The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Apple, Please Hurry Up And Ship Those iPhones To Verizon Already
- The Enterprise of One: How New Entrepreneurs Are Taking Advantage of the Great Reset
- Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s Lead The Way In Interactive iPhone Check-In Social Rewards
- East Coast Blizzard Could Boost Online Spending While Brick And Mortar Stores Suffer
- What People Searched For On BitTorrent In 2010: Mostly Movies, Porn
- On Cyber Monday, Amazon Sold 158 Items Per Second (13.7 Million In Total)
- Kindle 3 Beats Harry Potter Book As Bestselling Product In Amazon’s History
- IncrediMail Inks New Two Year Deal With Google, But Are They Too Dependent?
- Skype’s Christmas Present: A Patent Infringement Lawsuit
- All Household Appliances Should Be Made By Apple
- 2011: The Year Android Explodes! Killing Innocent Women, Children, And iPhone Users
- The Unwelcome Return of Platform Dependencies
| Apple, Please Hurry Up And Ship Those iPhones To Verizon Already Posted: 27 Dec 2010 09:02 AM PST Like many people, I’ve been holding out for the iPhone to arrive on Verizon before upgrading. It’s been a long wait, and now that my wife has an iPhone 4 she got for Christmas (on AT&T), my iPhone 3GS is really starting to look dated. Fortunately, it looks like Apple’s component suppliers in Taiwan are gearing up to ship 5 million to 6 million CDMA iPhones to Verizon in the first quarter, according to DigitTimes. Verizon has a CDMA mobile network, as opposed to AT&T’s GSM-based network. So if you know the components, you know which networks the phones will work on. We first reported last August that Apple was developing a CDMA iPhone set for a January ship-date. The DigiTimes report is the latest piece of evidence that this will indeed happen. According to DigiTimes, Apple raised its overall shipment goal for the first quarter from 19 million total units to 20 million to 21 million units). It also estimates fourth quarter iPhone shipments at 15.5 million, which will bring the total number of iPhones shipped worldwide in 2010 to 47 million. With Verizon coming on board, that number could easily grow by 20 million in 2011, unless of course it’s entry just shifts demand from AT&T and the total remains about the same. I know that I am seriously thinking about switching. How about you?        
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| The Enterprise of One: How New Entrepreneurs Are Taking Advantage of the Great Reset Posted: 27 Dec 2010 08:02 AM PST Editor’s note: Guest author Stephen Martin is an entrepreneur and author. His forthcoming book, The Enterprise of One, is due out next year. While the economic climate in the United States remains uncertain, economists and pundits alike continue to define our recent fiscal crisis with words like recession, downturn and depression. But labeling America's current financial woes should not be the focus for Americans as the overall economy struggles to free itself from its malaise. What really matters is how the current circumstances affect you and what they mean to your future. In his book, The Great Reset, Richard Florida calls periods like the one currently facing the United States "Great Resets." There have been two such periods before the current one, and both of these earlier downturns changed our culture in profound ways. We all know the stories of mass unemployment and hardships suffered by American citizens during the Great Depression. But what often becomes lost in these stories is that a reset plays out as a process and not as much as an event. It represents a shift in values, economic tastes and preferences, business structures, and industries. In fact, it is a fundamental change in our culture as a whole. I like to think of it as cleaning out a closet — the world rids itself of old, outdated principles to make way for the new. Change certainly doesn't come easy. And these periods are often paved with turmoil. The great resets first refocus people. They bring companies and industries back from years of wandering in the wrong direction. They jar us in ways that open the eyes of the collective nation. Importantly, they also reallocate our resources and time. Much like turning soil, these resets provide fertile ground for new ideas and new ways of doing things. The new systems, values and culture make way for new business leaders and innovations. It is in this cumulative cleansing that we begin to see the one common thread that everyone agrees runs through our country . . . opportunity. This reset is particularly profound for individuals. And it comes at a time when the tools of commerce are available to everyone. Technological advances now permeate every aspect of our lives, especially in the business world. They empower individuals in ways that directly change the business climate around them. Today, a person's professional identity is more important than ever. Individual skills, expertise, reputation and authority have become the personal currencies of our economy. And they are the currencies that will lead us into the future. Technology and the new landscape of enterprise now allow us to take the final strides toward the ideals upon which our country was based. We finally realize the ultimate extension of the founding concepts: the democratization of opportunity. No longer do background, resources, education, or other former determinants of success control enterprise. Gone is the need to come from the right family, grow up on the right side of the tracks, or have access to the right resources. The opportunities provided by the transformation to an online business landscape, as well as the elimination of many barriers to entry and transaction costs, have left individual strengths, passions and expertise as the only distinguishing factors remaining in an individual’s or business' success. Who you are as a person, and your expertise and passions, are more important than ever. In fact, they drive your own personal enterprise. Today, everyone is an Enterprise of One. In this day and age the next titans of business are more likely to come from your neighborhood than Wall Street. Although this fact alone is enough to inspire would-be business adventurers, another larger story lies beneath the business revolution. It is not as well known, or even completely visible, upon first glance. But those facts belie its importance. In fact, the story beneath today's business revolution is the future of business and enterprise itself. It is the story of a new side of entrepreneurism. But, more than that, it is the secret of what lies behind the success of a new breed of entrepreneurs that are turning traditional business and industry models upside down. These new business leaders have strengths, priorities and approaches that are not only different but also at odds with traditional business leaders. You read about them all the time here on TechCrunch. They are more passionate, open and in tune with technology. Through a new set of ideals, they are redefining our world and leading the changes in our culture that will drive our business world for the next 100 years. These business mavericks live by a new dynamic of success — unique individual strengths, expertise and credibility — fueled by today's cultural and technological changes. In this new dimension of business lies the secret to success in our transformed world of commerce. Armed with a new viewpoint, and the tools to make a difference, these entrepreneurs run their businesses based on the central principle that once all of the barriers to entry, transaction costs and other hurdles are stripped away by technology and cultural changes, an individual's strengths and weaknesses are primarily what determine his or her success. Richard Florida quotes General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, stating that "this economic crisis doesn't represent a cycle. It represents a reset. It's an emotional, raw social, economic reset." Immelt adds that "People who understand that will prosper. Those who don't will be left behind." The new entrepreneurs not only understand this philosophy but are living it. They know that business must be viewed through a new lens. It must be played by a new set of rules: the new rules of entrepreneurism. Photo credit: Flickr/Jennifer Konig        
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| Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s Lead The Way In Interactive iPhone Check-In Social Rewards Posted: 27 Dec 2010 07:51 AM PST
Here’s what Brad Haley, marketing head of CKE, has to say:
Considering the closest Burger King ever got to a digital plan was Subservient Chicken, this is pretty heady stuff for the fast food industry.        
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| East Coast Blizzard Could Boost Online Spending While Brick And Mortar Stores Suffer Posted: 27 Dec 2010 07:03 AM PST
The silver lining to all of this is that online retailers could see a significant boost in sales thanks to the snowstorm. Home-bound consumers who are still looking for post-holiday deals can access them on retailers online sites or on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or eBay. And blizzard conditions have proven to help online retailers boost sales. Last year, a snowstorm hit the East Coast of the United States the weekend prior to Christmas (which is always a busy weekend for brick and mortar stores), and online retailers saw a 13 percent boost in sales during that time period. Of course, consumers who are looking to return items will be forced wait until the snow clears. Online retailers have seen fairly strong results this holiday shopping season, with total sales up 12 percent to over $28 billion so far. Total sales for the full holiday season are expected to reach $32.4 billion this year, up 11 percent, but this number could be buoyed by snowed in consumers looking to find deals this week. Photo Credit/Flickr/GWdexter        
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| What People Searched For On BitTorrent In 2010: Mostly Movies, Porn Posted: 27 Dec 2010 06:59 AM PST TorrentFreak has released the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010, a list of the 100 most searched-for phrases and keywords in 2010 on one of the most popular public BitTorrent indexes, KickassTorrents.com. It’s unclear just how many searches KT indexes, but according to the blog post it concerns a “few hundred million searches a year”, so the data presented should give a pretty accurate view of what people were looking for on BitTorrent this year. Of course, because of its nature, it’s virtually impossible to track what people search on the hundreds of torrent sites out there, so this is just one data point and should be evaluated as such. Movies are super popular of course, with "Inception" topping the overall ranking. Also in the top 10: "Iron Man 2″, "Avatar", "Despicable Me" and "Clash of the Titans". According to TorrentFreak, “Avatar” was also the most-pirated movie in 2010. And evidently also in the top 10 of the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010: searches for "xxx" and "porn" (at #4 and #9, respectively). Perhaps more surprisingly, the first software-related search keyword in the ranking for this year is "Windows 7", in 20th place. Go <a href="here“>here for the full list of the 100 most entered search phrases on KickassTorrents.com. Here’s the top 20: 1. inception (Image via Flickr user Diraen)        
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| On Cyber Monday, Amazon Sold 158 Items Per Second (13.7 Million In Total) Posted: 27 Dec 2010 06:12 AM PST Amazon this morning announced that on its peak day for this year, November 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which translates to a – self-proclaimed – record-breaking 158 items per second. November 29 was, of course, Cyber Monday in the United States, the Monday immediately following Black Friday. According to comScore, overall online spending in the United States surpassed $1 billion on Cyber Monday in 2010, up 16 percent versus year ago. Clearly, Amazon took a huge piece of that particular pie. Amazon said its worldwide fulfillment network shipped a total of more than 9 million units across all product categories on the peak day this holiday season, to 178 countries. Kindle Wi-Fi and Kindle 3G were the best-selling products on Amazon.com this season. As we reported earlier today, the new, third-gen Kindle has even surpassed 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' as the bestselling product in Amazon's history. How’s that for a merry Christmas? More stats and figures are available in the release, but here are some of Amazon.com’s “Hot Holiday Bestsellers” (November 14 through December 19, based on units ordered): Electronics Kindle (Wi-Fi); Kindle 3G; and Apple iPod touch 8GB Toys Scrabble Flash Cubes; Qwirkle Board Game; and LEGO Ultimate Building Set Video Games and Hardware Call of Duty: Black Ops; Just Dance 2; and Donkey Kong Country Returns Movies “Inception"; "The Blind Side"; and "Toy Story 3" Kindle Books "The Confession: A Novel" by John Grisham; "Decision Points" by George Bush; and "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand Amazon MP3 "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" by Kanye West; "The 99 Most Essential Christmas Masterpieces" (Amazon Exclusive) by various artists; and "Born Free" by Kid Rock Software Anime Studio Debut 7; Manga Studio Debut 4; and Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Wireless Samsung Captivate Android Phone (AT&T); HTC DROID INCREDIBLE Android Phone (Verizon Wireless); and Motorola DROID X Android Phone (Verizon Wireless)        
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| Kindle 3 Beats Harry Potter Book As Bestselling Product In Amazon’s History Posted: 27 Dec 2010 06:08 AM PST
On Christmas Day, Amazon says that more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history. And Amazon’s worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 9 million units across all product categories. The company also announced that on its peak day, Nov. 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which is a record-breaking 158 items per second. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that the company is also seeing that many of the people who bought Kindles also own an LCD tablet. From the release:
Of course, the sunlight bit is a direct hit at Apple’s iPad, which has visibility issues when used in the sun. During the holiday season, Amazon days the biggest mobile shopping days for iPad, iPhone and Android users was Sunday, however the biggest mobile shopping day for BlackBerry users was Friday. In terms of electronics, the Kindle (Wi-Fi); Kindle 3G; and Apple iPod touch 8GB were the biggest selling products. Software’s best-sellers were Anime Studio Debut 7; Manga Studio Debut 4; and Adobe Photoshop Elements 9. And the best-selling DVD movies were Inception"; "The Blind Side"; and "Toy Story 3.” It’s great that the Kindle 3 has reached that milestone, but Jeff, we’re still waiting for an official number of total Kindles sold.        
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| IncrediMail Inks New Two Year Deal With Google, But Are They Too Dependent? Posted: 27 Dec 2010 05:58 AM PST IncrediMail, an Israel-based, NASDAQ-listed company that develops email clients and desktop software, has inked a new 2-year agreement with Google, which will go into effect January 1, 2011. This is good news for the software company – the partnership between the two firms is quite crucial for IncrediMail’s bottom line. The relationship between Incredimail and Google has always been a little rocky, to say the least. Three years ago, Google terminated its AdSense partnership with the company, sending IncrediMail’s shares down more than 45 percent. In July of 2009, however, IncrediMail announced that that it had inked a new deal with Google, which was due to expire in July of 2011 – but then the agreement was amended to get terminated six months early (which would be right about now). With today’s announcement, IncrediMail can thus breathe easy again – or can they? According to the news release, the terms of the new two year agreement are expected to produce results similar to those achieved under the previous contract. IncrediMail has been using Google AdSense since the late 2006, enabling it to share in ad revenue generated from users clicking on Google sponsored links, in response to a search query conducted across IncrediMail properties. The Israeli company reported in May 2009 that about 70% of its revenue comes from its “Search business”. Said Josef Mandelbaum, IncrediMail's recently appointed CEO:
(Update: for whatever reason, the second part of the quote above was subsequently removed from the press release.) IncrediMail recently reported financial results for Q3 2010. Revenues rose 13% to $7.5 million, up from $6.6 million in the same quarter last year. Revenues for the first nine months of 2010 were $21.7 million, up 10% compared to $19.7 million in the same period in 2009. Mandelbaum at the time, however, commented that IncrediMail had “embarked on a new strategic plan for the company” which he said will require a “renewed focus on the consumer” and Part of the plan: building a portfolio of personal productivity products to try and diversify revenue streams (outside of search, that is). The company’s future depends much more on its ability to successfully accomplish that than to keep depending on Google to remain a viable business overall, in my opinion.        
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| Skype’s Christmas Present: A Patent Infringement Lawsuit Posted: 27 Dec 2010 02:27 AM PST Poor Skype. A mere day after its key consumer service suffered a major outage, affecting tens of millions of users for hours on end, a patent infringement lawsuit against the company was filed in the United States. Plaintiff is the obscure Gradient Enterprises, a non-practicing entity (also lovingly known as an “obnoxious patent troll” in some parts). The patent-in-suit is U.S. patent no. 7,669,207, entitled “METHOD FOR DETECTING, REPORTING AND RESPONDING TO NETWORK NODE-LEVEL EVENTS AND A SYSTEM THEREOF”. The patent application was filed in July 2004 and issued in February of this year. The description summary reads:
Basically, Gradient claims to have invented network monitoring and security software that works in a decentralized way, with at its core a system capable of distributing control of a network throughout its nodes via mobile agents. If that sounds vaguely familiar, you may have read this blog post, which attempts to explain what caused Skype’s downtime – from an outsider’s perspective, that is. Perhaps the downtime, and the closer look at Skype’s “supernode network” was exactly what triggered Gradient Enterprises to file a patent infringement lawsuit against Skype. Like moths to a flame, so to speak.        
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| All Household Appliances Should Be Made By Apple Posted: 26 Dec 2010 11:15 PM PST Like many of you, I am visiting family this holiday season and nowhere does gadget snobbery become more apparent than during gatherings with loved ones. Aside from the ubiquitous “Whose phone is faster?” question, which in my case led to an email race at Christmas dinner, there is endless potential for the marginally tech savvy to show off during the holidays. But all the superiority gleaned from being able to load non-iTunes purchases into your mom’s iPod is tossed out the window when faced with a relative’s overly complex coffee machine, an arbitrarily complicated alarm clock and two separate indecipherable TV remotes for one TV. In my first encounter with my family’s new Cuisinart Coffee Maker CHW-12 Cup Programmable with Hot Water System, I ended up confused by the superfluous “Hot Water System” and poured the water intended for coffee in there instead of the coffee maker, costing myself an extra 20 minutes trying to figure out how to extract coffee from the infernal thing. I almost went to Starbucks. Many people received iPads and iPhones this Christmas, and because of Apple’s legendary intuitive and straightforward design, could pull them right out of the box and commence using. Not the case with a battery powered pepper grinder one of my relatives received at our gift exchange. It took three people to put together and when we did get it to work, we hilariously realized that it had a flashlight at the bottom, for no reason. Novel? yes. Productive? No. In my own home, I use a De’Longhi Magnifica espresso machine, which is the closest thing to what would happen if Apple made a coffee machine. With literally a push of a button, it grinds coffee beans, brews them and even cleans itself afterwards. I am not alone in the quest for simpler appliance design, Coding Horror’s Jeff Atwood is similarly befuddled by the controls interface of a microwave:
The saddest thing is that appliances used to be simpler. Old style microwaves used to have one knob, that only represented time. Now we’ve got a controls for various foods and buttons for “More,”"Less,”"Dinner Plate,”"Defrost,” the cryptic “Auto-Defrost” and so on when all we end up doing is putting our Hot Pockets in there and trial and erroring our way to the perfect cooking time. “Hmm, this looks like it is about done.” Dieter Ram’s appliance designs for Braun, which inspired the design team at Apple, hearken to a pre-digital touchpad era when design aspired to help us understand products or at least be unobtrusive. I guess I have the seventies to thank for the fact that I’ve got a radio alarm clock next to me right now that I have never used because I seriously can’t figure out how to the set the controls to get it to wake me up. I use my iPhone. Notice how the title of this post isn’t “All Appliances Should Be Made By Apple” or even “All Computers Should Be Made By Apple” (or the byline would be something along the lines of “MG Siegler”). There are moments in life where you need a PC, but there aren’t many where you need your coffee maker to also warm water for tea, your pepper holder to double as a flashlight, or one remote to turn on your TV and another to change the channel. Image: Coding Horror        
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| 2011: The Year Android Explodes! Killing Innocent Women, Children, And iPhone Users Posted: 26 Dec 2010 06:35 PM PST
And so Fortune’s headline today that “2011 will be the year Android explodes“, has been a long time coming. In his article, Seth Weintraub brings up a number of excellent points about how exactly Android is poised to grow even faster in 2011 than it already did in 2010. Though I suspect a number of his points paint too rosy a picture in terms of the outcome of such downward pressures on costs. I find it very hard to believe, for example, that the carriers (in the U.S., in particular) won’t find a way to screw us in 2011. It’s an artform they’ve perfected over the past two decades. But on paper, at least, it all sounds great. Some, like venture capitalist Fred Wilson, think this expansion of Android is great news — for entrepreneurs and VCs, in particular. Others, like Robert Scoble, thinks this is bad news, because it means the higher-quality iPhone will fall. You might expect me to back Scoble here. But I’m not going to. Well, not completely. When I write about the iPhone or Android and the fandroids come out in full force, people often ask if this angers or annoys me. I find that funny. What do I care? I have absolutely no skin in either game. I’m an iPhone user because I prefer it over Android. I think it’s an overall better product. That’s why I use it. It really is that simple. If there was an Android phone out there that I thought was better than the iPhone, I would use it. But I haven’t found one yet. So on one hand, the news that Android is going to explode in the market in 2011 actually gives me hope. More Android phones means more potential for a great one to emerge. Further, I’ve openly said numerous times that just about every Android device is at least 10,000 times better than any mobile device we had prior to 2007. Sometimes it can be hard to think back to the pre-iPhone mobile world. But it really did suck — particularly in the United States. Before the iPhone, I had a Motorola RAZR running Verizon’s piece of shit very proprietary (and very red) software. I was trying to come up with a better descriptive phrase than “piece of shit”, but that’s really the best way to describe it. The iPhone changed the game. But Android did too. It’s just because the iPhone did it before Android (and again, because I prefer the iPhone) that I give Apple more credit for this than Google. But both have done amazing things to move the ecosystem out of the carrier Hell we were in. And if Android can pull off half of what Weintraub lays out, it will be another leap forward. And I will heap praise upon them. But. The flip-side to this Android domination is what we’re already seeing. The carriers (again, in the U.S. in particular) are using Android’s openness to perform many of their same old tricks. I can’t help but think sometimes that it looks as if Google actually did the carriers a huge favor in the long-run because they’ve taken many of the bells and whistles that drove users to the iPhone in the first place and opened them up for the carriers to use as glittering lures to rope customers back into their traps. Say what you will about the iPhone/AT&T deal, it’s clear that Apple is in control there. And say what you will about Apple — at least they’re not the carriers. With Android, it’s a different story. That’s why the “open” argument is such a bullshit red herring. Android is so open that it gives the carriers (and now apparently the government) freedom to screw us — openly. Again, in my mind, the iPhone’s bells and whistles are shinier. But I’ll openly admit that with devices like the Nexus S (I’ll be writing my thoughts on the latest Android device up in a few days), the line between the two continues to get more blurry. Further, I know that most people simply don’t care about quality above all else. We see this time and time again across all industries. For many people, price matters more. Or features. Or other miscellaneous things (such as carriers). And so the only way for the iPhone to “beat” Android would be for Apple to either open iOS up in the same way that Android is, or to create a huge variety of iPhones spread across the spectrum in terms of features and price. Neither of those things is going to happen. Nor should they happen. The first simply isn’t in Apple’s DNA. It would create an ecosystem of crappy iPhones that Apple had no control over. And Nokia already made the latter mistake. Weintraub closes his piece with:
Again, the only plan for Apple to “keep up” is one of the two things above. And Apple isn’t going to do either. As Scoble argues, the Verizon iPhone could shake up the game temporarily, but it’s still a lost cause. Apple cannot win an arm’s race with Android because they will not attempt to. They’re perfectly happy “at the top of the market” where they make a ton of revenue and profit. Billions more, in fact, than Google does with Android. Google, of course, has a different game plan with Android. And it looks like it is a very smart one. As Microsoft’s Dare Obasanjo noted earlier on Twitter, “Even if Android makes $0, it has turned out to be a cheaper way to get search defaults on smartphones than paying carriers & Apple.” That’s a pretty perfect way of looking at it. Google would have had to pay millions upon millions of dollars to be a part of the smartphone game from the outside. Instead, they brought the smartphone game to them. And they’re paying zero dollars with Android. In a way, it’s sort of like what they’re doing with Chrome as well. They had been (and still are) paying millions of dollars to Mozilla to be the default search engine on Firefox. So instead, they decided to bring the game to them. And it’s working. But the stakes are much higher in the smartphone game. What does concern me about Android’s success is if it does to Apple what Windows did to them in the 1990s. That is, drives them into near extinction. There are plenty of reasons to believe why this won’t be the case — but history does have a tendency to repeat itself. What if everyone does decide they they want a free smartphone subsidized by search? How does the iPhone survive in that environment? I don’t think that will happen, I think Apple has enough ecosystem leverage with things like the iPad, iTunes, and their apps, that it would be very hard for a full collapse to occur. But it is something that has to be thought about. And that’s all I really care about. I couldn’t care less if the iPhone or Android is the market leader. All I want is the ability to choose which device I want to use. And I’m sure that’s Google’s stance on the matter as well. They love the iPhone because it brings them search revenue just as Android does. I just don’t trust what the carriers will do with their Google-powered leverage in an Android-dominated world. And frankly, the Google/Verizon relationship is growing quite frightening. [photo: flickr/robert nelson]        
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| The Unwelcome Return of Platform Dependencies Posted: 26 Dec 2010 11:01 AM PST Editor’s Note: The following guest post is written by a Silicon Valley CEO. Frank Dupree is a pen name In the late 1990s, the rise of the browser was supposed to usher in an era of unprecedented opportunity for startups. A great part of that increased opportunity came as a result of the significant reduction in platform dependencies. No longer did the users’ operating system dictate their access to services or information. Even a behemoth like Microsoft was fighting hand-to-hand combat with small startups for the first time in decades. Fast forward ten years, and it’s 1985 all over again. But even as the risks of dependencies become better understood by startups and investors, the ascent of Facebook and Twitter seem to point to an ever increasing number of startups with significant business dependencies. Recent changes to both Facebook and Twitter show that neither startups nor their investors can assume much when it comes to support for a given API in the future. Today, even the OS seems subject to dramatic shifts in record time. One only need look to Apple's iOS to see how dramatic and unpredictable developments can change the landscape for startups, customers and investors. Today, most startups build with significant external platform dependencies, whether it is Facebook, iOS, Google Apps or Twitter. There are a few types of dependencies. A simple distinction might be to call a dependency on a platform symbiotic or parasitic. Symbiotic dependencies are those for which both sides agree to terms of the dependency and for which both sides seem to derive a benefit. Developers on Facebook's platform, for example. The most successful here being Zynga, which grew completely and—probably for the team and its investors—nervously within the Facebook ecosystem. But some dependencies are parasitic. As such, the problem is considerably more sticky when a startup forms an unwelcome dependency. Consider Meebo's initial products which violated IM network terms of service by "hacking" into the major IM networks. Meebo has had to re-invent itself as a website check-in and sharing platform and at considerable cost (the startup has just announced its most recent round of financing taking it to over $70M in total funding). In fact, a great portion of the "aggregation" genre of startups have troubling dependencies on larger players who often consider their products either a violation of service terms or simply the next feature on the product roadmap. Take the social media aggregation tools like TweetDeck and Seesmic. It has become clear that even players like Twitter or Facebook who offer generous API access can inadvertently step on the toes of startups in its ecosystem with a new product release. For Seesmic, this appears to mean a third pivot for the startup. The company started as a video commenting platform for blogs, moved into the desktop client social aggregation business and with Twitter's recent redesign jumped into the plugin (aka, longtail) and enterprise user space (see recent partnership with SalesForce.com and plugin announcements). So for early platforms like Twitter, players like Seesmic and TweetDeck exist in a grey space between symbiotic and parasitic for the platform. Then there are the 100% parasitic players, including companies like Rapleaf. Rapleaf has a dubious reputation because it built its business on the aggressive and surreptitious collection of social network data and matched it to email addresses. Recently both Facebook and Linkedin threatened legal recourse unless the company ceased crawling and scraping their user data and expunged all existing data collected from their networks maintained on over 650 million email addresses. As a result, two weeks ago Rapleaf agreed to stop providing its customers with information from both networks. That can't be good for business. But it is likely even worse for the startups who had based much if not all of their products on data they were buying from Rapleaf, sort of a double dependency. Take Gist, Etacts and Rapportive. All three of these startups were dependent on Rapleaf to present social network information (photos, titles, updates, etc.) alongside emails, mostly Gmail. When their Rapleaf data stopped providing Facebook and Linkedin data, the startups were left only with what appeared to be that which they had cached prior to the cut-off this month. And so it may be no surprise that within just a couple of weeks of the Rapleaf changes Gist is reportedly in talks to sell itself to RIM and Etacts has announced its sale to SalesForce.com (rumored for $6 million). One wonders if the acquiring companies fully understood the dependencies these startups had to Rapleaf. (Prediction: Rapportive also will be forced to sell very soon). There is an alternative to parasitic access to a platform, but it can be expensive. You can build your own data from scratch or get access to it through painstaking partnerships if it is critical to your business. You might not grow as fast as you otherwise would, but at least you can control your own destiny. Even for startups that are successful in building their business within a platform dependency, such as Zynga, one of the most important things they must do as they grow is to mitigate their dependency on the platform. For startups and investors, however, the lure and benefits of developing on other's platforms with or without permission may be too great to avoid. When it comes to acquiring those critical first users, it takes an Odysseian-level of cunning (or foolishness) to avoid the siren's song of platforms like Facebook. Building on Facebook reduces both the cost of development and provides direct access to a massive user base. And what are the other options? Even if you put aside the costs of going it alone, a significant portion of startups will be faced with taking on significant dependencies for their success. How many mobile OSes can there be? Forget startups, after iOS and Android, even the future of big players like Microsoft, Nokia and Palm seems uncertain in the mobile OS space. So in the future it will likely be that the most successful startups will be those which are best able to navigate the minefield of platform dependencies. And while the benefits of platforms like iOS, Facebook and Twitter are significant to reduce development costs and increase access to customers, one can't help but lament the squashing of the promise we got with our first browsers: a world where startups and the behemoths of industry alike fought on more or less equal terms. But increasingly it is once again becoming a platform world. And the companies who control the platforms, control the profits. Photo credit: Flickr/uub        
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Although I would rather die in a pit, bitten by rats and my flesh taken by necrosis than eat at Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr, you have to admit that they do have a compelling social media marketing plan. CKE Restaurants, owners of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s and famous for making food that is less popular than McDonalds, have created a location-based “coupon game” that allows you to spin a wheel to win valuable food prizes and potentially life-saving antibiotics for after the meal.
By now many of you may have heard about the 
This isn’t a big surprise. Amazon has 
The top 
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