Nokia to lay off thousands; what Facebook knows about you.
Microsoft manufacturing tablet to rival Apple iPad [THE WRAP]
The company has scheduled a secretive event for Monday at 3:30 p.m. June 18 in Los Angeles, where it will make a “major” announcement whose nature has not been disclosed. Even the venue has not yet been announced. But an individual with knowledge of the company said that Microsoft would introduce a Microsoft-manufactured tablet at the event, marking a foray into a new hardware category that would put the company in direct competition with giant rival Apple.
Nokia to cut 10,000 jobs as Elop tries to stanch losses [BLOOMBERG]
Nokia reduced its earnings forecast for the second time this year and said it will cut as many as 10,000 more jobs and shut production and research sites in Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop’s biggest overhaul. The stock fell 18 percent to the lowest level since 1996, pushing Nokia’s market value below $10 billion.
What Facebook knows [TECHNOLOGY REVIEW]
And yet, even as Facebook has embedded itself into modern life, it hasn’t actually done that much with what it knows about us. Now that the company has gone public, the pressure to develop new sources of profit is likely to force it to do more with its hoard of information. That stash of data looms like an oversize shadow over what today is a modest online advertising business, worrying privacy-conscious Web users and rivals such as Google. Everyone has a feeling that this unprecedented resource will yield something big, but nobody knows quite what.
Kevin Rose on his new gig at Google Ventures, what he looks for in a startup founder, and more [TECHCRUNCH]
At Google Ventures, Rose tells us, he’ll be focused on seed-stage investments in mostly consumer web startups — so he’ll be making the same kinds of deals he’s been eyeing as an individual angel investor for years now, only now he’ll be backed with Google’s name — and, of course, its sizable checkbook.
Game developers already abandoning Google’s social network [ALLTHINGSD]
Wooga has confirmed that Monster World has already been taken down and that more titles are on their way off. PopCap, a division of Electronic Arts, also confirmed that Bejeweled Blitz will be offline starting on Monday. This is not a good sign for Google, given that Wooga and EA represent the fourth- and third-largest social game companies on Facebook, respectively.
