Take a peek at some of the most circulated stories this week in a brief wrap-up concerning BlackBerry’s pullout from the Japanese market, the Dell buyout, GoDaddy’s racy Super Bowl ad, and Facebook’s 25-minute glitch.
BlackBerry pulls out of the Japanese market
BlackBerry’s new flagship smartphones will not be available in Japan, says a BlackBerry spokesperson. In a Reuters report, the Canadian company will stop selling its smartphones in this far eastern country because it reportedly failed to justify the cost of modifying the new operating system (BlackBerry 10) to accommodate the Japanese language. Additionally, the pullout was also attributed to the shrinking market share of BlackBerry phones in the said country, which dipped to a whopping 0.3 percent, a steep decline from the usual 5 percent it usually enjoyed.
Dell buyout finally happens
Dell, one of the biggest makers of personal computers, recently bowed out of the stock market in a buyout amounting to $24.4 billion. Investment firm Silver Lake carried out the record-breaking deal and bought all of Dell’s stakes in an attempt to turn around the PC maker’s financial descent. It could be recalled that 25 years ago, the company raised $30 million in an initial public offering (IPO) following its rapid growth and demonstrated technological edge in the PC industry. However, the current shift in technological spending toward smartphones and tablets has weakened its stronghold and heightened worries of a looming collapse. Stockholders will reportedly be paid $13.65 per share, according to the announcement.
Facebook takes down big sites
Facebook accidentally took down a large chunk of the internet for 25 minutes Thursday evening after it automatically redirected users of CNN, the Huffington Post, Hulu, Kayak, Mashable, NCB, the Washington Post, Yelp and more to an error page. Despite the fact that the glitch was quickly resolved, the brief earthquake caused millions of users to scramble given that these popular sites use Facebook APIs to act as a gateway for logging in. The incident only showed that a monoculture is being created by Facebook, and if it can’t be stopped, a lot of use might get sucked into a black hole if and when the Zuckerberg started social networking site experiences an outage or figures in a DDoS attack.
GoDaddy posts biggest sales day after controversial Super Bowl ad run
GoDaddy reported that they just hit the biggest sales day in their company’s entire history after the racy ad featuring Bar Rafaeli and Jesse Heiman premiered in last Sunday’s Super Bowl. The TV commercial dubbed "Perfect Match" featured the supermodel making out with a nerdy partner named "Walter" in an effort to illustrate how the company merges a "sexy side" and a "smart side" to make things perfect. In a stats breakdown provided to Mashable, GoDaddy cited that hosting sales jumped up by 45 percent as compared to 2012’s, while dot-com domain sales rose by 40 percent. The internet-based company known for targeting small businesses in the same manner as VoIP service provider RingCentral and cloud storage giant Dropbox said it added a record-breaking total of 10,000 customers two days following the game.