Friday, January 22, 2010

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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The Nerve! ImageShack Tries To Trademark Twitpic

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 08:45 AM PST

Twitpic might be in a bit of a pickle.  In what looks like a cruel joke, its main competitor, ImageShack (the company behind the yFrog Twitter photo hosting service), went ahead and filed to trademark the name “Twitpic” before Twitpic did.  According to filings from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (via Trademarkia), ImageShack filed for the Twitpic trademark in August of 2009. Twitpic filed for the same trademark only in October of 2009.  Both Twitpic and yFrog serve the same purpose: they are image sharing sites for Twitter.  But it’s hard to see how Imageshack can justify its claim to the Twitpic trademark.

According to ImageShack’s filing, the application is in non-final action mode, which means that the USPTO’s attorneys are investigating the application since the documents and images that Imageshack filed don’t contain the word “Twitpic.” Meanwhile, Twitpic’s filing is in suspension mode, which indicates that the USPTO has suspended action on its application (perhaps pending its decision on ImageShack’s application).  I’ve embedded all of the filings and correspondence to and from the USPTO below.

All in all, the situation is unfortunate, but still pretty funny. While ImageShack has been around for awhile, the company didn’t launch its Twitpic competitor until a full year after Twitpic launched in February, 2008. And to our knowledge, ImagesShack has never used the name Twitpic for any of its products.  So this has all the signs of a competitive prank.  Still, it’s a little surprising that Twitpic waited so long to trademark its name. And sadly for Twitpic, it looks like revenge is out of the question. ImageShack owns the trademarks for both yFrog and ImageShack. We’ve contacted both companies for responses.

Thanks to Justin Khoo for the tip.


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Twitpic
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Social Media Identity Startup KnowEm Acquires FriendsCall.Me

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 08:40 AM PST

Startup KnowEm, which helps both large companies and small businesses stake their brand claim in social media landscape and manage their presence on these sites, has recently acquired FriendsCall.Me, a similar service, for an undisclosed amount.

FriendsCall.Me launched in April 2009, and like KnoweEm, helped both individuals and companies mange and secure their identity in the social web. FriendsCall.Me was the brainchild of Darius Monsef IV, the creator of the design community, COLOURlovers.com, and community organizer for Microsoft’s Photosynth.com. Existing FriendsCall.Me customers will automatically be transferred to KnowEm’s service.

On KnowEm's site, brand owners can instantly check the availability of their branded usernames and keywords on more than 330 social media networks (for free). KnowEm returns a list of social networks where the brand is and isn't registered. Brands can then choose to have KnowEm secure company and product brands across networks and will also set up profiles for each company or brand. And companies will have a dashboard on KnowEm where they can access all of their profiles on social media sites from a centralized platform. The dashboard also includes an aggregated feed of mentions of a brand across the social platforms, including Digg, Twitter, and more. KnowEm’s freemium packages range from $49 to $349 and users only pay a lifetime flat fee. Over 200,000 profiles have already been secured and created through KnowEm for a range of clients whose names cannot be disclosed, including one of the three major search engines (Yahoo, Bing or Google), a large pharmaceutical company and restaurant chains.

As social media becomes a more necessary playground where companies and brands need play, KnowEm's services become necessary. With reasonable pricing and growth of brand engagement on social media platforms, KnowEm is gaining a loyal following and growing.


Another AOL Veteran Jumps Ship, Lands At KickApps

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 07:17 AM PST

Social software startup KickApps this morning announced that it has appointed Grant Cerny as Senior Vice President of Product Marketing. Prior, Cerny spent 5.5 years working for AOL, most recently as Vice President, Entertainment, Living & Real-time Products.

In a blog post announcing his decision to chase after ‘the next big thing’ following his resignation from AOL last month, Cerny has nothing but kind words for the company he’s leaving behind, which he believes will thrive in the years to come.

“My decision is a personal one; I am as bullish for AOL as ever, and even today spent an hour on AOL Music's CD Listening Party devouring the new RJD2 album… AOL's leadership and strategy is strong, and as a leaner, now-public company, I believe AOL will thrive.”

That’s nice, and arguably venture-backed KickApps seems to be doing a great job building a solid network of over 100,000 publishers, web professionals and small business operators who rely on its social media applications stack, so it looks like a great opportunity for him.

On his personal blog, Cerny mentions that he’s been working with KickApps’ Mike Sommers and Alex Blum over the past few years in his role as Product VP at AOL, so that also makes his decision more understandable.

But Cerny is only the latest in a series of executives who have been with AOL for a long time and jumping ship. Most recently, we talked about the departures of ‘chief lifestreamer’ David Liu, Product Manager of AOL’s Lifestream Platform Frank Gruber, former AOL Advertising SVP Eric Bosco and we’re also hearing rumors about CTO Ted Cahall being on his way out.

And that’s not even counting the 2,500 employees AOL is leaving behind in light of its IPO.

It will be very interesting to see how the company performs on its own again in the coming months and years, but chances are not many veteran execs will remain to try and make an impact on the ‘new AOL’.

Seesmic Look Is A Tablet-Friendly Twitter Client For The Oprah Crowd

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 06:35 AM PST

A couple days ago we caught wind of a new Seesmic product called Seesmic Look. Today it is launching and we finally get a look at it. As suspected, it is a streamlined Twitter client aimed at the Oprah crowd. But it is also a Tablet-friendly client that tries to organize the stream into easily browsable channels, some of which are sponsored by brands.

Seesmic Look is the company’s second Windows client. As such, it works on touchscreen Windows Tablet computers, and can also be controlled by a remote on a computer-connected TV screen. It comes with pre-populated channels and interest streams so that users can dive right in without even creating a Twitter account.  Once you do log in, you can see your inbox (@replies and direct messages) and “social” stream, which is what the people you follow are Tweeting about.

As Tweets move down the screen they get smaller, or you can literally watch Tweets come in and fade-away in what looks like a screensaver mode. Linked photos appear in-line, and soon so will videos. Also, the background images are pulled in from each individual Twitter user’s account whenever you look at their Tweets.

The main navigation menu includes trends, favorites, interests, channels, and searches. When you select one, the app brings up Tweets, categories, and pre-selected accounts, which you can explore further.  Interests and channels are pretty much the same thing—curated lists of Twitter accounts by topic—except that the channels are sponsored by brand advertisers such as Red Bull, Live Nation, and Kodak, while the interests are not. Interests include news, sports, politics, music and celebrities.  The branded channels show a logo in the corner, but the actual Tweets are from real people. For instance, Red Bull puts together Tweets from athletes.

This is the first time Seesmic is offering any advertising spots in its stream reader. Since the branded channels are essentially just lists (although they are controlled by Seesmic, not Twitter), down the line they can be added into Seesmic’s other various desktop and mobile clients. Seesmic is also speaking with tablet and computer manufacturers about distribution deals.  And the app seems to be officially sanctioned by Twitter.  It has a “Powered by Twitter” icon at the bottom, which is notable given Twitter’s prior guidance that third-party apps not use the Twitter trademark.

Seesmic Look’s user interface reminds me of stripped-down interactive TV interfaces designed for a 10-foot experience.  The intention is definitely to make Twitter more accessible and TV-like.  The channel metaphor is there for a reason.  But do people really want to sit back and watch Tweets flow by?  I guess power users do that all day long squinting at their text-only streams.  Maybe to the extent that photos and videos are attached to Tweets, mainstream users will begin to find it addictive as well.


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Seesmic
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Posterous Turns Post.ly Into A New Media Sharing Service For Twitter

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 06:23 AM PST

Dead-simple blogging and content distribution service Posterous has long used the URL post.ly as a custom branded Web address for blog posts hosted on its platform. Today, the startup is announcing that it has turned Post.ly into a destination site of its own, more specifically making it the latest media sharing service for Twitter.

Staying true to its well-earned reputation of keeping its services as simple as they are functional, Posterous has turned Post.ly into something I can see myself using a lot going forward.

If you’re a Posterous user and logged on, Post.ly will recognize you as such, or you can simply sign in with your username and password. You can then use the tool to send out a tweet to your Twitter account (which you can link up using the OAuth protocol) and add multiple media files like photos, videos, music, documents and more to your message.

If 140 characters doesn’t quite cut it for you, there’s an option to include an unlimited amount of extra text. Evidently, whatever you choose to publish will end up on on your Posterous blog and be distributed to your Twitter stream using Posterous’ auto-post technology.

If you’re not a Posterous user yet, using Post.ly will work in the same fashion as sending an e-mail to post@posterous.com for the first time: it will automatically set up a custom blog for you with your Twitter username, and you can later dive into the settings to configure the title, theme, etc. Couldn’t be easier.

Posterous is introducing this new feature / service because it hopes Post.ly will introduce more people to their core service and entice them to discover more about what it’s capable of. As a Posterous user myself, I think it is also terribly useful for existing users, mainly because for whatever reason you currently can’t upload files to Posterous when you’re publishing a new blog post from the Web.

Box.net Launches Flash-Based Universal File Viewer, Saves You Some Headaches

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 06:00 AM PST

Last year, Box.net acquired a small company called Increo without giving much insight as to what they’d be doing with the technology. Today, we’re seeing the fruits of that acquisition: Box.net is launching a new integrated Flash file viewer, allowing users to immediately view over 20 file types from their browser, including most common document formats, images (including Photoshop), audio, and video.

From a technology standpoint, Box’s new viewer has a lot in common with the converters you’ll find on Scribd and DocStoc: it takes documents and makes them readable in a Flash-based viewer, so you don’t have to worry about installing any extra software to view the file. This makes it easier to share files among coworkers and access them from other computers.

Of course, one issue that you’ll find with many small businesses is that they use files with proprietary formats — things like accounting spreadsheets, statistical reports, or patient data. To deal with these, Box has built its platform with extensibility in mind. For now, they aren’t supporting these proprietary formats (though they say the 20 formats they do support cover 95% of the files stored on Box). But they intend to quickly build out modules for new formats, and will help the developers behind proprietary apps build support for their own file formats. Finally, Box intends to offer tools to the public, so the community can develop modules to support even more formats.

Aside from the viewer, Box has been showing strong growth over the last year. CEO Aaron Levie says that in 2009, Box’s reveneue from its enterprise offerings grew by 500%, and the service is now up to 3.5 million users with over 100 million files stored. The company now staffs 70 employees. Levie recently wrote a guest post for us describing how the enterprise is moving to the cloud (and obviously Box is one player looking to welcome them).



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BillShrink Now Helps Businesses Improve Their Bottom Line

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 05:50 AM PST

With the previous turmoil in the economy, small businesses are facing a tougher credit market as lending stalls and credit is tight. BillShrink, the startup that looks to help consumers save money across verticals including cell phones, credit cards, and savings accounts, has launched a new a customized feature tailored to give business owners the best credit card options. The startup will be also be offering advice in the areas of wireless service and CDs and savings accounts in the future.

Navigating the credit world can be different for small businesses in terms of needs and BillShrink is hoping to help small businesses find the best credit card that matches their requirements. BillShrink has added more than 45 of the most popular small business credit cards to its system in order to provide businesses with a diverse set of options.

This is the startup’s first step in offering money-saving advice specifically tailored for businesses as opposed to consumers. BillShrink recently announced that it has grown to 1 million members since its launch in April 2008 and has found "$1 billion in savings on everyday bills". BillShrink has been gradually rolling out its cost saving services to consumers over the last year and a half. The site kicked off with support for finding the cheapest cell phone plan in 2008. Since then it has expanded to include a service for picking the best credit card, saving money on gas, and choosing the best saving account or CD. Most users are interested in the wireless service though, in part because of a marketing push from T-Mobile.


Study Finds Marketers Embracing Social Media Marketing In A Big Way

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 04:44 AM PST

Integrated marketing services provider Alterian today released the results of their seventh annual survey on social media marketing adoption.

The survey covered 1068 marketing professionals worldwide (actually, it was 98% North America and Europe and only 2% Asia Pacific and other regions).

Alterian found that 66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing (SMM) in 2010. Of those, 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their SMM activities.

The survey also found more than a third (36 percent) of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.

Nearly half of respondents (42 percent), however, said they don't currently incorporate clickstream and web analytics data into their customer and e-mail database.

The research also found that over half of respondents (51 percent) are placing a 'fair' or 'significant' amount of effort on moving from a campaign-centric direct marketing model towards multichannel customer engagement – in fact only 7 percent make no effort at all.

To get a copy of the full report of the Alterian Annual Survey results, sign up here.


EU Approves $7.4 Billion Deal Between Oracle And Sun

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 02:49 AM PST

It’s official: the European Commission has granted regulatory approval for Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems for approximately $7.4 billion, without further conditions. In a statement released moments ago, Oracle says it expects unconditional approval from China and Russia as well and intends to close the transaction shortly.

Oracle will host an all-day live event for customers, partners, press and analysts on January 27th, 2010 at 9:00 AM Pacific time at its headquarters in Redwood Shores, California.

Just in case you weren’t planning on attending or following the major Apple event.

The approval comes after an in-depth antitrust investigation opened in September amid concerns that Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL would stifle competition in the database market. In August 2009, the Departement of Justice had already given the deal green light.

From the press release:

The Commission’s in-depth investigation showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment.

Given the open source nature of MySQL, the Commission also assessed Oracle’s ability and incentive to remove the constraint exerted by MySQL after the merger and the extent to which this constraint could, if necessary, be replaced by other actors on the database market.

“I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products,” said Neelie Kroes, the European antitrust commissioner.

The database market is highly concentrated with the three main proprietary database vendors – Oracle, IBM and Microsoft – accounting for approximately 85% of the market in terms of revenue, the commission added.

Nokia Launches Free Turn-By-Turn Navigation Around The World

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 02:03 AM PST

For the past few days, Nokia has been trying to get everyone excited about.. something. They piqued our interests by sending out press event invites (for separate events in the UK and the US, no less), then revved the hype machine with a good ol’ fashion countdown timer.

The US announcement is still a few hours away, but they just pulled back the curtain over in the UK — and while we can’t say for certain, I’m pretty sure the talk of the event will be the same on this side of the pond. The big secret? Free turn-by-turn navigation is now available for roughly 20 million Nokia handsets around the world.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Depressing Analysis Of RockYou Hacked Passwords

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 01:31 AM PST

What’s the most common password among the 32 million people who’s accounts were hacked at RockYou late last year? According to a study by Imperva (download here), it’s “123456,” followed by “12345,” “123456789″ and “Password,” in that order. “iloveyou” came in at no. 5.

Sigh.

Only 0.2% of users had what would be considered a strong password of eight or more characters that contains a mixture of special characters, numbers and both lower and upper case letters, says the study.

The really depressing thing is that users tend to use the same passwords on all or most of their work and personal accounts. This is what caused the 2009 Twitter document hack. Once the hacker broke in to a single employee’s gmail account, he was running free and eventually got access to a lot of sensitive corporate information.

So if you want your password to be the stunningly simple “123456″ on RockYou and other social sites, that’s fine. Just don’t use that same password for gmail, your bank and your work accounts.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter how awesome your password was with RockYou, since they stored it all in clear text and lost control of the data.

Automatic Data For The People’s Apps From The UK Gov

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 11:34 PM PST

The U.K. government has decided to make the non-personal data it holds available for web developers to create a new wave of public applications. It’s a bold move which will open up more data than even the U.S. government holds at its Data.gov. The new Data.gov.uk site is officially launched today by Web creator Sir Tim Berners Lee and been has been running for the last six months in beta with almost 3,000 data sets available. By contrast, the U.S. site Data.gov, has less than 1,000 data sets. So far over 2,400 developers have registered to test the site and 10 applications built. These include PlanningAlerts, a free service that emails you if someone has put in a planning application to build near your house and FillThatHole, which lets people report potholes and other road hazards across the UK.

YouTube Goes Disco With Experimental Music Discovery Project

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 11:07 PM PST

There are so many music search engines out there based on YouTube music videos (Songza comes to mind) that it was only a matter of time until YouTube created its own music playlist maker. The YouTube Music Discovery Project just launched quietly out of TestTube (YouTube’s labs). The page is a search box on top of which says, “Find>Mix>Watch,” and once you enter a name, you hit the “Disco” button to find music.

You can enter any music group or artist, and a playlist pops up, along with a thumbnail video and a description of the band. You can find related artists, create a mixtape, and save playlists. As you are listening to music and watching videos, it is easy to add and delete songs.

YouTube is taking advantage of a lot of the officially-sanctioned Vevo music videos in the Music Discovery Project. Playlists are saved to your regular YouTube playlists page, from where you can share them via email. For instance, here is a playlist I crated called “Too Cool For School.” Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be any to purchase the music other than the occasional iTunes ad within the videos themselves. But this is an experimental product

(Hat Tip to Ron Ilan).

Founder Institute Now International, Launches In Singapore, Paris, LA, And Denver

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 10:38 PM PST

Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute is going international. This Spring, the startup mentorship program will be expanding to Singapore, Paris, Los Angeles, and Denver, meaning that the Founder Institute is now active in nine cities worldwide. Interested entrepreneurs can apply starting tonight, with an early application deadline of February 15 2010 and a final deadline of February 28. These four new programs will start simultaneously this spring.

Ressi, who founded the program, says that the Founder Institute is the first incubator program to expand beyond the United States (though there are other entrepreneur-focused programs like Seedcamp). As the Institute grows, it comes closer to Ressi’s goal of training 1000 founders a year. Conservatively, he think that this year the nine programs in aggregate will graduate over 700 founders and 500 companies, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the tally is more like 750 companies.

The Founder Institute was announced back in March 2009, offering entrepreneurs and very early stage startups an environment designed to help foster their growth and education. The program holds two four-month long sessions annually at each location, which include mentorship sessions from experienced tech entrepreneurs. The program also has a unique structure that allocates some equity to each of the founders involved, so that they have an incentive to work together (and there’s a better chance that they’ll see some financial gain out of the deal even if their startup doesn’t take off).

Here are some of the mentors Ressi confirmed for the spring semester. Ressi notes that about half of the mentors in Paris and Singapore will be visiting from Silicon Valley:

Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari, Chuck E. Cheese, and uWink;
Aaron Patzer, Founder and CEO of Mint.com;
Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote;
Philip Kaplan, Co-Founder of Blippy, Founder of Adbrite and F’d Company;
Ross Levinsohn, Founder of Fuse Capital and former President of Fox Interactive;
Bryan Thatcher, CEO of LockerBlogger, Empressr, and Fusebox;
and Mathieu Nouzareth, Founder of Cafe.com and serial web entrepreneur.

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Kindle Apps, Seriously? Is Apple Supposed To Be Scared of E-Ink Sudoku?

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 10:12 PM PST

If you are going to try to steal Apple’s thunder just before its big Tablet announcement, you are going to have to do a little bit better than E-Ink Sudoku. Amazon is obviously concerned that the upcoming Apple Tablet, which will be able to function as a lush, full-color electronic reader for newspapers, books, and magazines might overshadow the black-and-white Kindle with its dot-matrix feel. So what does it do? It matches Apple’s rev-share with app developers by raising the royalty it gives publishers to 70 percent, starts to practically give away Kindles, and opens up the Kindle to developers.

That’s right, there is now a Kindle Development Kit and there will soon be Kindle Apps. So instead of just books, you will be able to play Sudoku and scroll through interactive Zagat guides. Maybe you’ll be able to play Space Invaders or Pong, if the E-Ink technology the screen is based on can ever refresh fast enough for you to shoot the aliens.

The Kindle will support free apps, one-time purchases, and subscriptions. Kidding aside, I can see some useful, text-based apps that could use some interactivity, but what you’d end up with is a Kindle version of a Website. (The Kindle already does come with a primitive browser which could be improved upon). At least the keyboard might now actually serve a purpose.

But if Amazon really wants to open up the Kindle, what it should do is allow other hardware and software developers to create their own electronic readers that work with the Kindle store. Presumably the existing Kindle for the IPhone app will work on the Tablet as well.

Given the choice between developing beautiful, touchscreen, GPS-enabled, gyroscopic apps for an Apple Tablet and dorky E-Ink apps for the Kindle, developers are going to go with the Tablet first, is my bet. But maybe I’m wrong.

What Kindle apps are you dying for?

Amazon Promotion Tempts Book Lovers With Free Kindles

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 08:40 PM PST

Hesitant about ordering an Amazon Kindle? The online retailer is apparently making a very tempting proposition to some of its customers: go ahead and order a Kindle, and if you don’t like it, you’ll get your money back — and get to keep the device. In other words, if you’re not satisfied you’ll get a free Kindle (and an Amazon-branded cover). Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

The screenshots we’ve received look legitimate, but we haven’t been able to find any mention of this offer on Twitter or elsewhere (this seems like the sort of thing people would be going nuts over). We’ve contacted Amazon for confirmation. If you see it yourself, let us know in the comments. Update: Amazon has confirmed that it’s real. To give an idea of the kind of user who has gotten the offer:
Commenter Vladimir Cole has listed how many books he typically orders from Amazon (it sounds like he averages more than a book a week).

Commenter Alex L says that he sees it too. He’s only ordered a total of around 20 books in the last three years (most of which were last year).

Our original tipster says that he orders perhaps a couple of books per month and has been a member since 1997.


Assuming it is real, it’s pretty clear that this is only being offered on a limited scale right now — the promotion points out that the user who saw it is an “unusually active book customer” and the deal is non-transferable. It’s also obviously designed to entice these users to make impulse buys, as the promotion ends in only five days. Also worth pointing out: the promotion ends just over a day before Apple’s upcoming event. Perhaps Amazon is looking to grab any book-loving holdouts before the Tablet lands?

To those who can get the offer, it looks like you’ll have 30 days to make up your mind. Amazon isn’t making it excessively easy to make your money back — you’ll have to actually Email or call their support staff. Assuming the promotion is real, I suspect it will work out in Amazon’s favor. They’ve almost certainly done market research showing that bibliophiles love the device, and how likely these users are to request a refund.

Thanks to Arthur Wait for the tip

Comcast Looking To Offer À La Carte Streaming Music To ISP And Cable Customers

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 08:27 PM PST

Comcast is in discussions with partners to offer a music streaming service to its customers as an à la carte offering, we’ve heard from multiple sources. For an additional monthly charge of $5 or more, users will be able to stream on demand music online via a website and on their TV via their cable box.

For the last 18 months a Danish ISP called TDC has been offering customers in that country the ability to stream music online as part of their basic ISP packages ranging from $47 to $65 per month. From what we’ve heard from our friends in Denmark, the service is very popular.

The Comcast service would offer users the ability to stream music without any additional charges. Services like MySpace Music, Spotify and MOG (and the late iMeem) offer similar services today, but not through the cable box.

In the past we’ve said that the music industry’s last stand will be a music tax, and they’ll aim for the ISP’s when they finally try to convince governments to do it. Comcast’s planned service isn’t a music tax, and presumably it will be an optional add on to normal Comcast ISP and cable TV services. Still, I can see a time in the not too distant future that we’re all paying $5/month for music via our ISPs. Whether we choose to or not.

iTunes.com Launching In The Cloud This Summer?

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 08:05 PM PST

clouds over hills by vszBuried all the way at the bottom of the Wall Street Journal’s latest piece about the Apple Tablet is a very interesting nugget of information. Apple is apparently gearing up to launch a cloud-based iTunes replacement called iTunes.com as soon as this June, WSJ states citing sources familiar with the matter.

Yesterday, we ran a guest post by Michael Robertson, the former CEO of MP3.com, who laid out Apple’s cloud-based media strategy going forward. An iTunes-in-the-cloud offering is the central part of this, and could happen “almost over night,” as Robertson laid out. And late last year we wrote about how a move to the cloud was inevitable for iTunes. The planets seem to be aligning for this to happen sooner rather than later. Apple’s recent purchase of the music startup Lala has potentially made this possible, because of that team’s talent, if nothing else. But there’s more.

Apparently, part of Apple’s strategy in moving iTunes online would be to make it so that third-party sites could easily implement one-click purchases of iTunes content, presumably through some iTunes APIs. Yes, plenty of sites offer iTunes click-to-buy buttons now, but they require that you load up the iTunes software and enter the iTunes Store through there to make the purchase — it’s cumbersome, to say the least.

A fully web-based iTunes could have huge business potential for Apple which has traditionally counted on the service as just a small source of overall revenue (aside from the newer App Store element), and used it as more of a way to move iPods with their higher margins. Such a move would potentially turn services like Pandora into mini-iTunes stores.

[photo: flickr/vsz]

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Netflix Just Gave iTunes A Big Fat Kiss

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 07:16 PM PST

glitter lips by snowkeiA new movie came out on DVD this week called The Invention Of Lying. It’s co-written, co-directed, and co-starring Golden Globe host Ricky Gervais and looks mildly entertaining enough that I want to rent it. So I load up Netflix to add it to my queue — but wait, according to Netflix, it’s not available until February 16. Why? Because it’s a Warner movie and as such is subject to Netflix’s idiotic new 28-day rule (they can’t rent Warner new releases on Netflix until after they’ve been available for purchase in retail store for 28 days). Well that’s just great. So all hope is lost, right? Nope. iTunes has it available for rent today.

Because Apple did not agree to enter into a deal with Hollywood that restricts them from renting movies during this 28-day window, it was available not only to buy but also to rent this past Tuesday on iTunes, the same day it was released on DVD. While iTunes has its own series of somewhat convoluted rules with regard to rentals (for example, some movies are restricted from being rented when airing on premium cable channels like HBO), in this instance, they hands down beat Netflix at their own game: rentals. And thanks to this new 28-day window, which the other major studios will undoubtedly have interest in getting from Netflix as well, this is something we could see a lot more of: iTunes, Amazon, Xbox Live, and yes, even Blockbuster Online being the go-to sources to rent new releases.

And that’s great news for those services which haven’t yet seen the rush of popularity that Netflix has enjoyed over the past several years. But Apple COO Tim Cook noted in an earnings call last year that iTunes movie rentals were a surprisingly strong part of the store and were helping drive Apple TV sales. People seem to like the idea of renting movies over iTunes, they just needed an incentive to do it more. This is it.

Sure, for a lot of people, a 28 day wait after waiting months for a movie to be released isn’t the end of the world. But a solid 30% of Netflix’s business is still people who rabidly want new releases when they come out. With Netflix no longer offering that option, they will turn elsewhere — and I don’t mean buying these movies. If they’re opposed to piracy (which will go up as a result of this window if all the studios get on board), they’ll turn to one of Netflix’s rivals in rentals. And with these companies’ living room hardware getting upgrades this year (Xbox in talks to get ESPN content, Apple TV likely to see a major upgrade, etc), there could be very enticing options. Not to mention a certain new Apple device likely getting unveiled next week that will probably support movie rental playback as well.

I understand why Netflix felt the need to cut this deal: on one hand, Hollywood was strong-arming them in a futile attempt stop their own DVD sales bleed. On the other, they want to secure what they believe is their future: streaming. But they’ve given their rivals a real opportunity with this 28-day window. Hopefully, one of them will take advantage of it.

Screen shot 2010-01-20 at 6.48.23 PMScreen shot 2010-01-20 at 6.48.41 PM

[photo: flickr/snowkei]

Review: Palm Mobile HotSpot For Pre Plus and Pixi Plus

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 06:01 PM PST

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By the time Palm announced the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus at CES earlier this month, there wasn’t a whole lot left to reveal. From the names, to the specs, all the way down to the carrier the handsets would launch on — just about everything had made it into the realm of public knowledge by way of the rumor mill.

However, there was at least one feature that Palm managed to keep hidden up their sleeve: Mobile HotSpot. With the flick of a switch, the Mobile Hotspot application turns the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus into a WiFi router for up to 5 users simultaneously, fueled by Verizon’s 3G network. We’ve spent the last few hours tinkering with a pre-release copy of Mobile HotSpot – read on for our impressions.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

YouTube Launches Limited HTML5 Support

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 05:51 PM PST

Up until now, talk around HTML5 has largely focused on its promise, without many major sites actually implementing HTML5-specific features as anything more than tech demos. Today, YouTube is taking steps to let users work it into their everyday browsing experience: you’ll now be able to watch some of the site’s videos without a plugin, using the video and audio playback support included with HTML5. No, you certainly won’t need HTML5 to watch any videos, but if you’d like to try viewing the site’s videos without Flash, you now have the option. You can activate the feature in the YouTube TestTube. To get the new player to work, you’ll have to be using Chrome, Safari, or ChromeFrame on IE. Note that YouTube is currently pushing the feature out, so it may be an hour or two before you can turn it on.

Unfortunately, this isn’t being rolled out to all videos. You can only watch videos that aren’t being monetized and that haven’t been annotated (obviously YouTube hasn’t implemented overlays in its HTML5 player). Still, this is a big deal — YouTube is probably the most popular Flash-reliant site on the web. The switch isn’t surprising at all given Google’s support for open standards, but it’s clear they’re moving at a fast pace.

Of course, HTML5 doesn’t really make much of a difference once you’re actually watching the video. In fact, you might not even be able to tell that the video you’re watching is being rendered without Flash (you can right-click and look for the telltale “About Flash Player…” menu item if you want to check). I’m running the dev build of Chrome on a Mac and the player is mostly working, though the Fullscreen button and volume slider are quirky.

Image via Justinsomnia

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Google Not Reading Your Personal Email Cause It’s Boring; Hard To Advertise Against

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 03:28 PM PST

Screen shot 2010-01-20 at 3.26.54 PMGoogle has a funny little blog post today on the Gmail Blog. Apparently, they’ve decided to change the way they’re serving advertisements in Gmail. Why? They say it’s in the name of serving ads that are more relevant to users. But really, it’s fairly obvious that it’s about serving ads that will bring in more money.

In the example they give, Google says that if you previously read an email confirming a hotel in Chicago, and were served an ad about flights to Chicago in Gmail, you might see that same ad when you’re reading an email wishing you a happy birthday. The thought is that there wouldn’t be a good ad to serve you related to this birthday message. That’s probably not true — instead, it’s probably an ad with a much lower click rate (and CPC rate) that makes Google less money.

Here’s something else Google notes that’s interesting:

To show these ads, our systems don’t need to store any extra information — Gmail just picks a different recent email to match. The process is entirely automated: no humans are involved in selecting ads, and no email or personal information is shared with advertisers.

Since the beginning of Gmail and its AdSense contextual ads, there has been much concern that Google was reading all of your email to serve up the best ads. Google employees aren’t reading them, but their bots are, and now they’re going to start reading some older ones that you’re not even looking at as well, apparently.

Now, how exactly reading another unrelated email will serve up a more contextually relevant ad, I’m not sure. Actually, I am. In this Google equation, “relevancy” simply means “ad more likely to make us money.”

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140 Proof Distills Ad Network For Twitter

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 02:44 PM PST

We’ve all been anxiously awaiting how Twitter will turn on advertising in its microblogging platform. We know Twitter is going to be incorporating advertising of its own this year and is currently in talks with advertisers, but we don’t know what this will look like yet. In the meantime, other startups have emerged with advertising models for Twitter, including Ad.ly, Assetize, SponsoredTweets, and Magpie. And last November, Robert Scoble presented us with a compelling model for advertising on Twitter, called a Super Tweet.

Now, startup 140 Proof is entering the mix with its Twitter-based ad network. The network bypasses Twitter’s site completely and allows 3rd-party Twitter clients sell space on the network to advertisers. The ads appear in third-party Twitter clients who use 140 Proof’s API to serve and measure their ads. Ads are served within users Twitter streams on these clients (mobile, desktop or web) and clearly marked as ads.

And 140 Proof promises targeted advertising. Twitter clients passes 140 Proof a user ID list (with no names) and the public information contained in a Twitter users profile, and on the advertiser side, advertisers bid on ads to be directed toward users based on keywords in tweets, followers, as well as device, location and platform. 140 Proof’s algorithms calculates Twitterer’s “persona” based on public tweets and who they follow and serves ads to users based on this data. So if many of my Tweets have the term “red wine” in them, 140 Proof would characterize me as an ideal target for a wine manufacturer.

Similar to traditional ad networks, advertisers pay per click, plus retweets and direct replies are considered a free bonus. Advertisers can create their own ad tweets through a self-service interface, define a specific Twitter persona to target, and then measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns through clicks, retweets and @ replies. 140 Proof has already signed on a number of smaller developers and recently brought on a major Twitter client developers but declined to name the startup. And the network has over 40 advertisers on its platform and continues to add businesses both big and small daily.

Backed by a $2 million investment from BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund, 140 Proof may help many Twitter-client developers monetize their apps via advertising. Monetization is a perplexing issue when it comes to Twitter, so this network could provide a way to for both advertisers and developers to use the stream to actually make money. OneRiot is doing something similar with its realtime ad network RiotWise, and is seeing promising results during its private beta. And Seesmic appears to be working on a stealth application involving brand advertising, called Look, which will be unveiled tomorrow.

The startup is offering $100 in free Twitter advertising to the first 50 TechCrunch readers who sign up here.


Complaints Paint Snackable Media As A Scamville For Mobile Phones

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 02:09 PM PST

How is it possible for a company to build a $170 million business selling text-message games on mobile phones? As I wrote in a post on Monday, Snackable Media claims to be pulling in that much revenue selling $10 monthly subscriptions to text-message games such as Predicto and Deal or No Deal. It’s an eye-popping number, but like most things that sound too good to be true there might be a catch.  In fact, some complaints about the way that Snackable Media signs up new customers through affiliate partners paint it as a Scamville for mobile phones.

As several readers mentioned in comments to the original post, the way Snackable Media signs up customers at the very least looks fishy. There are many complaints on the Web from consumers who say they never signed up for Predicto or were tricked into doing so. There is even a class action suit (embedded below) against Predicto and cell phone carrier Alltell for recycling “dirty numbers,” a practice whereby a phone number of a previous subscriber is assigned to a new customer who continues to be billed for the service that the old customer signed up for. And this isn’t the first lawsuit against Snackable Media’s founders. They have a history of similar complaints when the company operated under different names (including NextWeb Media and the Email Discount Network) and even settled one with the attorney general of Florida (also embedded below), a settlement which Washington state and others joined .

According to a former employee of the company I spoke with who requested anonymity, here is how the alleged scam works. Nearly all of Snackable Media’s customers—CEO Eyal Yechezkell told me there are one million monthly active players of Predicto alone and was open about the fact that he acquires customers mainly through online advertising—sign up through online affiliates, but often they don’t know that they are signing up for a $10/month mobile game. Consumers might take an IQ quiz, sign up to win an iPod or register on a job website, at the end of which they are asked to enter their cell phone number and then enter a PIN number. According to one complaint:

what I remember is I was in yahoo and I saw a little window on the side about IQ test they asked my phone number thats all I remember few days later I got a message asking about what I tought about some celibrities [sic], are they going to divorce or would they stay togehter something like that I erased it,

The registration all happens online or via a text message opt-in.  Then they get signed up for Predicto or some other game and the cell phone carriers start billing them on behalf of their partner, Snackable Media. “All the people they got were through affiliates,” says the former employee. One of the biggest affiliates is Smiley Media. “The reason we can drive so many sales is they can do it all online,” a Smiley Media account manager confirmed to me.

I spoke again with Yechezkell and asked him whether Snackable or its affiliates sign up consumers using misleading ads. “No, we don’t do that,” he says. “We don't have any of the IQ quizzes. Our offers are very clear. You have to wait to get the actual service, everything is audited weekly by the four major cellular services, everything is opt-in.” He adds that “you cannot opt in unless you enter a PIN we send you or you reply OK or Yes. We are continuously in compliance. We had a suit dismissed completely.”

And what about the complaints? “The complaints are a tiny fraction of our overall business,” he maintains. Snackable’s games are no different than any other subscription business, he says: “It is just like any subscription. If I don't use my Netflix, they charge me every month. They don't email me every week saying you did not send back your DVD because they want me to stay on. Every month, we have to send a renewal message with how to cancel. It has the price.”

Snackable might be in compliance, but that doesn’t mean consumers realize what they are signing up for. The former employee notes that Snackable does everything it can to stay “on the right side of the law, they follow carrier regulations to a ‘t,’” but “they are tiptoeing a line between the carrier and the user.” For example, according to the former employee, after sign-up Snackable will send as few messages as possible to people on their cell phones to reduce the churn rate and what they call “fast cancels.” (I’ve noticed this myself. It’s been days since I got a Predicto text message, and I’ve got a comp account).  If Snackable can get someone not to cancel until they get on the second or third billing cycle, they make money, because they pay affiliates a one-time fee of $4 to $5 per sign-up, and they share the other half with the carriers. So Snackable only starts to collect its half of the $10 in the second month. If consumers complain to the carriers about the added bills, they say they have to take it up with Snackable. AT&T and Verizon are Snackable’s largest carrier partners.

While these sign-ups might be technically legal, there are enough complaints out there to suggest that some are misleading. We saw a similar problem with Scamville offers in social gaming. Misleading online offers are not the only complaint against Snackable Media. There is also the recycling “dirty numbers” ploy, where Snackable allegedly just fails to cancel accounts for numbers that are reassigned to new wireless subscribers. According to that class action lawsuit against Predicto and Alltell filed last September:

Despite its knowledge about the problem of recycled dirty numbers, Predicto ignores the protocol established by wireless carriers such as Alltel to prevent this problem.

. . . As a result, Defendants have for years systematically, repeatedly, and without authorization caused charges to be placed on the cell phone bills of thousands of consumers across the country for content that was never authorized to be purchased by the current subscribers of the affected phone numbers, but rather by the previous subscribers formerly assigned such cell phone numbers, . .

In that case, Yechezkell says Snackable Media “never received the number on the blacklist” of the primary defendant from Alltell and that it has refunded the money to the person.

What makes all of this even worse is that Yechezkell has a history of running similar scams under different company names and has settled with at least one state (Florida) who brought complaints against him. For example, he ran a service called Email Discount Networks which allegedly would charge people’s home phone number $14.95 a month for an email account which they either didn’t authorize or didn’t realize they were signing up for.

The former employee adds that when Snackable Media was known as NextWeb Media it also signed people up for voicemail service which would appear on their home phone bills through a process known as LEC billing, which only required the consumer’s phone number. “The reason they switched to mobile is a lot of people don't have home phones anymore,” says the former employee. Yechezkell says the company has “completely stopped running that product.” However, a similar business called Voicemail Direct USA, which has an F rating by the Better Business Bureau because of the number of complaints against it, lists Snackable co-founder Itai Kathein as its manager. Kathein is also named along with Yechezkell in the Predicto lawsuit.

All of these allegations and complaints could be isolated incidents.  Businesses that are total scams don’t usually approach us for coverage and brag about how much money they are raking in.  Snackable Media does operate real mobile games, and if consumers willingly subscribe to pay $10 a month for a chance to answer trivia questions and win prizes, that is their problem.  But it appears that at least some of them are being duped by Snackable or its affiliates into signing up for the service unknowingly.  When there is so much easy money to be made, the temptation to step over the line is hard to resist, especially when all of your new customers are coming through an army of hard-to-control affiliate marketers.

Class action Lawsuit against Predicto and Alltell

EDNSettlement


MySpace Cuts Three Senior Tech Execs

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 01:58 PM PST

MySpace has cut three senior tech executives from its staff, we’ve learned. We’re hearing that those affected are VP of Media & Entertainment Technology Kevin Freund, VP of Engineering Lucas Buck (who writes on his LinkedIn page that he was one of the original programmers who built MySpace), and VP of Engineering Sheetal Patel.

We’ve confirmed that those individuals are no longer with the company. MySpace provided the following statement:

"Our intent is to foster an environment of innovation and nimbleness that is centered on our user and our product. Today we've realigned our technology team against specific product lines to make it more efficient and allow us to bring new experiences to our users faster."

We’re hearing that the cuts are part of a restructuring of technology and product that’s being conducted by Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn and Chief Technology Officer Alex Maghen. Both are still fairly new to the company — Hirschhorn joined last April as part of the massive MySpace top management reshuffle, and Maghen joined in September. Hirschhorn, in particular, has made no secret of his desire to kill off products that no longer fit with MySpace’s core strategy.
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