Friday, January 28, 2011

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Exclusive: Lockerz Acquires Social Photo Sharing App Plixi (Formerly TweetPhoto)

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 09:31 AM PST

Social commerce network Lockerz has acquired photo sharing app Plixi (which was formerly known as TweetPhoto), we’ve learned exclusively. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Plixi is an enormously popular social photo sharing application that serves more than 1 billion photos monthly. The startup rebranded from “Tweetphoto” last year, as the photo sharing network expanded beyond Twitter to other platforms like Facebook and MySpace and added location-based check-in features. While Plixi offers a standalone web and iPhone app, more than 300 developers have integrated Plixi's photo sharing technology, including Seesmic, TweetDeck and others and the startup handles more than 67 million API requests daily.

Lockerz, which has raised $30 million from Kleiner Perkins newly launched sFund, revolves around the idea that influencers within a social network can become brand and content advocates and affect the behavior of their friends.

Lockerz, which has nearly 18 million members worldwide, is primarily targeted towards men and women ages 13 to 30, attempting to build a community of trendsetters and tastemakers who love to shop, play and connect on the Web. Users can earn points and discounts on brands by sharing content on the site. Founded by Kathy Savitt, a former Amazon and American Eagle Outfitters exec; Lockerz eventually wants to be the go-to commerce homepage for teens and young adults.

Savitt tells the experience will be the same for anyone who previously used Plixi, except that the services’s name will be changed. Lockerz will changing Plixi’s name to Lockerz Photos. While developers will still be able to use Lockerz Photos in the same way they did with Plixi, the social commerce network will use Plixi’s platform to add a photo sharing experience to the platform. Lockerz members will be able to upload, share with friends, comment on, and rate their photos on Lockerz.com.

Over time, Lockerz and Plixi plan to developing new media sharing features to engage customers, such as the ability for Lockerz members to share their activities, photos and videos
on other social networks. The newly combined company will also focus on increasing and
enhancing celebrity content.

For Plixi, being acquired by a growing social network makes sense. It has been difficult to compete with Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter, which all offer photo sharing within their networks. And while it’s still unclear if there’s room in the social network space for a contender like Lockerz, the company’s targeted demographic and social commerce focus could prove to be a solid bet.

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Lockerz
Plixi
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Mobile Payments Startups Zong And Boku Launch Direct Billing Partnerships With Verizon

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 09:00 AM PST

After announcing direct relationships with AT&T, Zong, Boku and BillToMobile are announcing similar partnerships with U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless.

So why is this important? Historically, mobile payments companies face the challenge of lofty carrier rates. Wireless carriers have charged roughly 30% to 40% to process transactions made via mobile phone accounts, making it very difficult for mobile payment companies like Boku to scale beyond virtual goods. These transactions costs are passed down to developers using Boku and Zong, which are then passed to the consumer. To avoid these costs, Boku and Zong have been negotiating direct relationships with carriers as a way of possibly avoiding these costs.

While these mobile payments companies have had direct relationships with international carriers for some time, deals with U.S. carriers have taken more time in terms of negotiations. Last fall, Zong and Boku both announced direct relationships with AT&T.

And today, both companies are revealing that they have formed direct billing relationships with Verizon. Ron Hirson, Boku’s co-founder, says that in end, the consumer wins with these negotiations. We hear that fees for these mobile payments have been brought down to credit card fee levels. Zong tells us: “Verizon fees are in line with our AT&T fees, and we’re optimistic about increased acceleration of carriers worldwide dropping their fees to enable Zong to address more markets.”

In case you aren’t familiar how services like Zong and Boku work, here’s a quick tutorial. When a user wants to purchase a virtual item, he can enters his cell phone number on a site, the site sends a text message to the phone, the user confirms the transaction with a short reply, and all the charges show up on his phone bill. This entire transaction is powered by Zong or Boku.

It’s good news for mobile payments startups that U.S. carriers are starting to jump on the badnwagon and lower fees. Boku is reportedly a possible acquisition target for both Google and Apple, and direct carrier relationships reinforce the fact that there is consumer demand for this method of mobile payments.

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Verizon
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Google, Amazon Vets Bank On Jumio To Revolutionize Mobile Payments

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 08:53 AM PST

Much of what Jumio is building is still very unclear, but chances are this will become one of the hottest startups in 2011, and not just because they hire opera singers to tease their upcoming mobile payments product.

This morning, the company announced part of its advisory board, also revealing that its payment solution is now in the final stages of development.

The advisory board includes people like former Google exec Zain Khan, former Amazon exec Mark Britto and Maarten Linthorst, CEO of CSI Communication Systems.

Khan, now turned private investor, is credited with building Google’s infrastructure from scratch back in 1999. Britto is the founder of Accept.com (acquired by Amazon) and board member of Bill Me Later (which was acquired by eBay).

Arguably the most impressive resume of the bunch comes from Linthorst, though:

Working with NASA back in 1969, Maarten Linthorst paved the way for the Internet as we know it, interconnecting the first two servers to become the ARPANET. He also developed the X25 protocol, which is used for every credit card transaction worldwide.

Linthorst comments that Jumio will “revolutionize the way we think about online payment; both from a technological and a social point of view”.

Jumio was co-founded by Daniel Mattes, who sold his latest company, Jajah, to Telefonica for $207 million. Mattes is apparently called the “Bill Gates of the Alps” in some parts.

More praise from Bjorn Evers, a former CEO of one of the world’s largest online gambling groups:

“Jumio is a definite game changer and the answer to online payment fraud”.

Lots of hyperbole and big names involved – now let’s see what they have to show for it.

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Jumio
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BlackBerry Internet Service Reportedly Blocked In Egypt

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 08:21 AM PST

This just keeps getting worse. After blocking Twitter and Facebook, it looks like the Egyptian government or carriers may have blocked Blackberry internet service as well. According to chatter on Twitter, internet access via Blackberry phones has been suspended.

As we wrote in our previous reports, Egyptian protesters are filling the streets of Cairo to demonstrate against government corruption and policies. Similar to the recent protests in Tunisia, the Egyptian demonstrations were partly organized on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. And mobile internet access is a key channel through which protesters are connecting with each other.

It’s unclear of all BlackBerry services have been blocked. Some are reporting that users can still access Apps. Vodafone Tweeted early this week saying that Twitter had not been blocked but that it could be a network issue. But the conversation on Twitter, which is updating at a rapid pace, indicating that the downtime it could be more than an overloaded network.

We’ve reached out to RIM and will update if we receive confirmation of the blockage.



The Elusive White iPhone Appears On The German Apple Website [Update: Pulled!]

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 08:10 AM PST

Quick! Before it’s gone! Click over to the German Apple iPhone 4 vs iPhone 3GS page to see a pic of the white iPhone 4. It’s a tad small, but you get the idea. It’s just another piece of evidence in the developing case that the white iPhone is finally nearing release.

The phone was originally supposed to be release in the weeks following the iPhone 4′s launch date. But then it was pushed back. Again. And again. Until it was finally pulled completely from Apple’s website. Now a report surfaced claiming a new “miracle painting material” solved the previous issue.

Update: That was fast. Minutes after posting, the whole section shown in the screenshot of the translated German site disappeared! It’s a slippery devil.

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The Chevy Volt To Be Available Nationwide By The End Of 2011

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 07:39 AM PST


The Chevy Volt is going national a little bit ahead of schedule. GM just released a statement proclaiming that the “don’t call it a series hybrid” vehicle will be available from dealers in all 50 US states by the end of 2011. Currently the Volt is sold and delivered only in D.C., California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Texas. An additional eleven states will have access by the end of the third quarter with the rest of the Union getting access by the end of the year.

The press release also adds to the case of the Volt’s important halo status. Harry E. Criswell III, president and owner of Criswell Chevrolet, “The Volt is clearly bringing new customers to Chevrolet. We are seeing 10 to 15 customers a week who are seriously considering buying a Volt. Many of them own competitive brands and now have a Chevy on their shopping list because of the Volt.” GM’s diabolical plan is working.

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eMarketer: Apple Will Soon Lead The US Smartphone Market – But Not For Long

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 07:01 AM PST

According to eMarketer, Apple is to pass Research In Motion as the leader of the US smartphone market this year, only to be overtaken by Android in 2012.

eMarketer, which bases its forecasts on analysis of research estimates and methodologies from multiple firms who monitor the smartphone market, estimates Apple took a 28% share of the US smartphone user market in 2010, just above the 24% of users who use a device running Android.

RIM’s share of the market is expected to decline to 25% in 2011, down from 30% in 2010.

eMarketer predicts that Google’s Android platform will continue to gain share through 2012, with 31% of all smartphone users owning an Android-powered handset (up from 6% in 2009).

By then, Apple’s market share is expected to clock off at 30%, up only slightly from 2009.

In the words of Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst and author of a forthcoming report on mobile devices:

“With a growing roster of manufacturer and carrier partners in every major market and market segment, scale for Android is coming quickly in terms of device, market share, apps and ad revenues.”

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iPhone 4
Android
Research In Motion
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Storenvy Finds A Number Of Impressive Buyers For Its $1.5 Million Round

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 07:00 AM PST

One of the pillars of the web has always been online shopping. Billions upon billions of virtual (but real) dollars trade hands each year in the space — much of it simply because it’s fast and convenient. But as the web has matured, so have the opportunities to expand beyond the basics. What started as online shopping, also quickly become online selling. And the two formed a natural fit. And now we’re in the social age of the web, where yet another layer is being added. And that’s the sweetspot that Storenvy is in.

The San Francisco-based startup has slowly built up a mini empire of both buyers and sellers in their ecosystem. Over 60,000 community shoppers now visit their 2,800 community-run stores to browse and buy. And the stores are really the key. Storenvy gives anyone the tools to create and open their own online store to sell whatever they make. And they can then easily promote everything on networks like Twitter and Facebook, or on Storenvy’s own main marketplace.

And Storenvy gives the community all of this for free. Why? CEO Jon Crawford envisions an online world where Storenvy does for e-commerce what Tumblr has done for blogging. That is, make it more accessible and social.

Of course, when you’re giving everything away for free, the money has to come from somewhere. And for now, the company has found quite a bit of it — $1.5 million, to be exact. That’s the amount of their just-closed seed round of funding led by Spark Capital and First Round Capital. And aside from those two big players, Storenvy’s round also attracted interest from the likes of Kleiner Perkins and Charles River Ventures. And a group of angels are on board as well, including: David Cohen, John Maloney, David Cancel and David Hauser & Siamak Taghaddos.

Seeing as Maloney is the President of Tumblr, and Spark is one of its big investors, Crawford seems to have the right people on his side to become that “Tumblr for e-commerce”.

With the money, Storenvy plans to expand their team to fuel growth. In particular, they’re looking for Rails and UI people to build out the core team.

And once they build out the team and build out the product, the plan is to eventually go the freemium route; give away the majority of stuff for free, then charge a bit here and there for extras. That model should keep would-be sellers very interested as they keep their transaction and listing fees.

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Storenvy
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Why Microsoft Desperately Needs To Become More Acquisitive

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 06:52 AM PST

We’re on the verge of hearing how Microsoft performed in the last quarter of 2010 – the general consensus seems to be that the world’s largest software maker is set to report a dip in earnings.

We’ll be covering the quarterly earnings release, which is scheduled for after the market closes, and we’ll be zooming in on Microsoft’s online businesses in particular. But before we do, I wanted to address something else.

I’ll start with a rundown of mergers and acquisitions announced by major Internet and tech companies since the beginning of this year, which, notably, is less than a month ago:

Google acquired eBook Technologies (12 Jan), SayNow and fflick (25 Jan)

Facebook acquired Rel8tion (25 Jan)

Amazon acquired LOVEFiLM (20 Jan)

Skype acquired Qik (13 Jan)

Yahoo7 (a joint venture between Seven Media Group and Yahoo) acquired Spreets (21 Jan)

Groupon acquired SoSasta, Grouper, Twangoo (11 Jan) and GroupsMore (26 Jan)

Zynga acquired Flock (5 Jan) and Area/Code (21 Jan)

LinkedIn acquired CardMunch (26 Jan)

Salesforce acquired DimDim (6 Jan)

LivingSocial bought a majority stake in Let’s Bonus (13 Jan).

Dell acquired SecureWorks (3 Jan)

Concur acquired TripIt (13 Jan)

I could go on for a while, but by now you see where I’m going with this.

Since October 2010, Microsoft has announced exactly zero acquisitions, joining struggling companies like Myspace and Nokia for that dubious honor (Twitter acquired Fluther and AOL acquired About.me right before year’s end, while Research In Motion recently acquired The Astonishing Tribe).

Oracle, HP, IBM and Cisco have also recently announced significant acquisitions, as far as the enterprise software part of the equation is concerned.

Then there’s of course Apple, which has been notoriously non-acquisitive ever since the company was founded back in the seventies.

In fact, for the full year of 2010, Microsoft announced only two acquisitions of small companies, namely Canesta and AVIcode. The contrast with rival Google’s M&A activity (roughly 25 acquisitions in 2010) was particularly staggering.

My question is: what on earth is holding Microsoft back?

Look, acquiring companies is just one way a technology company can grow, recruit and develop new or strengthen existing revenue streams. It’s arguably not even the best one.

For all we know, Microsoft evaluated thousands of deals last year and decided not to pursue any of them for the right reasons. Perhaps Microsoft is saving up all its cash to make a giant move that will propel it into a positive innovation and profits spiral again.

Or maybe Microsoft has actually acquired some stellar startups in the past few months but has simply opted not to disclose any of those deals, however unlikely that may be.

Or maybe not.

Microsoft lost out on some big deals in the recent past, which inevitably happens to all companies, but it could be a sign that its M&A strategy is simply not working out the way it should. The software company is sitting on top of mountains of cash, and finds itself in a challenging position with regards to preserving its dominance in the technology industry in the next 10-15 years. It has every reason to become way more acquisitive, and fast.

It’s time to lift up your sleeves and get more aggressive, Redmond – the clock is ticking.

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Microsoft
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Photographers: You’re Now Officially Free To Shoot In Public Places And Outside Federal Buildings

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 06:29 AM PST

It’s a often-heard story: a photographer is shooting in a public place and security shoos them away, or worse, takes them into custody. Thanks to a recent settlement with the NYCLU, however, all federal personnel should be aware and adhere to a clarified set of rules and, in the end, allow photogs to shoot away.

The Information Bulletin, after the jump, states that almost all photographic activity is in the clear and that:

Officers should not seize the camera or its contents, and must be cautious not to give such 'orders' to a photographer to erase the contents of a camera, as this constitutes a seizure or detention.

Does this mean you’re free to snap away? Well, in theory, yes, but I suspect there will still be extreme instances where this bulletin is ignored in total and the photographer hustled from the scene. Ideally this would never happen but, as we know, in this era the price of security is eternal badgering.

Read more…



BrightEdge Takes SEO Platform Global, Adds Baidu Chief Architect Ming Lei As Advisor

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 05:00 AM PST

San Mateo, CA-based BrightEdge is taking its enterprise-class, on-demand SEO platform global today. Originally founded in 2007 by former Salesforce.com exec Jim Yu and Lemuel Park, BrightEdge provides online marketers with cloud-based SEO software designed to help them increase revenue from organic search in a measurable way.

Now, companies and brands can manage their rank across search properties in multiple countries and continents. And Baidu Chief Architect Ming Lei has joined as a strategic advisor to provide guidance as BrightEdge optimizes their platform for international search engines.

Dubbed the BrightEdge SEO Platform, the startup’s SaaS allows marketers prioritize SEO campaigns based on forecasted revenue, execute coordinated SEO strategies across their entire company and tie everything to clearly defined business metrics. The product also comes with reporting tools that lets large enterprise analyze how their organic search performance stacks up against that of their competitors, and how it can be improved over time.

Since launching to the public in 2010, BrightEdge has gained a significant clientele, including seven of the top ten Fortune 1000 retailers. Other customers include Symantec and VMware. BrightEdge has raised $6.5 million in venture funding.

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BrightEdge
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AT&T Earnings: 442,000 Tablet And 4.1 Million iPhone Activations In Q4 2010

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 04:28 AM PST

Telecommunications company AT&T has announced its quarterly results, reporting consolidated revenues of $31.4 billion, up 2.1 percent or $653 million from the fourth quarter of 2009.

Here are some of the things that caught my eye:

AT&T reports 9.9 percent growth in wireless revenues, with a 9.6 percent increase in wireless service revenues. In fact, the fourth quarter was the first quarter in the company's history in which wireless revenues exceeded wireline revenues.

AT&T had a strong tablet quarter, which it refers to as “a new growth area for the company”.

The telecom giant says it added a total of 442,000 iPad and Android-based tablets to its network, and reported that more than 7.4 million postpaid integrated devices were sold in Q4 2010, including 4.1 million iPhone activations.

In case you hadn’t heard, this was AT&T last quarter as the exclusive carrier of iPhone handsets in the United States – Verizon Wireless will begin selling the device next month – so it will be interesting to see how things evolve from here.

AT&T reports that it saw 27.4 percent growth in wireless data revenues, up $1.1 billion versus the fourth quarter of 2009, driven by messaging, Internet access, access to apps and more.

The company posted a net gain in total wireless subscribers of 2.8 million, to reach 95.5 million in service.

For the full year 2010, compared with 2009 results, AT&T’s consolidated revenues totaled $124.3 billion versus $122.5 billion.

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AT&T
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Nokia Reports Weak Q4 Earnings, Reshuffles Board Of Directors

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 03:58 AM PST

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker by volume, this morning reported another profit fall, its third in a row. Net earnings dropped 21 percent in the fourth quarter, from 948 million euros in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 745 million euros in Q4 2010. Nokia said its estimated market share shrunk to 31 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, down from 35 percent a year before. The silver lining: market share actually went up one percent compared to the third quarter of 2010. Sales came in at 12.65 billion euros. In a separate release, Nokia announced a reshuffle in its board of directors.


Yandex Acquires Single Sign-In Service Loginza

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 03:35 AM PST

Russian search engine Yandex has acquired Loginza, a local startup whose service allows developers to implement user authentication via the likes of Facebook, Twitter or OpenID-supported sites, without additional registration. Terms of the deal, which came about through Yandex's "open days for startups", an initiative as part of the Yandex.Start program, remain undisclosed. As noted, Loginza's single sign-in plugin supports authentication via Facebook and Twitter, along with Blogger, WordPress, VeriSign, AOL, Yahoo!, Flickr, Last.fm, LiveJournal, myOpenID and OpenID. It also supports authorization schemes of a number of Russian services: Yandex, Mail.Ru, Vkontakte, Rambler, WebMoney, Diary.ru and Loginza itself.


Playstation Suite: Sony Brings Playstation Games To Android Phones

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 01:04 AM PST

At their PSP2 launch event today, Sony did not only unveil the new device but also introduced "Playstation Suite", a new cross-device game platform the company will use to bring Playstation 1 titles to Android phones and tablets (version 2.3 and up). In other words, Sony games will not exclusively be distributed to owners of the Playstation Phone that's supposed to be officially announced next month. Read the rest on MobileCrunch.


Facebook CTO Bret Taylor On HTML5, Mobile As The Future, And Yes, FriendFeed

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 01:03 AM PST

Yesterday, following his talk at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, I had a chance to sit down with Facebook CTO Bret Taylor. I’ve been following Taylor’s work pretty closely since the early FriendFeed days, so it has been interesting to watch his transition into this powerful role inside of Facebook. And make no mistake, he’s transitioned well.

We talked about a wide range of topics regarding the company these days, and Taylor has a clear command over pretty much all of them. Obviously, he knows plenty of things that he’s not going to tell me, but the answers he did give are actually pretty insightful as well.

First of all, just as he did during his time on stage, Taylor made it very clear that there are two key high-level focuses for Facebook in 2011 from a technology perspective: HTML5 and mobile. And actually, as he sees them, those are both very much related as well.

Taylor said that the biggest transition internally that Facebook will make this year is a shift towards much more development resources being placed in mobile. Whereas right now, most developers are working on the site itself, over the next year, as they focus more on HTML5, that’s going to shift. Further, “over the next couple of years, a large percentage [of development teams] will be working on mobile primarily,” Taylor said.

Taylor said that there’s already a team just devoted to making HTML5 games within Facebook a reality. Sure enough, today we got a lengthy post from Facebook about the very matter. Of note, so far the team has found that short-term, 2D games are the only kind that are going to be really feasible with HTML5 until WebGL is more of a reality. And all of this s very early, but Facebook wants to share their finding as quickly as possible to help the web evolve.

Does that mean an evolution away from Flash? After all, Flash dominates the market for the types of HTML5 games that Facebook is talking about. “Well it’s hard,” Taylor said about Flash specifically. When I laughed and noted he was giving the diplomatic answer, he assured me that it is something they think about a lot. “We want to be ahead of the curve and fill in the gaps when possible,” is how he ended up putting it.

And this stance on HTML5 is vital for Facebook because Taylor really does see mobile as the future — but as it stands right now, that’s a bit of a problem. “The popularity of mobile devices will change,” he said implying that the dominant devices today might not be so dominant in the future. And if that’s the case, why should Facebook dump resources into them? Wouldn’t it be easier if they just focused on HTML5 — something which will work on an increasing number of devices going forward? Of course.

“We want Facebook to be consistent on the web and on mobile,” Taylor said, echoing what he had said earlier on stage. He also spoke about the trend of web applications taking cues from mobile apps. “I think that’s a really interesting trend. And it’s one that I’m really excited about,” he said. “People design better with constraints,” he continued, acknowledging that the latest version of Twitter on the web was a great example.

Oh, and yes, Taylor also said that work is well underway for tablet-optimized versions of Facebook. But he still wouldn’t commit to a Facebook iPad native app anytime soon.

I then moved on to more specific products within Facebook.

I first asked about Single Sign-On. This is the product that’s supposed to greatly ease the strain of having to sign in over and over and over again within native mobile apps. Taylor noted that most of the top apps have already implemented it, and said that as its adoption continues, the entire experience will only get better.

But he acknowledged that it’s not a perfect system, and went into some detail about how they have to get it to work on the iPhone, which is more limiting on background functions between apps. Essentially what they have to do is dump you into the Facebook app to load up your info then immediately take you back to the app you’re trying to log-in to.

Asked about Messages, Taylor said that it’s going great overall. “It’s a pretty big new system for us,” he said noting that the email and SMS additions require quite a bit of work to get going. “We’re rolling it out social group by social group,” he continued. “We hope to have it rolled out fully in the not too distant future,” he went on to say, which should be good news for a lot of users out there.

When I asked about the transition at the top of the Places group, with Justin Shaffer (fresh from the Hot Potato acquisition) taking over the project from Michael Sharon, Taylor noted that Sharon had been working on it for a long time. “It’s business style versus functional style,” he continued. “We encourage people to rotate around projects,” he said noting that Sharon was still working on the mobile team.

In terms of the Places product itself, “right now we’re focused on social value,” Taylor said. “Obviously, deals is a big part of the product, but we need to build really valuable social interactions,” he said. In terms of what’s driving people to use it, it’s simple: the ability to tell friends where you are — and the way they can tag you at a place.

With regard to the Questions product, Taylor was a bit more reserved, calling it “a very different product than most Facebook products.” “It’s not quite in the state that you want to roll it out fully. We have a lot to do on it,” he continued.

Groups, however, Taylor was much more enthusiastic about. “Groups are being used a lot,” he said. Again, one of the big things he cited there is that people can set up Groups on behalf of other people. When I asked if this was helping the product much like picture tagging did early on in Photos, Taylor said it absolutely was. “It’s been growing really well,” he said.

“Lists were really about filtering, Groups are about sharing,” he said also noting that the privacy issue here is interesting. That was a key focus for Groups, making it very easy and obvious to see who exactly you’re sharing what with.

I then asked what Taylor thought about the rise of these new mobile photo sharing apps like Instagram and PicPlz. Do these pose some sort of threat to Facebook? “It’s something we’ve talked about a lot — about what the interaction they’re seeing means,” Taylor said. “But we’re really happy that they’re built on top of our graph,” he continued with a laugh. He also said that he can’t wait to see how those products will evolve, noting that this is the first time we’ve seen a genre arise around a very particular element.

He also said that like Flickr and other more established photo services, the majority of pictures coming into Facebook now come from smartphones. So the service has to look at what these smaller players are doing and adapt.

Finally, I asked Taylor about the Turkish use of FriendFeed sustaining it against U.S. traffic loses. He said it has been amazing to see it rise there and in a few other countries organically. He also said that before he left Facebook, fellow FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit did a few things to ensure that FriendFeed will be able to run completely autonomously indefinitely.

[image: flickr/scriptingnews]

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Facebook
Bret Taylor
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Streaming Is Driving New Subscriber Growth At Netflix

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 12:22 AM PST

Netflix is betting its future business on streaming movies and TV shows over the Internet, and so far that bet is paying off nicely. Just last November, it introduced a streaming-only subscription for $7.99 a month, and that helped drive subscriber growth up 63 percent last quarter to end the year with 20 million subscribers. “More than one third of new subscribers are signing up for the pure streaming plan,” Netflix reports in a letter to shareholders (PDF and embedded below). And it expects that percentage to keep growing.

Netflix added 7.7 million net new subscribers total last year, up from 2.9 million in 2009. The growing appeal of streaming should keep driving that number up. And Netflix is spending less to attract new customers. While new subscribers grew 63 percent, Netflix spent 10 percent less on marketing. Its average cost to acquire anew subscriber fell to $11.13 in the quarter, from $19.81 during the September quarter before pure streaming was an option. Also, a lot more people are taking advantage of Netflix’s free one month trial to see if streaming is for them. Nearly 9 percent of subscribers were in free trials during the quarter, up from about 6 percent the quarter before (and 3 percent a year ago).

Netflix also addressed the fears it is stirring among some media companies that streaming will compete with cable. But it offers the example of one of its content partners, Starz, to show that streaming does not necessarily have to cannibalize other sources of revenue. It also calls out HBO for not licensing its shows to Netflix. In the letter, Netflix notes:

Some content owners fear that licensing to Netflix will undercut other, larger profit streams. The Starz example suggests otherwise. We have carried Starz since October 2008 and we have not licensed HBO. Over that time, Starz' Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD) subscriber count has grown, and HBO's has not. At a more granular level, the Starz Original "Spartacus" was available at the same time on Netflix as on MVPD, and it was a big success in MVPD viewing, as shown by its Nielsen ratings. Even the DVD box sets have been a great success. So having content on Netflix does not appear to materially harm the revenue of that content on other channels. In other words, the evidence is pretty clear that content that is also licensed to Netflix generates more money for its owners than content that is withheld from Netflix.

Stepping back, some consternation about Netflix success is natural. Like the rise of the Fox broadcast network 20 years ago, a new entrant bids up the price of content, and the incumbent aggregators are not pleased. Netflix is good for consumers, good for content producers, and is one more competitor for existing aggregators. Many of the major media companies are part content producer, and part aggregator, which leads to Netflix being a frequent topic of discussion.

If Netflix keeps adding new streaming subscribers at the rate it did in the fourth quarter, it will become an even more frequent topic of discussion in both living rooms and media company board rooms.

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Netflix
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Sony Unveils The PSP2 (“As Powerful As The PS3″)

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:38 PM PST

As previously reported, Sony just unveiled a PSP successor, codenamed "Next Generation Portable", at an event in Tokyo. The biggest bullet point here is that Sony claims the portable system is as powerful as the PS3, which means it will be supposedly able to produce "PS3-like graphics". Sony did show the hardware up and running. Read the rest on CrunchGear.


Task Management Startup Cohuman Raises $600K

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:36 PM PST

Cloud based task management service and Disrupt Startup Alley alumnus Cohuman has raised $600K in additional angel funding. Investors in the round included Diamond II Investments, Jupiter Partners, Stage One Capital and other angels. This is the second round of angel funding Cohuman has received and is added to a $800K raised in the fall of 2009 for a total $1.4 million.

On Cohuman people can assign individual tasks and because it is web-based any group of people can collaborate through it. “We really think co-human is a better way to get things done, it really addresses some of the shortcomings of contemporary messaging technologies,” says CEO Matthew Work.

In the same organizational management space as Salesforce, Chatter and Basecamp, the web-based Cohuman, whose usership has tripled to over 15,000 users since launching at Disrupt in September, is currently freemium and monetizes with a subscription based “Professional” version.

Cohuman is headquartered San Francisco and comprised of 8 people, and while Work doesn’t plan on hiring more staff the company will be using the money to focus on business app integration and mobile moving forward.

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IMHO, Imo Is A Pretty Great Way To Chat. Today Brings A New Design And An Exit From Alpha

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:02 PM PST

It was almost exactly two years ago that my colleague Robin Wauters first wrote about a service called Imo with the title: IMO.IM Is The Best IM Web Service You’ve Never Heard Of. I’ll be honest, I didn’t listen to him at the time (though, to be fair, I didn’t even work at TechCrunch yet). He followed up a few months later when the service added Facebook chat support. But since then, they sort of dropped off our radar. So it’s time tonight to give them some more love, because the service really is pretty great — and after three years in alpha, they’re finally dropping that label.

The idea is super simple: Imo is an IM client that allows you to sign in to many different types of IM accounts at once, all managed through their service. Obviously, there are many services like this out there. But the key to Imo is that it’s fast and easy to use. I mean really easy. All you have to do is enter your user name and passwords for the different services and you’re off and running in a way that’s very seamless.

And they’ve just launched a complete redesign of their web experience. It actually makes the service even easier to use. Now Imo on the web sort of looks like a blank canvas just waiting to be filled up with chats. Chats that you can drag and drop to position anywhere in your window on the browser. And like the new version of Gmail launched today, Imo.im can send you desktop notifications for new chats. And like their mobile clients, you can now send instant voice messages of up to 30 seconds in length as well (another feature that has fascinated me recently).

That’s the other key to Imo.im: their great mobile clients. Whether you have an iPhone, iPad, or Android device, Imo offers a nice, simple way to connect with all your various chat services. Below, find a demo of the iPad app in action.

While it may seem a bit odd that the service has been up and running for three years and is just now dropping the alpha label, remember that one of the Imo co-founders is Georges Harik, one of the first 10 employees at Google. He’s learned well.

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WebMynd Receives 100K TechFellow Award To Focus On Addon Developer Platform

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 09:38 PM PST

YCombinator-funded WebMynd, which launched in 2008 and was most recently responsible for the browser addon Search Smarter, is today announcing that it is the recipient of one of our heralded 2010 TechFellows Awards, from none other than Paul Graham himself. WebMynd will be using the 100K in financing to concentrate on its new product, the WebMynd Addon Developer Platform.

As the Search Smarter browser plugin was pretty popular, with over a million installs across Internet Explorer and Firefox, co-founder Amir Nathoo told us that the experience of building his own app led to WebMynd’s current incarnation (nay pivot). Nathoo realized there was customer demand for a platform that would allow developers to code apps once and have them work on IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome right away.

Nathoo tells us that things were much simpler for app developers a couple of years ago when all people had to worry about was Firefox and the iPhone. Now there are multiple browsers and mobile platforms and a developer needs to tweak his code multiple times in order to port an app, unless he or she has a platform like WebMynd’s or Particle’s to do the dirty work.

Nathoo says “The issue for app developers now is how am I going to support all these platforms, and that’s a real pain …Our mission is to get all the great apps that developers are making to be available everywhere.”

While WebMynd is entering the space with a focus on amazing browser addons like this one, Nathoo’s future plans include adding mobile app support for iOS, Android and Chrome OS. He plans on monetizing with a freemium business model, charging a subscription rate per platform and allowing developers to use the Chrome extension framework for free to develop, and then charging them to port.

WebMynd is offering the first 20 TechCrunch readers who sign up their first port for free. You can check out the service here.

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YC-Backed Tutorspree Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 07:54 PM PST

Launching today from the YCombinator Class of 2011, Tutorspree is a online marketplace for K-12 tutors along the lines of accommodations network Airbnb, but specific to tutoring (yes I’ve made this comparison before). Founded by Aaron Harris, Josh Abrams and Ryan Bednar, the startup is disruptive in the sense that the tutoring space up until now has been monopolized by agencies like Sylvan and Huntington Learning Center or risky alternative Craigslist.

Tutoring is a business that is aching for change: Agency strongholds make tutor comparison difficult and Craigslist is a whole ‘nother can of worms trustwise. So Tutorspree tries to combine the easy accessibility of the Internet with the quality vetting of an agency, at reduced cost. All you need to do as a parent to find a tutor is type in your location into the Tutorspree search box, and you’ll get a listing replete with photos, credentials and price. Prospective tutors can sign up with the “sign up as a tutor” link at the top of the site.

Harris tells us that the quality control at an affordable price is Tutorspree’s competitive advantage, and the screening process favors people who have experience teaching kids in front of a classroom. Currently there are about 160 tutors signed up, with another 100 or so that haven’t yet passed muster.

Tutorspree also takes less of a cut from each lesson (50% initially and then less at each subsequent lesson) than traditional tutoring operations, so it is able to retain top talent. “We’re hoping to make a system where everybody wins,” Harris says.

Currently you can find Tutorspree in four cities, San Francisco, Washington, New York and Los Angeles and integrated with one highschool, (Harris wouldn’t tell us which one). Harris says the company is planning on expanding to more cities, ramping up the tutorbase and integrating with more schools in the near future.

The first hundred of you interested in trying it out can get a 25% discount on your first lesson by signing up through this link.

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Google Begins Soft Censorship Of Arbitrary Piracy-Related Queries

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 07:00 PM PST


The efforts of media companies to quash online piracy are a bit like someone trying to put out a forest fire with a wet noodle. The latest pathetic flail comes in the form of coercing Google into censoring its results for some search terms. A number of words will no longer be autocompleted or trigger an instant search, among them the interesting and perfectly legal “bittorrent.”

It’s a new high for antipiracy theater, because you can of course still search for the terms by hitting enter, and get the same results as before, including direct links to torrent files hosted on well-known indexers. The move will accomplish two things, though: first, it will damage consumer trust of a company whose services are ostensibly objective, and second, it confirms for the hundredth time how quixotic and misguided the efforts of the MPAA et al. are in every action they take.

The actual censorship (I use the word lightly) is a joke. A leakier sieve than this was never wrought. While “Bittorrent” is blocked, “torrent” is not, and while some popular cyber lockers are on the blacklist (Rapidshare, Megaupload), others aren’t (Drop.io, Hotfile). As far as preventing piracy, the policy is worthless — incompetent. I have no doubt that this list was put together by the media companies, because Google would have done a far better job of doing it. The team responsible for executing this probably lost more time to derisive laughter than long lunches.

As for the damage it does to Google’s reputation, it’s really nothing that wary web users weren’t already aware of. The algorithm and Google’s results have always been at best pseudo-objective, and Google has made these kinds of gun-jumping censorship mistakes before. But when word gets out to the millions of people who don’t care about DMCA requests and cyber lockers that Google is allowing music industry officials in between them and their search results, there may be… well, let’s be honest, there will be a small ripple of outrage, then people will forget. But a reputation as a search-broker for big business isn’t what Google wants. Blocking a few dirty (yet very common) words is tolerated as it protects our sensitive children, who know nothing of such things, but this? Not so much.

Of course, the practical effects of this move will be utterly nil. The companies and websites being soft-blocked are livid, but the media industry wants nothing to do with them anyway, and Google holds all the cards, so there’s not much the offended parties can do.

Will Google expand the blacklist? Will the terms ever be hard-blocked? I’m guessing that the media companies expended a lot of time and capital just getting this non-result, so I doubt future changes will be soon or serious. Google can plausibly demur on broader censorship, calling this little blacklist a gesture of good will and referring the MPAA and RIAA to the allegedly infringing sites themselves.

More analysis and comments from the affected companies can be found at TorrentFreak.

Quora + CrunchBase + LinkedIn = Best Extension Ever?

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 06:15 PM PST

A month ago, Polaris Ventures principal Ryan Spoon wrote up a quick blog post looking for a developer with Chrome extension/app experience. He had a pretty simple idea for something to help him with his job. Matt Basta saw the post and created the extension Spoon was looking for almost instantly. Now they’re opening it up for all to use and calling it Polaris Insights.

The straightforward app is very, very slick. You simply visit the website of a company you’re interested in, hit the extension button, and you get an overlay of the CrunchBase, LinkedIn, and Quora data for the company. The CrunchBase column shows you the funding information, the LinkedIn column shows you your connections within the company, and the Quora column shows you some of the Q&A conversations going on about about company.

Yep. Awesome. Mainly because of the CrunchBase usage, obviously. But okay, the other two are pretty cool as well.

“I imagine bloggers, VCs, business development and sales folks will find this super useful,” Spoon says. Indeed. This is my new best friend already.

We have previously written about a Quora extension, but that only shows you notifications. This gives you actual data — and it does so in an interesting way. Rather than using a Quora API (which is still in its infancy), the extension uses Chrome’s ability to pull data in the background from Quora.com and auto-complete the extension with it. And it’s all cached, so Basta jokes that it won’t turn Quora into Tumblr — that is, it shouldn’t cripple the service.

Polaris Insights is Chrome-only for now, but Spoon says that if it’s popular enough, they’ll gladly do a Firefox version.

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YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston On The Dearth Of Women In Tech (And Some Steps To Fix It)

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 05:33 PM PST

Last August our own Michael Arrington wrote a post addressing a topic that’s as important as it is sensitive: the lack of women who are running startups. In short, his point was that there simply aren’t enough women who are setting out to become entrepreneurs — and it’s not because the issue is being swept under the rug or because the industry is heavily weighted against them.

Now Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston has written an insightful article discussing her own experience with this. Livingston is as qualified as anyone to analyze the problem — she wrote Founders at Work and has also interviewed hundreds (perhaps thousands) of founders for Y Combinator. And her conclusion is similar to Michael’s:

So why don't women want to start startups? I wonder if it's not that not enough women want to start startups, but that not enough women even consider it as an option.

Livingston’s post is well worth reading in its entirety. She chronicles the things that were on her mind during her mid 20′s (entrepreneurship wasn’t among them, because she wasn’t exposed to it) and discusses the advice she would have given herself at that age had she wanted to start her own company. Here’s one of her tips, on what is one of the most difficult challenges: finding a cofounder.

Finding a technical cofounder would have been difficult for me. I was an English major and didn't know any computer programmers.

The best advice here is to get out and network. If someone in your IT department is actually good, befriend them. Ask friends of friends if they know talented programmers. Read Hacker News. Go to meetups or other similar events. This may feel uncomfortable but it won't be the first uncomfortable thing you have to do if you want to start a startup.

Finding a programmer to work with if you don't already know one will be a challenge. Merely judging if a programmer is exceptional vs. competent will be very hard if you are not one yourself. When you do find someone, work together informally for a while to test your compatibility. Cofounders will endure so much together that their relationship is often compared to a marriage.

And while Livingston says that there is probably some degree of discrimination against women from investors (which I suspect is true, even if it isn’t deliberate on their part), she believes the bigger problem is that not enough women are involved with these companies in the first place.

Fortunately Livingston isn’t just talking about the issue — she’s taking some steps to address it. Next month she will be working with Grubwithus (a YC company) to organize a series of dinners where women thinking of starting a company, or curious about the process, can interact with herself and YC alumni. If you’re interested (and female) you can sign up for the dinners right here.

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