Digital Week in Review: Apple’s Ping Social Network Starts With 160 Million Users

Digital News Roundup is a new weekly segment which highlights the latest in news and happenings in the online world within the past week.

Foursquare Surpasses 3 Million User Registrations; Mashable
Foursquare now has more than 3 million users. Foursquare’s growth has been accelerating rapidly lately. The service hit 2.6 million users on August 2, up from 725,000 in March.
The Takeaway: Facebook Places launch in August has not deterred Foursquare’s rapid growth, which grew another 15% in August.

Apple’s Ping Music Social Network Starts With 160 Million Users; TechCrunch
During their event last week in San Francisco, Apple announced iTunes 10, the latest version of their music software. But they also introduced a big new feature in the app — Ping: a social network for music.
The Takeaway: Apple has leveraged the iTunes platform to reach a massive user base.

Google Improves Real-Time Search Engine; Reuters
Google’s real-time search engine, which indexes and serves up status updates, messages and other public content from sites like Twitter and Facebook, now has its own Web address and contains new filtering capabilities.
The Takeaway: Search is becoming more and more social.

Facebook Pops Up in Target with Gift Cards for Virtual Goods; CNN.com
Facebook begins creating a unified online currency by selling gift cards in Target that work for Zynga, PopCap and other 3rd party games.
The Takeaway: Virtual goods now have meaning in the “real world.”

Google Working on Pay-Per-View Movies; FoxNews
The Financial Times claims that by year’s end we could see YouTube transform from an online destination for user-generated content into a full-fledged, international on-demand movie service.
The Takeaway: This YouTube game-changer is bound to alter the way we view movies.