Social networking juggernaut Facebook is suing a new website called Teachbook, which is designed to help teachers, administrators & parents share classroom resources with each other.
The suit alleges, “Misappropriating the distinctive BOOK portion of Facebook’s trademark, Defendant has created its own competing online networking community in a blatant attempt to become Facebook “for Teachers.””
Facebook’s lawyers are claiming that using the name Teachbook is intended to (and would) confuse people into believing the site is associated with Facebook.
While there’s certainly truth to the claim that the use of “book” in Teachbook’s name is intended to let people know it’s a social networking site, it doesn’t automatically follow that people will assume an affilliation with Facebook.
In fact it seems like an equally valid argument that the average person would assume the name implies Teachbook is an alternative to Facebook, and therefore not affiliated.
Result for: online
In October 2009, billionaires Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the creators of the Kazaa P2P client as well as Skype, announced that they had developed and financed the unlimited music subscription service Rdio, and the company has now made the service available to all.
Separating the service from others like Rhapsody is the fact that Rdio allows users to listen from anywhere in “the cloud,” including through their phones, instead of needing to download DRM-laced music locally.
Furthermore, Rdio has many social networking features connected to Facebook and Twitter. Rdio uses subscriber’s online social networks to recommend songs, as well. If a bunch of your friends like a certain artist, Rdio will likely recommend it to you.
Rdio has over seven million tracks available from the major labels and thousands of indies.
The service charges $10 per month for unlimited access to music on a computer or your smartphone. For $5, you can get browser-only access.
Rdio is available on BlackBerrys, Android devices and the Apple iPhone.
Result for: online
Hulu, the United States’ long-time second most popular streaming video site saw its viewership nosedive for the month ended June 30th, after comScore changed their measurement methods.
In May, the site had an estimated 44 million viewers, says comScore, with that number falling to 24 million in June.
The giant drop was the largest of any of the top Internet video sites, dropping the site from second to tenth, in terms of online video traffic in the U.S.
While the number drop seems huge, the new numbers mainly underscore a different and lingering problem; the fact that measuring online audiences remains unreliable.
Three companies, ComScore, Nielsen and Quantcast, each measure differently, so numbers may be similar but never equal.
Says one digital media strategist of the difference in numbers, and the overall problem of unreliability: “You would think 15 years on, we would be in a better place. But we’re still talking about fundamental discrepancies in things like page counts.”
