The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Mike Maples Goes Pro As A Venture Capitalist, Launches FLOODGATE
- Knocking Live Video Now Lets You Stream Between Android And iPhone Devices
- Trademark Application For Facebook Credits Reveals Globe Coin Logo And Other Details
- Thanks To Google, Baidu Share Price Tops $600 For First Time Ever
- Vibes Media Acquires Mobile Advertising Startup Zeep Mobile
- Live Video From TechCrunch Paris Meetup
- Avatar Reality Raises $4.2M For 3D Virtual World, Hires Industry Vet Trent Ward
- Zittrain: Google Stands Alone
- Instapaper For The iPad May Be The First Killer App. And It Will Be Universal.
- Not Being Evil Has To Be More Than A Marketing Slogan.
- Fox Mobile Unveils Bitbop, A Video Subscription Service For Smartphones
- With Version 2, Lissn Quiets The Noise And Focuses On Individuals. But Is It Too Quiet?
- Tumblr Rolls Out Make Money Plan Part 2: Beautiful Themes
- Twitter Starts Rolling Out Contributors Feature, Salesforce Activated
- A Conversation With Hunch Cofounder Caterina Fake
- Qik Indeed. Service Comes Built-In To The Sexy HTC EVO 4G Android Phone
- First Look: Nintendo DSi XL
- Take Your RSS Feed And Dlvr.it To Twitter, Facebook, And Tumblr
- Twitter Loves @You. No, Literally. And Unintentionally.
- Icahn Crony John Chapple Quits Yahoo Board
- Placecast Raises $3 Million For Location-Based Mobile Marketing Technology
- The Evil Dial: Scamville Illustrated
- Don’t Miss Your Chance: Apply to Startup Battlefield at TC Disrupt
- Live From Sprint’s Experience4G (HTC Supersonic?) Event At CTIA
- Warner’s Strategy Revealed: Close Eyes, Pretend It’s 2002
| Mike Maples Goes Pro As A Venture Capitalist, Launches FLOODGATE Posted: 24 Mar 2010 08:58 AM PDT Mike Maples, one of the co-founders of Motive, has been investing “as a hobby” for the last five years under the banner of Maples Investments. Some hobby: his investments include Twitter, Digg, Chegg, Gowalla, ngmoco, Smule, Kwedit and a dozen or so other well known startups. And he’s already cashed in on a few of those investments by selling some of his stock in secondary venture rounds. At first he put his own money to work. Then he raised a $10 million fund in 2006, and a second $35 million fund in 2008. And along the way he added a partner, Ann Miura-Ko.
What’s changing? Not much, which is precisely the point. Maples has focused on finding disruptive startups that don’t need a lot of cash to win since the beginning. That sounds smart, but the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley is often still the notion that a startup that wants to disrupt a big industry needs big capital. You can listen to his outline his investment approach in a talk he gave earlier this year at a Future Of Funding event in Silicon Valley put on by Adeo Ressi. He calls the startups he’s looking for “Thunder Lizards.” He wants startups that are like Godzilla, he says, who eats his competitors and tears apart cities. It’s a fascinating video. Part of this whole Thunder Lizard philosophy is to find startups that not only have a great idea, but it’s a great idea that everyone else thinks is ridiculous. That gives the startup room to grow before competition hits. It doesn’t matter if a startup idea is wrong, the venture money is lost. But if it’s right and everyone jumps in at the same time, competition eats profits. He’s looking for startups that are “non-consensus right” and he uses Chegg, which rents textbooks to college students, as a prime example. He invested in 2007. Two years later Kleiner Perkins jumped in. I spoke with Mike and Ann last week about the new launch of FLOODGATE. It’s a fascinating conversation (see video at top of post). Particularly, in my opinion, when they explain how the name of their new fund (Floodgate, which is a gate to stop floods) is actually about opening the floodgate, not being one. They also talk about the proper care and feeding of young startups (my words, not theirs), and how much value the right early stage investor can bring to a young Godzilla-in-training trying to find its place in the world, and a city to destroy.      
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| Knocking Live Video Now Lets You Stream Between Android And iPhone Devices Posted: 24 Mar 2010 08:58 AM PDT
With the new Android app, Knocking Live Video, which enables users to stream live video to each other over 3G and Wi-Fi networks, promises to broadcast live video between Android and iPhone devices. The iPhone app has also been upgraded with the same functionality. Here’s how both of the apps work: Once you download the app and set up an account, you can search to find friends who are on the network and then request to start streaming video. Your friend has to approve your friend request in order to begin streaming live video to each other. Both of the apps now allows users to create profiles to allow users to connect with each other to share video. You can also share questions, answers and experiences with other users on Knocking Live Video forums. On the backend, Knocking has improved its server capacity to allow for faster load times and peer-to-peer connections. Since the iPhone app’s launch in the App Store last December, it is being downloaded approximately 13,000 times daily. Pointy Heads Software also has a nifty photo sharing app, called Knocking, which is applies its video functionality to photos. The app allows you to instantaneously share up to 100 photos at once between two iPhones.      
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| Trademark Application For Facebook Credits Reveals Globe Coin Logo And Other Details Posted: 24 Mar 2010 08:22 AM PDT Add one more piece of evidence to all of those rumors about an impending launch of a Facebook virtual currency at the upcoming f8 conference in late April. Facebook recently applied for a trademark for its virtual currency platform, which is aptly named Facebook Credits. Included in the application is a drawing of the new Facebook payment platform logo (embedded above, although it could still change). It is a gold coin with a stylized globe in the middle and two arrows flying out of the globe perhaps symbolizing the free flow of virtual cash. A blue square with a small “f” is placed over the bottom right part of the coin. The other noteworthy things about the trademark application are the description given to the payment system and the fact that the assigned USPTO trademark officer thinks it needs some adjustment before the mark can be granted to the company (more info on that). Let’s start with the description:
This description of the service, perhaps unsurprisingly, leaves the door open for Facebook Credits to become much more than merely a virtual currency that can be used for purchasing or exchanging virtual goods on the social network, in the sense that it also encompasses “facilitating the exchange and sale of services and products of third parties via computer and communication networks.” In other words, any Internet commerce, linking Facebook to the consumption of a wide variety of consumer-oriented products and services. Obviously, Facebook Connect could play an important role in that story as a way to authenticate users on third-party ecommerce sites. See for example the apparent partnership Facebook and Eventbrite are putting in place for the monetization of events. On-topic: Facebook recently announced a partnership with PayPal, broadening the number of options people have to purchase Facebook Credits using the latter’s online payments system (PayPal has some 81 million users worldwide, while Facebook recently claimed over 400 million). According to Facebook, its platform now boasts more than 500,000 applications. Notably, the company also recently announced that it may soon start allowing developers to store end user data for more than 24 hours. Facebook is on track to pull in somewhere in between $1.1 and $2 billion in revenues in 2010 according to industry observers, and a roll-out of Facebook Credits might just make it end up at the high end of that estimate as it opens up a number of potentially very lucrative revenue streams for the company. Facebook recently announced that it would be taking a 30% cut on currency spent by users, leaving 70% for developers. Facebook Credits kicked off in alpha mode in May 2009 and has been in closed beta for a good number of months, granting a select few developers like Zynga, Playdom, Playfish and RockYou access to the program in anticipation of a more extensive roll-out. I daresay we’ll hear more about the company’s quest to put its stake in the ground and attempt to become the Web’s default virtual currency at f8. (Image via InsideFacebook)      
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| Thanks To Google, Baidu Share Price Tops $600 For First Time Ever Posted: 24 Mar 2010 08:15 AM PDT
Google, in case you haven’t heard, shut down its Chinese search engine two days ago in response to the widely reported cyber attack on Google in December 2009. Baidu’s stock price jumped yesterday too, after investment firm Kaufman Brothers upgraded shares from hold to buy and raised its price target to $690 on expectations for the Chinese company to pick up the market share in their home country that Google will probably lose. When you look at Baidu’s stock performance over the last 3 months, the jump is even more notable: its lowest price point this year was $386.5 (on 12 January 2010) while recent trading puts the value at no less than $606 per share. That’s more than triple the stock registered a year ago, and it puts Baidu’s current market capitalization at about $21.1 billion. For the sake of comparison: that’s close to Yahoo’s market cap ($22.5 billion) but a far cry from Google’s ($172 billion). Earlier this year, Baidu reported blow-out financial results for the fourth quarter of 2009: the company’s Q4 profit rose 48.2% to 427.9 million yuan (approx. $62.7 million), or $1.80 a share. The recent surge in shares can not be 100% attributed to Google’s withdrawal from China, however: Baidu already had double its market share in China even before Mountain View publicly disclosed its plans to possibly shutter its Chinese operations, and Baidu is now operating the third largest search engine in the world. Baidu also recently co-invested $50 million in a giant online shopping mall, and raised another $50 million for its new online video endeavor in China, so it’s poised for growth in other areas than search. Still, Baidu is clearly benefiting as Google backs away from China.      
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| Vibes Media Acquires Mobile Advertising Startup Zeep Mobile Posted: 24 Mar 2010 05:21 AM PDT
Zeep Mobile provides a free API that allows any website and publishers to send and receive text messages to and from its visitors. There are no volume restrictions on sending messages and the service is free to use. Vibes Media creates mobile marketing campaigns via SMS for clients. The Chicago-based company, which raised $15 million in funding from Fidelity Ventures, is one of the largest licensors of short codes in the United States. Vibes’ customer bases includes CBS, Tribune, Best Buy, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, Accuweather and Gray Television. Zeep Mobile’s technology will be folded into Vibes’ platform. Jack Philbin, CEO and founder of Vibes Media, tells me the company has grown by 300 percent over the past year. He says that text message campaigns are interactive, and lead to success because the campaigns are a two way experience that can be used by any phone, even non-smartphones. We recently wrote about Placecast, a mobile marketing company that is using SMS technology to help retailers attract customers.      
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| Live Video From TechCrunch Paris Meetup Posted: 24 Mar 2010 05:19 AM PDT  TechCrunch Europe returns to Paris for its 2nd annual afternoon seminar today featuring yet another interactive and live-streamed session with some of the most innovative and interesting web and mobile startups and investors in France. 
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| Avatar Reality Raises $4.2M For 3D Virtual World, Hires Industry Vet Trent Ward Posted: 24 Mar 2010 04:03 AM PDT
In addition, Avatar Reality has announced that it has recruited Trent Ward to join as the new VP of Design. Ward has been in the industry for quite a while, having worked as creative director for companies like Foundation9, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts. Blue Mars is a 3D massively multiplayer works where people can come to create virtual hangouts, games, applications, simulations, shops, businesses and entertainment venues. It launched in open beta in October 2009 and began selling virtual land to third-party developers in January this year. You can find more info about pricing here. Avatar Reality co-founder Henk Rogers is quoted as saying that Blue Mars is “the inevitable next step in immersive 3D virtual worlds”, which makes me immensely curious if only for the history of the man. I’ll let you read his Wikipedia profile for more information, but basically Rogers was singlehandedly responsible for bringing Tetris to the Western hemisphere in the early nineties. Avatar Reality, founded in 2006, is led by CEO Jim Sink, who previously managed business development and partner acquisition at Microsoft’s Xbox Live division. The company has more than 30 employees in Honolulu and San Francisco.      
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| Posted: 24 Mar 2010 04:00 AM PDT
Other companies, Zittrain argues, are too timid to go toe-to-toe with China, especially with the web’s biggest market at stake. That decision to remain neutral seems like a no brainer — at least from the short-term, dollars and cents perspective — but there’s an argument to be made that Google could eventually emerge as the victor. Zittrain hypothesizes that if Google holds its posture and China ultimately evolves into a truly free society, then the citizens of China will pledge allegiance to Google and reject the other brands that effectively sold-out with self censorship. Our Skype interview with Zittrain after the break. [photo: flickr/evanrapp]      
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| Instapaper For The iPad May Be The First Killer App. And It Will Be Universal. Posted: 24 Mar 2010 03:38 AM PDT
Tonight, Arment posted a preview of Instapaper for the iPad, and it sounds perfect for the device. Aesthetically, it doesn’t appear to look all that different from Instapaper for the iPhone. But as Arment explains, he went through quite a bit of trouble to tailor it for the new device. One entirely new feature is a list screen that allows you to easily navigate bookmarked articles when the iPad is held horizontally. So why not just let users scale up the current iPhone version of the app? Because it looks awful, according to Arment. In fact, he says that the experience of seeing his app scaled this way (2x) has turned him off of the idea of using any app scaled up to the iPad’s resolution. Arment is basing this off of his experience with the iPad software simulator (since no developers have the actual device yet), but I can confirm that some apps did look a bit wonky when scaled up when I played with the device after Apple’s unveiling in January. To be iPad-ready, Arment reworked the latest version of Instapaper (2.2) and now has made a “universal” version of the app. While clearly the iPhone and iPad versions will be different, apparently developers will be able to bundle iPhone/iPod touch versions with iPad versions in one package (the SDK page hints at this). This is interesting as it allows developers to charge one fee for the two different versions. I wonder if more developers will offer similar deals. If Arment was so unhappy with the iPad scaling, clearly others will be as well, and will also be anxious to have an iPad-native version of their app. But telling paying customers they have to pay twice is a bit of a stretch, so this universal approach seems smart. And it conjures up memories of the universal apps that existed as Apple transitioned from its old PowerPC chips to the newer Intel ones. With iBooks and all the print media deals, clearly Apple believes one of the iPad’s core strengths will be reading. That’s why I think Instapaper may be one of the first real killer apps for the device. Instapaper takes any piece of content on the web and strips it down to its bare reading essentials. It’s a breeze to find a piece of longer content on the web, hit the Instapaper bookmarklet, and revist the content in its stripped-down form later on the iPhone or Kindle. And on the iPad, with this reworked app, the experience looks to be even better.      
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| Not Being Evil Has To Be More Than A Marketing Slogan. Posted: 24 Mar 2010 03:09 AM PDT
I called that choice the “Evil Dial” – more evil, more money, and Facebook gets their cut because all of these guys plow that money back into Facebook advertising. Cutts’ issue is the apparent contradiction with an earlier post where I criticize Twitter for saying that they want to "be a force for good." “Let others use Twitter to do good things. Twitter should stay goodness-neutral and self righteous free,” I say in that post. The reason these two posts don’t contradict each other is the last sentence of my Twitter post, where I say this: “Or alternatively try to be a force for good. But just do it, don't talk about it.” But it’s a lot harder to actually be good than it is to simply say you are good. Like others, I am becoming increasingly skeptical of the original Don’t Be Evil company (the one Cutts works for, in fact). Their hypocrisy on China is stunning. It’s hard to argue with the evidence Danny Sullivan laid out. Whether Google is doing business with the Chinese government in 2006 or pulling out of the market in 2010 they make the same argument that good v. evil dictates their actions. Bullshit. I’ve thought long and hard about my position on this since the news about Google in China first broke in January. I didn’t want to spout off half cocked with an opinion that I’d later regret. And after long deliberation, I’ve come to that simple conclusion. Google’s position is bullshit. That’s why I wince when I see Twitter following that same path. Because Googlers really think that they are doing the right thing. It’s a self righteous groupthink that leads to situations like this. And on a mass scale it can be dangerous as hell. A lot of that same self righteousness pervades the ranks at Twitter today. It led them to, for example, remove news sites like this one from the suggested user list in 2009 when we didn’t fall into line editorially. As Twitter’s power grows, how will Twitter define good v. evil? Perhaps revolutionary actions in Iran are ok and supported, but in another country they aren’t? Will Twitter continue to pick and choose which politicians get on the suggested user list, or whatever future mechanism they have for helping out “good” politicians v. “evil” ones? Of course they will. Because they aren’t striving for neutrality, they’re striving to support their version of good. So back to Facebook. What I’m arguing for here is a straight up ban of misleading advertising that dupes consumers into buying stuff they don’t want to buy. They don’t have to create a frickin slogan, all they have to do is protect their users from bad people that want to steal their money. But at least we know where things stand with Facebook. There’s a straight up Evil Dial. I’ll take that over religious zealotry any day.      
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| Fox Mobile Unveils Bitbop, A Video Subscription Service For Smartphones Posted: 24 Mar 2010 02:35 AM PDT
As GigaOM called it, you can think of the new offering is a Hulu on-the-go. Bitbop users will be able to both stream and download movies or other video content on-demand from their mobile devices over Wi-Fi or 3G alike. An actual launch date hasn’t been announced yet, but according to the Bitbop placeholder website the service will be making its U.S. debut this Spring. Fox Mobile says the Bitbop service will work on “most advanced technology handsets” with “nearly every major telecommunication carrier”. In addition, the company said subscribers can expect to able to stream or download content from Fox but also a range of content partners. According to GigaOM, partners will include NBC Universal and Discovery, along with a number of unannounced content owners. Our smartphones are ready for mobile TV and video streaming on the go, and content providers are placing bets on us opening up our wallets for it. Million dollar question is: will the carriers’ networks be able to cope with the bandwidth requirements?      
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| With Version 2, Lissn Quiets The Noise And Focuses On Individuals. But Is It Too Quiet? Posted: 24 Mar 2010 02:33 AM PDT
Whereas the first version was based around specific conversations, Lissn 2.0 is entirely based around individuals. It doesn’t matter what they’re talking about, only who they are, and that you might be interested in having a conversation with them, or listening in on the one they’re having. In fact, the only pages that exist on the site now beyond the list of all users online and the list of your favorite users (“memory,” as it’s called), are individual user pages. From there, you have only three options: listen in (by watching), “say something,” or “ask a question.” Doing either of the latter two will place your text in a stream above the user’s avatar. From there, depending on how many people are in the room, it’s basically a massive IM conversation. Or, if you feel like starting your own conversation, you simply go to your page and say something in the text box along the bottom of the page. To me, there’s something compelling about Lissn because it’s now very, very simple — sort of like Twitter, back in its early stages. You really can only do a few things, again, like Twitter. However, I can’t help but wonder if Lissn is now too simple. Having conversations is nice, but what’s the benefit to having them on Lissn versus over IM with multiple people? Maybe something like great search functionality would entice me, but there is no search right now. But the team says it plans to iterate with this new version on a weekly basis, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s coming. Whereas rival LiveFyre is based around specific topics to have conversations about, Lissn offers no context for conversations, so it will likely be hard to jump into one. That said, if the service positions it sort of like a Formspring.me-type Q&A with a certain user, it could be kind of interesting.
     
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| Tumblr Rolls Out Make Money Plan Part 2: Beautiful Themes Posted: 23 Mar 2010 08:59 PM PDT Earlier this month, Tumblr rolled out its first attempt at making money: a small ($9) fee to make your blog featured in a directory of blogs. Tomorrow, the service is officially rolling out its second revenue generator: premium themes. The initial 13 themes being featured in this roll-out look pretty great. They come from 7 different designers and will range in price from $9 all the way up to $49. Tumblr declined to give the revenue split between the company and the designers but says that “most” of the money will go to the designers. The premium themes page is actually already live here. This seems like a smart play for Tumblr. One thing that separates it from rivals such as Posterous is the attention to design. Tumblr already features over 350 free templates that any user can install with the click of a button. “There’s already been a ton of demand for this platform [premium designs] from our developer community, and we know it will add a spectacular collection of new themes and options for our bloggers,” says founder David Karp. The roll out of this second premium feature is the latest in a huge amount of updates the service has unveiled in the past several weeks. Those include the ability to add static pages to Tumblr blogs, photo replies, video uploads, and even comments (sort of). Tumblr is also just about to hit 4 million users.      
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| Twitter Starts Rolling Out Contributors Feature, Salesforce Activated Posted: 23 Mar 2010 04:15 PM PDT Back in December, Twitter noted a new feature it was testing out, Contributors. Basically, this allows multiple people to tweet from one account (with individual attribution below the tweet). Twitter noted that the feature wasn’t quite ready for prime time yet, but they started using it on their @twitter account. Today, the service has started rolling out to others. The Salesforce account had the feature turned on about an hour ago. As you can see, they’re already using it. Contributors is thought to be a part of Twitter’s plan to give premium features to businesses. Though they’re apparently not charging yet for it, one could envision when their business tools are ready to go, this would be wrapped into it.      
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| A Conversation With Hunch Cofounder Caterina Fake Posted: 23 Mar 2010 03:55 PM PDT New York based Hunch is on a bit of a roll. Users have now answered 50 millions questions on the service, which uses your answers to help give you recommendations for just about anything. Investors have taken note of their progress, and they recently closed a $12 million venture round from Khosla Ventures and previous investors.
The lights are too bright and the sound echoes (we’re still working on our new studio), but Caterina gives deep insight into what Hunch is all about. And we also talk about Yahoo. Caterina was an executive at Yahoo from 2005 – 2008 after her previous startup, Flickr, was acquired. Yahoo has an uphill battle, she says, and we spoke about their need for a product visionary: The full transcript is below: Mr. MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I’m here with Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Hunch. Hello. Ms. CATERINA FAKE (Co-Founder, Hunch): Hello. Mr. ARRINGTON: Thanks for coming in. Ms. FAKE: Thank you. Mr. ARRINGTON: You guys just raised a big round of financing a week ago from Khosla Ventures. Ms. FAKE: Twelve million dollars. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah and we covered that, but I thought it was probably time to maybe talk to you a little bit more about Hunch and do a deeper dive than we have in the past with the company. Ms. FAKE: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, OK, first thing is, what is Hunch and why does it matter? Ms. FAKE: So, the way Hunch works is Hunch learns about you. Hunch asks a bunch of questions which we call Teach Hunch about You. Those are questions about demographics, beliefs and values, your aesthetics, your political views, all those kinds of things and it’s meant to be fun. There’s a kind of a little module up in the corner of the front page if you go in and, you know, it’s everything from, do you live in the country or the city or the suburbs. Do you cut your sandwich down the middle or diagonal? You have you ever used a fake ID when you were underage? That kind of thing… Mr. ARRINGTON: And that tells you Hunch… Ms. FAKE: And it tells you all of these – all of these like really interesting things and it enables… Mr. ARRINGTON: If I cut my sandwich down the middle or diagonally, let’s say kind of diagonally, what does that tell you? Ms. FAKE: Yeah, there is this tremendous database that we have of all of these into like fascinating correlations and it turns out there’s certain things that are like the example that I just gave; if you have used a fake ID when you were an underage you're significantly more likely to be an entrepreneur. It means that, you’re like kind of like more… Mr. ARRINGTON: Does everyone use a fake ID? I use plenty(ph). Could you use… Ms. FAKE: Well, like the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs? And I used… Mr. ARRINGTON: You used one? Ms. FAKE: I used a fake ID when I was underage. Mr. ARRINGTON: Is there a (unintelligible) in Canada? Ms. FAKE: There – I’m not Canadian. I’m actually American. Mr. ARRINGTON: Oh you just lived in Vancouver when you guys started? Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK Ms. FAKE: Yeah. So, you can learn all these really interesting things and, Hunch really is a way for us to give you the best recommendations possible. It’s a bit like Amazon or Netflix recommendations for everything and… Mr. ARRINGTON: What is – that's for? Movies? Restaurants? Vacations? Ms. FAKE: It – I wouldn’t actually – no, I wouldn't actually limit it to anything in particular. I mean, it should work for everything. It should work for, I need a hotel in Dallas. I need to find a philosopher. I need the New York Time’s bestseller to bring on vacation with me, we know everything. It should work for those things that especially are very taste-oriented and I think that the thing that really distinguishes Hunch from other efforts out there, there’s a lot of kind of products that are, attacking a kind of like a similar problem is that we are trying to create this taste graph for the whole web. We’re trying to learn the tastes of all of the people out there and… Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s obviously a planned social graph, right? Ms. FAKE: Which is a planned social graph, right? It’s analogous like the taste graph we’re saying is something that’s analogous to like the social graph. But from our perspective, the social graph is actually less informative and actually gives you less valuable information on you than what we’re calling the taste graph because you may – I may be in contact with my co-workers, who are kind of like male engineer types and, with my mom, I have a very close relationship with. But our tastes are very different, the things that we like, the sushi restaurants or (unintelligible) that we’d be interested in… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Or the clothes that we would wear and so, what we’re – our assumption is that there's people out there who share similar taste. They have a similar aesthetic to you or they have, say, you’re kind of looking for a blog or a news show, your political position or political stance would inform that choice as well. So, that’s really what… Mr. ARRINGTON: And this actually works? Ms. FAKE: And this actually works, yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: You found statistically relevant results… Ms. FAKE: Yes. And it's a completely data-driven kind of like algorithmic side and so the way that Hunch evolved was we launched last – June of last year and I’d say that this first – the first part of this phase of the product’s development, we had a kind of a chicken and egg problem in order to make really good recommendations, in order to understand the taste graph. We had to gather all of these data. We had to have information. We had to get kind of a cold start problem. And so we’ve spent the past – how long has it been – seven or eight months now gathering information about people, learning about people and we have 1.5 million uniques(ph)… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yup. Ms. FAKE: In the past couple of months, each month and… Mr. ARRINGTON: So, 1.5 million people a month are coming to the site… Ms. FAKE: Are coming to the site and… Mr. ARRINGTON: And answering these questions… Ms. FAKE: What we have – I mean, we do have 200,000 – I would say the best data that we gather from the 200,000 registered users who were – have been answering an average of 140 of these questions. So, we have over 50 million questions answered in our site. Mr. ARRINGTON: Well… Ms. FAKE: So, it’s an incredible amount of data. And now, I’d say we’re in the position where we can actually use this data. We can actually make assumptions. We can make – we can draw connections between people and products and services and all of those kinds of things. Mr. ARRINGTON: How do you – well, actually, let’s take one step back and then talk like the company was different before you started because you’re a co-founder, and you actually joined little later and what… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: How – what – did you… Ms. FAKE: That's right. Mr. ARRINGTON: Move the direction and what was it before and why did it change? Ms. FAKE: So what happened with – what happened with Hunch is it was – it was originally founded by Chris Dixon and Tom Pinckney and Matt Gattis. And they had come out of – their prior company was SiteAdvisor which they built in, I believe, 2005, 2006. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: And they were – they sold it to McAfee for $74 million. What they were doing was like kind of like security – a security site which analyzed, you can kind of guess by the name, it’s like SiteAdvisor tells you the kind of the relative safety of visiting various sites. And so their initial product, the thing that they were developing originally was it was a decision tree model. It was kind of based on expert systems where a series of questions were asked and you got an answer at the end. And so they started off – they kind of hoping to fund experiments that they try that did not succeed including, sort of like a thing called pure printer fixer(ph) or you had to go down this decision tree, like is it plugged in, it's the toner in the cartridge. You know, they basically kind of take you down this path and observe a diagnostic tool. But they knew that there is something very interesting about destruction in this model learning things. And then there is this – there’s this other part of it where they, ask questions, some of which were amusing, some of which were kind of very serious. Those were the taste-oriented… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Questions that I would say. And at some point, they had done – they have been doing this in an entirely automatic way. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: They have kind of like – for example they had sucked in the entire, products database of Amazon, for example. And it felt computational, it felt mechanical. It felt as if a computer had done it. And at some point they realized that the only way that this was going to work, that the only way the Hunch was going to work, was as if it were a user-generated content site and that there had to be human input. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: There had to be people contributing to it. And that was coincidentally the week that they figured that out. I was introduced to them by their venture partner, one of their investors is Bessemer. And so I kind of walked in just at the moment and they realized that this had to be man plus machine. It had to be human-added content as well as sort of very, (unintelligible) kind of computational algorithmic stuff on the back end. And so that of course, is my background and that’s kind of one of the strengths of my, part of development so… Mr. ARRINGTON: All right. So looking forward, how do you know it’s working? Like what’s the feedback from the users that tells you… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. I mean, we do… Mr. ARRINGTON: We're helping them. Ms. FAKE: We we measure kind of internally as our success rate. So we give a recommendation and the user will say do you like this, yes or no. Well, no if they click through a to read more about it, if they’ll, go actually and go purchase the product. Those were – those are the strongest signals that we have. And, we were starting on – this is our so-called success rate has been increasing over time. When we launched it was, in the 70’s. You know, like 72 or 73 percent success rate. Mr. ARRINGTON: And that's based on the user does something with the recommendation. Ms. FAKE: Yes, yes, like in a positive direction I guess. That means a positive kind of – in a way that’s increased of, you know, until like the 90’s now. And so we have a good 90 percent success rate. And so that’s how we measure our success so… Mr. ARRINGTON: It’s interesting that you allow people – it's so – your recommendations are based on the data that you get… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: From people on building the – well, you’re calling the taste graph. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: But you allow anonymous users to go in and use the site without being logged in. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: And do you just give them that pretty good answers and why… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. I mean, there’s a significant increase in our success rate obviously when people who log in when they answer questions when we get to know them over time. And I do think that, if we were to re-launch today one of the things we would very strongly consider is that it only be a logged in experience. I mean, I do think that when we launched it’s one of those things that you learn, and we’re – it’s a very new product we are inventing in as it kind of goes along and, this got – this to me, personally is of – is, kind of the most gratifying product to build as the one where you’re not really sure or like how to build and it’s not really clear how it's going to turn out. You do a lot of experimentation. And I do think that one of the things that we would have considered from the outside is making it just logged in. I mean, I do think that, it very clearly improves to an incredible degree with our experience… Mr. ARRINGTON: So why not change it now or just… Ms. FAKE: Yeah, yeah. That’s one of the things that's sort of under consideration. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK. Ms. FAKE: Well, we do have an amazing increase in the number of users that were coming in through SEO. And so it’s a trade-off. Because you are able to give people pretty good answers, pretty good recommendations without them having answered 140 questions as the average walked-in user has. But it’s not nearly as good. Mr. ARRINGTON: Something I wanted to ask you. You were the co-founder of Flickr… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: And – and we know how that turned out. And so many people love Flickr and you’re a bit of a celebrity founder now. You definitely entered that. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Is it easier to grow a startup as a celebrity founder or harder… Ms. FAKE: You know, that’s an interesting question… Mr. ARRINGTON: Or is it – the more tension there’s more expectations or… Ms. FAKE: There’s more – there’s a lot of – I do – I do think that’s the case. There’s definitely more tension which is… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Which can be good and bad. I do think that a lot – one of the things that you have to be on guard against is not taking risks because I think that you can, if you've… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: If you've had a big success previously, you can stop taking risks. You can… Mr. ARRINGTON: In fact, psychologically, you’re… Ms. FAKE: You’re kind of guard it against – you want to kind of – you keep what you’ve got, right? Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: You want it, and so it makes you less willing to take risks. Mr. ARRINGTON: So how you do fight that? Ms. FAKE: I mean, you just have to very deliberately do that. And I think in a lot of ways, you have to really kind of like focus in and kind of filter out the noise and all of the kind of attention that you could potentially get drunk on. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Like people you know, if you kind of – it happens to – it happens to a lot of successful companies, Not just individuals or founders but companies themselves if you start believing in press releases. It’s a very dangerous situation that you want to get out of. And to me, I think it would’ve been – I’ve seen many – many second time, third time entrepreneur founders going down the same route that they had gone down before without a lot of variation. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: And that was something that I’m very much wanted to avoid and Hunch is obviously vastly different from Flickr. And I think part of that was informed by the time that I spent at Yahoo. When I was at Yahoo, the most interesting thing that was going on there was social search. At that time since I was there, 2005 through 2008, the most… Mr. ARRINGTON: And you weren't running Flickr. I mean, that was handed off, right? I mean, you were… Ms. FAKE: Yes. What happened was that was when we came in, we came in – we made sure that Flickr which has a very good outcome, that Flickr stayed Flickr. We wanted to make sure that it did. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: It’s very common for a company to be acquired and to lose its heart and soul and to kind of get – get lost. And so, you know, we spent a lot of time protecting it, making sure that… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: You know, the heart of Flickr remained. And then once that, once I felt as if Flickr was on the right path, then I branched out. And the most interesting thing going on, as I was staying, was social search and, at that time, and this is no longer the case, unfortunately, but Yahoo is going up against Google in search. And so as a result – and they knew what their strong suits were. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Yahoo knew that a strong suit was a social. They had logged in users. They knew a lot about their users. Their users were people that came back. They, used a lot of different products an average of like two and a half products, like whatever Yahoo Finance or, mail or IM or what-have-you. And you know, and as a result there is an incredible amount – amount of social information that could be used in search. And so that was a lot of the work that I was doing while I was there, I was working in social search. And then subsequent to that, I worked on the problem of actually developing product at Yahoo as well… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Because they know where the problem was. You know, obviously coming from the startup going into a large organization like Yahoo is that often the obstacles there's no innovation deficit in a company like Yahoo. There is an incredible amount of invention and creation, but often what happens is the organization gets in the way. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: And so then, subsequent to kind of working in social search I worked on – I worked on, how do you get products built. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Within a big company like that so… Mr. ARRINGTON: I'd love to talk to you a lot more about that, but since you brought up Yahoo I will go a little deeper into it. I thought I'm getting into too much of a sensitive area… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: But when Yahoo changed CEO’s at the end of '08… Ms. FAKE: Right. Mr. ARRINGTON: And they hired Bartz, Carol Bartz. A lot us were rooting for Yahoo to hire somebody who was product-focused, true product visionary. Microsoft had Bill Gates, Apple has Steve Jobs. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: There are other examples as well although not many. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. But I agree with it, by the way, yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: You agree that maybe… Ms. FAKE: Yes. The product you're in. Mr. ARRINGTON: Somebody – and they didn't. And they hired somebody who accomplished – accomplished executive… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: But did – and then they subsequently have not hired a true product visionary that I can see even… Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Even under Carol. Do you agree with like – you sound like you're very pleased… Ms. FAKE: I agree, absolutely. And I do think that one of the things that they should have done exactly is bring in a product person. To some extent… Mr. ARRINGTON: Weren’t some of those people already in the company? Ms. FAKE: Interestingly, yes. I mean, some of those people were already in the company and interestingly, I actually… Mr. ARRINGTON: But they've all left now, right? Ms. FAKE: I actually think that Jerry Yang – Jerry Yang was one of the best product people. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: And I – during the time that I was at Yahoo, all of the best product decisions I think, that were made during the era… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: During the period when I was there were made by Jerry Yang and all of the things that he funded – he funded the Yahoo Developer Network and it was a great example. He funded Yahoo Answers. I mean, all of the successful products that immersed out of there and all of the great… Mr. ARRINGTON: What do you mean by funded? That he green lighted it? Ms. FAKE: He had to green light it. He has a discretion pedestal, thus a discretionary project where he can green light any project from the company… Mr. ARRINGTON: OK. Ms. FAKE: As a founder, you know, chief guy. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: And everything that he green lighted and funded were, very successful. So, in some ways it is interesting because during the brief, you interregnum, you know between Terry Semel and Carol Bartz, he was the CEO. But unfortunately during that time it wasn't – the focus was not on building our products it was on fending off Steve Ballmer in Microsoft so… Mr. ARRINGTON: Well, why can’t he be that person today? Is it – he’s damaged now? He’s… Ms. FAKE: I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have enough view. I guess, good enough view into the workings of the company now under Carol Bartz right now. Mr. ARRINGTON: Do you think Yahoo can – can, not will, but can re-emerge as… Ms. FAKE: Re-emerge? It'll be a long uphill battle. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yup. Ms. FAKE: I mean, it's – it's – it's sad to me because I think that Yahoo is in a not a very strong position as it was even when I started there in 2005. And I think the industry’s wish(ph) for it because I think a strong Yahoo is really good for the industry as a whole. Mr. ARRINGTON: Some of your – I'll call them competitors, they're not really product competitors but guys like Aardvark and others been taken out and then acquired. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Have you guys had some acquisition pressure that you've… Ms. FAKE: There has been – I mean, there have been kind of, you know, nibbles… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: You know, kind of around the edges but we are not really interested in, you know, doing in acquisitions. Mr. ARRINGTON: You don’t want a $50 million exit? Ms. FAKE: No. Mr. ARRINGTON: You want what? Ms. FAKE: Yeah. I mean, I guess – you know, I – both my co-founders… Mr. ARRINGTON: Right. Ms. FAKE: They sold SiteAdvisor to McAfee. I sold Flickr to Yahoo. You know, none of us are really interested in, you know, a kind of an acquisition. You know, we really want to have a company that we built and, you know, and swing for the fences and go ambitious. And I think that Hunch we picked a very good problem. I think that we picked a very ambitious area. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: And so I think that it the possibilities are tremendous for the company. Mr. ARRINGTON: Do you think – I am speculating here but if – let’s say I am a regular Hunch user and – I mean, I use it twice a month, three or four times a month. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: What does this got? The 200,000 hardcore users, are they using a – you said they've answered 150 questions each. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: They are using it pretty regularly. Ms. FAKE: Yeah, very regularly. Mr. ARRINGTON: Once or twice a month it sounds like – yeah, OK. Ms. FAKE: Very regularly, yeah, yeah, and more in. Mr. ARRINGTON: After a year or so of using it you have my taste graph. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: You almost have my taste DNA. Ms. FAKE: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: Like you can almost describe me psychologically… Ms. FAKE: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: Demographically as a – you know, as a human being, right? Ms. FAKE: Right. Yeah. And the other thing too is that… Mr. ARRINGTON: Does that – that's still scary. Ms. FAKE: What – you know, one of the things that we are interested in is actually allowing you to take your taste profile elsewhere. So, you should be able to, for example, we are going to roll out some stuff where it will help you – it will help you pick out, you know, who to follow on Twitter. It will help you – you've… Mr. ARRINGTON: Choose the movies that I want. Ms. FAKE: Choose movies that you want to see. It will be able to – you know, imagine – imagine, you know, you could take your taste profile and you could apply it to eBay or Etsy. And you could take – you could take it… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Kind of like anywhere with you. Mr. ARRINGTON: I imagine advertisers will be eager to get their hands on the idea as well. Ms. FAKE: Right, right. But we have no intention of actually giving it to anyone. It was – it would… Mr. ARRINGTON: You want to sell it? Ms. FAKE: It would be no. We wouldn't be selling it… Mr. ARRINGTON: But you – I mean, you will advertise in to this, right? I mean, that is the monetization model. It must be. Ms. FAKE: The advertising? Ms. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: The monetization model is basically it is the same as – it is the same as sort of kind of intent gathering mechanism like Google for example is, obviously if you are looking for a camera and we help you find a camera and then you click on the link to go buy a camera… Mr. ARRINGTON: That's where you monetize… Ms. FAKE: That's – that's where all the monetization… Mr. ARRINGTON: But not – let's say a studio coming to you and saying I want to market Avatar… Ms. FAKE: Yeah, yeah. No way. Mr. ARRINGTON: To all the people you know are going to love it. Why not? Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: I actually you might enjoy being told about it. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Yeah. Well that would – you know, like to date, that has not been something that we've been saying… Mr. ARRINGTON: I mean, that's if – you know, you are (unintelligible) Blippy – I mean, Blippy it's like… Ms. FAKE: Sure, yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Where you – to post everything you buy. Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: That I mean – that they're blunt about the fact they were going to sell that profile… Ms. FAKE: Yeah, yeah. Now I know. I know – what… Ms. ARRINGTON: All day. It does not – we are thinking… Ms. FAKE: When I'm planning on doing that. I mean, I like Blippy. I mean, Blippy is a really interesting company and I think that in many ways they are doing something very similar to what Hunch is doing and that they are creating a taste profile. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: They are approaching it from a completely different… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: Direction and that they're using your purchase history as a way of – you know, of basically creating a kind of taste profile. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: But I do think that this is going to be a kind of a trend. That the social graph, which everybody is very excited about right now will be in some ways replaced by the taste graph. And what Blippy is doing would be as also kind of creating a taste graph as well but from a different source. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. FAKE: In your purchase history. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK. So, no quick sale for you guys, that's a promise. Ms. FAKE: No quick sale. Mr. ARRINGTON: We're going to see how this plays out. Ms. FAKE: No quick sale, yeah. That doesn't seem like it's in the cards. Mr. ARRINGTON: Congratulations on the round. Thanks for taking the time with me. Ms. FAKE: Yeah, of course. All right. Thank you.      
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| Qik Indeed. Service Comes Built-In To The Sexy HTC EVO 4G Android Phone Posted: 23 Mar 2010 03:44 PM PDT
Today, all anyone seems to be talking about is the new HTC EVO 4G, Sprint’s WiMax phone that runs Android which was just unveiled at CTIA. Not only will Qik work on the device, it will come built-in to each one. This is potentially huge news for the service. With even the coolest services, it can be hard to convince users to download your app. But coming pre-installed is worth its weight in gold. And live video streaming seems like the perfect way to test out Sprint’s new 4G network, which is already deployed in a few cities, and will be in many more this year. And it’s not just the network. This new device features an 8 megapixel autofocus camera capable of recording HD video. And yes, Qik is able to capture videos in HD with this device. And it even has a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera — something which plenty of vain Qik users will appreciate.      
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2010 03:35 PM PDT  Just got another care package from Nintendo, and it's a big one — literally. Nintendo sent us one of its new DSi XL units, and color me impressed. The screens look great, and games look like they should have been on a screen this size in the first place. I don't even need my reading glasses to play any more! Click through for more shots and first impressions.
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| Take Your RSS Feed And Dlvr.it To Twitter, Facebook, And Tumblr Posted: 23 Mar 2010 03:03 PM PDT Things on the Web used to be simple for bloggers and publishers. You published on a Website, and then syndicated it out to other channels via an RSS feed. But then realtime streams started taking over and RSS couldn’t keep up, even though technologies like PuSH are speeding it up. So publishers take their RSS feeds and publish the headlines and a link directly to Twitter with a service like Twitterfeed. But what about Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and all the other social streams coming down the pike? There are so many ways to syndicate your feeds that it is becoming unmanageable. A new service called Dlvr.it is launching in open beta today to help publishers deliver their feeds anywhere they want. Dlvr.it is a new product from in-stream advertising startup Pheedo. Once you sign up, you select a feed as an input, and then you select where you want to deliver that feed as an output. Depending on the destination, the feed will appear differently (a headline with a short dlvr.it link for Twitter, a longer excerpt for Facebook). You can set it to deliver all headlines to Twitter, but only a certain subset to Tumblr. The workflow is a little bit like Yahoo Pipes. You fill in the blanks, and can set the number of updates per channel, or can even trickle out stories throughout the day if they get published all at once. Or it can all be pushed out in realtime using the PuSH protocol. Dlvr.it has its own short URL and also supports bit.ly. It can add auto-hashtags to your Twitter feed based on pre-existing category tags. Once you start syndicating through dlvr.it, you can monitor clicks, posts, retweets and other stats in a dashboard. Twitterfeed also offers analytics, but only for Twitter. Dlvr.it wants to keep adding services and open up an API to support more inputs than just RSS feeds. On the other hand, Twitterfeed is much simpler and already has a lot of momentum. Dlvr.it is a free service. Check it out and tell us what you think in comments.      
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| Twitter Loves @You. No, Literally. And Unintentionally. Posted: 23 Mar 2010 02:15 PM PDT
With Twitter’s Retweet functionality, when someone retweets a tweet, below that tweet is placed some text noting who retweeted that item (sorry, I know I just used “tweet” or “retweet” a dozen times there). That person’s name is a hyperlink to their Twitter account, so the hovercard function works for that name as well. But if you happen to be the person that retweeted the tweet, it says that “you” retweeted the item. And that “you” is still hyperlinked. But rather than “you” linking to your Twitter account, it actually links to @you. And this guy does not like you. @You, whose name is Wallace, hasn’t tweeted in almost a year. But his last tweet reads: “I kill people who nudge me“ Despite the no tweeting in a year, and only 62 tweets total, this guy has over 5,600 followers — likely thanks to this Twitter bug. So no, @You isn’t retweeting everything in the Twittersphere. It’s just a bug that Twitter has somehow overlooked. [thanks Owaeis]      
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| Icahn Crony John Chapple Quits Yahoo Board Posted: 23 Mar 2010 01:59 PM PDT
The real reason is that Chapple is a close associate of Carl Icahn, who resigned from Yahoo’s board in October 2009 after basically wrestling his way into the company’s top management team back in July 2008 (remember the Microsoft saga?). With him gone from the Yahoo board, there really wasn’t much reason for Chapple to stick around. John Chapple is President of equity firm Hawkeye Investments. Prior to forming Hawkeye, he served as President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Nextel Partners from January 1998 to June 2006, when the company was purchased by Sprint. Chapple serves on the board of directors of several telecommunications companies: Cbeyond, Leap Wireless International and privately held companies Seamobile Enterprises and Telesphere Networks. With him resigning from Yahoo’s board, the only other person from the Icahn posse left is Frank Biondi, former Chairman and CEO of Universal Studios and Viacom before that. I wouldn’t bet on him sticking around much longer either, though.      
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| Placecast Raises $3 Million For Location-Based Mobile Marketing Technology Posted: 23 Mar 2010 01:55 PM PDT
Placecast recently debuted its technology, called ShopAlerts, that allows retailers bring people into their stores by sending them text messages when they get near their retail outlets. Here’s how ShopAlerts works. Consumers can opt-in to receiving text messages in a variety of ways—at the store, online, via text-message, mobile websites or on Facebook. Once the technology has been activated, consumers will be alerted when they are near a location that they are interested in or when the brand is offering sales and specials. ShopAlerts’ technology uses “geo-fences,” which are virtual boundaries that can be targeted via location-based marketing. Retailers can customize alerts to fit their brand and strategy. On the consumer side, ShopAlerts will only send maximum number of 3 messages within a given week from a retailer. And users can opt out of the program by texting “stop” back to a text message. One of the benefits of ShopAlerts is that it works on both smartphones and non-smartphones, making it a compelling source of marketing and advertising for the 196 million Americans who do not own smartphones but may be interested in shopping alerts. Placecast will be using the new funding to accelerate the development and distribution of ShopAlerts. Since September 2009, the ShopAlerts service has run pilot programs across the U.S. with several major retailers including North Face, American Eagle Outfitters, and REI. The startup also offers a location-based advertising platform that weaves together location information and other data from audiences across the web, mobile, and email. Placecast will analyze inventory, segments audiences and targets ads for maximum relevance for advertisers and publishers.      
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| The Evil Dial: Scamville Illustrated Posted: 23 Mar 2010 01:40 PM PDT
Last week I argued that it’s not possible for companies to balance a profit motive with a goodness motive. Many disagreed in the comments and elsewhere. Well, I was wrong. It is possible to balance those competing goals. And nowhere is it illustrated better than this ridiculous decision that Facebook game publishers are forced to make when monetizing their apps via Super Rewards. There is literally a slider with one end that says “monetization” and the other end that says “user experience.” Publishers are faced with a choice. Be good to users and don’t monetize well, which means less revenue to plow back into Facebook to advertise your games. You lose market share and disappear. We’ve had publishers tell us before that the worst offers are the ones that make the most money. People disagreed. I’m not sure how they’ll disagree now that they see the decision that publishers have to make: Monetization or User Experience. Are the publishers who chose monetization wrong? Yes, but they must do it to survive. Is Super Rewards wrong for pushing bad offers? Yes. (oh, yes). But as we’ve said before, Facebook is the ultimate offender. They make the rules. The more flexible the rules, the more money flows back to them in advertising. There is a direct relationship between the evil dial and Facebook’s revenues. Facebook must set the rules so that the dial is permanently set to Not Evil, and then let the advertising play out from there. Otherwise they risk real long term brand damage. Users must know that Facebook is protecting them. That is a rule that can’t be bent. And bent it is, all the time.      
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| Don’t Miss Your Chance: Apply to Startup Battlefield at TC Disrupt Posted: 23 Mar 2010 01:34 PM PDT
We are planning to pack the empty shell of former Merrill Lynch offices in New York City with the most disruptive, fresh technologies from around the world. The Startup Battlefield is a tournament-style showdown where startups demo products to the Disrupt audience and experts over multiple rounds during three days, May 24-26. All entrants get mentoring from expert judges and the winner takes home $50,000 in cash. And you get to come to the event, which is going to be awesome. Here’s what we’re looking for (and sundry practical info): –Companies that have been live for less than three months, defined as publicly available site or service –We will heavily weight companies willing to launch for the first time at TC Disrupt –We consider new products from existing companies. New feature sets and mobile extensions of existing properties are not considered new products –Companies from around the world are welcome to apply –There is no charge to apply. Selected companies receive 2 free tickets to attend If you don’t fit the Startup Battlefield profile but want to exhibit at Disrupt, you can look at our paid exhibitor options.      
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| Live From Sprint’s Experience4G (HTC Supersonic?) Event At CTIA Posted: 23 Mar 2010 01:30 PM PDT We’re live from Sprint’s press announcement at CTIA in Las Vegas, which is scheduled to begin in just a few minutes. What ever might they be announcing? All signs are pointing at the HTC Supersonic, a brand new touchscreen smartphone packing a massive display and support for Sprint’s 4G WiMax network. Follow along with our live notes below, won’t you? Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>      
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| Warner’s Strategy Revealed: Close Eyes, Pretend It’s 2002 Posted: 23 Mar 2010 12:58 PM PDT
For me, it’s been a few years. And it’s been several years since I was going regularly. And I was only doing that because the then-Viacom-backed-giant drove the mom and pop video stores out of business in my community. I have no desire to ever step into a Blockbuster store ever again. But Warner Bros. sure wants me to. Today, Blockbuster announced it has reached a deal with Warner Bros. to ensure the studio’s new titles would be available in Blockbuster stores and by mail the day they are released on DVD. This is significant because Warner recently negotiated deals with Blockbuster rivals Netflix and Redbox to give them such access only after the movies have been available to purchase on DVD for 28 days. In other words, Warner just screwed Netflix and Redbox. So why would Warner do such a thing? Well, in their release, they make it sound as if the two sides have long been friends (BFFs for over 25 years!) and they want to continue that relationship. But the reality is more complex. Obviously, this all boils down to money. The financial terms of the deal aren’t stated, so it’s hard to know if Blockbuster is actually paying more than Netflix would have (more on that below). But regardless of that, it seems to me that the line of thinking by Warner may simply be to pretend it’s the early-to-mid 2000s and the DVD business is booming. Back then, Blockbuster dominated rentals and more importantly for Warner, DVD sales were on fire. In fact, in quite a few cases, studios were making quite a bit more off of DVD sales than off the box office take for a film. DVDs became the golden calf of the industry. But over the past few years, that calf has been slaughtered. Warner clearly believes it’s because of services like Netflix and Redbox make renting movies too easy, and thus, decrease the need to buy DVDs. That’s true, but Warner’s response is faulty logic at best, and idiotic at worst. The truth is that the vast majority of movies have never been worth owning. People were only buying them in droves over the past decade because renting from Blockbuster (driving to the store, paying late fees, etc) was a pain in the ass. Once an easier and more convenient way to rent came along (Netflix), consumers awoke to the realization that there are very few movies actually worth owning. But even if it wasn’t Netflix that came along, some other method of distribution (such as the Internet) would have, and DVD sales still would have shrunk. So now, Warner is cutting preferred deals like the Blockbuster one in an attempt to make renting movies more of a pain in the ass once again. Brilliant. But still, why not give Blockbuster the same raw deal they gave to Netflix? I’d imagine part of it is because Blockbuster has all those retail stores that sell DVDs as well as rent them. The availability of new releases (which again, Netflix and Redbox won’t have) will get people into the stores, and in Warner’s logic, get them potentially buying DVDs from there. And there’s another reason: Blockbuster itself is a wounded calf. The company recently warned that it may have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as it’s drowning in debt (thanks in large part to the aforementioned stores). Warner likely got a sweet deal from Blockbuster in an effort to save the struggling company. And if, by some miracle, Blockbuster is saved, they’re likely to get that same sweet deal over and over again. The problem with all of this is that it won’t work. People are not going to start buying DVDs like they were a decade ago, again. The window has closed. We’re moving to a time of distribution over the Internet, but rather than get out in front of that, Warner is inexplicably propping up dinosaurs like Blockbuster. While there is validity that many consumers don’t care all that much about when a DVD is released, there are millions that do. For example, Sherlock Holmes was a very popular film this past year. When it comes out on DVD next week, neither Netflix or Redbox will have it available to rent — but Blockbuster will. Consumers will be confused as to why this is. Short term, this may prop up Blockbuster a bit, and may even slightly boost DVD sales. But long term, money-grabbing shenanigans like this that screw consumers will only lead to one thing: piracy.      
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