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The Attack Of Branded Content: Who Will Control TV On The Web? (TCTV)
I've got to admit, the concept of "branded content" on the Web makes me cringe. It is generally used to refer to Web videos created and packaged specifically for an advertiser. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I like my videos created for the audience first, not advertisers. And yet, in the budding Web video industry, branded content is bringing in some serious dollars and even some serious talent.
There is a lot more going on here than advertisers bankrolling the production of their own videos because there isn't enough professionally produced Web video to show their ads against (although that is part of it). The rise of advertiser-produced video entertainment is but a sign of a much larger shift that is happening as people consume more video on the Web. Advertisers love broadcast and cable TV because of its massive reach into every home. They are finding it nearly impossible to replicate that reach on the Web. The only way they can do it is by spreading ads across tens of thousand of sites through video ad networks.
Many of those video ad networks also create their own content for their own sites, but some are also starting to become broader video distribution networks as well. One of the biggest video ad networks that specializes in creating branded content is Digital Broadcasting Group (DBG). Last week, I met with COO Rick Kleczkowski, who told me about a few of the Web video shows DBG is producing, including the upcoming ControlTV, Built Green, and Family Versus Chef. We also got into a spirited discussion about why branded content seems to be taking over the Web, and whether or not that is a good thing I ask him if guys like him are going to put guys like me out of business (see videos below).
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Super Angel/VC Smackdown: Why the Hate? (TCTV)
Watching the battle of words, blog posts, term sheets and Tweets unfold over the last few weeks between VCs and Super Angels has been a little surreal. I've spent a career convincing editors that the internal workings of Venture Capital are more interesting than they sound, but even I can't muster the passion to declare convertible debt AWESOME while equity TOTALLY SUCKS.
Clearly, this cultural explosion of tension is about more than just terms and who does what deal. After all, in theory, both these group need each other to thrive.
Rather than commission yet another guest post on the subject, we figured let's just invite Super Angel rabble-rouser David McClure and early stage VC defender David Hornik into the studio for a no-holds-barred Smackdown. This is a five-part series tackling five wedge issues of the debate, and we'll post one every day this week-- consider it a primer on what you missed if you took August off, Mr. Old School VC.
Today's topic: Why the hate? Don't you two need each other?
As always when Dave McClure is involved, the language is NSFW. There, you've been warned.
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Recommendations Working Like A Charm: Twitter Follower Growth Is Accelerating
It's been about a month since Twitter turned on its people recommendation engine, a set of algorithms that enables the service to automagically suggest people you don’t currently follow but may find interesting.
Twitter has indicated that these suggestions are based on a variety of factors, including the people you already follow and the people they follow. They are, for now, only visible on Twitter.com and the Find People section.
And based on my experience, the algorithms seem to be doing their job just fine indeed - I have most certainly discovered a lot of new interesting people on Twitter who I wasn't yet following already, and my own follower count has increased significantly in the past few weeks.
So for fun, I decided to use TwitterCounter to look up the counts for a couple of accounts I follow, to see if this is a general trend of something I'm noticing for my account only.
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Facebook Denies Testing Places In The UK – But It Looks Close
Is Facebook testing its location based service Places for imminent rollout in the UK? Notes on Twitter started to surface over the weekend indicating that might be the case. And as you can see from this screengrab from @kierondonoghue on Saturday, it did work for a short time.
However, we've checked with Twitter's official spokespeople and they say "We weren't testing it this weekend contrary to reports." And a simple check of the iPhone app reveals that even if some people can access their location via mobile in the UK, most can't.
So there you go. But, the imminent arrival of Facebook Places in the UK and across the rest of Europe is clearly going to have an interesting impact not least on local location-based startups who already compete with Foursquare and Gowalla, to name the two main US players whose services have migrated to Europe.
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Can Wikileaks Afford To Back The Undiplomatic Julian Assange?
"He’s a classic Aussie in the sense that he’s a bit of a male chauvinist.” That quote comes at the end of a piece on the recent escapades of Julian Assange, founder and chief spokesman for Wikileaks. It seems apt, because it's becoming increasingly clear that an organisation which aspiries to transparency and the high ideals of open information is going to have problems going forward if it continues to entertain an individual who lacks transparency and whose private life is alleged by his female accuses to be be riddled with low ideals.
Because let's be clear, delicate diplomancy and skirting the choppy waters of international issues which involve thousands of lives - like releasing highly sensitive government information about the Iraq war - is not the kind of thing you want someone who is careless about their personal life to take charge of.
How would you react if you heard this story: A guy sleeps with two women in quick succession, annoys both with his sexual habits, they talk but he dismisses their concerns. When they go to the Police he calls it an "international conspiracy". Uh... what?
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Overblog and Wikio Just Married. Pregnant with a European Google News for Blogs.
A trusted source has confirmed that French-blogging platform, Overblog, will soon be part of the Wikio family. Rumor has it that the growing Luxembourg-based news portal is apparently trying to develop European Google News for blogs.
For anyone who isn't familiar with Wikio, all you really have to know is that it's a news portal founded by Pierre Chappaz in 2005 after his previous company, Kelkoo, was acquired by Yahoo in 2004 for some 475 million euros. For acquisitions à la Française, that's not too shabby.
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Facebook, Relationships And “Catfish”: It’s Complicated
If ever a trailer did not depict what a movie is actually about it's this trailer for Universal Pictures' "Catfish", a movie about Facebook the subject matter of which could not be further from that other movie about Facebook. I'd like to use this sentence to say "Spoiler Alert" about fifteen times because the next couple paragraphs are going to be full of them.
If you hate spoilers do yourself a favor and stop reading now. That said, the following exposition shouldn't prevent you from seeing the movie, I've seen it twice and enjoyed both times.
"Catfish" is a movie about Nev Schulman, a 24-year-old New York photographer and his relationship with eight year old Abby Pierce and her 19-year-old sister Megan Faccio whom he meets on Facebook in 2007. I'm sure all of you can see this coming, but Megan isn't who she claims to be and neither is Abby. Nev and Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and the viewer get taken for a wild and well-documented ride, especially for the last 40 minutes of the movie.
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As It Moves Away From The Wikis, Wetpaint Launches TV News And Entertainment Site
Online publishing company Wetpaint has been undergoing a strategic shift in its business model over the past year. Wetpaint began as a simple wiki/social publishing tool but then started to build entertainment sites for big brands, including MSN. And the heavily funded startup succumbed to layoffs last July and December. But today, Wetpaint is taking the company in a new direction: original content. The startup is launching Wetpaint Entertainment; a TV news site that covers news and gossip from over 15 major TV shows, such as Glee, Grey's Anatomy, and Gossip Girl.
Each show has a dedicated online channel (the site is launching with 15 channels), and will compile the most popular photos, videos, fashion gossip, and headlines to provide one place for all the information about fans’ favorite shows.
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Rollover Minutes: How Adam Penenberg Has Legitimised New, New, New Journalism. Again.
Adam Penenberg. If you call yourself an online journalist, and yet that name doesn’t immediately prompt a nod of recognition - a smile, even - then it’s time to close your laptop and bow your head in shame. Or at least head over to Netflix.
It was Adam Penenberg who, back in 1998, first forced traditional journalists to sit up and take online reporting seriously. And he did so with a double whammy: scooping them on a big story - a scandal that went to the heart of one of America’s journalistic institutions - while also exposing a rising star of print journalism as a hack and a liar.
The lying hack was New Republic wunderkind Stephen Glass and the story of how Penenberg - then a reporter for ‘Forbes Digital Tool’ (now sadly swallowed by the execrable Forbes.com) - exposed Glass’ fabricated reporting was subsequently made into a movie. (Penenberg was portrayed in the movie by Steve Zahn while Glass was played by Hayden Christensen. Weirdly, Jonathan Chait was played by Chloë Sevigny.)
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Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?
This weekend, I've been catching up on some reading. One post that was of particular interest to me was David Beach's article from last week about developing for Android. Beach, who is a product manager at eBay Mobile and a co-founder of 12seconds, basically says that the experience sucks for a number of reasons (all of which Google can fix, but will take quite a bit of work and time). But one quote in particular stuck out to me:
Android has succeeded despite Google. In fact it's safe to say that Android is successful for one primary reason. The iPhone is only available on AT&T. If the iPhone was on Verizon a year ago. Android would be no where near as popular.
Obviously, Beach isn't the first person to bring this idea up. But he brings it up in a way that he's able to back-up his feelings from a developers' perspective, while at the same time roping in what isn't ideal from a consumer perspective about Android as well.
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Guest Post: Could Tiny Somaliland Become the First Cashless Society?
Bob Dylan once said that 'money doesn't talk, it swears', but in Hargeisa the capital of Africa's Somaliland it stinks. It literally stinks, reeking of rotten paper, like a leaky library in a monsoon.
That's because there's so much of it. For every dollar there are almost 17,000 Somaliland Shillings and the highest-denomination note is 500 Shillings, which is by no means the most common note in circulation. Money-changers sit within self-built stacks of money (picture left, video below) and children take wheelbarrows of it from one place to another, reminiscent of 1930s Weimar Germany when the Deutsch Mark became worthless.
By all criteria, cash doesn't work here. Could tiny, unknown Somaliland become the first nation to become a cashless society? It is not only possible, it is almost certain. There is already a surprisingly strong base for this to happen. Thanks to a cobbled together-by-necessity system of money-transfer posts from Somaliland's diaspora and a surging mobile banking industry, the country has to do away with cash. But first some background...
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Blogging And Mass Psychomanipulation
If I ever write another book it will probably be about one of three topics. The first is the truth about how the press and journalism really works - the sausage making - to show just how much of a beautiful, subjective and chaotic mess it all is. The second idea is to talk about how perfect blogging is, with its constant feedback loop, as a training ground for mass psychology and manipulation. The third idea I'm keeping to myself for now, but it's more startup focused.
It's the second one that's been on my mind lately. Mostly because it's become pretty clear to me that any blogger worth her salt could start, say, an extremely successful militant religious cult.
Any blogger will tell you how frustrating the early days are. Getting someone, anyone, to link to you. Your first comment! etc. And as your audience grows you are introduced to the first rule of anonymous human behavior - it's dark and brutal, and reminds me how thin the veil of civilized behavior really is. If there is something nasty that can be said, someone will say it. Over and over.
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Stealth Mode Watch: Another Nail In The Coffin Of ‘Stealth’
Stealth Mode Watch, a searchable data spider of often very revealing SEC form D filings, is the brain child of Denis Papathanasiou, who came up with the idea while researching funding options (a.k.a spying) for his ebooks startup Fifobooks, "I was just using it to keep tabs on specific investors and other competitors in the ebook space, but I mentioned it to a few people, and they were interested enough to want to use it themselves."
Papathanasiou then added a public API and launched it in beta under its own domain. Right now the site allows a simple search mode which shows results for the past four weeks and then an extended API mode which allows results past that date as well as filtering parameters like "people,""companies" and "places" (Humans beware: The data is delivered in XML files).
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The Real Social Network: Your Mobile Contacts
The term "social network" is of course synonymous with online networks like Facebook. But think about what you're actual social life is like for a second. Are you really closest to the people whose items you "like" the most on Facebook? What about the people you @reply or retweet on Twitter? The people you reblog the most on Tumblr? If you're anything like me, probably not. Instead, the best indicator of who I actually interact with socially the most in real life are the calls I make and the texts I send -- it's all mobile interaction.
I've written before that I think location is the bridge between social networks and actual social life. But why do we even need that bridge? Why are so many startups content to build on top of the Facebook or Twitter social graph, when a lot of them can access your actual social graph in your mobile contact book? We're seeing more and more apps go "mobile first, web second" these days, and that's likely to increase going forward. This means that they start as services on mobile devices. So again I ask, why not just get to your actual social graph through your contacts there?
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Inside Facebook Seattle [Pictures]
A couple weeks ago, Facebook officially opened their new office in Seattle, WA. At the time, Facebook's Ari Steinberg (the main engineer in charge up there) wrote a post and shared a few pictures of what it looks like. But those pictures sort of made it look like a dismal, dreary version of Office Space (I know Seattle is cloudy all the time, but come on). So we've got a few better ones that show actual signs of life.
Just as when Facebook opened their new Bay Area office, and when Twitter opened their office, I think it's sort of neat to see pictures inside these offices -- to see where the sausage is made. We've been thinking about doing something like this for TechCrunch TV as well -- think: Cribs for tech startups. We'll expose ridiculous murals and raid startups' fridges. Would that interest you?
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Does Apple Value Secrecy More Than The Environment?
According to new research from Pew Internet, 82% of American adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other similar devices. And 65% of adults who own them say they have slept with their cell phones on or right next to their beds.
Yet consumers don’t know what these devices are made of exactly, and what their environmental and health impact may be. Phone manufacturers aren't required to share all the details. Some do anyway.
Not Apple, though...
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Rise of the Anti-Content Farmers
Editor's note: The following guest post is by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the CEO of WatchMojo, a producer and distributor of premium video content. Read his other posts here, or follow him on Twitter @ashkan
My cohort at Revision 3, CEO Jim Louderback, recently wrote an article called "Screw Viral Videos." Why? Because according to Louderback, “viral videos deliver little or no value to anyone.” Which led me to wonder: what about content farms?
The Definition of Content Farms
While no official description exists yet, a content farm is the term given to a website or media organization that
seeks to maximize content production output
while minimizing production costs
to acquire as much organic search traffic as possible
with the main intent of converting that traffic into revenue, generally from advertising.
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Kanye West Loves Twitter, And We Love Twitter For Kanye West’s Tweets
You'll forgive me for sneaking in some pop culture in the mix because it's Saturday and all, right? Rapper Kanye West is having a bit of a moment on Twitter the past few hours, apologizing for the Taylor Swift incident from last year when he stormed the stage during the artist's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain that Beyonce should have won the Best Female Video award instead.
But not just that. He's also making it crystal clear, as others have before him admittedly, that Twitter has changed the way celebrities interact with their fans and anyone who's interested in what they have to say really. And slamming mainstream media in the process.
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Tech Industry Managers: Little Men in Big Shoes?
When I was ready to transition from computer programmer to project manager, my employer, Xerox Corporation, sent me to its huge training center in Leesburg, Virginia. Over two weeks, the people there taught me some of the skills I needed in order to succeed in my new role: managing projects, motivating people, complying with employment regulations, and preparing status reports and presentations. The company also encouraged me to complete an MBA, on a part-time basis, at New York University. It gave me lots of time off and paid for the tuition.
Tech companies in the internet era offer their employees some great perks. But do you think that Facebook, Groupon, or Zynga provide budding professionals with any serious management training? Not at all. Given the way tech companies grow and the HR challenges they face, management training and career development are more important than ever. But few have the time—they are too busy surviving.
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Lanyrd – Plancast Meets Upcoming For Conferences
Look out Plancast and Upcoming, here comes Lanyrd. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but if it's possible to have a SXSW "tipping point" at an event then Lanyrd just had it at dConstruct, a popular design and developer conference in the UK.
So what is it? The guys behind Lanyrd say they are not trying to build a general purpose events site but instead they are just interested in conferences and everything associated with them: speakers, attendees, venues, books, video and audio, twitter conversation, blog coverage - you name it.
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The Funded’s Adeo Ressi Arrested After Virgin America Flight Incident
The Funded founder Adeo Ressi was arrested and briefly detained earlier this evening over an altercation with a flight attendant. The airline? Virgin America, which I've been holding up as virtually the only airline that doesn't suck (See Virgin Airlines Fails To Commit Atrocities On Flight VX746 and Delta Flight 1843 From JFK To Hell).
Ressi's description of the incident is below, and he has sent this to Virgin, he tells me. I've reached out to Virgin America for their position.
I can't help but note the similarities with Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater, who has now been rewarded for his behavior with a reality tv show. The worse the flight attendant, the better the chance for fame and glory, I guess.
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Hate The iTunes 10 Icon? Think You Can Do Better?
Apple CEO Steve Jobs' obsessive focus on design detail is at least partially responsible for why the tech sphere and the design sphere are so intertwined at the moment. Which makes the ire that Jobs has received for the current iTunes 10 logo (not to mention the foibles of Ping) particularly poignant. The universal hatred for this thing has spawned an @BPGlobalPR-esque Twitter account, some pretty impressive suggestions of alternate logos over on design collaboration site Dribbble, and an email to Jobs himself.
ValuLeads designer Joshua Kopac:
Enjoyed the presentation today. But … this new iTunes logo really sucks. You’re taking 10+ years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown. Let’s both cross our fingers on this….
Steve Jobs to designer Joshua Kopac:
We disagree.
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Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down
Bad news for Craigslist users who like to peruse the Erotic Services Adult Services section of their site. It's gone, replaced by a large black and white "censored" logo.
I've reached out to Craigslist for comment and await their reply. But the choice of words is significant - the section wasn't simply removed, the censored word was used.
The site has been embattled as old press and state attorneys general use any excuse to blame sex crimes on the site. From South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster's failed crusade against them to a variety of press stories about sex and other crimes. If it's just a sex crime it isn't a story. But if a listing on Craigslist was involved, it's a big story.
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Fast Trains to Connect US Cities, Alleviate Highway Congestion
The Obama administration promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects back in January.
This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH.
Bi-level rail cars not typical in the US today, would accommodate more passengers, and hopefully alleviate congested roads and some resulting air pollution...
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Why This New Apple TV Makes Sense — For Now
As a longtime Apple TV owner, I'll admit a dirty little secret: I really like the device. Sure, it has been one of the rare flops for Apple in recent years. And it could be so much more with say, a Blu-ray player or a web browser. But it is really good at its core functionality: bringing iTunes content into your living room. And that's why this new version of the Apple TV makes sense -- at least for now.
When I first bought the Apple TV, there were two varieties: a 40 gigabyte version and a 160 gigabyte version. I was torn between which one to get, but I ultimately went with the 160 GB one thinking I could put most of my movies on it. Big mistake. I basically never use the hard drive on my Apple TV, so it's a 160 GB hard drive sitting there doing nothing. Instead, I stream everything to the Apple TV.
In fact, the only time I do use the hard drive on my current Apple TV is when I rent a movie on it. Currently, even when renting, you download a movie to your hard drive where it sits for up to 30 days (or 24 hours after you start playing it). But with the new iTunes rentals (both TV and movies) everything is streamed -- no hard drive is required (besides a small one for buffering purposes). Thanks to that, and undoubtedly the knowledge that most owners were using it for streaming, Apple removed the hard drive from the device, and cut it down in size and price.
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Google Streamlines Its Privacy Policy. Should Facebook Be Next?
Location-based service Echo Echo recently posted the above image to their blog in a (successful) attempt to garner some media attention as the debate around online privacy continues to rage.
As extreme as their "If Mark Zuckerburg Cared About Privacy" example is, it does call attention to the needless complexity of various web service privacy agreements, settings and policies.
In the wake of an $8.5 million lawsuit settlement today, search giant Google made a gesture of good faith in the "caring about privacy" department, assuring users that they were taking steps in order to make the minutae of online privacy easier to understand.
"For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, 'The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,' since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies."
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Vidyo Bets On The iPad And iPhone For The Future Of Video Conferencing
Vidyo, a company that specializes in high-quality video conferencing technology for the enterprise, is betting big on bringing video conferencing to mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones. Similar to Skype, Vidyo offers a technology that allows people to connect with each other over the web via video conferencing. However, the company says that Vidyo system is focused more on the enterprise, providing a reliable system, allowing conferencing for many parties at once, and offering high quality video.
And Vidyo has built a big business licensing its technology to large electronics companies, such as HP, Intel and Hitachi. Vidyo’s technology is also used by Google to power video for Google Chat.
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Want To Use Gmail Priority Inbox With IMAP? Tough Luck
Curious what Google's Gmail Priority Inbox means for those of us who use an IMAP or POP client like Mac Mail or the Mail function on an iPhone? Well as of yet the feature is not fully enabled on either IMAP or POP-compatible third party or mobile clients, leaving a large percentage of people who hate viewing email their email on a standard web browser out in the cold.
If you try to use the service in Mac Mail right now the emails determined by the Priority Inbox algorithm to be "Important" are sent to an "Important" folder under Gmail. In order to reach them in Mail for the iPhone you have to search for the "Important" folder under your Gmail account.
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Coinstar Not Necessarily Not Partnering With Apple On Something Or Nothing
Can someone please explain this Bloomberg Businessweek story to me? I've read it a few times and am still having a hard time understanding what is or what isn't being implied, or not implied, about a partnership between Coinstar and Apple.
First of all, the title is awful because most people likely don't know that Coinstar owns Redbox (they acquired them last year), the DVD rental kiosk company. Instead, most people know Coinstar as those machines in supermarkets where you turn in your loose change for cash or silly things, like Facebook Credits. So why on Earth would they be partnering with Apple on some online venture?
Well, again, it's about Redbox, as they sort of note in the first paragraph. But what are they going to do with Apple?
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Video Impressions Of Google TV On Logitech Revue Hardware
It seems that one of the beta testers for Google TV couldn't keep all that goodness to himself, and has posted several pictures and some video of the near-finished interface and hardware. It's a brief and not particularly shocking video, but seeing it running on a home TV and hearing a regular guy expressing legitimate (if subdued) excitement make it a lot more real.
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Is Digital Eavesdropping Evil? Depends Which Country Is Doing It (TCTV)
First we had the Google vs China debacle, then came Saudi Arabia's tussle with RIM. And now it's India's turn: threatening to block RIM, Google and Skype unless the companies agree to set up localised servers, all the better for state monitoring of communications.
Curiously, compared to the outrage levelled at the Saudi and Chinese governments, American reaction to India's move has been pretty muted. Could it be that India is somehow perceived as "less evil" than the Muslim/Communist nations? Also: to what extent is India simply doing what every government - including the US government - tries to do: demanding the ability to monitor digital chatter in the hope of foiling criminal and terrorist plots? After all, if Big Brother can't read your BBMs, haven't the terrorists already won?
In this week's episode of Why Is This News, we talk to Harvard Law professor Jon Zittrain, who explains the differences between governments who obey the rule of law, and those who don't - and why Sarah's right to criticize the government by email is totally protected, unless she should happen to email it to Paul.
Video below.
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A Closer Look At Apple’s Latest Patents
Apple has been granted nine new patents, and I thought I'd take a look at the claims therein and see whether they match up to the descriptions, and whether they seem (to this humble blogger) like realistic items for which to gain exclusive rights. I've included links to all the patents, but the USPTO office is behaving strangely, and often returned an error when I tried to pull up documents. Those guys ought to claim a method to buy some new servers, whereby I don't have to submit the patent number five times before it comes up.
I'm not going to get in the habit of analyzing in detail every patent that comes our way, but in light of recent lawsuits and all the noise being made about software patents specifically, it seems worthwhile to take a closer peek now and then.
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Tweetmeme’s Button Impressions Collapsed 20% After Twitter’s Button Launched
It was only a year ago that Tweetmeme declared their intention to be the king of retweets. And for most of the past year, that was the case. Their retweet button was everywhere. Of course, that was before Twitter launched its own button last month. The result of that introduction? An immediate 20 percent drop off in button impressions per day, Tweetmeme found Nick Halstead noted today.
Luckily for Halstead, Twitter let him know their button-killer was coming and gave Tweetmeme a chance to get out of the way. Twitter even agreed to license some of Tweetmeme's technology and enter into a business agreement with them about the button. The phrase, "killing me softly" comes to mind.
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DoubleClick Ad Planner’s Bestiality Bug (Screenshot)
Is Google serving up ads targeted at sites which categorize themselves as "extreme porn," bestiality," and "child porn"? Rest assured, it is not. But if you are a website publisher using DoubleClick's Ad Planner to select categories to match your site to advertiser's interests, you might think so. The screenshot at right and below shows what one publisher found when choosing self-descriptive categories. Under "Adult" and "Porn" are those three categories. The issue was first brought to Google's attention in this help forum, and subsequently by TechCrunch.
It turns out this is a software bug, but what a doozy. DoubleClick, which is part of Google, maintains a blacklist of categories and keywords it will not serve ads against. Those include "extreme porn," "bestiality," and "child porn." Somehow categories from the blacklist started appearing as regular options within Ad Planner. Google is removing those now and says no ads were actually served against those categories even if somebody selected them.
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Offerpal Gets Its Third CEO In A Year, Garrick Named Executive Chairman
Offerpal Media has just announced that Mihir Shah has been named president and CEO, while chairman and former CEO George Garrick has been named executive chairman. This is Offerpal's third CEO in a year; Anu Shukla left the company last November following the Scamville drama and was replaced with former Mochi Media CEO George Garrick.
Shah was the company's chief revenue officer and joined Offerpal in December of 2009. Prior to Offerpal, Shah was VP of ad networks for RockYou. And he previously served as VP and general manager of direct selling services at QuinStreet.
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Yahoo Search Assist Gets More Local, But Google Gets It Right
As you type into a search box on Yahoo or Google, a list of suggested keywords pops down below to help you complete your search faster. Today, Yahoo turned on a local component to its keyword autocomplete feature. The search assist now serves up different keywords based on your location.
So if you type in "Santa" in northern California, "santa clara county" might be the first suggestion, but if you type it in southern California, "santa barbara" might be first.
Location is often a very relevant way to filter search, so this makes Yahoo's search assist smarter. But, as with many things Yahoo, it is lagging behind Google with this feature. Google's search assist also factors in your location. And, from what I can tell, it does it better.
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Hey Palm: Take A Deep Breath. Leaks Happen. Be Proud. [Updated]
Just days ago, Palm revealed a bunch of details surrounding webOS 2.0, which, as the name implies, is an upcoming major update to their webOS platform. Shortly thereafter, they released a big chunk of webOS 2.0 to a small section of their development community as part of a Beta program.
Almost immediately, one of these developers unearthed one little bit that Palm didn't intend anyone to find: a lingering mention of a virtual keyboard -- something which webOS doesn't have, and that Palm has yet to confirm as a feature.
So, what do you think Palm did? Did they pull the stone-face routine, and say they don't comment on rumors and speculation? Did they send out an e-mail saying "Hey guys, we gotta be more careful!" and move on? Nope. They freaked the hell out.
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Plancast Schedules A New iPhone App, Eventbrite Integration, And Local Events
Back in March, on the eve of SXSW, Plancast got an iPhone app out just in time. Now, with more time to work, they've perfected it with the launch of version 2. And that's not all they've been working on.
Over the past couple of weeks, Plancast has rolled out a new site design, a new plan social invitation system, and Eventbrite integration. On top of that, they're also testing out two other new features: local plans and a recent activity feed. Each of these features make a great service even better.
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Ping: ping ping ping-ping ping?
Ping - ping ping ping ping - ping ping, ping? Ping! Ping, ping ping ping ping; ping-ping ping! Ping.
Ping ping ping, *ping* ping ping #ping ping. Ping, ping:
"Ping ping ping ping ping -- ping ping ping (ping ping ping)".
Ping ping ping ping. Ping. And yet and yet...
Ping?
Ping.
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Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senkut: The Next Great Mobile Company Is Not Here Yet
Aydin Senkut, founder of Felicis Ventures, has an enviable track record. Founded in late 2005, Felicis has made roughly 60 investments, with 16 successful exits, including Mint, Tapulous and Aardvark. As anyone in the investment community will tell you, that's not a shabby hit rate.
Senkut, a former senior manager at Google, is getting ready to deploy even more capital, with the recent birth of Felicis' first institutional fund. The $40 million war chest was 33% oversubscribed and includes institutional investors like Flag Capital and Weathergage Capital and other notable names, like Peter Thiel and Joshua Schachter. So what is Senkut buying? The super angel investor recently dropped by TechCrunch TV to share his playbook. Video ahead.
Hint: he says the next great mobile company may intersect with health care.
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Six Apart and Vox—How Promise Gets Squandered
Six Apart is shutting down its free blogging service, Vox, and as Mike points out this announcement is really about cleaning up for an upcoming merger with VideoEgg. With 250 million uniques worldwide spread across thousands of blogs and a growing ad business, Six Apart isn't a failure. But, like Slide and like Digg, it hasn't lived up to its promise either. And products like Vox are a big reason why: As blogging was getting more open and commenters more mean spirited, Vox was intended as a clean, well-lit place in the blogosphere. It had a great UI and some nice features like a "Question of the Day" to get reluctant new bloggers up-and-writing. But then it just sort of withered.
My takeaway from the shuttering wasn't so much "Six Apart is cleaning up for a sale" (which they are and Six Apart Japan is next) but "Good God, Six Apart! What took you so long?"
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The Problem With Ping
With the launch of Ping this week in the latest update for iTunes, Apple is finally adding social elements to its software. Ping is very promising if only because of Apple's reach through iTunes to 160 million music consumers. And it will no doubt get better over time. But at launch, it is riddled with problems which stem from the fact that Apple does not know how to create social software. It is completely out of its element, and it shows.
The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web. And Ping doesn't communicate with any other social networks. I can't see people's iTunes Pings in Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else. While Ping does make iTunes itself more social, the problem is that I don't live in iTunes. It is a store. I go in to buy stuff and get out as fast as I can. I am not sure Ping is going to make me want to hang out there more.
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IFA 2010 Video: Plex Running On LG TV
Plex, taking over the world. Only a few days after releasing Plex/Nine and Plex for iOS, the media center announced a partnership with LG to include a version of the software on its Internet-enabled TVs and Blu-ray players. But you knew that already. Wouldn't you know it, I have here a brief video demo. Who loves ya?
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Motorola Pulls Out Another Full Page NYT Ad Aimed At Apple’s Head
Oh my, how I love some good ol' fashion mudslinging.
"Flash Websites? There's A Phone For That."
To any ne'er-do-blog-read layman, the full page ad that Motorola just put in the New York Times might just seem oddly worded. To anyone who has even considered considering themselves a gadget geek -- or has, at least, turned on their TV anytime in the past year and a half and seen Apple's "There's An App For That" campaign -- there's no question who this one's aimed at.
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ESPN Thanks Sony For ESPN 3D Help, Says ‘People Who See 3D Can’t Get Enough Of It’
Without Sony's support ESPN “probably would not have launched” ESPN 3D. So said Bryan Burns, Vice-President of ESPN, at IFA earlier today. Burns, talking before a reasonably crowded auditorium, reiterated ESPN's commitment to 3D sports broadcasting while fully recognizing what we've all been going on about for months now: nobody's going to buy an expensive 3D TV—have you seen the unemployment numbers of late?—when there's nearly zero 3D content to be found.
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Google To Update, Shorten And De-Jargon Privacy Policies – Here’s What’s Changing
Mike Yang, Google's Associate General Counsel, just published a post on the Google blog, informing users that the company is making its privacy policies shorter and easier to understand for non-lawyers. They are also making some other changes, but to be clear, the Mountain View company isn't altering its privacy practices as such.
The updates will go into effect October 3, which is 30 days from now.
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Shazam Launches Major Updates To iPhone app, Now On 20m Users
Music identification app Shazam has announced big feature updates to its iPhone and iPod touch music discovery apps.
There are now customised settings for ‘tagging on start-up’ make the process of identifying a music track faster, a new UI, the ability to search for ringtones and videos on iTunes and better video. You can also share tunes you find via Facebook and Twitter. Shame it doesn't own its name on Twitter then.
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comScore: Time Spent Watching Live Web Video Up 650 Percent
comScore has just released some telling stats about the massive growth of live streaming video over the web. According to the analytics company, over the past year, the amount of time American audiences spent watching video on the major live video publishers (Justin.tv, Ustream, Livestream, LiveVideo, and Stickam) has grown 648% to more than 1.4 billion minutes. Of course, video consumption on the web has grown generally—U.S. audiences watching YouTube and Hulu increased 68% and 75%, respectively, over the same time period. comScore says that even though live stream viewership still represents a fraction of the total time spent watching online video, it does indicate that viewers are increasingly looking for live streams on the web.
While live online video sites don't have nearly as much of an audience as static video sites, the live video sites have been able to keep their audiences more engaged for a longer period of time. For example, the average live streamed video view is 7% longer than the average online video view.
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Former UK PM Joins Web Foundation – But He Really Should Join Twitter
Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, ousted in this year's election, is forming the Gordon and Sarah Brown Foundation, and has accepted three pro-bono appointments all with some connection to the Web. He's joining Queen Rania of Jordan’s Global Campaign for Education. Queen Rania has 1,337,872 followers on Twitter and last year spoke at Le Web. Brown is also working on a new programme to bring the internet to Africa and joining the board of Tim Berners Lee's World Wide Web Foundation.
If you recall, just prior to the election in May, Brown launched a policy initiative to put £30m into an "Institute of Web Science" which would have been headed up by Berners-Lee. That centre has been cut dead by the new government, so perhaps Brown joining BL's Web Foundation is a sort of thank you?
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Android’s Mobile Web Consumption Share In The US Is Surging, iOS Share Dropping
Media measurement and Web analytics company Quantcast has some interesting numbers on mobile browsing in the United States, and it's preparing to release some of those statistics, across vendors. Earlier today, the company put up a teaser blog post, showing two graphs, one of them representing the share of mobile Web consumption in the US per mobile OS.
As you can tell, Quantcast concludes Android is storming ahead, now taking up a 25 percent share of total mobile Web consumption in the US. Apple's iOS, meanwhile, is seeing its share decline, from approximately 67 percent in May 2009 to 56 percent in August 2010.
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Plex Inks A Deal With LG, Could Be The Start Of Something Huge For Both Companies
Plex is about to get big. The offshoot of the XBMC project just announced that LG will be using its media platform in upcoming Netcast HDTVs and Blu-ray players, in turn, making these devices about the best media streamers imaginable -- even better than the upcoming Boxee Box or just-refreshed Apple TV.
After all, Plex already works with Netflix, Hulu, BBC's iPlayer, and supports playback of just about every media format ever created via the best interface in the business. There's even an iOS remote viewing app coming soon. Forget about having an extra box sitting on your TV stand just to stream random content, it's going to be built into your HDTV. Welcome to the future, ladies and gentleman.
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The Samsung Galaxy Tab Can Set Its Own Price, No Need To Directly Compete With The iPad’s $500 Price
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is going to sell well. It won't be a blockbuster like the iPad, but it should still do alright mainly because it's the first consumer-worthy Android tablet. Samsung can even price the tablet well north of the iPad's $500 starting price. It will not matter. People will buy it even if it's, I don't know, $800. You might not, but there are enough Android fanboys that will.
Rumors have popped up over the last 24 hours about the Tab's price. Some European retailer's pricing has leaked out although Samsung is saying it's all speculative because the official pricing hasn't been announced just yet. But still, it makes you think. The pricing ranges from €699 ($890) to €799 ($1,020) for the 16GB and 32GB respectively. Remember, the Galaxy Tab comes with a 3G modem and there likely will not be a WiFi-only model because Google requires cellular capability for the Android Market. But for a quick minute, forget that the iPad offers a bigger screen and twice the storage for the same price. It doesn't matter.
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A Merger Made In High Heaven: US Cannabis To Buy WeedMaps
Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson fame may be too chicken to invest in WeedMaps (think Yelp for pot), but that isn't stopping other companies from sniffing around the startup, looking to score.
In fact, a company called LC LUXURIES LIMITED, or rather its most recently established subsidiary, US Cannabis, is very close to buying WeedMaps. According to this press release, the Nevada corporation has entered into formal negotiations with the startup to acquire the domain name "weedmaps.com" as well as the current operating website.
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Google Hopeful Of 2010 Launch For iTunes Rival Despite Lack Of Signed Label Deals
We all know Google Music is coming, it's just a question of when - and what it'll look like, of course. According to Reuters, Google hopes to launch the service as early as December 2010.
Citing unnamed 'people familiar with the matter', Reuters says Google's VP of Engineering Andy Rubin (which we likened to a Steve Jobs-caliber product fanatic in the past) is spearheading talks with music labels on plans for a digital music download store and cloud-based song locker service, which he hopes will see the light of day before year's end.
Only thing that could get in the way of a pre-Christmas debut: the company has yet to sign a single licensing deal with the music labels, those same sources told Reuters.
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Project Dance Party: Facebook’s Secret Twitter-Like Follow Feature
Yesterday, news broke about a new feature Facebook is testing out called "Subscribe." For a second, I thought it might be the equivalent of Twitter's "follow" ability -- that is, a feature which would let you follow the updates of someone that you're not technically "friends" with on Facebook. Sadly, that's not the case. Instead, this is simply a way for you to more closely follow someone you are already friends with (or fan pages), by getting alerts when they update. But that doesn't mean Facebook isn't working on the follow idea. In fact, last year, they definitely were.
Facebook had a secret project last year that involved testing how best to implement a Twitter-like follow feature on Facebook, multiple sources have confirmed to us. The name of the project? Project Dance Party.
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YC-Funded Cloudant Launches Its NoSQL Cloud Database Platform
YCombinator-funded Cloudant, a database platform built around Apache’s open source CouchDB framework, officially launches after three years of hard work.
Cloud-based like Cloudera and Amazon Web Services and part of the NoSQL movement, Cloudant scales your database on the CloudDB framework but also provides hosting, administrative tools, analytics and support so "You don't have to think a lot up front about what your database is going to look like."
Going up against Goliaths like Oracle, Cloudant focuses on scalability, flexibilty, and high availability. Its method of data storage is ideal in any situation in which data is generated in a distributed way, such as with sensor networks, web servers, and mobile device services, in essence "small companies with big data."
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Important: Gmail Priority Inbox Should Now Be Available To All
It's hard to remember a product I've become so dependent on quicker than Gmail's new Priority Inbox. I'm so addicted, that the few times I've accidentally clicked on the old "regular" Inbox view in the past week have really annoyed me. So much so that I actually moved that view into my "more" drop down (you can drag any sidebar item in there). And now I have good news: you can all share in this addiction.
While it began rolling out to users on Monday, Google is now saying that Priority Inbox should be available to all users (including Google Apps users) today. Look for the "New! Priority Inbox" message in red in the top right corner of your Gmail account to activate it. There's a slight learning curve with it, so you'll still probably want to watch Google's official video. But once you get started, it's unlikely that you'll go back.
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Six Apart’s Vox Heads To DeadPool
When Six Apart launched Vox, a blogging/social network platform with strict privacy controls, in 2006, investor David Hornik had high hopes. Vox is an "amazing blogging platform," he said, because "Finally I have a place where I can post pictures and video of my kids without concern about who is looking at them."
Vox will be shut down on September 20, says Six Apart.
What they're not saying is why. Part of it is likely cleanup for a merger that the company continues to flatly deny - CEO Chris Alden will have fun explaining his way out of that one if it actually happens.
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How Tagged Found A 100 Million User Path Post Facebookocalypse (Video)
Heard of Tagged? Back in 2005 it was a teenager-only social network, catering primarily to U.S. high school students as Facebook charged through the college crowds. By 2007 they were profitable and worth over $100 million.
Just one problem though. Facebook eventually started letting high school students in, and then everyone else. Tagged responded by opening up to everyone, too. But by mid 2007, CEO Greg Tseng tells me, Tagged knew it was in trouble.
"Facebook beat us," he said. "We were just another social network...but not in the top five."
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Visual Website Optimizer: Another Way To Run A/B Tests On Your Site
A/B testing, which entails running multiple versions of a site at once and tracking which one performs best with users, is a key part of launching a new version of any website.Visual Website Optimizer, which I'll just call VWO from here on out, helps users manage this often complex process. The service shares some similiarities with a Y Combinator-funded startup called Optimizely, which launched in July.
Among some of VWO's features are multivariate testing (you can adjust more than one item on your site and VWO will run them in various combinations to determine which ones have a positive effect), heatmaps showing off where users are clicking (which are useful for visualizing where your visitors are clicking for different variations of a site), and split URL tests, which gives you the option to redirect traffic to two alternate versions of your website.
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Notifo for iPhone Gets Free User-to-User Messaging, Real Time Twitter Notifications
Last time we wrote about Notifo, we called it a "simple mobile notifications platform for anything" -- and really, that's probably the best way to describe it. Take your iPhone, install the Notifo app, hook it up to your favorite services (like Twitter, or GitHub) or any of the "Projects" (read: plugins, like Growl alert forwarding, or Chrome-to-Notifo ), and bam! You've got push notifications coming down to your iPhone from just about anything you could imagine.
All that notification sending takes two things: users to send the messages to, and a message pushing backend to handle all the heavy lifting -- the same two things, as it just so happens, that one would need to create a basic instant messaging service. And so they have.
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Twitter For iPhone Push Notifications Are Being Internally Tested; Rolling Out Soon
To many users, Twitter for iPhone (the artist formerly known as Tweetie) is perhaps the perfect Twitter client (though I'd argue that the new Twitter for iPad is right there with it). But the one thing it has been lacking and that users knock it for is the lack of Push Notifications. Well, good news. They're coming. Soon.
Twitter is currently internally testing the feature, we've confirmed. Interestingly enough, we learned of its existence when the latest version of the app went out yesterday (the universal binary that included Twitter for iPad). It appears that users who have iOS 4.1 installed (which just hit Gold Master for developers, but won't be official out until next week) get the option to enable Push Notifications for Twitter. They don't appear to be working yet, but the feature is definitely there.
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Twitter Now Over 145 Million Users, Almost 300,000 Apps
When I read Twitter CEO Evan Williams post tonight about the state of Twitter from a mobile perspective, the first thing that jumped out at me what that Twitter for Android, an app Twitter worked hard on, isn't even in the top 10 most-used apps for the service. But Williams also used the post to whip out some impressive numbers. Chief among them: Twitter now has over 145 million registered users (though presumably less than 150 million, or he would have said that). And there are now nearly 300,000 registered apps in the Twitter ecosystem.
The latter number above is technically the number of registered OAuth apps in the ecosystem (and includes multiple instances of some apps). Twitter made the switch over from basic authentication to OAuth a few days ago, leaving behind some apps, such as the old Tweetie (which was reborn as Twitter for iPhone). Williams says this number of registered apps has tripled since their Chirp conference -- which was only this past April.
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Um, Where’s Twitter For Android On Twitter’s Top 10 Apps?
This evening Twitter CEO Evan Williams put up an interesting post about Twitter mobile usage. By just about every measurable metric, it seems to be skyrocketing. He also included a graph of the top 10 ways people are now using Twitter. This includes both Twitter's own apps and third-party clients, but notably, Twitter for Android is nowhere to be seen.
I've confirmed with Twitter that this isn't a mistake. It seems that Twitter for Android is in fact not in the top 10 ways people interact with the service. That's incredible considering that Twitter for iPhone is number 4 and Twitter for Blackberry is number 5. Both of those were built by the Twitter team, just as the Android app was.
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Record Numbers Pinging Ping.fm Thanks To Apple’s Ping
An interesting beneficiary of Apple's launch of music-oriented social network Ping—social status updater Ping.fm. According to Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, Ping.fm saw a record number of accounts created yesterday (Seesmic acquired Ping.fm earlier this year).
Could it be a coincidence? Definitely, not. When you Google "Ping," Ping.fm is the second result under the golf equipment site PING (this doesn't include News results). Apple's Ping is actually the fourth result (not including Video results). On Bing, Ping.fm is the third result, behind the golf company and the Wikipedia page for Ping. Clearly, as people starting becoming curious about Apple's Ping yesterday on search portals, they also found Ping.fm in results.
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Reddit Diggs Traffic Surge, Prepares For Expansion
It's all hands on deck at Reddit this week.
In the wake of Digg's bungled redesign, its rival is enjoying a surge in traffic and a jump in ad and subscription sales. Since Monday, the site has been averaging 900,000 uniques per day--- a 50% increase from Reddit's pre-"Digg 4" average, according to senior programmer, Chris Slowe. The six-member team does not openly celebrate the technical woes of its competitor but there is a certain giddiness in the air at Reddit's SF headquarters (a small room, tucked in the corner of Wired's expansive office).
The Conde Nast owned startup is having a moment, and they know it.
On Thursday, we dropped by their offices for a pulse check. While programmer David King's eyes were glued to his monitor--- tweaking a feature that will hopefully improve the site's scalability--- senior programmer Chris Slowe was available to take our questions, video ahead.
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Ustream Snags Former Palm PR VP Lynn Fox
We hear that former Palm Vice President of Public Relations Lynn Fox has given up on her “Consult Until-I-Find-Another-Job Consulting" plans and landed a permanent gig at video streaming service Ustream. Her formal title will be VP of Corporate Communications and she will be reporting to Ustream CEO John Ham.
Sources say that Fox is the first in a series of new hires at Ustream, hires which should be announced formally in the next couple of weeks. Fox's first day will be Tuesday, Sept. 7 and her primary duties will be leading all things related to PR, Events and Social Media.
It looks like Ustream is taking advantage of its $75m round of funding from Softbank and other investors earlier this year in order to ramp up their recruiting efforts and attract major talent like Fox.
Prior to Ustream, Fox had to honor of working in the upper echleons of communications departments at both Google and Apple. She left Palm shortly before the HP acquisition in June.
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Facebook Wants To Be In A Relationship With The Big Boys — They Want To Be Just Friends
Yesterday, Apple launched iTunes Ping, their new music social network. Part of that launch was a very basic implementation of Facebook Connect, simply to hook in and find out which of your Facebook friends were also using Ping. I tried it yesterday and it worked fine. But this morning the option vanished and everyone was left wondering what happened?
Well, it vanished because Facebook started blocking iTunes Ping from accessing their API, we've heard (just as AllThingsD and New York Times have as well). Obviously, there's no point in having a feature that doesn't work -- so Apple simply removed it.
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This Spam Infographic About Spam Infographics Makes My Head Hurt
Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post of Internet memes, today wins the "more meta than thou" award for making "An Infographic Backlash Infographic" inspired by the tragic tale of a guy whose job it was to game Digg back when Digg had enough traffic to make it worth gaming.
Okay Buzzfeed, just because you understand recursion, doesn't mean you have to rub it in our face all the time. Aside from the Greyhat SEO tricks, your anti-infographic infographic and the post that inspired it are actually just describing successful web-writing and content creation. It's like...there's a reason people are clicking on it.
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Mark Zuckerberg Is On iTunes Ping — But Only One Is Real
Perhaps you've heard that Apple and Facebook are having a little bit of an issue at the moment. Despite launching with Facebook Connect integration yesterday, it's now nowhere to be seen on Apple's new music social network, Ping. And that's too bad because even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed up to try out Ping yesterday, we hear.
While Facebook Connect will no longer help you find Zuckerberg there, if you do a simple name search, there he is. Well actually, there he is twice. Hmm. Which one to choose?
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In The Coming HTML5 Browser Wars, The Markup Should Remain The Same
On Monday, Google made a big splash with a customized Arcade Fire video page that showed off all the cool things HTML5 can do, from video, animations and 3D rendering to gorgeous fonts and choreographed windows. It's all cutting edge stuff as far as what is possible with a Web browser goes, but there is one very big problem. It doesn't work so great in all browsers, even browsers that supposedly support HTML5. If you go to the landing page that launches the video in Firefox or even the forthcoming IE9 (which isn't out yet, but is very HTML5-friendly), it detects your browser and suggests you use Chrome instead.
href="http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/demo-firefox-35-treats-videos-like-web-pages-why-cant-flash-do-that/">supports HTML5? This isn't the first time there have been issues with HTML5 compatibility. The problem is that HTML5 is so young that the standards have not been hammered out yet across all browsers. The markup language required to produce the same effect is different for different browsers.
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Done Deal: HP Gets 3PAR For $2.35 Billion In Cash
It's officially over. After Dell pulled out of the running this morning, HP has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire data storage company 3PAR, for $33 per share in cash, or a value of $2.35 billion. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
This morning, HP upped the ante with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR accepted HP's bid and Dell withdrew.
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Facebook Testing “Subscribe”, Their Version Of Follow — Well Sort Of, Maybe
I feel like all I've written about the past few weeks is Facebook's need for a new social dynamic. Specifically, I want Facebook to break their social graph into two: those people who you are friends with, and those who you follow -- for sharing purposes. It seems that Facebook may be testing something like that out -- well sort of, maybe.
Facebook appears to be testing out a new feature called "Subscribe." A source who supposedly has it enabled, tells All Facebook that "by subscribing you don’t miss any updates from people you subscribe to.” While on the face of it, this would seem to be a lot like the idea of "follow" it's not clear from that wording if you actually already need to be friends with a person in order to follow them.
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Hot Or Not’s App Answers The Next Question: Close By Or Not?
It was only a matter of time before this app came out. The folks over at Hot or Not have launched a location-based free iPhone app that will show you the hottest ladies and gents that are close to you.
If you aren't familiar with Hot or Not, the site allows you to rate pictures of girls or a guys (depending on your taste) on a scale of 1 to 10. It's a mindless site and game which has managed to gather a fairly massive user base.
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Happy Birthday Chrome, You’re About To Overtake Firefox On TechCrunch
As we pointed out earlier, today is Google Chrome's second birthday. Since it launched in beta on September 2, 2008, it has come a long way (it's already 6 versions deep). Back then, it was Windows-only, with official Mac and Linux support only coming late last year. But now it's on the verge of another milestone: becoming the top browser coming to this site.
I've checked out our logs over the past few years to see how well Chrome has been doing compared to its rival browsers. The numbers are shockingly strong for such a new entry -- particularly in the past year. Obviously, TechCrunch has a tech-centric audience, but I don't think it's off-base to say that you're also a leading audience of early adopters that often point to where the general public will be in the future.
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The First Samsung Galaxy Tab Commercial Shows Off Swype, Augmented Reality & Video Calling
Prepare to get hit by a ton of Sammy marketing. The commercial embedded here is likely just the first wave of Samsung's assault on the iPad. And it seems that they're going about it the right way, too.
The commercial simply shows off the Galaxy Tab's capabilities in an Apple-ish sort of way. We've said all along that if any Android tablet has a chance to steal marketshare away from the iPad, it's the Samsung Galaxy Tab and this commercial, along with our extensive hands-on, seems to confirm our thought. Now all we need is to know is its price tag and when it will hit stores.
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Nailed It (Not): Our First Twitter Post, Circa 2006
I often point to my first post on Twitter, the day it launched in 2006. Why? Mostly because of how wrong I was. Best line: "I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website." I also love that original vowel-free logo.
The first couple of comments to that post are classic as well:
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TechCrunch |
iTunes Ping And Facebook Were Friends Yesterday. And I’m Still Connected.
There seems to be some confusion out there right now about iTunes Ping, Apple's new music social network, and Facebook. Some people seem to think it was never a part of iTunes, that Apple decided against connecting; while other reports say they think it was at one point integrated, but that it wasn't working and has since been removed. I can tell you for sure that yesterday Facebook Connect was a part of Ping -- because I used it.
When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn't work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them.
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TechCrunch |
Fora.TV Triples Traffic. Wait, That Many People Want Hour-Long Videos on Economics?
Fora.TV has always been playing a dangerous game—trying to sell long-form online video about intellectual ideas. That’s like trying to sell sunblock to the cast of Jersey Shore. Fora calls itself Hulu for “the Thinking Man’s Web.” (There’s a Thinking Man’s Web?)
Eighteen months after closing its $6 million series A round and long time magazine editor Blaise Zerega took over as CEO, Fora seems to be grinding it out. The traffic has tripled and it’s now streaming about three million videos per month, mostly captured from conferences and high-level events. Those aren’t close to YouTube numbers, but considering the intellectually demanding content-- think Timothy Geithner talking for an hour about the best ways to stimulate the economy—it’s impressive.
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TechCrunch |
Look Out Yammer – Zyb Founder Joins Podio, The Hot New Social Work Startup
When Danish entrepreneur Tommy Ahlers sold his 'social phonebook' ZYB to Vodafone in 2008 for €31 million and joined the company, it didn't seem like he would stay forever at such a slow-moving corporate entity. And sure enough he has now left. But ever the restless entrepreneur he's decided against lying on a beach somewhere and careered headlong into a new startup which is poised to come out of stealth mode.
Ahlers has now invested in, and become the CEO, of Podio, a hot new startup out of his home town of Copenhagen. I'd heard excited whisperings of the company when I was in the city recently, and indeed, Podio has been around for one and a half years as a boostrapped project, but with big ideas. It's now open via invitations – either from Podio or from existing users - and it's pretty awesome.
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TechCrunch |
Fwix Shifts From Local News To Places: “We Are Automating Patch”
For the past two years, Fwix has been building a hyperlocal news site for cities and neighborhoods around the country in a very automated fashion. Its homepage for every city has been three columns filled with recent news and blog headlines, along with other local data like weather (see second screenshot below). Today, it is scrapping that approach to become more of a hyperlocal places directory.
"We are automating Patch and building richer places pages and city pages," says CEO Darian Shirazi. With everyone on the Web crazy for Geo and trying to tap into local commerce, places directories are becoming more valuable. (They are also better for SEO). Whereas AOL's Patch is building out a directory of places in 500 small towns by hand, Fwix is creating an automated directory filled with maps, news feeds, events, photos, reviews, Tweets, status updates, and check-ins.
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TechCrunch |
HipChat’s Enterprise Communication Platform Adds Video Chat And Guest Access
HipChat, a recently launched private instant messaging service for companies, has added support for voice and video chat as well as guest access.
Similar to Campfire, HipChat provides a simple application for communication within businesses. HipChat offers both a web and desktop client based on Adobe AIR that lets you chat with your entire team at once, or hold more private discussions with select team members. The application includes support for quick attachment sharing, notifications when you receive a message, and a searchable web archive for past messages. It's incredibly easy to use and setup and doesn't require a company email address.
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TechCrunch |
Hands-on Video With The Samsung Galaxy Tab (Spoiler: Wow)
Well, as promised, here’s a handy video of the Samsung Galaxy Tab in action. Apologies if it’s gets a little hairy at times—juggling two cameras while trying to navigate a GUI touchscreen isn’t exactly the easiest trick to pull off.
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TechCrunch |
Yammer 2.0 To Launch As A Powerful, Full-Fledged Social Network For The Enterprise
Since Yammer launched as the "Twitter for businesses" at TechCrunch 50 in 2008, the startup has continued to improve on its already solid product, releasing mobile apps and new desktop clients, adding threaded conversations, and more. The fact is that in just under two years, Yammer, which we use at TechCrunch for internal communications, is being used by more than one million users and 80,000 companies worldwide (which includes 80% of the Fortune 500). That's impressive growth for the startup, which has raised $15 million in funding and is doubling revenue every quarter. But the social enterprise arena is competitive with Salesforce Chatter, Jive, Socialcast and many others vying for a piece of the pie. However, Yammer is going to be releasing a new version of its application at TechCrunch Disrupt this fall which could be a game-changer.
The new Yammer will essentially turn the microblogging application into a full fledged social network. Yammer plans to add a number of applications to its platform that will increase its functionality beyond just a communications platform. An events application will allow you to invite co-workers to company or group events and track responses. Attendees can also download the event into their calendar.
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TechCrunch |
When Geeks Attack, Shanghai Edition (TCTV)
For some in Silicon Valley, Asia remains an alluring black box. A promising world with pockets of hyper growth, obscured by a tangled web of unfamiliar languages, customs, regulations and native ecosystems. Although the walls are coming down fast, the road to Asia's markets remains an intimidating one for many.
Enter Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups (a recently launched $30M super angel fund) and Geeks On A Plane, a program that takes tech entrepreneurs and investors to emerging markets. In its own small way, Geeks On A Plane is attempting to bridge that gap between the Valley and the rest of the world. Earlier this year, roughly 55 "Geeks" traveled to several key hot spots in Asia, including Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul and Beijing, to connect with the region's top entrepreneurs, to mingle with Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and to sample local tech conferences like Shanghai World Expo and CHINICT.
During the journey, Ben Henretig, founder of Micro-Documentaries, followed the group and made four short videos on the trip's highlights. Jump ahead for our video interview with McClure and the official debut of episode one, Shanghai.
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TechCrunch |
EverFi Raises $11 Million For Financial Literacy Education Application
Washington D.C.-based startup EverFi has just raised $11 million in Series A funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from TomorrowVentures and independent investors including Michael Chasen, the CEO of Blackboard.
EverFi has created a SaaS application for schools to help educate young adults on financial literacy, student loan default prevention, filing taxes, credit card debt and more. The application's curriculum incorporates virtual worlds, gaming, social media and videos to help teach children these life skills.
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TechCrunch |
LivingSocial Brings Daily Deals To The Hood
One of the challenges of running a social commerce site these days is that there is just too much demand, from both local merchants wanting to give out deals and consumers who want to try them. There are only 365 days in a year, and the daily deal format limits each city to 365 deals a year.
Sites like GroupOn and LivingSocial are hitting those limits. GroupOn is expanding its inventory by "personalizing" deals, essentially showing different deals to different people. LivingSocial is handling the issue by going hyperlocal. It will now start offering deals by neighborhood and city districts.
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TechCrunch |
Dell Withdraws From 3PAR Bidding War, HP Wins With $2.4B Offer
It looks like the bidding war for 3PAR could be over. Dell has just issued a release indicating that it will not increase its most recent $2 billion proposal to acquire 3PAR, and the company's has ended acquisition talks for the data storage company. Dell is entitled to receive a $72 million break-up fee from 3PAR upon the termination of its merger agreement.
This morning, HP upped the ante today with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR has accepted HP's bid. Dell also said that its improved offer included a proposed commercial relationship and an increased break-up fee.
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TechCrunch |
On Its Second Birthday, Google Chrome Officially Hits Version 6
Ever since it became stable enough to use on a day-to-day basis on a Mac last year, Google Chrome has been my browser of choice. Other browsers have been adding some nice features -- but Chrome keeps adding them faster. And today on its second birthday, that rate of change isn't slowing down.
Google has officially rolled out Chrome 6 as the latest stable version of the browser today. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone using the dev or beta builds of the browser, but it's nonetheless an important mark as it means it's stable enough for mass consumption.
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TechCrunch |
After Dell Matches $2B Offer For 3PAR, HP Ups Its Bid To $2.4B
It looks like we're back to square one again. Dell has matched HP's $2 billion offer to buy 3PAR, and HP upped the ante today with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR has accepted HP's bid.
Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for $1.8 billion. HP then offered $2 billion last Friday.
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TechCrunch |
Cisco To Acquire Smart Grid Monitoring Tech Company Arch Rock
Cisco this morning announced its intent to acquire privately-held Arch Rock, which specializes in IP-based wireless sensor network technology with a focus on energy and environmental monitoring and Smart Grid applications.
Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.
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TechCrunch |
AOL And Google Renew Search Deal For 5 Years, Expand Partnership To Mobile, YouTube
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong hinted that this was coming, but this morning Google and AOL announced a five-year renewal of the search deal between the two companies. Google will continue to power search across AOL’s content network and properties. The partnership will be expanded to include mobile search and YouTube.
Armstrong said in a statement “Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL...AOL users will be getting a better search and search ads experience from the best search company in the world – Google. After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”
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TechCrunch |
Android Users Can Now Check In To Foursquare By Using Their Voice
Thanks to a partnership with Vlingo, owners of Android 2.0 or higher-equipped phones can now check in to Foursquare and update their status on Facebook and Twitter simply by speaking into their phones.
To try it out, download the free Vlingo app to your Android handset.
Using your voice, you can then update your location status on Foursquare by saying "check into Logan Airport", locate your friends with commands like "where are my friends?" and "who's nearby?" as well as send shout-outs to your buddies (e.g. "shout at Logan Airport waiting to board a plane to San Francisco").
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TechCrunch |
Allmyapps Snags 1 Million Euros for iTunes-for-Apps
The iTunes-for-apps, Allmyapps, has just announced its first round of funding with French VC fund, Elaia Partners - the same firm that has backed French all-stars like Goom Radio, Goojet and Criteo. With 1 million in the bank, the Paris-based company founded in June 2009 plans to focus on product development and emerge as the leading Microsoft-dedicated app store.
Just so happens that Allmyapps, founded by Thibauld Favre and Arnaud Coulondre, is also the company that won the startup pitch competition at TechCrunch Paris in March.
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TechCrunch |
Email Overload Means We’re Never Not Working
A new study by email software purveyor Xobni confirms what we bloggers know to be true, there's actually no such thing as a day off in the Internet age (Want more visceral proof than an email study? Check out the timestamp of this post).
Information anxiety has pretty much put the kibosh on "time off" as two out of three Americans and Brits check their email outside of regular business hours (ha) and half of Americans email while on vacation (double ha).
The Xobni study, an online survey of 2,200 British and American adults conducted in August, holds that the traditional 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo, due to the fact that Americans and Brits can't stop checking their email. Apparently we sneak a peak at our inboxes while on vacation, weekends, sick days and even when we are (gasp!) in bed.
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TechCrunch |
60% Of Apps In Android Market Are Free (Vs. 30% Or Less In Other App Stores)
App store analytics provider Distimo yesterday published its latest report, once again zooming in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms.
Consistent with its previous findings, Google's Android Market has by far the largest share of free applications available compared to other mobile app store, but the gap is also widening.
In July 2010, 60% of all applications on Android Market were free of charge, representing an increase of 3% since May 2010 when it was 57%.
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TechCrunch |
WhereMark Launches Location-Based Service, A Cautionary Tale
Okay, here's the deal, if you are a startup unveiling a location-based service in a market saturated with location-based services please tell us what is unique about you vs. the 800 or so other services out there and please please whatever you do don't copy the RULE.fm pitch, which we liked the first time around.
WhereMark
"We are writing to you in an awkward state of euphoria and exhaustion. This combination is resulting from 15 months of being strung out on more Diet Coke than a human should consume, a sleep debt rivaling the national deficit, and finally going live with our startups newest service."
RULE.fm
"Another late night, we’re tired, hopped up on caffeine, malnourished and could probably use a shower…but man do we love this startup S#!T. We are sitting here with the launch of our productivity tool rule.fm ( http://rule.fm – screenshots attached) around the corner."
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TechCrunch |
The Tweeting Wifi Body Scale Scores 3 Million Euros
Withings, the Paris-based company behind the famous tweeting wifi body scale, has just scored 3 million euros from French VC firm, Ventech. It's the company's first round of funding and will be used primarily for the development of 2 new products, which should come out within the next 6 months.
For anyone who isn't already familiar with the company's first product, the tweeting wifi body scale, it's a terrific wifi-connected device that tracks your weight. May sound simple but it can recognize up to 8 users and allows you to transfer your weight information to a computer, iPhone or iPad - which is where the Tweeting comes from, obviously. The product launched officially last year on June 25 goes for €129 in France and is a great little way to track a fitness program or diet.
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TechCrunch |
Google Sued Over Nexus One 3G Connectivity Problems, Misleading Claims
On Tuesday, Google was slapped with a breach of contract class action lawsuit alleging that its Nexus One smartphone failed to maintain 3G connectivity and that the Mountain View company not only made misleading claims about the product's capabilities but also failed to adequately support customers in search of answers.
Plaintiff Nathan Nabors of Florida is seeking damages and class action interest on behalf of residents of his home state as well as California who have bought the Nexus One since its January debut.
The only defendant named in the suit is Google - in other words, manufacturer HTC and exclusive 3G carrier T-Mobile USA are not included in the suit. The potential size of the classes is not specified in the complaint.
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TechCrunch |
Virgin America Rides Loopt Taco Truck Special To Fifth Largest Revenue Day Ever
Sometimes the titles just write themselves. On Tuesday Virgin America and Loopt partnered to offer people two-for-one tickets to Cancun or Los Cabos from California. All you had to do was check in on Loopt at SFO, LAX or one of a variety of taco trucks in San Francisco and Los Angeles in a four hour window.
So how did it go? Loopt says 1,300 people checked in to a single taco truck in San Francisco, and 80% of those people have already bought tickets on Virgin America for flights. It was Virgin's fifth highest revenue day ever, says Loopt (we're confirming with Virgin).
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The Attack Of Branded Content: Who Will Control TV On T...