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Tweetmeme has been on a roll lately. Not only have they partnered with Twitter this month on a new Twitter retweet button, but they have also announced a new search engine product called Datasift.

Datasift is essentially a programming language that can help users with complex searches. An example that TheNextWeb gave was the ability to find “people in New York with over 200 followers who have mentioned Barack Obama in a positive way with no swearing in the past day.”

Datasift is not intended for common Twitter users. Instead it is for developers of Twitter-centric software to build advanced search tools. This would be beneficial to Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic, etc.

Twitter has provided a lot of support to Tweetmeme on this new product. Datasift will make money by offering free streams with built-in ads and paid streams where developers for content volume.

[TheNextWeb]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by simonivan \\ tags: ability, barack-obama, engine-product, offering-free, retweet-button, shot-2010-08-17, tweetmeme, twitter, twitter-centric

Groupon has acquired a majority stake in their Russian and Japanese counterparts. Expecting to make $500 million this year, Groupon now has a significant ownership in Qpod of Japan and Darberry of Russia. This is in addition to Groupon’s acquisition of Germany based counterpart City Deal. As a result of the investment, both companies will be named Groupon as well. Groupon is a business that thrives on offering daily local deals based on bulk customer actions.

Groupon will now offer daily deals across 230 markets and 29 countries. Groupon is also flush with VC money as they have received $135 million from DST and Battery Ventures plus another $35 million across separate rounds. Groupon has a $1.35 billion valuation.

[WSJ]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by tanloc2t \\ tags: based-on-bulk, both-companies, bulk-customer, groupon, groupon.com, investment, japan, japanese, majority-stake, qpod inc., russian, shot-2010-08-17, the-investment

Nielsen, the TV and consumer habit measurement company is planning to raise $2.01 billion through an IPO that they are planning. Originally the company was planning to raise $1.75 billion through the IPO.

Nielsen is currently owned by a group of six private equity firms as part of a $10 billion deal this past 2006. The six companies are KKR, Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Thomas H. Lee Partners, AlpInvest Partners, and Hellmen & Friedman.

[DealBook]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by gunturbabu \\ tags: billion-deal, blackstone, carlyle-group, currently-owned, firms-as-part, invest-partners, nielsen, partners, past, shot-2010-08-17, six-companies, six-private

There has been an influx of complaints about the Droid 2 seeing a lot of dropped calls. In two test units received by MobileCrunch, the signal seems to dip from full signal to almost no signals when sitting in the same place. Engadget is saying the same thing about four test units they have. If you have the Droid 2, are you seeing the same problem? Let us know in the comments. [MobileCrunch]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by pietro842 \\ tags: droid, droid 2, google android, mobile, same-problem, shot-2010-08-17, signal, the-signal

Cricket Wireless has brought in a few goats to take care of their blackberry tree problem around their cellphone towers in Beaverton, Oregon. Immediately, you may have thought to yourself that I was referring to the mobile devices manufactured by RIM — but you were wrong. These goats helped save Cricket Wireless thousands of dollars. Check out the video below.

[Engadget]

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Duy Phong \\ tags: Application, beaverton, blackberry, cellphone, cricket, cricket-wireless, goats-helped, object-height, param-name, shot-2010-08-17, video