If you can find the silver linings, the news is finally getting a little better over at the number three largest carrier in the States after countless quarters of brutal numbers. Sprint still isn't turning a profit or earning net customer adds, but it's continuing to stem losses by posting its first sequential rise in revenue in almost three years, clocking just under $8.1 billion for the quarter; that's still less than the revenue it posted a year ago, but hey, at least it's an improvement over Q4 2009's roughly $7.8 billion. All told, that works out to a net loss of $865 million, which is also better than Q4's $980 million. Net wireless customers fell by 75,000 -- considerably better than Q4's 148,000 -- but net postpaid customers fell by a much larger 578,000, suggesting that Boost Mobile's aggressive marketing is probably working. That's all well and good, but it also likely means that ARPU is on a downward trend; Sprint claims it was flat sequentially and down a dollar from $56 to $55 year-over-year. All told, it seems the company's fortunes are improving by baby steps -- but is it fast enough? And how much is the EVO 4G going to mix things up?

Sprint halves its quarterly customer loss, increases revenue for the first time in ages originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sprint  | Email this | Comments

• “WiFi On Steroids” Is A Go. Now Google (Or Someone) Just Has To…
• Video: Hitler Is Not Pleased About Facebook’s Acquisition Of…

Nokia this morning announced that it has acquired MetaCarta, a privately-owned geographic intelligence company, for an undisclosed sum. Nokia says it will use MetaCarta’s technology in the area of local search and other services.

MetaCarta was founded in 2001, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and employs over 30 people.

MetaCarta’s solutions enable companies to bridge the gap between content and maps. Its products fall into four major categories: the MetaCarta Platform, Geographic Data Modules, GeoWeb Applications, and Hosted Content Collections.

To see an example of what MetaCarta’s technology is capable of, see NewsMap, a hosted map mashup / extension that enables Web publishers to dynamically display maps that show the places mentioned in their news articles. Or check out its GeoSearch News service, which aggregates news from thousands of sources and displays a map of the locations mentioned in stories.

MetaCarta also has a partnership with Microsoft in place to provide its Geographic Search and Referencing Platform to deliver map-based local news within the Microsoft Vine service.

For Nokia, this is the second small acquisition in two weeks – it recently picked up mobile Web browser company Novarra. Its purchase of MetaCarta is another testament to the Finnish mobile giant’s focus on location and navigation-based services for its wide range of handsets that find their way into the hands of customers all over the globe.

• “WiFi On Steroids” Is A Go. Now Google (Or Someone) Just Has To…
• “Ask A VC” Guest Swap: Kopelman Out; Hirshland In

This morning, numerous British newspapers and tabloids (followed by a wave of bloggers) reported that Facebook use had been “linked to a rise in Syphilis” in a number of cities in the UK. That’s certainly an attention-grabbing headline, but Facebook users out there may want to think twice before putting any weight into the claim. For starters, the article in The Telegraph, which appears to be among the first publications to have broken the news, gets off to a bad start: it says that Syphilis is caused by a virus (it’s actually a bacterial infection — I knew my biology degree would come in handy one day!). But more importantly, the story’s facts are nebulous at best.

For one, the articles in question say that the number of Syphilis infections in the English town of Teesside has grown to a whopping thirty cases in 2009 (up from a mere ten cases the previous year). Sure, that’s a big jump percentage-wise, but the small sample size and the complete lack of details about any of these studies makes the conclusion that Facebook can somehow be linked to Syphilis extremely dubious.

All of the articles quote the same person: Professor Peter Kelly, director of Public Health for NHS Tees, and none of the quotes seem to contain any concrete evidence. Here’s a sample quote taken from The Sun that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence (yes, I know it’s a tabloid, but it has more quotes than the other articles):

“I don’t get the names of people affected, just figures. And I saw that several of the people had met sexual partners through these sites. Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. There is a rise in syphilis because people are having more sexual partners than 20 years ago and often do not use condoms.”

This sounds more like an observation based on a small number of cases rather than an established trend, and it doesn’t say anything about causation. I’m hardly the first to notice this — Dr. Petra Boynton of the UK has written a detailed blog post outlining the lack of evidence cited in the report, and Dr. Ben Goldacre is trying to gather more details from the NHS (which has gone silent, according to his Twitter posts). The Guardian has pointed out the weakness of the claims as well.

We reached out to Facebook for their stance. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes gave us this statement:

While it makes for interesting headlines, the assertions made in newspaper reports that Facebook is responsible for the transmission of STDs are ridiculous, exaggerate the comments made by the professor, and ignore the difference between correlation and causation. As Facebook’s more than 400 million users know, our Web site is not a place to meet people for casual sex – it’s a place for friends, family and coworkers to connect and share.

• Zuckerberg: “Guess What? Nobody Wants To Make Lists.”
• Video: Hitler Is Not Pleased About Facebook’s Acquisition Of…

The problem with all of these people who are walking out the door at MySpace isn’t so much the number of them, because MySpace is trying to replace them by hiring more people. It’s the fact that the best people are leaving, and taking a lot of the knowledge base with them.

Three star senior employees left to go to cross-town startup Gravity, we reported earlier this week. And tonight we’ve heard that Jeff Webber, the engineering director that oversees the email, instant messaging and other “communications” platforms for MySpace, resigned earlier this week as well to join a startup. He’s been at MySpace for nearly three years and was one of the star engineers and leaders, says one source.

Other recent departures – VP and General Manager of Mobile John Faith, SVP User Experience Katie Geminder and most of her team. And of course CEO Owen Van Natta. And lots more as well, only a few of which we’ve reported.

The company has no direction, says everyone we talk to at MySpace except the top execs, and internal politics are the only thing that seem to matter. Ambitious new projects like Remaking MySpace have been thrown away just because the wrong exec supported it. Anyone who actually wants to build products has left or is looking for a new job, say many, many sources.

If you’re a MySpace employee and feel differently, please contact us anonymously. Because right now all we see is a ton of fluff and absurdity coming from the top, and massive morale problems at the middle management ranks.

The title of this post is actually a recent quote from a (now former) MySpace employee, and it seems to be accurate. They say a company has to hit rock bottom before it can even think about rebuilding into something new. If that’s the case, the time to start rebuilding is, apparently, right about now. But in our opinion MySpace has no chance at all until it is free of the News Corp. death grip.

• Video: Hitler Is Not Pleased About Facebook’s Acquisition Of…
• “Ask A VC” Guest Swap: Kopelman Out; Hirshland In