Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.
Obama: “We Are a Nation of Google and Facebook”
In addressing American innovation in the State of the Union Address, President Obama called America a nation of Google and Facebook. The mention is significant not only because Obama has been known for leveraging social media, but also because Google announced many job openings Tuesday -- and it’s no coincidence that President Obama mentioned the word jobs 25 times in his address.
Twitter Now Worth $4 Billion
Twitter’s market value has reached $4 billion, according to SharesPost, a secondary market for buying and selling stock in privately held companies.
Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Fan Page Hacked
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook fan page appears to have been hacked. A message calling on the company to transform into a “social business" was quickly removed (together with the fan page), but not before receiving more than 1,800 “likes” and hundreds of comments.
Further News
The New York Times is thinking about developing a system that will let anonymous leakers easily submit large and confidential files directly to the newspaper. Sound familiar?
Group-buying platform Groupon is set to launch its first hyperlocal ad campaign through Wi-Fi and mobile ad network JiWire this week, and we’ve got an early look at the assets.
Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has secured more than $1.35 billion in capital commitments since last March, according to an SEC filing.
Photos uploaded to photo-sharing service Picplz can now be automatically configured to copy directly to Dropbox.
Mozilla released the latest Firefox 4 Beta Tuesday night.