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Twitter has changed how new users just signing up find others on the app.  Rather than the old, random, Suggested User list of (mostly) celebrities, Twitter has installed a new Suggestions list based on topics.  The change was officially announced on the Twitter blog today.

Each of about twenty categories (including Books, Fashion, Tech, and the like) has a floating list of users that Twitter keeps track of.  Active users are Twitter are categorized by the subject matter of their posts and their activity level.  Those who are most active in each category will be featured.  The list is dynamic, so whoever’s there today might not be tomorrow.

Current memes, such as Haiti (the current one), are created by the staff as well, so that users can more easily find news and relevant information.  These are hand-picked by the staff of Twitter and will change as the news stream shifts with new events.

TechCrunch, of course, likes the new changes, but laments the new inability to mass follow those on the lists that come up.  At least they disclose that this is because they’re on the Suggested User list (under Technology).  So far, no word from Ashton Kutcher, but I’m sure he hates this new development.

Interestingly, Tumblr came out with something very similar to the new Twitter Suggested User list on their site as well.  It doesn’t seem to be as well thought out, however.  As Andrew Mager on ZDNet points out, though, anything is an improvement when it comes to linking social media users.  Especially when compared to the old “surf and hunt fruitlessly for an hour or just give up” choices.

An industry rumor and a change in an Apple subsidiary are more signs that the buzz about Apple working on a new tablet computer is true.  In fact, one of them is a good sign that the tablet will be here sooner rather than later.

Sylvie Barak at TD Daily says that the rumor on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show was that Apple has been quietly sucking up the available supply of 10-inch touch screens in both LCD and OLED.  An anonymous source at the CES event told Barak that the near-future 10-inch screens have all been pre-ordered by Apple and Asian suppliers have nothing for anyone else.

Of course, if Apple has really bought up all of the LCD and OLED screens available, it would mean they plan to sell a lot of tablets.  On the order of four million or more per year, to be precise.

Another angle comes from MacRumors.com, which points out that Fingerworks, a company Apple bought up about five years ago, only just now removed the content from their website regarding gesture-based interfaces and multi-touch keyboard technologies.  That could be another sign that the tablet is on its way, integrating these technologies in its design.

That is confirmed with more information from Richi Jennings at Computerworld, who puts together a nice roundup of the rumors and innuendo surrounding the Fingerworks-Apple and tablet PC tie-ins.

While all of these are just more pieces to the puzzle of rumors that surround Apple’s (possible) plans for a tablet computer, everything known so far seems to point towards a likely announcement in the next month.  If Apple is already purchasing hardware for the tablets, they’ll be coming sooner rather than later, of course.  A timely announcement towards the end of this first quarter would be a great stock booster for the tech giant as well.

Online marketing company ReachLocal just filed a $100 million initial public offering (IPO).  For the first three quarters of 2009, ReachLocal made a reported $143 million in revenue compared to $100 million in 2008 for that period.  Profits were $11.66 million of that.

ReachLocal’s venture funding sources, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Rho Ventures, and Galleon Group, have put in about $68 million into the company, so cashing out at $100 million is actually a small return by comparison.

ReachLocal is one of the most well-known Internet marketing firms in the business.  They work by empowering small, local businesses to reach out to the world at large via the Web.  Businesses large and small use ReachLocal and the company was one of the first to use localized relationship marketing as well.

The company is headquartered in Woodland Hills, California and headed by CEO and co-founder Zorik Gordon.  It is entry number 39 in the current Inc. 500 list.  The company has impressive comScore and other rankings as well.  They reach over 195 million search engine users, 170 million surfers, have had 20 billion total local search impressions, manage over 55 million keywords, and have generated over 33 million inquiries to clients through phone and online.

Not too shabby having been around only since 2004.

ReachLocal operates in several geographic areas world-wide and targets potential customers for their clients based on their location and strategies geared towards that area’s best uses.  One area might see better return from Twitter while another might be more useful with localized banner ads or Facebook ads.  Through a network of sites, the company advertises for businesses large and small.

Pricing depends on what you’ll use when using ReachLocal. For businesses with a good advertising budget who want to aim locally and are tired of the fruitless Yellow Page game, ReachLocal is probably a good bet.

In a stunning move, Pepsi has announced that they will not be running ads in the Super Bowl this year.  Instead, they will be focusing on social media.

Yes, you heard right.  They’re dumping the Super Bowl, televisions largest event of the year, for social media.  This marks a serious turning point for not just social media, but media in general.  In fact, another ABC article, this one written by Larry D. Woodard, CEO of Vigilante (a Manhattan ad agency), points this out:

As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased. The 2009 Super Bowl attracted an impressive 95.4 million viewers (approximately 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes) and many of those watch the commercials as attentively as the football game. By contrast, in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company. This holiday season, Toys “R” Us developed a Facebook page that grew at the astounding rate of between 40,000 and 95,000 fans per day after its late November launch.

I would call that compelling evidence that early adopters like Pepsi may be the ones who reap the most rewards for this switch.

So who’s the hot new number that Pepsi is dumping their 23-year relationship with the Super Bowl for?  It’s The Pepsi Refresh Project, which begins January 13th.  They’re putting a $20 million bet on that social networking project being a Bowl replacer.

Starting January 13, people will be able to visit the Refresh Project through a variety of social media and give ideas on how Pepsi could “refresh” their community.  Then, on February 1st, those ideas will be put up for a vote by the Internet at large.  Then, the $20 million Pepsi didn’t spend on the Super Bowl this year will instead go towards funding the winning projects.

What Pepsi appears to be doing, and what Mashable seems to agree with me on, is moving the Pepsi brand from soft drinks and sexiness (aka Britney Spears and Cindy Crawford) towards social outreach and philanthropy.  In other words, the Pepsi Generation is over and the new Pepsi Community Action Generation is in.

If it works, it will be the greatest coupe in media history.  If not, there’s always next year’s Super Bowl, I guess.  Maybe by then, Britney will have made her comeback.

Of all the big tech companies out there, it seems that Microsoft finds itself in court more often than any of the others.  They’ve been in patent battles with a company called i4i for several years, ever since Word and other Office apps started supporting XML.

The patent suit is over the algorithms that Microsoft uses to convert and save .xml, .docx, and .docm files.  i4i is a database design company that holds a patent on a specific set of algorithms they created in 2000 to convert USPTO database (Office) files to XML formats.  Judging by the court battles, it appears that the Seattle Giant blatantly ripped them off.

The new court ruling means that Microsoft has four options: don’t ship Office as of January 11, hurriedly remove the XML support from MS Office to continue sales in 2010, hurry up and pay off i4i so they can keep shipping Office, or attempt to get the case heard in the Supreme Court.

None of these are winning options for Microsoft.  At least they don’t have to recall a bunch of past editions of their product and those of us who decided to tell MS and their high-dollar (crappy) software to shove off while we use OpenOffice will be totally unaffected, according to Engadget.

According to an official press statement from Microsoft, they expected to lose and have taken steps to use option #2: remove support from shipping copies.  They also claim that the 2010 Office Suite (in beta now) do not contain the infringing code.  I’m sure i4i would prefer to be the final judge of that.

The patent is actually from 1994 and, according to eWeek, Microsoft has applied for a patent with similar technology that could be their replacement plan.  Regardless, it may be that i4i is now $290 million richer.  Minus lawyer fees, of course.

The big news on Friday was that Google and Yelp had nearly cinched negotiations for a buyout with Google acquiring the social consumer site, for a sum rumored to be over $500 million.  Well, that deal is off according to breaking news today at TechCrunch.

The deal looked like a win-win for everyone.  Except maybe the loyal fan base at Yelp. Yelp’s investors and shareholders would have stood to gain a huge return on their investment while Google would have gained a vital niche for their local content strategy.  Google seems desperate to fill this niche, which is one of it’s biggest weaknesses and where the search giant seems to be unable to gain any market share.

Google has thus far proven incapable of running either local content portals or social networking portals.  Users of Yelp are big on socializing and are very vocal about things they do and don’t like.  They didn’t like Google or this deal.  This was made clear on CNET where a special Q&A section was put up just to discuss this. The question is, really, what made the deal break?  TechCrunch says that Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman walked away from the deal.  While that might be likely, it doesn’t answer the motivation for doing so nor does it cover what he’s telling investors and who gave him permission to do so. Two things immediately come to mind: an IPO or another investor. Yelp has been ripe to go into an initial public offering for some time.  An IPO would definitely raise the bar for the company and probably would result in a huge amount of cash.  The thing is, that’s speculative cash, not real money and so it’s questionable that this is really what killed the deal.  There is no guarantee that a Yelp IPO would generate over half a billion dollars in any amount of time. So the next question is whether there was another investor stepping in or not.

This may be a buyout or a really strong partnership to help push Yelp to the next level.  In this case, it could be a combination of a strategic partnership leading to a stronger IPO. Who would have not only the money, but the interest in nixing a Google-Yelp deal?  Microsoft assuredly. But until someone officially makes an announcement, it’s not likely it will be known how all of this played out over the weekend.