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About four years after it launched, Meetup decided to charge for its services, which allow users with common interests to organize face-to-face meetings offline. Immediately, the startup lost some 95% of its activity. CEO Scott Heiferman says that startups need to implement such risky strategies to elevate their products, and to see what the real demand for such services is. Despite the initial backlash, Meetup went on to attract close to 14 million members who organize about 400,000 meetings a month in 196 countries. Watch below Heiferman talk about the dangers of layering too many features onto a product and losing focus, and how entrepreneurs should give their companies enough time to evolve and adapt rather than throwing in the towel at the first sign of trouble. Please enable Javascript to watch this videoPlease enable Javascript to watch this video Produced by Daniel Goodman and Kamelia AngelovaSEE ALSO: How 12-Person Startup SurveyMonkey Became A Billion Dollar Company Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Ping Foo / flickr Eight months ago, small- and medium-sized businesses around the country started getting threats from mysterious six-letter entities like AllLed, GosNel, and AdzPro. The letters suggested that the network of shell companies owned several key patents that cover scanning to PDF documents, and they demanded payments of around $1,000 per worker. It's the kind of patent licensing that, in earlier times, would typically be directed against the makers of a technology, not the end users. But the reality is that patent attacks against end users are proliferating. The Electronic Frontier Foundation noted several recent and disturbing examples in a blog post published yesterday. In April, Ars interviewed Brian Farney, one of the lawyers managing the MPHJ scheme, which controls the 40 six-letter shell companies sending infringement notices to end users. Farney said that users were the only appropriate targets of the MPHJ patents because the patents are only infringed when the scanners are combined with a local network, a step that is performed by the users. Farney said he has spoken to the scanner companies and found that they do not infringe. After a long silence, two of the scanner companies in question, Xerox and Ricoh, have now taken joint action against MPHJ. The companies have filed an "inter partes" reexamination request at the patent office seeking to prove that the claims of one MPHJ patent, No. 7,986,426, aren't patentable. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Players won’t have to pay an activation fee in order to play pre-owned games on the Xbox One, according to reports by Eurogamer and MCV. The stores who sell them will. MCV cites numerous retail sources who say they have been briefed by Microsoft about how the new system will operate. Brick-and-mortar stores will be required to register a game as being ‘traded in’ by using a dedicated system offered by Microsoft. The title is then wiped from the user’s account, which could be the reason why the Xbox One needs to be connected to the Internet at least once every 24 hours. To sell the game pre-owned, the store then has to pay an activation fee. Eurogamer says Microsoft hasn’t specified what this is yet and hence much of the confusion circulating on the Internet at the moment. Regardless, the activation fee will be split in two; part of it going to Microsoft and the remainder to the publisher. Such a system sounds unnecesarily complex, but it makes sense on multiple fronts. Microsoft is looking for any additional revenue that can be sourced from trade-ins, and taking a cut from second-hand games seems a good place to start. Meanwhile, publishers are worried that they’re losing vital business as crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter continue to grow, as well as direct digital distribution on PC by indie studio. Taking a cut on pre-owned, physical games will help to fill the gap left by changing consumer and developer behavior. How will this affect me, the gamer? If true, the effect of such a system is two-fold. By handing a cut to Microsoft and the publishers, retailers will be forced to increase the price of pre-owned games. Consumers, as a result, will still pay some form of activation fee, albeit indirectly. The higher price-point for pre-owned games will also cause sales of such products to slow. Players will buy less of them, choose to pay for a new edition, or simply wait until a new copy drops to a price that they’re comfortable paying. All of this plays into Microsoft’s hands. Hardware manufacturers and publishers want to kill the pre-owned market as quickly as possible; or find a way to earn a share of the profits. It also means that Microsoft will likely be able to change the cost of the activation fee depending on its impact. After all, Microsoft would be wise not to choke a valuable source of revenue for brick-and-mortar stores. Doing so might jeopardise their very existence and as a result, reduce the opportunities for consumers to buy new copies of their latest console and games.

Learnist may have launched out of a company focused on test prep and more formal education, but the social learning site is quickly showing that its appeal is much broader. Since its launch about a year ago, the service, which was created by startup Grockit to enable users to curate and follow “learn boards” of videos, text and other web content focused on specific topics, has attracted about 700,000 registered users (150,000 to 200,000 are active monthly users). Each month, the company said, it receives about two million page views and has grown its traffic 30 percent week over week since its latest update last month. But while a significant portion of its traffic goes to content relevant to K-12 teachers and students, the site is also drawing a large crowd for content unrelated to the classroom.  Co-founder Farb Nivi said that about 25 to 30 percent of the content on the site is education-related and it receives about a quarter of the total Learnist traffic. But he added that while just 6 percent of the content on the site is lifestyle-related (focusing on food, cooking, home design and other similar topics), it receives about 35 percent of the site’s traffic. It underscores that while the site does accommodate teachers and the education-only crowd, it’s moving further away from being a typical ed tech app. “We want to be the Instagram of knowledge-sharing,” Nivi said, adding that as it grows it plans to make it even easier for users of all types to share content and receive the bits of content most relevant to their interests, “like a smart RSS.” Unlike a true RSS reader, the site doesn’t allow people to subscribe to blogs and news sites to get the most timely stories. But it wants to be a service that enables people to easily keep up to date on the topics they care about – from technology to art to cooking to politics – by following people and topic-focused tags. While an RSS reader only enables people to view content from sources to which they subscribe, Learnist aims to suggest and surface all kinds of crowd-sourced content that could match a user’s profile. Now, the site has about 25 million pieces of content but, in the next twelve months, he added, Learnist plans to increase that by as much as 100 times. Last month, it removed the sign-up process, which was a big barrier to entry. Going forward, Nivi said they’re considering removing the concept of the “learn board” to simplify content sharing, as well as adding more publisher partners (now they partner with only Discovery and the BBC). That growth could raise the amount of lower-quality content on the site. But to keep the signal to noise ratio high, the company this week added a LinkedIn-like endorsement feature to help its algorithms identify the best contributors and content and it’s playing with applying natural language processing to publisher content to help it route the best content to users. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominatedSocial 2013: The enterprise strikes backHow social discovery is transforming entertainment

Nvidia is aiming to unleash "the full graphics potential of enterprise desktop virtualization" with the integration of its GRID vGPU into Citrix XenDesktop 7.

This news note comes from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's research and and analysis service. The charts and data featured here are available for download in the BI Intelligence library. Please sign up up for a free trial here. Teens are sharing more information on social media than ever before, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet And American Life Project. In 2012, 53% of teens said they shared their email address on social networks, compared to only 29% who did so in 2006. Further, ten times more teens shared their cell phone number on social networks in 2012 than in 2006. Other information, such as photos, school name, and locations are also being shared more frequently on social media by younger demographics, according to the survey of 802 U.S. teens. In other words, despite all the attention on privacy issues surrounding social media, teenagers appear comfortable with sharing more data. However, they also tend to calibrate that sharing. According to Pew, 60% of teen users keep their Facebook profiles private (so that casual Web users and non-friends can't access their profiles). Among adult users, 58%, keep their Facebook profiles private. It's a sign that teens are just as mindful of their privacy setting as adults, even as they share more data about themselves with friends within their network (and Facebook itself). Facebook remains by far the most popular site among social networking teens, with 94% claiming to have an account on the site. However, some teens are also using other sites: 26% of social networking teens used Twitter in 2012, up from 12% in 2011. In contrast to Facebook, where only 14% of teens have public profiles, 64% of those teen Twitter users say their account is public. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

News-aggregation is a pretty busy space as things stand, with the likes of Flipboard and Pulse leading the way, and other emerging social platforms such as Njuice showing promise. There’s always room for one more though, right? Right. Fireplug for iOS has been quietly plugging away in the background for several months already, but in light of a handful of recent tweaks and updates, we thought we’d take a quick look under the hood. We’ve heard good things. How it works When you first launch the app, you’ll be invited to create a new account – you can do so via Facebook or email.     Before you’ve lifted a finger, the app already serves up a slew of stories in your personal stream – this covers business, technology, sport and everything in between. But given this isn’t tailored, there’s a fair chance it won’t be to your liking – for my stream it had a slew of American sports for example. This is why you set about building your own streams.     It’s also worth adding here, if you choose to connect your Facebook account you’ll see an additional ‘Social Stream’ menu option which reels in articles shared by your Facebook Friends. But that may not be for you. For each publication within each category, you simply hit the ‘Plus’ button and select which Stream you wish to add it to – you can choose to create a new stream at this point too.     If you don’t see a publication of your choice, you can hit ‘Search’ instead and chances are, if it has a website, it will show up.     You can share or bookmark any article simply by long-pressing it and selecting your desired action.     It’s very easy to delete publications from a specific stream too, by pulling down the little tab in the top-right – this also lets you delete an entire stream if you wish.     Things start to get really interesting in the ‘My Profile’ section, however. Fireplug essentially tracks every article you read, and serves up stats based on your history. This includes articles you’ve read and shared, as well as the number of different sources you’ve used.     Fireplug also draws on a gamification aspect, letting you become a subject-matter master – the more you read on a particular subject, the more credit you get. Your credit score is then categorized based on the contents of the articles you’re reading. This is a great idea, but isn’t without its flaws – just because you’ve accessed a Web page, this doesn’t mean you’ve read it properly and retained all the information. But I guess the idea here is more of a signifier – if you’ve read 1,000 articles on Apple’s upcoming court case, for example, chances are you’re not blagging it. This competitive element does have a slightly gimmicky air to it, but the stats page and the overall ‘become an expert’ concept is sound. It would genuinely be interesting to know over the course of a year what I’ve read about most and which publications I always keep coming back to. While Fireplug may not be quite as slick or ‘visual’ to browse as Flipboard, it is still a very well constructed app. In many ways, it’s actually easier to personalize than its peers and it’s incredibly intuitive to use – if you’re looking for an alternative news-aggregrator, Fireplug is worth your time. Finally, Fireplug has also just launched a Chrome extension, which syncs your PC-based reading with your mobile endeavors. So all we need now is an Android app and we’re ready to roll. Fireplug for iPhone/iPod touch is available to download for free now. ? Fireplug | iOS Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and bu

Nokia is targeting HTC's latest slate of smartphones, including the HTC One, with new legal action in the U.S. that demands the Taiwanese company cease the alleged patent infringement.Nokia is accusing the HTC One, and several other HTC phones, of infringing three Nokia patents, according to a lawsuit filed by the Finnish handset maker on Thursday. The patents deal with handset radio frequency identification technology for use with applications. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. district court of Southern California, is demanding HTC stop the alleged infringement and pay damages.Other handsets named in the lawsuit include HTC's Droid DNA, the HTC First, and last year's generation of HTC One phones.Nokia on Thursday also filed a patent infringement complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the company said in an email. Nokia said both the ITC and U.S. district court complaints cover nine patents new to its legal dispute with HTC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Company also nixes backwards compatibility, suggests used games may come with an extra fee

Back in March, AMD introduced its mobile Richland APUs with a collection of 35W parts. The firm has now filled out the lineup with seven new models that reach all the way down to 17W. Here's how the chips stack up against the Richland APUs announced in March. I've split the APUs into two tables: one for each of the CPU core configurations. The older parts are grayed out.Appropriately, four of the new APUs are quad-core models. The 35W A10-5757M and A8-5557M look pretty similar to chips announced in March, although ...Read more...