Your personal timeline, a place to aggregate photos, blog posts, tweets and key events in your life.
Created by nobodyexactly on Mar 24, 2008
Last updated: 10/20/10 at 02:34 PM
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Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained nearly 2 million users, say Aol. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at lifestream.aol.com.
Like Friendfeed, Lifestream aggregates a number of third party social networks - Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, etc., so if you follow a Lifestream user you'll see all of the content that user publishes on those networks, and Lifestream automatically pulls in content from people you already follow on those various social networks, so you don't have to create yet another new friend list. Lifestream isn't yet integrated with Google Buzz, but Aol says it may be coming soon.
Users can filter out content from specific networks if they like, on a per user or broad basis. A way to think about this - "noise cancellation for social networks."
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/qGFfnkSDGk8/
If I were a spit takin' man, I'd do a spit take right now. Motorola, stalwart of freedom, will work with Chinese carriers to add Bing to Chinese Android-based phones, ousting Google Search and Maps from the scene. Now this isn't meanness on Motorola's part although Reuters notes that this move could have something to do with that whole Great Chinese Google Hacking Incident a few weeks ago.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/V_DuRsHxpFg/
Canadian performance marketing solutions company Yellow Pages Group (YPG) this morning announced that it has come to an agreement with rival 411 Local Search Corp, under which terms YPG will purchase the 411.ca brand and domain names and acquire an ownership interest in the company to boot.
Simultaneously, the company announced that it has acquired Clear Sky Media, owner of a number of digital coupons and price comparison websites, for an undisclosed sum.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/KObiQgJBa7I/
Last week I met Gever Tulley, author of the provocatively-titled “Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.” The book grew out of a 2007 TED talk about why embracing and exploring danger ultimately lessens it. (See! Good things do come out of TED. Let the TED-TechCrunch healing begin!) The book doesn’t advocate playing in traffic, but it does extol the virtues of things like super-gluing your fingers together, boiling water on the stove in a paper cup, and putting metal in the microwave.
He talked about the decrease in “tinkering” in America and linked it to Americans seeking an appearance of affluence, i.e. only poor people would try to fix their own sink, anyone else would call a plumber. Tulley is a big believer that this is bad for kids and by extension the country. I’ll take it a step further—I think it’s bad for American entrepreneurship.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/z4rm8V9Dfxg/
Every year there's an "off broadway" event during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which is always way more focused around startups and new applications. Although MWC has this year created an entire, echoing hall called AppsPlanet, the Mobile Premier Awards organised by dotopen usually surfaces most of the best new apps largely because of its symbiotic relationship with the 75 MobileMonday chapters worldwide and mobile entrepreneurs, and because its free to enter for startups. This year pulled in 600 start up submissions globally. Back at MWC you only find mobile apps that can afford stands, like, er, Skype. Here's a run down of the winners at the MPAs today.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/-TdeIzHTQ30/
Merging something designed for public broadcasting (Buzz) with something inherently private (Gmail) was just looking for trouble.
Google is -deservedly - getting a lot of heat for the fact that its latest social product has a number of privacy flaws baked into it by design.
They've since made some improvements to the product, but that's not where the story ends.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/FFjtpAvhMVw/
YouTube might be streaming more than 13 billion videos a month, or nearly 40 percent of total individual streams, but when you measure by time spent YouTube only accounted for 26 percent of all viewing minutes on the Web last year. It is not surprising that it commands a smaller share of time spent watching videos than number of streams watched, since most YouTube videos are so short. But what is surprising is how fragmented the Web video landscape remains once you go out past the top 25 sites.
According to comScore's 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review, more than half of all time spent watching videos on the Web (52 percent) last year was on Long Tail video sites beyond the top 25. What you see is a real barbell distribution, with Youtube on one end and the Long Tail sites on the other. Total video views more than doubled between December, 2008 and December, 2009, from 14 billion to 33 billion streams. So there is hope yet for niche video producers.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xwSPSidvoJU/
I remember way back before the Internet when I got most of my daily news via the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN. If it wasn’t reported by either of those outlets, there was a good chance I wouldn’t hear that news at all.
Those days are over.
The problem is that most of the people running legacy news sites today are way older than I am, and still can’t get their arms around the fact that the world has fundamentally and irreversibly changed. Today I get my non tech news via scores of sources. I’m led there via social sites like Twitter and Facebook, and from aggregators like Google News and Memeorandum. Most of my tech news comes, of course, via my phone and email inbox.
It’s ok that the legacy guys don’t understand that, because when they erect paywalls it just stokes TechCrunch, which isn’t behind a paywall. Live and let live, I say. Far be it from me to talk them off the ledge. Paywalls kill social links and aggregators unless they are specially designed to allow them via a set number of free views. But even then there’s enough friction that most people won’t bother.
But when Mark Cuban starts saying aggregators are bad, that’s something new. He’s one of the guys that gets it. He’s not supposed to be on the losing team:
Outspoken billionaire cum provocateur Mark Cuban charged Google and other content aggregators Tuesday of being freeloaders — or worse. “The word that comes to mind is vampires,” he said. “When you think about vampires, they just suck on your blood.”
Telling the world that you don’t want them to do you the favor of visiting your site is just ridiculous.
Let me repeat that. When someone visits your site they are doing you a favor. Not the other way around.
And when an aggregator puts up a link to your site, they are doing you a favor by sending you traffic. Not the other way around.
As I’ve written before, “We throw a party when someone “steals” our content and links back to us. High fives all around the office. At least there’s some small nod in our direction.”
The real problem out there today for news sites are the guys that just take stories and rewrite them on the cheap without any links or attribution at all. When you erect a paywall, you’re just encouraging this behavior. It’s less anyone will notice.
What About The Users?
But forget all that navel gazing for a minute while I jump back up to my first paragraph. Aggregators are popular because they help users find the news they’re interested in. They serve a very real purpose and add value to the system. Without aggregators and social links users would be forced to choose which news sites they want to pay for, and trust that they’ll get everything they need from those sites.
I don’t want to jump back to 1993. I want to live in the present where each piece of news lives and dies by its own merit as it spreads virally around the Internet. That means I spend less time finding better content.
Mark Cuban knows all this, and he agrees. Which is why I don’t understand his lash out against aggregators. If news sites block aggregators, as Cuban urges, they lose and the users lose. No one wins. Except the sites that remain free. And those sites are here to stay.
More: Mark Cuban May Hate News Aggregators, But He Also Wants To Invest In Them
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Orli Yakuel noticed that Google has quietly added a new icon in the ‘Compose Mail’ window of its free webmail service Gmail, enabling users to run search queries from within the interface and insert results and URLs straight into drafted e-mails or open chat conversations.
This is an expansion of a Google Labs feature, simply dubbed ‘Google Search’, that was introduced back in April 2009 as an optional setting in Gmail.
The first iteration of the labs feature added a ‘Web Search’ box next to the main column (left side on the screenshot) that provides much of the same functionality, only you needed to remember to go to the side column to run a search. Now, enabling the feature also adds an icon to the top toolbar in the ‘Compose Mail’ window, where you can also customize colors and fonts for your message, add links and emoticons and more.
It’s unclear when the icon was added, but we can’t retrieve any mention about this on the Gmail blog and today marks the first time we’ve seen it.
The icon opens up a search box at the bottom of your screen and lets you run a search like you would using the regular Google search interface. A small arrow opens up a limited menu where you can paste results, paste URL and send by e-mail (which is kind of redundant in this case, since you’re already in a new e-mail). If you have a chat conversation open in Gmail, you’ll also get an extra option to send search results to your contact.
Obviously, this isn’t a ground-breaking feature, but if you’re a Gmail user you might want to (re-)enable the Labs feature in Settings. Guaranteed to save you quite some time.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/83gPyGElETM/
Aol’s answer to Wikipedia is Owl, a new site described as “a living, breathing library where useful knowledge, opinions and images are posted from experts the world over.”
Owl seems more of a testbed for Seed than anything else. Seed, of course, is Aol’s new
low-cost content management system for soliciting articles and photographs for its network of existing Websites. Owl will crowdsource freelance work from “experts” who submit articles about movies, books, health, sports, money, parenting, computers, and other topics.
An “expert” is anyone who gets approved through Seed. Contributers get paid a little bit and the articles tend to be more how-to advice such as “How To Survive A Long Flight”, “The Right Way To Pop a Zit,” and “Top 5 Ways To Score Free Food.” It’s all very search-engine friendly.
Actually, Owl is less like Wikipedia than it is like Helium, which also pays for expert articles and has been around for more than three-years. Right now, Owl is rather spare. Most of the articles still seem to be written by Owl/Aol staff instead of contributors. That should change once more people find out about it.
Owl fits neatly into Aol’s plan to create as much content as possible on current topics or evergreen interests so that it can throw more ads against those Web pages. Even if Owl is way late to the game (see About.com, Helium, eHow, wikiHow, HowStuffWorks, Instructables, Expert Village, and so on), AOL operates a big enough network that it can just cross-promote Owl from its own sites. And, as I mentioned, search engines love that type of content.
The only question is whether or not Seed can feed Owl with enough articles to keep it healthy.
Update: An Aol employee reveals, “Owl was developed last year as one site that could publish content from Seed on a wide range of topics. It is not currently being used, however.” That explains why it is so light on articles. Aol is currently using Seed to assign and publish stories across its 80 existing sites. But it is also developing new sites like Owl which will be fed by Seed. Owl has been up for more than a month and appears to be more of a design concept than anything else. But if it is not being used, why is it live?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/tfU8GdOcQw0/
This just came in through the tip line purporting to know for certain that the iSlate event will happen at the Yerba Buena Center in San Fran on January 27th, just as others have reported. The agenda should include a new SDK (probably iPhone/iSlate 4.0) and that most iPhone apps presumably run on the iSlate.
In addition to the introduction of the iTablet hardware recent rumors have said that a new software development kit for iPhone OS 4.0 could be revealed at the presentation.Tthe new kit may includes a "simulator" that allows developers to adapt their iPhone applications for different screen sizes and resolutions i.e. the iTablet, or whatever it is called:-)
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Vl5LfBc6XGo/
The most amazing thing about the Internet is how many industries it’s wrecked. File sharing and iTunes forever changed music’s economics; blogging and other forms of online content have killed old media; and open source and software-as-a-service have brutalized the expensive, on-premise enterprise software products.
In all these examples companies suffered and good people have lost their jobs, including many of my friends when it comes to media. But mostly, the Internet has acted like Robin Hood—taking big fees from greedy fat cat middlemen, giving more value for a lower price for the end users, and breaking the barriers for new entrants.
Here’s the second most amazing thing about the Internet: The fact that there are still industries it’s barely touched. One of those is finance. Sure we had eTrade, Ameritrade and Scottrade in the early days, but opaque, confusing, regulated finance is still largely the same. And as we discovered with last year’s financial meltdown, that’s not a good thing.
Fortunately, though, we’re starting to see change from several different –and surprising– avenues. An obvious first foray into finance 2.0 was Mint.com. Thanks to its sale to Intuit, Mint helped validated the category in a Valley that’s suspicious of Wall Street. But Mint was still pretty basic in terms of a financial revolution. The UI was excellent and there were new features, but people were used to managing money online via their bank, Quicken or Microsoft’s Money.
Mint’s greater contribution was convincing investors and entrepreneurs that finance is still a viable category. Hot on its heels, a newer– and far more ambitious—pack of online finance companies are threatening to really upend, piss off and steal fat cat fees from existing players. Say it with me: Hallelujah.
We’ve written about most of these guys already, but they’re worth taking a look as a group to see just how big this impending revolution could be. They’re attacking different parts of the finance industry, but they have one thing in common: Finally aligning interests between the finance professionals and the users. This list isn’t exhaustive but these are the names I’m most excited about:
-Wonga is remaking payday lending. It charges high fees for a lender, but incents people to repay quickly, meaning overall the fees for emergency lending are much lower. Wonga makes money only when debts are paid off—unlike most credit card and payday lenders that make more money the longer you’re in debt and the bigger those debts are.
-kaChing is remaking mutual fund investing, cutting fees from an average of 3% to 1.5% and giving more transparency into what investments fund managers are making now, not just past returns on decisions they’ve already made. In the past, fund managers have been paid more by how many assets they can get under management than on how well they perform. That in turn makes the funds’ performances worse, because they can’t get in and out of stocks quickly. By giving investors more transparency into how investment decisions are made and exposing them to more boutique fund managers, kaChing hopes to flip that around.
-Square and Bling Nation are changing how we make payments, adding convenience and, in many cases, eliminating fees from ATM withdrawals and those levied by Visa and Mastercard. It’s a boon for pretty much everyone else the transaction touches including end users, retailers and even banks. “I underestimated the level of hatred there is for Visa and Mastercard,” says Wences Casares Bling Nation’s founder and CEO.
-On the “does-the-world-really-want-this?” front is Blippy, the social payment site that could bust opaque pricing wide open, when people can compare how much they pay for, say, a hotel room, with how much their friends paid. Blippy is comparatively TBD. It’ll test whether people are getting more comfortable sharing financial information the way they’ve gotten more comfortable sharing contact and location information in the last ten years. That answer might be no. But when it comes to fees and pricing, transparency does usually lend to lower prices.
If these companies are successful, this would be as radical a shift for the finance industry as when the music industry had to start selling by the song and not the album. Think back to how revolutionary that was at the time—and how much the labels fought it tooth and nail. Now imagine a financial transaction where you didn’t assume there was a catch, extra fee or damaging fine print. Imagine a financial world where everything is upfront and institutions don’t profit off your financial naiveté; a financial world where making money isn’t a zero sum game that the house is all but guaranteed to win in the end. It’s as common-sense-and-yet-controversial as when open source and software-as-a-service pioneered business software that actually worked and that employees actually used.
Finance has been so anti-innovation and so anti-consumer for so long, these companies don’t have to be perfect to be huge. And the margins are there. For instance, Casares, who has built and sold two online financial services companies already, says the cost of digital transfers have plummeted, but the banks haven’t passed those savings along. That’s similar to what we saw in telecom. Remember how expensive it used to be to call someone one state away? If mobile companies hadn’t collapsed prices, we’d likely still be paying those fees.
Combined investors in these companies include well-heeled names like Khosla Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Greylock Partners, Accel Partners, Marc Andreessen, Sequoia Capital, Evan Williams, Balderton Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and DAG Ventures and they have put a combined $80 million into these companies, which isn’t much considering the potential. For instance, if kaChing can get to $10 billion in assets under management, it will be a $100 million revenue a year business. And $10 billion in assets wouldn’t even crack the top 100 funds in the massive $11 trillion mutual fund universe. To put it in further perspective, Square’s valuation is already half of what these companies have raised combined.
And here’s the most important part of this trend: These new financial services companies are not being built to flip. Instead, these companies are thinking big—a rarity in the Web world right now. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Casares’s view on how selling has made him a “failure” as an entrepreneur. Don’t expect him to do it again unless things go horribly wrong. Errol Damelin spent years studying payday lending before starting Wonga, and having already sold a few companies, expects this to be his big one. Similarly, Square founder Jack Dorsey is already the second largest individual shareholder in Twitter. That’s just paper money now, but it’s safe to say his financial future is pretty assured. With Square, he’s out to prove he can have more than one big idea. Likewise, veteran entrepreneur Philip Kaplan was lying in cushy wait at Charles River Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence before he jumped for Blippy. You don’t jump for something you don’t expect to be a real business.
But of all the companies mentioned in this post, kaChing may be the least likely to sell. I met with the company’s CEO Andy Rachleff and founder Dan Carroll last week. Rachleff—a founder of Benchmark Capital during its eBay funding glory days—has made plenty of money and was looking forward to a life of teaching at Stanford. He quit that to be kaChing’s CEO and he certainly didn’t do that to sell for a few million. He doesn’t even take a salary from kaChing. He called Mint—also a Benchmark investment—a “disappointment” for selling so early and said he made it very clear that if he was leaving his plush, retirement-esque life it was to build a big, public company. (See what Mint’s founder Aaron Patzer says about that view in the clip below at the 6:09 minute mark. Patzer was on NBC’s Press:Here last week. Go here for the whole show.)
I think finance just became my favorite category of startups. Step one of building the next billion dollar Web powerhouse is a good team. Step two is a good product. Step three is market opportunity. But an all-important step four is saying “no” to quick money offers. Every decade Silicon Valley produces a handful of huge multi-billion dollar public companies. I’m betting the ‘10’s see at least one finance company in that category….finally.
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Wonga
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kaChing
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Square
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Bling Nation
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Blippy
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As we’re all well aware, the Nexus One is out there now. After Google officially unveiled it on Tuesday, the web analytics firm Clicky starting sniffing for it in its reports. And the (very) early results are impressive.
Today is the first day Clicky has any data on the Nexus One and already it has a 0.61% browsing share of the 170,000+ websites that use Clicky Web Analytics. By comparison, the Droid, which has been out for two months now, has a 5.35% share. And all Android phones account for a 7.44% share. This one-day Nexus One stat is impressive considering that most people who have ordered the device don’t yet have it, and really it’s only people Google has given the phone to to test out (such as some of us bloggers).
Also somewhat interesting is the movement of the Apple iPhone in this data. That is to say, downward movement. While it is just one day, the iPhone’s browsing share fell almost a full percentage as the Nexus One entered the fray. Certainly, it may just be that these early Nexus One testers are busy loading up every site they can on their phones. But make no mistake, with so many Android phones now out there, and even more coming, it’s going to be hard for Apple to maintain its huge share (around 45%) if it’s just one device on one carrier.
[thanks Sean]
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For most people on the prowl for employment, job fairs are something of a mixed blessing. Yes, they can sometimes lead to job opportunities. But it’s often very difficult to separate yourself from the dozens (or hundreds) of other prospective applicants in attendance — at the end of the day, you’re probably just another resume in the stack. The Hacker Dojo, a community center that caters to developers in the Mountain View area, is looking to turn that model on its head with The Hacker Fair. Where developers actually get to show off their coding talents to the employers in attendance.
Here’s how they describe it:
At the Hacker Fair, the job seekers are the ones giving demonstrations, and the recruiters are the ones walking around.
Think of it as a “science fair” where the “science projects” are the developers’ personal and side projects, the “judges” are recruiters, and the “prizes” are interviews and hopefully job offers!
The event will be taking place on January 16th from 10am – 1pm, in Mountain View CA (you can find more details on signing up here). It will be attended by some of Silicon Valley’s most well known companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft, Mozilla, Yelp, and plenty more. Microsoft is even sponsoring breakfast.
For those who attend, feel free to let us know how it goes in the comments. I’m guessing a few of the hackers may get creative with their projects, and employers won’t know what to expect, which should make things even more interesting.
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Aggregate Knowledge, a provider of display ad optimization solutions, has closed a Series C financing round of $9 million led by OVP Venture Partners. Also participating in the round are Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, DAG Ventures, and original existing angels.
The San Mateo, CA company markets a platform, which it says is patent-pending, that provides marketers and agencies with tools that enable them to personalize “audience-centric” advertising campaigns in real-time and with a minimum of effort, using machine-learning algorithms.
The extra funds, which brings the company’s total investment to a healthy $34.5 million, will go to building and executing on the platform and business. Aggregate Knowledge historically competed directly with Strands, Loomia, Directed Edge and others, but it has recently moved away from powering product recommendations for e-commerce vendors to a more general technology proposition for the online display ad industry as a whole.
Aggregate Knowledge, led by CEO and founder Paul Martino, is said to currently have 26 employees.
Lucinda Stewart, managing director of OVP Venture Partners, will be joining the company’s Board of Directors as a result of this investment. Also spotted on the company’s website section on its management: Chief Revenue Officer David Jakubowski, former GM adCenter & Search Strategy at MSN / Microsoft.
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Graphic.ly, a content delivery system and community platform for the publishing world, today announced that they have raised $1.2 million in funding. Graphic.ly was originally named Take Comics, and was part of the 2009 TechStars program in Boulder, Co.
Graphic.ly raised $1 million. The round was led by DFJ Mercury, and included Starz Media, LLC, as well as, Northstar Equity Investors. Individual investments as well came from David Cohen, Chris Sacca, Jake Nickell, Paige Craig and Dave McClure.
Graphic.ly’s first product, which focuses on comic publishers, creators and enthusiasts, provides an immersive social experience and marketplace around digital comics and associated merchandise. The company looks to expand its community and content platform and become the de facto solution for print media.
Graphic.ly also has announced a partnership with Marvel Comics, one of the leaders in comics, allowing Graphic.ly users to read Marvel comics on the go, exactly like what Panelfly did on the iPhone.
The company has brought in Micah Baldwin as the CEO of Graphic.ly. Previously, Micah was the Vice President of Business Development and Chief Evangelist at Lijit. Micah is also an advisor at TechStars, which explains the relationship between Graphic.ly and Micah.
Graphic.ly is going to use the funds to expand development and marketing efforts and begin work on content partnerships.
Also, the first 1,000 to use the code TECHCRUNCH will be able sign up immediately.
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In the two weeks since it acquired imeem in a firesale, MySpace has been met with waves of frustration from outraged users who blame the company for shutting down the troubled music service. MySpace didn’t really have anything to do with imeem’s sudden shutdown (it would have closed shop anyway), but most users don’t care — they just want their imeem playlists and free streaming music back. Today, MySpace is reaching out to these disgruntled imeem users to let them know that their playlists will soon be restored, brought back to life with free streams from MySpace Music.
We’ve known this was happening for a while now (MySpace even tells users who visit imeem.com that their playlists are being migrated), but it now looks like the site is taking a more proactive approach to keeping its users informed. This is probably what it should have done from the start, instead of suddenly pulling the plug on its API and redirecting all imeem traffic to MySpace without any prior warning. But at least your imeem playlists will live on, which is better than nothing.
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Professional social network LinkedIn has been seeing a significant amount of growth internationally, 3.4 million members in India, out of 55 million members globally. That’s more than its members in the U.K., which just hit 3 million users. Today, LinkedIn is opening an office in Mumbai India, to set up shop in the area where it’s growing like gangbusters. In October, LinkedIn’s network’s CEO, Jeff Weiner, said in the post that half of LinkedIn’s membership is international, with India seeing the fastest rate of adoption of the network.
Nayan Patel, LinkedIn’s current director of strategic partnerships will be the new director of operations at LinkedIn India. Hari V. Krishnan, country manager of LinkedIn India said in a statement that the new office will focus on forming strategic partnerships with media organizations and other distribution channels. The new outpost will also work to gain more users and promote the use of the platform by third-party developers.
The professional social network has already formed a partnership with Indian media company Network18 that will integrate of business and finance content from its business news channel LinkedIn. UGC from LinkedIn will also be cross-posted to CNBC-TV18, a business news channel in India.
LinkedIn has has a big year. Founder Reid Hoffman recently changed the guard at the company, with Weiner taking the helm as CEO in June. While LinkedIn is a strong IPO candidate, Hoffman recently told us that he’s not in any rush to go public. The company was valued at around $1 billion in its last round of financing in 2008, and has been profitable for the past years. And last week, Hoffman told Reuters that the company plans to pursue an IPO at some point, but not any time soon.
The network also added a number of new features including Twitter integration, and released its API.
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TechCrunch50 demopit startup Lottay, which lets you create an online gift that people can put money towards, has raised $475,000 in Series A funding from DFJ Frontier. The startup has also recruited former Evite exec Harry Lin as CEO.
Lottay, which uses PayPal’s newly released Adaptive Payments API, lets anyone create gift pages with detailed descriptions and pictures of a particular goal or gift and then friends can contribute to the site via PayPal.
The gift is sent instantly and securely, delivered as a surprise via email and Facebook. Givers can specify the gift they would like the money to buy – from a cup of coffee to a Caribbean cruise and beyond – while receivers are free to use the money to buy the intended gift or anything else they want.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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Did Facebook finally unfriend iLike? It certainly looks that way. Facebook is restricting iLike from showing people’s music data in their profiles (the songs and artists they like) or alerting them to upcoming concerts through Facebook notifications. The ban on notifications appears to be part of Facebook’s recent moves to fight app spam. It is not clear what music data specifically will be pulled from profiles, but that could cover all the data iLike collects about users—their music preferences and recommendations.
Even though iLike is the top music app on Facebook, with 12 million active monthly users, the two companies have been on the outs ever since iLike was picked up for a song by arch-rival MySpace. The recent deal with Google Music to show iLike/MySpace Music results added insult to injury.
This morning some people with the iLike app installed on Facebook received the following notification:
Due to upcoming Facebook changes, your Music data on Facebook won’t show on your profile and you’ll stop getting concert alerts. Take this step to save your music data
To get around these restrictions, iLike is now asking for users’ emails so they can send them concert alerts (which can be a very lucrative source of affiliate revenues) outside of Facebook. But routing these types of alerts through email is not ideal. People don’t want app spam in their inbox.
The app inside Facebook is currently “taking a short time-out for maintenance.” I have asked iLike, MySpace, and Facebook for clarification on the changes, and will update this post when I hear back from them. A few weeks ago, Facebook’s Ethan Beard hinted: “We are making some changes to the profile. We think it should be a great place for users to accurately represent their identity.” Perhaps this is related.
Update: This notification is indeed in response to changes in Facebook’s developer roadmap, which will eliminate two of iLike’s top features: adding music to a profile and personalized concert alerts. So iLike trying to get users to switch to email notifications (outside of Facebook’s control) and new profile tabs. The policy changes are not targeted at iLike specifically.
A Facebook spokesperson clarifies: “We didn’t do anything specific to iLike as the headline implies, and alerts are not going away, they’re simply shifting away from their current channel to ones we think will be more effective for both users and developers.”
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Huzzah! It’s that time again! Time for TechCrunch50: where thousands of struggling entrepreneurs spend three grand they can barely afford to watch fifty of their peers dancing like malnourished bears for the approbation of Jason Calacanis! It’s like Christians and lions meets Satan’s own version of speed dating, with added Scoble! What’s not to love?
I’m sorry – you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, it’s just that I have to prove to you that I haven’t gone native.
You see, one of the main reasons I was hired by TechCrunch was for my traffic-driving habit of hurling faeces at unsuspecting industry conferences. Conferences like Jeff Pulver’s inexorably ill-planned 140 Characters in New York or Loic LeMeur’s très froid ‘Le‘ in Paris – both of which saw the sharp end of my tongue when I was at the Guardian. I learned there that no-one cares when I talk about interesting start-ups or noteworthy trends – but when I textually assault a hard-working event organiser, the page impressions flow like gravy.
And so you can imagine how worried I felt when I realised that the very first major conference to come along after I moved to TechCrunch would be the one that pays my wages.
For weeks friends have been responding to my protests of impartiality with wry looks and knowing chuckles. “Sure,” they said, “even if the wifi’s shit, the venue’s freezing and there’s no food, you’ll still have to say nice things. Arrington’s not going to let you publish a hatchet job about his cash cow. The man is a renowned megalomaniac; worse than Stalin and Kim Jong-il added together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I argued back, “that’s just propaganda put about by jealous rivals at lesser blogs. Arrington hired me for my fierce independence, not just because he wanted to make sure I’d toe the line when it came to the most important event on his calendar. No one would be that cynical.”
Right?
Well, we’ll find out soon enough. In a bold journalistic experiment, this week’s column is split into several installments, of which this is the first. The others will be filed on Monday and Tuesday, live from the conference hall, or from whichever after-party or fringe event I find myself at when my deadline hits. I’ll be working overtime to bring you a true and complete picture of the event, so if you spot a hyper-focussed figure, hunched away from the main throng, obsessively pecking away at a laptop when he should be drinking and having fun, that’ll be me. (Or possibly Gabe Rivera; you’ll know for sure by the shoes.)
My original plan was to use this first installment as a prologue, to preview some of the companies that will be launching on Monday and Tuesday and suggesting which pitches you should definitely check out. I wouldn’t give too much away, of course, but hopefully I’d give you an idea of the 50 amazingly revolutionary products that will be competing for the $50k grand prize, plus $4.7bn in advertising credits, 3.76m Beenz and a share in the fortune of the late Dr Clement Okon of Nigeria.
There are just two problems with this plan. Firstly, with the exception of Penn and Teller, I have absolutely no idea what start-ups will be pitching. Really. In the interests of impartiality – and laziness – I’ve kept well away from TechCrunch HQ, where I understand frantic last minute preparations are underway to make sure this year’s event is the best ever. MG is charging his iPhones, Arrington is practicing his cynical stage-stare, Lacy is ironing her ‘I *heart* Brazil t-shirt, Daniel Brusilovsky and the interns are doing all the actual work – that kind of thing. But I’m staying behind my Chinese wall. Until yesterday I hadn’t even bothered checking that the venue was the same as last year, or confirming that I actually had a ticket.
(It is. I have.)
The second problem is that I strongly suspect this year’s companies will fall into the category of evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Which is probably a good thing. The market being what it is, it makes a lot of sense to play safe: develop something that users and investors can easily get on board with, make some revenue, keep up repayments on your home, ride out the storm.
The fact that last year’s winner, Yammer, was an evolution (’clone’ is such an impolite word) of Twitter is a case in point, and it wouldn’t suprise me if the selection panel have chosen similar kinds of businesses this year. Which is great for those who value tried and tested ideas and solid business models but terrible news for a columnist who gets off on mocking the sick and jeering the lame.
But, then again, I could be completely wrong. I mean, if this year’s selection really does err on the side of caution, how does one explain Penn and Teller? These are hardly men renowned for safe ideas; the last time I saw Teller thinking inside a box, Penn poured in a swarm of bees and did something decidedly innovative with a can of gasoline. So perhaps their presence is a hint that this year’s event will be one filled with ridiculously bold ideas, chosen to inject a much-needed shot of adrenaline in the arm of an industry flirting with the doldrums.
And yet that possibility doesn’t quite feel right either. No, actually, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that Penn and Teller’s attendance is indicative of a much more cynical plot altogether.
Just consider the evidence: a few weeks ago when Arrington asked for my bio for CrunchBase, I mentioned the odd factoid that I used to be a magician. Four weeks later and – lo! – Penn and Teller, the magicians’ magicians, are slated to pitch at TechCrunch50. Coincidence? I hardly think so.
A far more likely explanation is that my friends were right about Arrington all along. The poor man really is so desperate to ensure that my TechCrunch50 review is positive that he’s selected each of the participating companies based purely on how likely they are to appeal to me, and me alone. The other 1999 attendees be damned, all that matters is getting my journalistic thumbs up.
It’s an audacious plan. And you know what? It might just work. Especially if he’s chosen such me-focussed companies as…
DoucheBall
An evolution of the Foursquare/Dodgeball concept, designed to appeal to men who, for whatever reason, want to avoid running into any of their ex-girlfriends. Whenever a previous flame checks into a venue, an alert is pushed to the man’s phone allowing him to stay well clear until the danger has passed. Much like Foursquare, there’s a fun game element too, with badges to be won based on certain patterns of behaviour. By default, all users are awarded the “Player, please” and “Coward, grow up” badges at sign-up.
Am I Fired Or Not?
You know how it is – you have multiple freelance gigs, any of which you could lose at a moment’s notice by writing unforgivably navel-gazing columns about yourself and your friends. Combined with industry-wide budget cuts and publication closures, keeping track of who still employs you can be a full time job. But not any more! Introducing ‘Am I Fired Or Not?’ – the Friendfeed of firing; the RSS of redundancy. Simply add each new employer as they hire you, and be instantly notified when – a few weeks later – they come to their senses and remove themselves.
WhoreSquare
Sure, services like Skimlinks provide a neat way for site owners to make extra revenue by turning key words and phrases into affiliate links. But some editors are uneasy at the idea of shilling to their readers under the guise of producing impartial content. If you’re one of those editors then WhoreSquare is your perfect compromise. Simply install this free plugin and every single word on your blog will be instantly transformed into an affiliate link to my brilliant book, Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore. As an added bonus, every image, including your site’s own logo will be replaced with a gigantic animated gif of me holding the book, and waving. Sure, your readers are still being sold to but, trust me, they’ll thank you for it.
BlackoutCast
Heading out for a quick drink? Want to record everything you say and do after 10pm so you can play it back in the morning and remember all of the people you need to apologise to / pay damages to / add to your avoid list on DoucheBall? There’s an app for that.
Exciting products, all, as I’m sure you’ll agree. And each absolutely guaranteed to get a much-needed positive review from me next week.
Perfect! See you all on Monday! I’ll be the cold, hungry one in the corner, swearing about the fucking wifi.
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An update to our earlier report about the recent ruling of a Magistrate Judge from Delaware’s District Court, who ordered Facebook to give the decidedly low-profile company Leader Technologies access to its entire source code base based on alleged patent infringement. The case is still ongoing.
Court documents dated September 4 were posted on RealGeek.com this morning and reveal that Facebook’s prompt objections to having to reveal its entire source code the first time has been rejected. The renewed court order again obliges the social networking company to give Leader full access to its source code, but still under very strict conditions (more on that later).
This renewed court order does not mean Leader Technologies, dubbed a ‘patent troll’ by tech blog Venturebeat when it first caught wind of the case back in November 2008, can crack open the champagne just yet. (also see update with Facebook statement below)
Background
The suit revolves around alleged infringement of this patent (PDF), No. 7,139,761, issued by the USPTO on November 21, 2006. The patent generally relates to a method and system for the management and storage of electronic information. Leader Technologies has sought unspecified damages and an injunction against Facebook for willfully and deliberately infringing on the patent, and initially found a sympathetic ear with District of Delaware Magistrate Judge Leonard Stark: Facebook was forced to provide Leader with a hierarchical map of its source code by the end of July, and the entire code by August 21.
Facebook in a statement said it disagrees with the opinion of the judge, is appealing the order, and says it will fight the “merit-less” suite aggressively. Facebook asked for a stay of the order until its appeal could be heard by a higher judge, but the lower court denied that stay saying essentially that Justice must move on.
Update on the case
According to the latest public Court Order document dated 4th September 2009 (embedded below), Facebook objections were denied and the company will still need to produce its entire source code for Leader’s review no later than September 15, 2009. The Court makes it clear that it believes Facebook to fully understand Leader’s infringement theory and finds the company’s contentions that it will be irreparably harmed by giving access to its entire source code non-persuasive.
The judge rejected Facebook’s arguments that it would be irreparably harmed by having to reveal its source code because of the protective measures under which the code would be reviewed—in a secure room with no Internet access at a location of Facebook’s choosing on a secure computer. Leader’s lawyers and experts reviewing the code would be bound by a court-ordered confidentiality agreement and will only be able to take hand-written notes.
You can still expect Facebook to fight this one tooth and nail just for fear of this setting a new precedent every time it gets sued.
The company is currently formulating its response to the posting of the documents and its content; we’ll update once they get back to us.
Update with Facebook’s statement:
“It is extremely common in software intellectual property cases for there to be some form of source code review. In this case, the review is subject to a very restrictive protective order, which limits what they see and what they can do with any information they glean from review. Further, plaintiffs’ do not receive the code but merely get to inspect it.”
Facebook Ordered To Give Leader Its Source Code –
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Say what you will about the quality of the reviews on Yelp or the lengths it will go to get verboten features into its iPhone app, it has made the jump from Web 2.0 darling to a mainstream service. Over the past year, Yelp has nearly doubled its U.S. audience, while incumbent CitySearch has remained flat. In July, Yelp had 8.6 million unique U.S. visitors, up 80 percent from a year ago. Citysearch, on the other hand, literally had zero growth, staying at 15.4 million uniques, although it bottomed at 13 million in April and has come back up since then (comScore).
Yelp also has the No. 1 travel app on the iPhone (it is No. 26 overall). Whereas Citysearch’s similar iPhone app is not even in the top 20 travel apps.
Yelp’s pageviews and average time spent per user on the site are also up 150 percent and 22 percent, respectively. In fact, the 3.3 average minutes per visitor on Yelp is above Citysearch’s 2.3 minute average. But comScore shows a steep drop in both pageviews and average time spent starting in May, with a leveling off in July. Citysearch experienced similar drops. (See charts below). It’s hard to say what is causing these drops. It could be that people are not finding what they are looking for, or the opposite, that they are finding what they need faster due to better site design. I suspect it has something to do with the latter. For instance, a much-improved Citysearch redesign went site-wide in March and Yelp is constantly tweaking its site. Update: Kara Nortman, the executive who runs Citysearch, says that the pageview numbers are down slightly, but not as much as comScore suggests. Part of this has to do with Citysearch actually going through the site and “pulling out pages that are not great consumer experiences,” which hurts SEO, but improves the site overall. Citysearch is also trying to reduce the number of searches it takes ti get to what you want, which also causes pageviews to drop.
I asked Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman about the pageview situation, and he sent me an internal Google Analytics chart pasted at bottom of this post). “As you can see we’ve continued to grow pageviews smoothly throughout the summer,” he says, “so it looks like the effect Comscore is reporting is spurious.” There is definitely a discrepancy there. Stoppleman also says that worldwide Yelp did 157 million pageviews in August (although he thinks that is becoming a less a meaningful metric as Ajax redesigns reduce the need for page refreshes) and more than 25 million unique visitors. (The comScore numbers cited above are only for the U.S.)
Yelp came out with a major update for its iPhone app in April, right about the time the pageviews started to allegedly decline. But Stoppelman doesn’t think that is it either. There might be some shift over to mobile, but he’s seeing the following trends:
Mobile usage for us is lowest early in the week and climbs throughout, peaking on Saturday. Desktop web usage (especially contributions) tends to be highest on Monday or Tuesday (though Yelp.com reader traffic sometimes peaks on Fridays as people plan their weekend in the office ;).
No matter which way you cut the numbers, though, Yelp is gaining fast on Citysearch. Update “I worry about everyone,” says Citysearch’s Nortman. “I think you’ll start to see some pretty strategic initiatives roll out across the web and mobile. We have this new neighborhood platform in place. We have to fill it up with trusted content.” That is how Citysearch will try to stand apart, by having reviews and other content that is more trustworthy than Yelp’s. Which site do you trust more?
Average Minutes Per Visitor
Total Pageviews
Yelp’s Daily Pageviews (Google Analytics)
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When Gmail went down today, it caused more than a minor panic. People, like me, who use Gmail as their primary email couldn’t get much work done. There’s nothing like an outage to make you realize how much you rely on something.
So what happened exactly? Isn’t Gmail supposed to have multiple points of failure? Well yes, Gmail has thousands and thousands of overlapping mail servers which can pick up the slack if any one fails because the data is replicated and spread all around. But there are also request servers which do nothing but route the requests for email to whichever server (with the right emails on it) happens to be available.
It tuns out that Google took down some regular email servers for routine maintenance, and because of some recent changes, that overloaded the request servers. Google engineering VP Ben Treynor explains on the Gmail Blog:
At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system “stop sending us traffic, we’re too slow!”. This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn’t access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn’t be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don’t use the same routers.
So much for redundancy.
Gmail, which recently passed AOL to become the third largest Web mail service in the U.S., is obviously having some growing pains. A few hours of downtime is not the end of the world, although it might seem like it at the time. It just better not make this a new habit.
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Branchr Advertising, the CPC (cost per click) based internet advertising company that allows fair ad distribution without contracts or setup fees, has acquired small business project and contact management application Atomplan (formerly Avecora OnDemand), we’ve learned this morning.
Financial details were not disclosed, but Branchr Advertising Director/Founder Christian Owens mentioned that the deal was a cash and equity acquisition.
Atomplan is a small business organization and team collaboration suite, delivered on the web, on-demand. Among Atomplan features are task and deadline management, group messaging, calendar, contact management and allocation, wiki pages, and Twitter-style status updates. The service was formally run by startup Avecora, which is now moving its focus from web applications to consumer electronics, we’re told by the company’s 17-year old CEO Mark Bao.
Branchr self-reports currently serving 100 million ads per month, across more than 2,300 websites. Its competitors include Fusion Ads, which claims to have served nearly 18 million ad impressions last July, and The Deck.
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The folks at Gmail always seem to be adding new features that help you organize your life. And the innovation seems to be paying off. Gmail is now the third largest Web mail service in the U.S, nudging past AOL Email with 37 million unique visitors compared to 36.4 million for AOL in July, according to comScore estimates. Today, Gmail has added a small, yet useful addition to its Tasks feature: the ability to email your tasks.
“Email Task List” is now being rolled out as an option under the ‘Actions” tab under Tasks. When you click on “Email Task List” it will open compose email window with the contents of your current task list. You can send your current task lasts or completed task lists to anyone.
Though minor in comparison to other features added to Gmail, the ability to email your Task list can be particularly useful to share both work-related and personal to-do list. But really, shouldn’t every Gmail feature have an email feature from the get-go?
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Hear that? Google has just unveiled the latest addition to Google Labs, and it’s sure to crowd-pleaser for Android users. Dubbed Google Listen, the new project is an Android application that lets you quickly search through web audio content, which you can then directly download or stream to your phone. The app also acts as a podcast manager, allowing you to subscribe to audio feeds and download new content over the air.
Using the app is simple: you head to the search bar, then enter whatever it is you’re looking for, be it a specific podcast or a more general term like “tech”. Google will pull up the most relevant podcast and audio clips scattered across the web, which you can begin streaming immediately. If you’re interested in multiple matches you can build a queue, and Listen will automatically begin playing from your subscriptions once it reaches the end of the playlist. At this point the app is indexing “thousands” of content sources in English only, but Google intends to expand to other languages. The site’s FAQ also hints that it may index video in the future as well.
Here’s how Google describes Listen in the company’s blog post:
Listen quickly finds podcasts and web audio relevant to your searches, lets you stream over-the-air or download for later, and subscribe to fresh content from your favorite feeds and searches. In short, Listen helps organize the world of audio information and makes it easily accessible anytime, anywhere.
For now, Google Listen is only available on Android. This may be because the app is still early in development, but its omission from the iPhone may also stem from the issues Google has recently had getting its applications approved for the App Store — in the last few months, Apple has rejected a native application of Google Latitude, and also banned all Google Voice apps. Even without the recent controversy, Apple may well have smacked the app down for competing with iTunes’ podcasting functionality (other apps have been rejected for this in the past).
Whatever the case, Google has a sense of humor about the devices it plans to support. Oh Newton, we hardly knew ye.
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It’s a match made in real-time heaven. StockTwits, a popular site that lets you track real-time discussions about stock information on Twitter, is now featuring a live feed of real-time news provided compliments of SkyGrid, the powerful real-time financial news aggregator.
SkyGrid will now embed a widget on StockTwits pages, showing a stream of incoming news for whatever company you’re currently looking at (you can also see a broader stream of news if you haven’t visited an individual company page). In effect, the site will now let you monitor both the news and the conversation around it in real-time, making the site even more useful for investors. And if you’re only on the lookout for good news (or bad news), you can filter by that too: SkyGrid uses semantic text analysis to determine if each incoming article is deemed positive, negative, or neutral about a given company.
At this point the SkyGrid widget is only available on StockTwits. However, I’d be very surprised if we don’t start seeing it pop up on more publisher sites soon, though it may be some time before anyone is able to grab the widget.
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There's a lot of talk of 2010 being the year of the tablet or, more correctly, the year of the Mobile Internet Device (MID). These devices were supposed to change the world a few years ago (remember Origami?) but never did and we basically bumped over MIDs and into netbooks, resulting in the race to the bottom we're now seeing.
But now we learn that Dell might be making a MID and that Apple is planning a bigger Touch. These two rumors are fairly concrete - I'd give the Tapplet a 75% chance of happening and a Dell MID about 80% - but there's a big problem: people don't like MIDs.
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My, how the tables have turned. Earlier this week, we learned that Apple had suddenly begun to pull third party iPhone applications for Google Voice, citing the unconvincing rationale that they “duplicated” some of the iPhone’s functionality. We then broke the news that Apple had also rejected Google’s own official Google Voice application submitted six weeks prior, sparking a din of complaints from developers and users alike over the arbitrary and possibly anti-competitive restrictions being imposed by Apple. AT&T, too, has been a target of frequent criticism as many of us believe it may have also played a part in the decision. Of course, nobody really knows who is to blame — AT&T has hinted that it was ultimately Apple’s decision, and Apple continues to remain mute on the issue. But now we may get our answers: the Dow Jones newswire reports that The Federal Communications Commission is looking into Apple’s rejection of Google Voice, and has sent letters to AT&T, Apple, and Google to find out what’s going on. We’ve obtained copies of the letters and reprinted them below.
The newswire report notes that this is part of the FCC’s ongoing investigation into wireless handsets and their exclusive deals with carriers. Of course, this all comes years after Google CEO Eric Schmidt sent a letter to the FCC, urging it to adopt open standards that would gives users the freedom to use whichever applications they’d like on their wireless devices, on whichever network they preferred. At the time the suggestions seemed perhaps a bit idealistic, but now it’s becoming clear just how badly they’re needed.
It has been just over one year since Apple released the App Store, and already we’re beginning to see just what can happen when major companies collude to restrict user choice without fear of recourse. As I’ve written before, Google Voice offers a service that innovates in the telephony space in a way that hasn’t been seen for years. But rather than try to improve and offer a better service, Apple and AT&T are doing what they can do to protect their sacred cash cow. But it looks like the government isn’t going to stand for that any longer. With this move, the FCC is showing that it’s not going to let Apple carry its famed culture of secrecy into the telecom space.
FCC Letter to Apple
July 31, 2009
Catherine A. Novelli, Vice President
Worldwide Government Affairs
Apple Inc.
901 15th Street, NW, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20005
RE: Google Voice and related iPhone applications
Dear Ms. Novelli:
Recent press reports indicate that Apple has declined to approve the Google Voice application for the iPhone and has removed related (and previously approved) third-party applications from the iPhone App Store. In light of pending FCC proceedings regarding wireless open access (RM-11361) and handset exclusivity (RM-11497), we are interested in a more complete understanding of this situation.
To that end, please provide answers to the following questions by close of business on Friday, August 21, 2009.
1. Why did Apple reject the Google Voice application for iPhone and remove related third-party applications from its App Store? In addition to Google Voice, which related third-party applications were removed or have been rejected? Please provide the specific name of each application and the contact information for the developer.
2. Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications? If the latter, please describe the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection with the decision to reject Google Voice. Are there any contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T that affected Apple’s decision in this matter?
3. Does AT&T have any role in the approval of iPhone applications generally (or in certain cases)? If so, under what circumstances, and what role does it play? What roles are specified in the contractual provisions between Apple and AT&T (or any non-contractual understandings) regarding the consideration of particular iPhone applications?
4. Please explain any differences between the Google Voice iPhone application and any Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications that Apple has approved for the iPhone. Are any of the approved VoIP applications allowed to operate on AT&T’s 3G network?
5. What other applications have been rejected for use on the iPhone and for what reasons? Is there a list of prohibited applications or of categories of applications that is provided to potential vendors/developers? If so, is this posted on the iTunes website or otherwise disclosed to consumers?
6. What are the standards for considering and approving iPhone applications? What is the approval process for such applications (timing, reasons for rejection, appeal process, etc.)? What is the percentage of applications that are rejected? What are the major reasons for rejecting an application?
Request for Confidential Treatment. If Apple requests that any information or documents responsive to this letter be treated in a confidential manner, it shall submit, along with all responsive information and documents, a statement in accordance with section 0.459 of the Commission’s rules. 47 C.F.R. § 0.459. Requests for confidential treatment must comply with the requirements of section 0.459, including the standards of specificity mandated by section 0.459(b). Accordingly, “blanket” requests for confidentiality of a large set of documents are unacceptable. Pursuant to section 0.459(c), the Bureau will not consider requests that do not comply with the requirements of section 0.459.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation.
Sincerely,
James D. Schlichting
Acting Chief
Wireless Telecommunications Bureau
Federal Communications Commission
FCC Letter to Google
July 31, 2009
Richard S. Whitt, Esq.
Washington Telecom and Media Counsel
Google Inc.
1101 New York Avenue, NW, Second Floor
Washington, DC 20005
RE: Apple’s Rejection of the Google Voice for iPhone Application
Dear Mr. Whitt:
Recent press reports indicate that Apple has declined to approve the Google Voice application for the iPhone and has removed related (and previously approved) third-party applications from the iPhone App Store. In light of pending FCC proceedings regarding wireless open access (RM-11361) and handset exclusivity (RM-11497), we are interested in a more complete understanding of this situation.
To that end, please provide answers to the following questions by close of business on Friday, August 21, 2009.
1. Please provide a description of the proposed Google Voice application for iPhone. What are the key features, and how does it operate (over a voice or data network, etc.)?
2. What explanation was given (if any) for Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice application (and for any other Google applications for iPhone that have been rejected, such as Google Latitude)? Please describe any communications between Google and AT&T or Apple on this topic and a summary of any meetings or discussion.
3. Has Apple approved any Google applications for the Apple App Store? If so, what services do they provide, and, in Google’s opinion, are they similar to any Apple/AT&T-provided applications?
4. Does Google have any other proposed applications pending with Apple, and if so, what services do they provide?
5. Are there other mechanisms by which an iPhone user will be able to access either some or all of the features of Google Voice? If so, please explain how and to what extent iPhone users can utilize Google Voice despite the fact that it is not available through Apple’s App Store.
6. Please provide a description of the standards for considering and approving applications with respect to Google’s Android platform. What is the approval process for such applications (timing, reasons for rejection, appeal process, etc.)? What is the percentage of applications that are rejected? What are the major reasons for rejecting an application?
Request for Confidential Treatment. If Google requests that any information or documents responsive to this letter be treated in a confidential manner, it shall submit, along with all responsive information and documents, a statement in accordance with section 0.459 of the Commission’s rules. 47 C.F.R. § 0.459. Requests for confidential treatment must comply with the requirements of section 0.459, including the standards of specificity mandated by section 0.459(b). Accordingly, “blanket” requests for confidentiality of a large set of documents are unacceptable. Pursuant to section 0.459(c), the Bureau will not consider requests that do not comply with the requirements of section 0.459.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation.
Sincerely,
James D. Schlichting
Acting Chief
Wireless Telecommunications Bureau
Federal Communications Commission
FCC Letter to AT&T
July 31, 2009
James W. Cicconi
Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs
AT&T Services, Inc.
1120 20th Street, NW, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20036
RE: Apple’s Rejection of the Google Voice for iPhone Application
Dear Mr. Cicconi:
Recent press reports indicate that Apple has declined to approve the Google Voice application for the iPhone and has removed related (and previously approved) third-party applications from the iPhone App Store. In light of pending FCC proceedings regarding wireless open access (RM-11361) and handset exclusivity (RM-11497), we are interested in a more complete understanding of this situation.
To that end, please provide answers to the following questions by close of business on Friday, August 21, 2009.
1. What role, if any, did AT&T play in Apple’s consideration of the Google Voice and related applications? What role, if any, does AT&T play in consideration of iPhone applications generally? What roles are specified in the contractual provisions between Apple and AT&T (or in any non-contractual understanding between the companies) regarding the consideration of particular iPhone applications?
2. Did Apple consult with AT&T in the process of deciding to reject the Google Voice application? If so, please describe any communications between AT&T and Apple or Google on this topic, including the parties involved and a summary of any meetings or discussions.
3. Please explain AT&T’s understanding of any differences between the Google Voice iPhone application and any Voice over Internet Protocol applications that are currently used on the AT&T network, either via the iPhone or via handsets other than the iPhone.
4. To AT&T’s knowledge, what other applications have been rejected for use on the iPhone? Which of these applications were designed to operate on AT&T’s 3G network? What was AT&T’s role in considering whether such applications would be approved or rejected?
5. Please detail any conditions included in AT&T’s agreements or contracts with Apple for the iPhone related to the certification of applications or any particular application’s ability to use AT&T’s 3G network.
6. Are there any terms in AT&T’s customer agreements that limit customer usage of certain third-party applications? If so, please indicate how consumers are informed of such limitations and whether such limitations are posted on the iTunes website as well. In general, what is AT&T’s role in certifying applications on devices that run over AT&T’s 3G network? What, if any, applications require AT&T’s approval to be added to a device? Are there any differences between AT&T’s treatment of the iPhone and other devices used on its 3G network?
7. Please list the services/applications that AT&T provides for the iPhone, and whether there any similar, competing iPhone applications offered by other providers in Apple’s App Store.
8. Do any devices that operate on AT&T’s network allow use of the Google Voice application? Do any devices that operate on AT&T’s network allow use of other applications that have been rejected for the iPhone?
9. Please explain whether, on AT&T’s network, consumers’ access to and usage of Google Voice is disabled on the iPhone but permitted on other handsets, including Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices.
Request for Confidential Treatment. If AT&T requests that any information or documents responsive to this letter be treated in a confidential manner, it shall submit, along with all responsive information and documents, a statement in accordance with section 0.459 of the Commission’s rules. 47 C.F.R. § 0.459. Requests for confidential treatment must comply with the requirements of section 0.459, including the standards of specificity mandated by section 0.459(b). Accordingly, “blanket” requests for confidentiality of a large set of documents are unacceptable. Pursuant to section 0.459(c), the Bureau will not consider requests that do not comply with the requirements of section 0.459.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation.
Sincerely,
James D. Schlichting
Acting Chief
Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Federal Communications Commission
Photo credit: Billogs.
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We’ve all seen the ads and screenshots that pop-up when you hover over keywords on blogs. For the most part, they’re annoying. But what if those pop-ups had actual useful information in them? That’s the idea behind Panels Network.
A key feature of these overlays is that they’re not just about links, they also pop-up over ads. So, for example, when you hover over a 125×125 ad on TechCrunch (see an example on this demo page), you can find out information about the advertiser. Think of them as kind of like an excerpt from Wikipedia about the company.
And it’s not just standard information about the company. These panels also house screenshots of the company’s website, a map of where they are located, any recent news about the company, job listings, financial news, reviews, and also the ability to shop (if applicable). And the panels remember what section you last clicked on, so the information you find most relevant will always be front and center.
The idea is to make the ads more useful, by giving more information about the companies. As a result of this, they’re seeing a 50% to 500% increase in click-throughs, Panels Network CEO Craig Barnes tells us.
So how does Panels make money off of any of this? Well, the idea at first is advertising. Around 20% of Panels are taken up by contextual ads. But eventually, the company has more elaborate plans, including possibly working with companies to tailor their own panels, and control the way they are shown on other sites.
The service, opening in beta today, will be free, at least initially. But the company is being selective for who they will let in at first, with only a few hundred users being allowed to sign up. Installing the panels on your site is as easy as placing a line of code on the page.
Down the line, Panels Network also hopes to make an iPhone app with the same information you see in the panels. The idea there is to get users used to the idea of the information found in the panels.
The Portland, Oregon-based company has raised $2.5 million from Barnes as well as several angel investors, so far.
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You may recall back in December, we first reported the news about Apple gearing up for the launch of a large form iPod touch. While there had been no shortage of rumors over the years about some sort of Apple tablet, our sources indicated the device would be akin to Apple’s current mobile devices, the iPhone and iPod touch, which are both seeing booming sales. A new report from AppleInsider seems to confirm this news, and gives some new details.
Most importantly, after months and probably even years of tweaking, the device is now said to have Steve Jobs’ seal of approval. All we all know, even now, that is perhaps the single biggest determining factor as to whether a device will see the light of day from Apple. Jobs apparently likes this new device so much, that he’s “cemented” into the company’s 2010 roadmap of products, AppleInsider says citing sources well-respected “for their striking accuracy in Apple’s internal affairs.”
And we shouldn’t have to wait a year or more for the device, the goal is Q1, according to the report. This indicated just a small slip from the Fall 2009 launch that we had initially been hearing.
So what other details are there? Well, the device will apparently have a 10-inch screen (slightly bigger than the 7 to 9 inch screen prototypes our sources had seen). It will also have built-in 3G wireless access. This is where things start to get really interesting, because there have long been rumors of Apple talking with Verizon about a device that was not the iPhone. Apple, of course, has an exclusive deal in the U.S. with AT&T for the iPhone through next year, but there have been no shortage of whispers in recent weeks that it’s not just us that is displeased with AT&T, but that Apple is as well. And Yesterday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson made a comment indicating that the iPhone would not be AT&T exclusive forever, perhaps indicating that the end is near for the exclusivity of the partnership.
Another interesting partnership element is behind what will power this new device. It had long been assumed that Intel’s Atom chips would be used in such a device, but more recent reports have indicated that Apple has instead used its acquisition of chip-maker PA Semi last year to produce its own, custom-tailored chips. AppleInsider is indicating the same thing. These chips would supposedly handle the device’s power consumption better than the Atoms would.
One thing that’s not clear from this new report is what kind of operating system this device would run. AppleInsider’s own mockups (pictured above) indicate that it will run apps like the iPod touch and iPhone. This would seem to suggest a version of the iPhone OS, rather than Mac OS X. But who knows, that’s just a mockup. Certainly, a low-power chip would have an easier time running the iPhone OS. But this would change Apple’s idea of having developers develop for one form factor, something which gives the iPhone platform an advantage over other mobile devices.
Another question mark remains the price point. The report suggests it will be “expected to retail for somewhere between the cost of a high-end iPhone and Apple’s most affordable Mac notebook.” That means between $300 and $1,000. And given what Apple COO Tim Cook said the other day during Apple’s earnings call, you can probably rule out anything under $399 and $499 as well. So perhaps $699 or $799?
But one pricing wild-card that you must note will be the wireless carrier partnership. If there in fact is one, that could mean another subsidy which could drive down the price significantly. But would people be willing to pay a monthly fee for a device that isn’t a mobile phone? That seems unlikely in this market. So perhaps Apple will work out a deal with Verizon or another carrier similar to what Amazon has done for its Kindle device. That is, it will bake the cost of access into the cost of the product. The problem there is that while the Kindle uses very little wireless data to transfer books, an Apple tablet would presumably use a huge amount of data, for apps and Internet access.
That type of access is something which I doubt any carrier would be willing to provide without a huge (and I mean huge) chunk of change in return. This will be something to pay attention to over the next several months.
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There is absolutely no doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo are in the final stages of some sort of search/search marketing deal. And lots of Yahoo’ers are buzzing that the big announcement is today along with Yahoo’s quarterly earnings report after the markets close. But our sources are saying that while the deal is imminent, it won’t be announced today.
But Yahoo sure is being secretive about what they are announcing today. Some people who usually have access to the earnings call script are out of the loop, our sources say. Yahoo has been one of the leakiest companies in the last couple of years (remember this?), and CEO Carol Bartz may finally be trying to put the hammer down on some employees suspected of facilitating those leaks. Is something unusual being announced today? Perhaps, say our sources inside Yahoo. But they can’t say what it is besides speculation about a Microsoft deal.
But back to those Yahoo/Microsoft negotiations - sources say that a search deal is imminent. But they are also saying that Yahoo continues to push for an outright acquisition. Microsoft, after pulling their acquisition offer last May, never again expressed any real interest in buying the company. The search deal is the next best thing, and Yahoo has to take it. With Google unable to partner with Yahoo over search, there’s no one else ready to step in.
The Microsoft/Yahoo search deal would apparently put Microsoft’s new favorite child, Bing, behind Yahoo’s search product, which has a much higher market share than Microsoft’s. The deal would supposedly see Yahoo get paid $3 billion upfront, as well as pretty much all of the revenues (after traffic acquisition costs) that its searches provide over the first few years of the deal, 24/7 Wall Street reported the other day. There is also talk that Yahoo’s relatively strong display advertising business would be put in place for both companies.
We’ve previously written about what a deal like this could mean for both companies, but things have changed a bit since Microsoft completely revamped its search product. It’s still too early to tell if Bing will make any meaningful inroads against market leader Google. (And in fact, it looks like Bing may be stealing share from Yahoo, rather than Google.)
But the general consensus among users seems that they at least like Bing — something which cannot often be said about consumer-facing Microsoft products. And that has to be seen as good news if Microsoft can combine its search product with Yahoo, giving it nearly a 30% market share.
There are no shortage of rumors flying around today given Yahoo’s earnings, but remember that Microsoft also announces its earning on Thursday after the market closes. Yahoo’s stock fell 1.5% during regular trading today, but has already fallen another 2% in after-hours trading leading up to earnings. Their call is set for 2PM PT, we’ll be listening in.
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On the Google Docs blog today, the company took the time to make a non-announcement. Basically, there’s a bunch of words that bury the real story: That Google Docs will soon be launching a “brand new shiny interface.”
Hmmm. I wonder why. Obviously, earlier this week Microsoft laid out its plans for Office 2010, which includes a web-based component meant to take on Google Docs. But once again, there is nothing to actually see right now from Google, instead this is a pre-announcement to let users know that they may be seeing wonky elements over the next few weeks as they tweak things on the fly.
Not surprisingly, the sharing of documents will be a key element to this redesign. Despite it being perhaps the key element of Google Docs, sharing items with others is simply not that intuitive right now. Here’s what Google has in mind for the future:
One thing you’ll probably notice in the next few days is that the “Shared with…” list in the left hand pane will go away. But don’t worry, you can still use Search to do the same thing. Just click on “Search Options” and type the user’s name into the “Shared with:” box. If this is a search you’ll do over and over again, you can click “Save this search” so it will be easily accessible in “Saved Searches”.
Another thing you’ll see is the new Sharing Menu. We feel this is a big improvement over the old one; we’ve moved all the sharing functionality into this one dialog, so now you can completely manage sharing without having to leave the Docs list.
Other than that, Google is adding a bunch of new search operators (which only the hardcore users will care about). And it concludes the post with “They [the new features] will be followed shortly by the new interface and a number of pretty exciting features we have in the pipe.”
Google. Such a tease.
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Bad news for Amazon over the weekend. The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau slapped Amazon’s affiliated unit “Amazon.com International Sales” with a $119 million tax bill. Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday [JP], the subsidiary is accused of failing to report income in Japan between 2003 and 2005.
Japanese tax authorities started making these allegations as early as 2007 but now seem ready to pull out the hammer. The way Amazon operated so far is that every time Japanese customers buy something from Amazon’s Japanese website, they legally make contracts of purchase with Amazon offices in the US. The problem for the Japanese taxation bureau: These sales were booked and taxed in the US, even though Amazon operates two companies in Japan, Amazon Japan and Amazon Japan Logistics. (Click here for more background on Amazon’s position in Japan.)
Reportedly, income of several hundred of millions of dollars wasn’t taxed in Japan under the U.S.-Japan tax treaty, as demanded by local tax authorities now. Amazon is currently in talks with authorities to invalidate the accusations.
Amazon has a history of getting in trouble for the way they deal with taxes. In its 2008 annual report [PDF] released in April this year, Amazon.com disclosed that even more trouble may be on the horizon, especially in Japan (page 73):
We are under examination, or may be subject to examination, in the following major jurisdictions for the years specified: Kentucky for 2004 through 2008, France for 2005 through 2008, Germany for 2003 through 2008, Luxembourg for 2003 through 2008, and the United Kingdom for 2003 through 2008.
In addition, in 2007, Japanese tax authorities assessed income tax, including penalties and interest, of approximately $119 million against one of our U.S. subsidiaries for the years 2003 through 2005. We believe that these claims are without merit and are disputing the assessment. Further proceedings on the assessment will be stayed during negotiations between U.S. and Japanese authorities over the double taxation issues the assessment raises, and we have provided bank guarantees to suspend enforcement of the assessment. We also may be subject to income tax examination by Japanese tax authorities for 2006 through 2008.
(emphasis supplied)
But even the $119 million tax bill in Japan isn’t peanuts, even for Amazon (provided they really end up having to pay it): Their operating income, for example, stood at $842 million last year for the Amazon group as a whole, with the Japanese subsidiary estimated to having contributed 10% of that number. We’ll stay tuned.
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Dearest CrunchGear readers: I recently had the honor and privilege of speaking to Karen Dyer, who is not only the voice of Sheva Alomar, from Resident Evil 5, but who also did said character's motion capture. I hope you enjoy it on this day, our day of freedom.
Obviously, “K” is for Karen, and “N” is for Nicholas. With that...
N: Well, first off congratulations. Resident Evil 5 was a big hit. It sold something like 4 million copies.
K: That's what I hear!
N: Excellent. But before we get into the game, I just wanted to bring up something I saw on your bio. It says here you're known for your circus skills, and I just wanted to say how that awesome that is. And I wanted to ask, where do you study that? Because I don't know if your average community college offers that type of training.
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Mozilla has teamed with Infectious, a startup that lets users easily customize iPhones, laptops and even cars with high quality stickers of commissioned artwork.
From time to time Infectious works with corporate partners to create custom stickers. Here’s an example of an iPhone with a Wordpress theme, for example. We’re also talking to them about designing custom stickers for the CrunchPad.
The Mozilla project brings art from five Infectious artists that you can buy now. iPhone skins cost $15, laptops skins are $30 and car decals are $35. 25% of the proceeds go to the artist and the Mozilla Foundation.
In a couple of weeks Infectious will also open up the project and let any artist submit work. One or more winners will be selected by user voting and input from Mozilla and Infectious, and users will then be able to buy those skins, too.
More info on the Mozilla blog.
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With all of the collaboration going on between Qik and Nokia over the past few months, it seemed like it wouldn’t be too long before Nokia went ahead and put the live mobile video broadcasting service onto handsets right out of the box. Sure, enough: Beginning with this morning’s release of the North American N97, Qik will come preloaded onto all Nokia S60-based phones.
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It's a Saturday morning. You're making Silver Dollar Hots for the family. The doorbell rings. It's the mailman. He's brought a CubeGuard.
That's right: on the traditional day before or the actual day of rest, the mailman is here to bring you something to remind you of work. But what a gadget it is! It's basically one of those crowd control tapes with a spring loaded reel to wind it back up after use. However, this tape has a calming scene - a mountain range or a happy face - with a message ("Do not disturb" or, in my case, "John is blogging. Do not disturb."
That's right: it's crowd control tape for your cubicle. Read on for more info and a giveaway.
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I haven’t been much of a cleantech bull in the past, at least when it comes to venture capital investing. I think it’s a huge market, and there’s clearly a pressing social need. I just don’t quite think the science, government cooperation and economics are there yet for it to be a great opportunity for classic venture investing.
Sure there’s low-hanging fruit, and the outliers like Elon Musk who had the cojones to invest $70 million of his own money into building an electric car company. But a huge boom producing several multi-billion winners? Not yet, IMHO.
But Vinod Khosla greatly disagrees with me, and, frankly, you should listen to him, because he’s a lot smarter. That came across last week during a rare-sit down with Khosla, the famed venture investor and Sun Microsystems co-founder. It was for my Yahoo show, TechTicker, and I’d lobbied—nay, harassed—Khosla and his poor assistant for about eight months to get the meeting.
I’d initially intended to talk a lot about investing in India, since I’m going there in November, and it’s a cause close to Khosla’s heart. But we spent most the time talking about cleantech. Khosla Ventures arguably has the largest cleantech portfolio in the business. I counted more than 30 companies from the Web site alone. And, in many cases these are ambitious, science-heavy, swing-for-the-fences type plays. He is one of the only VCs I know who likes to do “science projects” – usually that’s a derogatory term in the industry, even for biotech VCs.
Here’s a link to our segment where Khosla explains why he believes ethanol—not hybrids and plug ins—are the answer to getting us off oil for good and here’s a link to the broader segment we did where he rebuts all my arguments about why cleantech won’t be the next big driver of Valley returns. He says that “clearly” ten Googles will be created from this opportunity, because it’s not really about solar, wind or biofuels, it’s about totally re-architecting the infrastructure of society.
Sounds ambitious, huh? I’m still not sure about cleantech as the next big Valley wave, but that ambition was what I liked about Khosla. Because I just don’t hear enough ambitious investment ideas these days in the Valley. Facebook apps, Twitter apps and iPhone apps are all great for consumers and for developers who want nice thriving businesses. And certainly, they’re great for Facebook, Twitter and Apple. But with the possible exceptions of Slide, Zynga and one or two others, they’re not the next companies that are going to drive the economy of Silicon Valley, mint millionaires, generate fees to support all those attorneys and accountants, and of course generate enough returns so that institutions want to keep investing in this asset class.
The fact that Facebook is considered risky scares me a little for the future of the Valley. This is a company that’s not necessarily doing something new; social networks have been around a while. It’s a company that mostly always been run at break-even. It’s a company that’s generating upwards of $500 million in revenue a year without really “figuring out” its business model. It’s a company that has no problem still raising money at nosebleed valuations. And most importantly, it’s still growing in almost every user metric that matters. That is not a particularly risky start-up.
Guess what? Twitter isn’t either. If you can’t look at the growth and usage patterns on Twitter and come up with several ideas to monetize it, you’re not very creative. Google built a great monetization engine because it knew intent—in other words, what you were searching for. Twitter knows way more about what’s going on at your head at any given moment, and that’s ripe for advertising and premium research/customer service products for companies. Is it a slam-dunk? Of course not. The crew still needs to execute, and the Twitter natives are getting restless to see some new features. But it’s all execution risk at this point, I’d argue.
Compare that to a company that’s making liquid biofuels out of bark or switchgrass. Khosla spoke right to this fact in the third segment of our interview, which I’ve embedded below. I started out by asking him if he’d turned his back on IT, which is after all where he made his fame and fortune. He gave a few examples of investments he’d snapped up in seemingly “over-invested areas.” One strong one was Aliph, the company who makes the Jawbone. It did $500k in 2006 to $140 million in 2008, and it’s still growing amid the downturn. (He says this at the 2:15 mark below.)
At minute 3:55, he talks about the venture capital business, and its troubling new aversion to risk. As he puts it the business is more about “capital” these days and less about “venture.” “There are too many people trying to avoid risk; too many people trying to deploy capital as opposed to invest in risk and invest in breakthroughs,” he said. You tell ‘em, Khosla.
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Since launching in late 2007, Hulu has done one one thing very well: it lets you watch your favorite TV shows and movies from your computer, free of charge. But aside from improving the user experience with assorted niceties like smart thumbnails, improved navigation, and social features, the site hasn’t really done anything extreme to expand its functionality. That changes today.
One of my only long standing gripes with Hulu was that it could never really replace the TV watching experience simply because you had to sit in front of your computer to control it. Boxee was the perfect solution to this, as it allowed you to control Hulu via remote through a very snazzy media center interface. But Hulu has repeatedly killed that functionality, largely at the behest of its major network investors.
Now Hulu is releasing its own desktop application, allowing you to browse through the site’s content using your computer’s remote control (both the Windows Media Center remote and the Apple Remote are compatible). Both applications are native too, so you won’t have to deal with any quirkiness from Adobe AIR.
Hulu has posted an intro video for the Desktop application, which you can watch below. The app itself doesn’t seem to be live yet (oddly enough, the URL for the application that’s shown in the video is located on the company’s QA server, which requires a password). But we can probably expect an update later todayUpdate: It’s now live, download it here.
Of course, most people aren’t going to ditch cable in favor of Hulu, simply because they don’t have their computers hooked up to their TVs. They’ll just use it to make their Hulu experience at their computer even better. But for those of us who have been toying with Boxee and similar solutions to replace our cable boxes entirely, this is a very welcome addition.
Update: Looking back on the Boxee fiasco, the news is a bit strange. I (and a number of others) believed that content owners were against giving users this ‘lean-back’ experience entirely, but now Hulu has done just that. Given the change of heart, Boxee is reaching out to Hulu once more to give things another shot. It won’t be surprising if they get turned down though - Hulu may well want to keep all of its content contained in its own application.
Hulu is also planning to launch a new Labs section today, though details on this are still scarce. The new Labs site has just gone live as well.
Thanks to eagle-eyed TechCrunch alum Nick Gonzalez for the tip.
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Last month Time Warner announced that it would likely spin off its AOL assets into a new company, followed by an IPO (10Q SEC filing is here). Little detail was given about the transaction, other than the fact that Google’s 5% stake in AOL would be repurchased. But exactly when the transaction would occur, and what assets it would include, were left unstated. New CEO Tim Armstrong will lead the independent company.
Sources close to AOL tell us that the board of directors will make a final decision on the AOL spinoff at a board meeting this Thursday, May 28, possibly undoing the $147 billion 2001 merger of the two companies. Sources characterize the decision as “a done deal.”
The big question is whether AOL’s dial up access business will remain with AOL. Last year Time Warner was in discussions to sell it to Earthlink. The dial up business continues to decay - at one time AOL had 26.7 million dial up subscribers, but it has fallen to just 6.9 million today. Still, it’s a nearly $2 billion business that brings in, sources say, around $1 billion in free cash to AOL. At current decay rates the business will peter out in another couple of years, but for now it’s an important way for AOL to finance growth (more on that in a post later today). Our sources say the dialup business will become part of the new AOL entity.
Total AOL revenues in 2008 were $4.2 billion, a 20% drop from 2007. AOL had $867 million in revenue and $150 million in operating income for the first quarter of 2009.
From the 10Q filed last month:
AOL’s business is focused on attracting and engaging Internet consumers and providing advertising services on both the AOL Network and the Third Party Network. In addition to growing its Global Web Services business, AOL is focused on managing costs in this business, as well as managing its declining subscriber base and related cost structure in its Access Services business. In the first quarter of 2009, in an effort to better position its Global Web Services business, AOL undertook a significant restructuring. As a result, for the three months ended March 31, 2009, the Company incurred restructuring charges of $58 million primarily related to involuntary employee terminations and facility closures, and currently expects to incur up to an additional $90 million in restructuring charges during the remainder of 2009.
During 2008, the Company announced that it had begun separating the AOL Access Services and Global Web Services businesses, as a means of enhancing the operational focus and strategic options available for each of these businesses. The Company continues to review its strategic alternatives with respect to AOL. Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company’s review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL’s businesses.
The Platform-A business unit sells advertising services worldwide on both the AOL Network and the Third Party Network and licenses ad-serving technology to third-party websites. Platform-A offers to advertisers a range of capabilities and solutions, including optimization and targeting technologies, to deliver more effective advertising and reach specific audiences across the AOL Network and the Third Party Network.
The MediaGlow and People Networks business units develop and operate websites, applications and services that are part of the AOL Network. In addition, AOL’s Products and Technologies group develops and operates components of the AOL Network, such as e-mail, toolbar and search. The AOL Network consists of a variety of websites, related applications and services that can be accessed generally via the Internet or via AOL’s Access Services business. Specifically, the AOL Network includes owned and operated websites, applications and services such as AOL.com, e-mail, MapQuest, Moviefone, Engadget, Asylum, international versions of the AOL portal and social media properties such as AIM, ICQ and Bebo. The AOL Network also includes TMZ.com, a joint venture with Telepictures Productions, Inc. (a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.), as well as other co-branded websites owned by third parties for which certain criteria have been met, including that the Internet traffic has been assigned to AOL.
During the first quarter of 2009, AOL’s Advertising revenues were negatively affected by weakening global economic conditions, which contributed to lower demand from a number of advertiser categories, a deterioration in the financial position of certain significant customers and downward pricing pressure on advertising inventory, as well as an overall increase in marketplace competition, an increased volume of inventory monetized through lower-priced sales channels and other sales execution issues. During the remainder of 2009, the Company anticipates that these factors and trends may continue to negatively affect AOL’s Advertising revenues. Additionally, in the first quarter of 2009, AOL made a number of organizational and personnel changes, including hiring a new chief executive officer and changing the leadership within its Platform-A business unit.
The AOL Network and Third Party Network components of the Global Web Services business have differing cost structures. Third Party Network advertising has historically had higher traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”) and, therefore, lower incremental margins than display advertising. As a result, a period-over-period increase or decrease in aggregate Advertising revenues will not necessarily translate into a similar increase or decrease in Operating Income before Depreciation and Amortization attributable to AOL’s advertising activities.
Paid-search advertising activities on the AOL Network are conducted primarily through AOL’s strategic relationship with Google Inc. (“Google”). In connection with the expansion of this strategic relationship in April 2006, Google acquired a 5% interest in AOL, and, as a result, 95% of the equity interests in AOL are indirectly held by the Company and 5% are indirectly held by Google. As part of the April 2006 transaction, Google received certain registration rights relating to its equity interest in AOL. In late January 2009, Google exercised its right to request that AOL register Google’s 5% equity interest for sale in an initial public offering. Time Warner has the right, but not the obligation, to purchase Google’s equity interest for cash or shares of Time Warner common stock based on the appraised fair market value of the equity interest in lieu of conducting an initial public offering. The Company is in discussions with Google and has notified Google of its intention to purchase the 5% equity interest.
AOL’s Access Services business offers an online subscription service to consumers that includes dial-up Internet access. AOL continued to experience declines during the first quarter of 2009 in the number of its U.S. subscribers and related revenues, due primarily to AOL’s decisions to focus on its advertising business and offer most of its services (other than Internet access) for free to support the advertising business, AOL’s significant reduction of subscriber acquisition and retention efforts, and the industry-wide decline of the dial-up ISP business and growth in the broadband Internet access business. U.S. subscribers declined 0.6 million in each of the three-month periods ended March 31, 2009 and 2008. The decline in subscribers has had an adverse impact on AOL’s Subscription revenues, and the Company expects the total number of subscribers to continue to decline. AOL’s Advertising revenues associated with the AOL Network, in large part, are generated from the activity of current and former AOL subscribers. Therefore, the decline in subscribers also could have an adverse impact on AOL’s Advertising revenues generated on the AOL Network to the extent that subscribers canceling their subscriptions do not maintain their relationship with and usage of the AOL Network.
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Last year we called on Google to let users have the option of making Google Analytics data public. Today they’ve done that, in a fashion. They aren’t aggregating the data into a public site (although adding it to Google Trends over time would make sense). But they are allowing websites to access the data via an API and publish it to the web or in applications.
From the blog post:
Many users are clamoring for a simpler way to share their Analytics traffic data with their external stakeholders. These stakeholders, such as investors and advertisers, typically use data reported by other services to evaluate the performance of a company. Many times these estimates are significantly different than that from Google Analytics.
One way to share your Analytics data with everyone is to use our recent integration with Google Ad Planner. With this, you can replace Ad Planner traffic estimates with actual data collected by Google Analytics.
Now you can use the Google Analytics Data Export API to create your own integrations to share Google Analytics data with everyone. For example, if you use WordPress blogging software, you can display Google Analytics traffic data directly on your website using the new Analyticator plugin by Sprial Web Consulting.
Wordpress users can download a plugin here.
Transparency is good. This is going to be a popular way to share metrics with advertisers and users.
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Good news, people with Dads or Dad analogs! Show Pop you care with Shapeways custom cufflinks.
Shapeways can offer two winning CrunchGear/TechCrunch readers each a pair of the custom 3D printed metal cufflinks as a Father’s Day gift. The final shipping date for this item is May 26, 2009, so be sure to let me know the winners prior to then. These items MSRP for $49, including shipping and gift packaging.
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Just weeks ago, Google unveiled a polished up version of Product Search for Android handsets. Near the tail-end of the post, we postulated that Google would add barcode scanning support to Product Search soon. Such services have already proven quite popular on Android already, with the success of applications like ShopSavvy and CompareEverywhere.
Sure enough, Google is announcing this morning that Google Product Search for Android now has barcode scanning support. If you’re looking to price compare a product that’s right in front of you, why type out its name and dig through irrelevant results when you can just scan the barcode?
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Celebrities love Twitter, right? Just look around, Ashton Kutcher, Jimmy Fallon, P Diddy — they won’t shut up on it or about it. But not every celebrity loves it. Take hip hop artist Kanye West, for example. Apparently mad about people pretending to be him on Twitter, he went on a Peter Finch-style rant today on his blog about the service.
He specifically calls out the “heads of Twitter” a few times. Let’s see if @ev @biz and @jack are listening. (Update: yup) - Hopefully, he doesn’t have the caps keylock on for nothing. Here’s what he had to say:
(This spaz comes courtesy of losers making fake Kanye West Twitter accounts) I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS. REPEAT… THE HEADS OF TWITTER KNEW I DIDN’T HAVE A TWITTER AND THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ACCOUNTS HAVE HIGH ACTIVITY ON THEM. IT’S A FUCKING FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!
[thanks Auston]
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Ning’s social network-building platform is getting a huge boost today, with the private beta launch of Ning Apps, a new suite of applications and features that Network Creators will be able to deploy across their networks with only a few clicks. The news has been a long time coming - network administrators have long been asking for features that could enhance their networks. But because of the nature of Ning, which houses hundreds of thousands of unique social networks, Network Creators were often requesting totally different things. Now they’ll be able to make everyone (or nearly everyone) happy.
At launch, Ning Apps is offering 90 new features to Network creators, built by 52 different developers that encompass a wide variety of web services. Network creators will now be able to integrate live video chat through TokBox, condunct contests with Wildfire, and create Wikis. Even better: network admins will be able to easily integrate monetization options, selling merchandise through Cartfly and tickets through Amiando and other ticketing apps.
Ning is likely going to be a very enticing platform for developers, too. Unlike social networks like MySpace, when a Ning network creator chooses to deploy an application, they have the option of deploying it to all of their users at once. And with some networks reaching more than 500,000 members, that translates into a huge jump in users. The applications are based on the OpenSocial standard, with some modifications to make them suitable for network-wide deployments. Still, even these changes are pretty minor - Ning says that developers have been porting their applications from other social networks in just two to three days.
Access to applications is beginning to roll out to a small number of Network Creators tomorrow, and will be available to everyone by the end of the month. At launch, all of the applications will be free to install (though some of the apps that involve money, like Cartfly, will take a revshare at the time of transaction), but Ning may well decide to deploy premium applications in the future.
Before now Network Creators have had access to some added functionality through third party applications. But Ning didn’t support these, and some of them were eventually removed from the site entirely. CEO Gina Bianchini says that Network Creators installing applications through Ning Apps can have ‘absolute confidence’ that the applications will work as advertised.
Aside from the launch of Ning Apps, things seem to be going quite well for Ning. The site recently saw the creation of its 1 millionth network (of which 200,000 are active), and is seeing 85,000 to 100,000 new users per day across all of its networks.
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Android is making steady gains in mobile ad market share, accounting for 6 percent of all mobile ad requests measured by AdMob in its latest March metrics (full report embedded below). That puts it neck and neck with the Palm OS, compared to a 5 percent /7 percent share split in favor of Palm just one month before.. Windows Mobile Devices also saw a share decline from 13 percent to 11 percent, while Blackberry’s RIM OS gained a point to 22 percent, and the iPhone stayed the same at 50 percent.
AdMob measures ad requests from both mobile browsers and mobile apps, thus its numbers are a good proxy for mobile Web usage (minus paid apps which don’t serve ads, of course). On a device level, the Android G1 (HTC Dream) actually overtook the Palm Centro, becoming the No. 4 smartphone in terms of Web usage in the U.S. (after the iPhone, the Blackberry 8300, and Blackberry 8100).
But the iPhone still dwarfs Android. As a point of comparison, AdMob measured 72 million ad requests for Android in March, 2009 versus 607 million for the iPhone in the U.S. Wordlwide, the iPhone had 995 million ad requests, and if you combine it with the iPod touch the total grows to 1.66 billion.
But is this even a fair comparison? The number of iPhones out there outnumber Android phones by nearly 20 to one (21 million iPhones have been sold to date, compared to estimates of about one million for the G1). Given these ratios, the disparity in Web usage measured by Admob makes sense. As more Android phones are introduced, that should help its numbers.
One major driver of ad requests on both platforms has been the proliferation of standalone apps. Admob measured the growth in ad requests following the launch of each app store on Android and on the iPhone, and found that the growth rate for the iPhone was 88 percent a month versus 47 percent for the Android. But both outgrew other platforms by a wide margin.
Once the Palm Pre comes out and the Blackberry App Store gains more traction, it will be interesting to see whether the relative strength of the iPhone and Android continue.
Admob Metrics March 2009 - Get more Information Technology
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Moments ago, Google released the public beta version of the Google Analytics API after running a private beta program with hundreds of developers for about a year.
When Google announced a great deal of updates to Google Analytics last October, the company already said the API was ‘coming soon’, but obviously it took them another 6 months to effectively start rolling out.
With the Google Analytics data API, developers can develop client applications that access Google Analytics data and subsequently present it in new, innovative ways. By combining a wide variety of metrics and dimensions, an API-based client application can deliver custom reports, more refined data or new visualizations that in turn provide new ways to analyze the performance of websites and web applications.
From the blog post announcing the release:
The Analytics API is a Google Data API. This is the same API protocol for Google Calendar, Finance and Webmaster Tools. If you’ve used any of these APIs, the Google Analytics Data Export API will look very familiar to you.
For the JavaScript and Java programming languages, we’ve provided client libraries to abstract and simplify the process. We’re also working on supporting more programming languages. In the meantime, for any programming language you want to use you can make requests directly to the API over HTTP and access the data in XML.
One of the applications that was built using the API and which is being featured on the launch website is Polaris, one of the products built by Desktop Reporting, which aims to bring Google Analytics to the desktop. The full suite, a full-featured Adobe AIR-powered GA reporting tool called Dopac, is still a couple of weeks away from launching, but Polaris already brings some of the data to the desktop in the form of cross-platform widgets and is definitely worth checking out. There are 8 standard reports available, and the app is completely free if used for only one website (an annual $15 fee is required to extend it to more websites). It’s targeted to marketers, project and account managers who are looking for an intuitive way to check out basic stats for a website they’re tracking from their desktops.
Desktop Reporting was pioneered by just one guy, Nicolas Lierman from Belgium. (Disclosure: the startup was one of the presenting finalists at my conference Plugg, held last month in Brussels)
Lierman has been working on bringing Google Analytics offline for quite a while (in fact, we covered one of the first iterations of his desktop application back in September 2007), and besides the full reporting suite and the now launched Polaris, he also has two other GA-related products in the pipeline (check his website for more info).
Also worth chekcing out is Actual Metrics’ Android application for Google Analytics.
It will be interesting to see what other third-party developers come up with now that the API is finally out there. Google already put some examples online in this gallery, but if you have anything cool to announce in the future, you know where to find us.
The company also set up a Google Analytics API Notify email group so you can get the key announcements on feature updates, code changes and other service related news that relate to the API that way, and / or you can join the Google Analytics APIs Group.
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Up until this point, despite all the press he was getting, Ashton Kutcher was behind CNN in the race to become the first Twitter user with a million followers. Not anymore.
Kutcher surged past CNN on Thursday evening, likely clearing the last hurdle that stands between him and Ted Turner’s doorstep — he promised to ding dong ditch the CNN founder if he was the first to a million followers. Since then, Kutcher and others have upped the stakes. EA is offering Kutcher’s millionth follower a copy of every single game it makes in 2009 and a role in its Sims 3 game. And now Kutcher is offering to buy 10,000 bed nets to help stop the spread of malaria in Africa if he wins. CNN has also pledged to buy bed nets, win or lose.
But the stage is set for Kutcher to hit the mark first. With over 980,000 followers currently, he’s appearing tomorrow on Oprah to talk about Twitter along with the service’s CEO Evan Williams. And Oprah, who just secured her Twitter account today, has promised that she will send her first tweet tomorrow during the show.
Kutcher’s late surge to take the lead in Twitter followers has been pretty amazing. Today alone, he’s added tens of thousands of followers. This helped him overcome odds that were in CNN’s favor. The site Bookmaker.com said it had received thousands of bets on the race and favored CNN’s account to get there first at -500, with Kutcher at even money.
But one oddity in this whole thing is that apparently you can’t unfollow either Kutcher or CNN on Twitter right now! Go ahead, try it, you’ll get a nice error message saying something went wrong. Is Twitter trying to ensure Kutcher gets to a million in time for Oprah tomorrow? Tin foil hat time!
Update: Actually, as MobileCrunch’s Greg Kumparak just shared with me, you probably can’t unfollow either so that you can’t game Kutcher and EA’s millionth follower giveaway. So I hope you like your Ashton and CNN updates!
Another oddity is that some people are seeing follower counts go way up for certain users. The CNN account is one of them, see the screenshot below. (Though I still see the correct amount.) Twitter, it appears, is having some issues leading up to the breaking of the 1 million barrier.
Here’s the video Kutcher recorded on Ustream about the milestone. Notably, Kutcher says he’s going to start following more people.
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