Fearless Predictions That Were Utterly Wrong

Twitter, Path blamed in privacy controversy

(NEWSER) - Leading smartphone apps are taking a lot more of our information than we realize. If you use Twitter's "Find Friends" feature, the company receives every phone number and email address in your address book—a fact that Twitter hadn't clarified, the Los Angeles Times reports. The company now says it will fix the problem. But it's just one of many companies storing user information with a view toward ultimately using it for advertising. More»

They said iPads wouldn't make it, but Google Wave would

(NEWSER) - The media gave us plenty of predictions for 2010, and plenty of them simply didn’t come true. AOL News lists some of the most glaring:

• Job growth will begin again. Newsweek predicted it unemployment would fall “below 9%,” but it was never less than 9.5%.
• Republicans won’t storm the midterms. The National Review foresaw “good, though not great, gains.” The GOP won 63 House seats.

Esquire : Sites that were before their time

(NEWSER) - Everything old is new again, especially on the Web. Some of today's tech darlings owe a lot to websites of years past. Here are some of Esquire's 15 favorite, and mostly kaput, Web 1.0 pioneers:

1. Dodgeball (2000) "A location-based social network for mobile devices, and the Internet's gift to stalkers," says Esquire. Today's Foursquare was co-created by one of its founders.

Privacy gap closed, but not before some opportunistic hijinks

(NEWSER) - If your Twitter account lists no followers or follow-ees, thank the happy-go-lucky iPhone acquirers at Gizmodo , who tipped the tech world to a vulnerability this morning. It's no longer working, but the web interface allowed the attention-starved to type "accept" and the Twitter name of any account, thereby gaining a follower—and the attendant direct-messaging capability. "I have no idea how a hole this large could be left in a service as popular as Twitter, nor do I understand why it hasn't been shut yet," wrote John Herrman. More»

Company aims to fill service gaps

(NEWSER) - In another move toward world domination, Twitter has acquired Tweetie, a Twitter client for iPhone and Mac platforms. The purchase is part of Twitter's plan to work on "filling the holes" and eliminate the need for third-party services—and that's causing some tension between the the company and the developers who have built the 70,000 applications that support the microblogging site. More»