In television, there are the “Nielsen families,” who track their TV viewing and report back on what shows are popular and what shows aren’t. On the Web, there’s comScore and its army of panelists, who agree to let the research firm track their browsing habits and create a picture of what’s hot and what’s not.

But in the still-young world of mobile ...

Activision Blizzard has been famously averse to adapting its hit video games for the big screen, but that could soon change.

The publisher of blockbuster games including “Call of Duty” and “Skylanders” is currently mulling a plan to launch an entertainment studio, where it would produce its own movies and TV shows rather than simply license its titles to outside ...

Google has been working to overhaul its Web services so it can legally allow children to use them, as it becomes more willing to tolerate hairy legal requirements in exchange for growth.

Among the new initiatives mentioned in BuzzFeed’s latest funding news was that the fast-growing online publisher will build out its in-house creative agency for advertisers.

In doing so, BuzzFeed, which investors say is on track to generate at least $100 million in revenue this year, is also engaging in a creeping turf war with traditional advertising agencies. Those agencies already ...

Travel back in time a decade and you’ll find a world awash in game-changing innovation that was supposed to make life less expensive, more efficient and better for all. Instead of apps and data analytics there were mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps and other derivatives. There were specialty lenders. And there were massive hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds to keep ...

Chinese Internet companies are spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising campaigns to get people to download their mobile applications in countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Egypt. In these Android-dominated markets, companies like Qihoo 360, Baidu and Cheetah Mobile have figured out how to build a relationship with overseas customers and, perhaps more importantly, how to get their ...

The spring selloff of tech stocks has subsided, but the ad tech sector is still struggling. Across the board, ad tech companies that filed to go public in the last year are well below their 52-week highs, with some seeing their valuations cut in half.

The negative sentiment is affecting private, venture-backed ad tech companies too, with fundraising becoming more difficult. And it confirms ...

More than a century after Nikola Tesla showed the world that he could light up a phosphorescent lamp without using any wires, even the most cutting-edge consumer electronics products remain tethered to their power cords.

Wireless cellphone charging pads from companies like Samsung and Duracell have been around for a few years, but those products don’t offer much more flexibility than a ...

The fourth installment of our Free Agents series, which highlights prominent business leaders between full-time jobs, comprises a range of executives looking for their next acts. The list has some executives who were shown the door—the latest sign of how unforgiving it can be to run big tech and media companies today.

The list also includes the man responsible for many of the hit TV shows ...

The race is on for one of the most important non-product jobs in tech: chief of sales and business development at Google.

Nikesh Arora, who shocked much of Google’s 15,000-plus sales organization two weeks ago by announcing his departure from the position, leaves behind a critical job opening as the unit tackles new challenges like mobile advertising and fierce competition in emerging ...

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset’s first target market might have been video games—an obvious area of interest for new parent company Facebook. But it may soon go Hollywood too.

In recent weeks, Facebook representatives have been meeting with executives at all the major film studios as well as with individual directors about creating content specifically for the Rift ...

If you remember Enron, Worldcom and the dot-com 1.0 preference for eyeballs over revenue, you can understand why people are wary about the unfamiliar accounting metrics used to justify big valuations for subscription software companies.

Salesforce.com, Jive Software, Dropbox and Evernote don’t need profits to be worth billions, the thinking goes, because their value is underpinned by a ...

The renovated San Francisco warehouse that serves as the headquarters of tech startup Thumbtack, replete with exposed timber and an inviting open kitchen, was all but empty one recent weekday afternoon. The company has raised $48.2 million from investors including Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management to build a local services company to compete with the likes of Craigslist, Yelp and ...

For the first time since it launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services is facing serious competition, mainly from Microsoft and Google. To stay ahead, Amazon will need to do much more than keep cutting prices. 

On Friday, Netflix released what is being billed as the final season of the bleak murder mystery series “The Killing.”

The show has a murky history of its own: it was cancelled after its second season on AMC, then picked up in a co-financing arrangement through Netflix and AMC, then cancelled again on AMC, only to be brought back again for a last Netflix-only hurrah. The ...