additional fixed amount). The fees charged depend on the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipient's account type.In addition, eBay purchases made by credit card through PayPal may incur a "foreign transaction fee" if the seller is located in another country, as credit card issuers are automatically informed of the seller's country of origin.

On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Austin, Texas in the U.S., Chennai, Dublin, Berlin and Tel-Aviv. As of July 2007, across Europe, PayPal also operates as a Luxembourg-based bank.

Beginnings

The current incarnation of PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially featured financial services with email payments as a feature.

At Confinity, many of the initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk recruited a wide range of technical and business personnel, including many that were critical to the combined company's success, such as Amy Klement, Sal Giambanco, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Sanjay Bhargava and Jeremy Stoppelman.

To block potentially fraudulent access by automated systems, PayPal used a system (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter numbers from a blurry picture, which they coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test.

eBay watched the rise in volume of its online payments and realized the fit of an online payment system with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May 1999, prior to the existence of PayPal. eBay made Billpoint its official payment system, dubbing it "eBay Payments," but cut the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only payments made for eBay auctions. For this reason, PayPal was listed in many more auctions than Billpoint. In February 2000, the PayPal service had an average of approximately 200,000 daily auctions while Billpoint (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April 2000, more than 1,000,000 auctions promoted the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 attacks.

Acquisition by eBay

In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay's subsidiary Billpoint, Citibank's c2it, whose service was closed in late 2003, and Yahoo!'s PayDirect, whose service was closed in late 2004. Western Union announced the December 2005 shut down of their BidPay service but subsequently sold it in 2006 to CyberSource Corporation. BidPay subsequently ceased operations on December 31, 2007. Some competitors which offer some of PayPal's services, such as Google Checkout,Wirecard, Moneybookers, 2Checkout, CCNow and Kagi, remain in business, despite the fact that eBay now requires everyone on its Australian and United Kingdom sites to offer PayPal. Eventually eBay moderated its position, and mandated that sellers on eBay Australia offer PayPal as one of the (but not necessarily the only) payment methods. These accepted payment methods include bank deposit, cheques and money orders, escrow, and credit cards (processed by other than PayPal).

In January 2008, PayPal agreed to acquire Fraud Sciences, a privately-held Israeli start-up company with expertise in online risk tools, for $169 million, in order to enhance eBay and PayPal's proprietary fraud management systems and accelerate the development of improved fraud detection tools. In November 2008, the company acquired Bill Me Later, an online payments company offering transactional credit at over 1000 online merchants in the US.^[20]

PayPal's total payment volume, the total value of transactions, was US$ 60 billion in 2008, an increase of 27 percent over the previous year. The company continues to focus on international growth and growth of its Merchant Services division, providing online payments for retailers off eBay.

history of Rapidshare

RapidShare is a German-owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service (with certain restrictions and limitations) website that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users. Rapidshare is one of the world's largest file-hosting sites, claiming that its customers have uploaded more than 10 petabytes of files onto its servers and can handle up to three million users simultaneously. As of October 2009^[update], according to Alexa's three month average rating, Rapidshare.com is the 18th most visited website globally.

RapidShare has two different websites, but both sites claim to be entirely different organizations and entities.^{[citation needed]} The original site is RapidShare.de, which uses the German top-level domain ".de", and the organization has its central office in Cham, Switzerland.

On October 20, 2006, RapidShare announced that "Unfortunately all drives of RapidShare.de are full right now". A new website, RapidShare.com was set up in an attempt to transfer usage from RapidShare.de to RapidShare.com.^{[citation needed]} When the new Rapidshare.com was launched, holders of "Premium" accounts at the time on RapidShare.de were able to use both the RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com, until their account expired. It is not possible, however, to use a RapidShare.com account on the German site.

Upon uploading, the user is supplied with a unique download URL which enables anyone, with whom the uploader shares it, to download the file. No user is allowed to search the server for content; all files have to be downloaded by following a given URL.

RapidShare stated in April 2008 that it had 240 gigabit/s of Internet connectivity and 5.4 petabytes of storage for users.

Registration and payment allow benefits such as unlimited download speed, download of several files simultaneously, queue skipping, the facility to interrupt and re-start downloads, uploading and downloading bigger files up to 2 GB, allowing Free Users to download their files with Premium privileges ("TrafficShare") and to store up to 500 GB of data that can not expire.

Premium accounts last for a certain number of days. If an account is still valid is measured in seconds, not days. Thus, if you buy a 30 day account, its valid 30*86400 seconds. The timer starts with your first login. However, there seems to be a limit of the delay, so people can not hoard cheap accounts for ages. Every premium account is limited to a maximum of 150 GB download traffic per month, divided equally over every day of the month. If there are 30 days in a month, then the user will receive 5 GB per day. The user is allowed to "save" traffic up to a maximum of 25 GB and can then spend the saved traffic all at once.

There is now a rewards program that allows the user to trade "RapidPoints" for a selection of products depending on the amount of points the user has collected.

As of May 2009, the downloads limit has been established for Premium Members at 5 gigabyte per day. The unused volume is automatically rolled over to the following day, up to a maximum limit of 25 gigabytes. If the complete download capacity is used up during one day, the premium-user is able to download another 5 gigabytes the following day (or after midnight CET).

The Rapidshare service is subject to frequent alterations, such as the size of the traffic allowances and the policies for their application. Users are notified of changes via the 'News' page on the Rapidshare website.