Thursday, March 29, 2012

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Mobile Taxi Network Hailo Raises $17M From Accel And Atomico To Take On Uber In The U.S.

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Hailo

Hailo, a European mobile taxi network, is announcing a $17 million round of Series A financing led by Accel Partners. The company previously raised $3 million in seed funding from Wellington Partners and Atomico, who both participated in this round as well.

Hailo, which has been operating in London since last year, is a mobile network that matches passengers and licensed taxi drivers (a differentiation from Uber, which uses private black cars). Here’s how it works (check out the video below as well). The Hailo Driver Network can be accessed via iPhone or Android apps is designed to be a taxi driver's companion and offers social features, advanced, private stats, sharing of traffic and demand events relevant to drivers. These apps also allow drivers to accept credit cards as well, and includes a tipping functionality.

The network aspect of the app allows drivers to access traffic patterns and problems, messages about where pickups are light or heavy, airport information and more. Along with this information, Hailo also offers an interface that will show drivers where pickups are ordered (through the Hailo consumer app), and will allow drivers to process these pickups seamlessly. Additionally, drivers can use the app for credit card processing for pickups unrelated to Hailo.

On the consumer side of things, Hailo’s iPhone and Android apps allow you to order a licensed cab in a similar way you order a car with Uber. Once you open the app, Hailo will detect your location on a map and you can adjust where you’d like to be picked up. The app will tell you how close the nearest drivers are to your location, and you can then request a pickup. When the driver is nearing arrival, the app will alert you of the arrival. You can also see a profile of the driver, his or her ratings and more.

In terms of payments, you are charged based on what the taxi’s meter reads for the trip. With Hailo, you enter your credit card information once and the app will always use this information for payments without having to renter the details for each ride. Via the app you can choose to add a tip, as well as choose to pay via cash. Receipt will be emailed to you and you can rate the driver.

Hailo has been downloaded nearly 200,000 times by consumers in London and over 3,200 taxi drivers have already downloaded the app since its launch last November. In London, the startup says its average pickup time is around 2 minutes, and the app has around 850 active taxi drivers as users.

As explained to me by CEO Jay Bregman, Hailo, which was co-founded by three London cab drivers and three technology entrepreneurs, is working on making the app appealing to both drivers and consumers. By offering a network that includes traffic, pickup, and other info, the startup is actually making Hailo useful to taxi drivers beyond just providing pickups. Bregman tells me, “We don’t look at this as transactional booking app. We are building an app that helps solve the fundamental pain points of being a driver.”

The company also enlists drivers as the managers of operations in its cities. In London, Hailo is managed by three drivers, and in the startup’s next stop, Dublin, current drivers will also help set up operations.

It’s important to note that Hailo can work with any taxi company since it simply sits on top of the meter—drivers manually input whatever the meter’s amount is into the app for charges to go through. This enables drivers who don’t pickup fares via the Hailo app to input a charge manually through the app for a credit card payment. Hailo makes money by taking a percentage of each fare that is processed via its consumer pickup app.

Armed with $17 million in new funding, the startup is etting its sights on the U.S., looking to launch in Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C. and even New York. Although Bregman acknowledges that new York is a more challenging city to enter because of the heavy regulation of the taxi industry in the city.

And the company, explains Bregman, is not trying to provide taxi drivers with a full days worth of work. Hailo wants to simply account for 10-20 percent of order volume and provide orders in downtime. He feels that taxi cab companies will be responsive to this because drivers will be more productive.

Accel partner Adam Valkin tells me, “This is a massive market and a market that is inefficient. Passengers are frustrated and drivers aren’t making enough money. The smartphone is the tipping point.” He adds that Hailo has thought carefully about the internationalization of the app and feels that the startup has a clear strategy for becoming a global leader in the space. Valkin, who is based in Accel's London office, will join the Hailo Board, and Palo Alto partner Sameer Gandhi
will join the Board as an observer.

While Hailo has major ambitions of entering the U.S., the startup will certainly face competition from some of the more established and popular players. Uber has been exploding in growth, and armed with $32 million of new funding, the company also has it sights set on London. TaxiMagic also offers a an online taxi booking app in the U.S. And GetTaxi is expanding in Europe.

Bur Bregman is confident that the model that has proven to be successful in London can be scaled quickly in the U.S. and even Canada. Already, Hailo has hired a Chicago general manager and is looking to quickly expand in the coming months.

Personalized News App Zite Comes to Android

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 08:12 AM PDT

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Zite, the newsreading startup acquired last year by CNN, is launching its Android app today.

Co-founder Mike Klaas demonstrated the app for me earlier this week. The interface and features should be pretty familiar to anyone using the previous versions. You enter your Facebook or Twitter information, then Zite brings up a stream of stories that are likely to interest you. You can improve the app’s understanding of your tastes by hitting the thumbs up or down button for each article. And you can import your account if you’ve already set one up on a different device. (Klaas says there’s a fair amount of overlap between iPhone and iPad users, but he’s not sure whether that’ll be the same with Android — “The question is, what tablet do Android users use?”)

The new app integrates with Android’s sharing features, making it possible to hit one button and share via pretty much any method or social network you want.

For a relatively small company, Zite has been moving pretty quickly onto new devices. It launched on the iPad, then released its iPhone app in December of last year. Flipboard, on the other hand, has a larger team (Klaas says Zite runs as a largely independent unit inside CNN and currently has 11.5 full-time employees) and is currently available only for the iPad and iPhone.

Klaas says that one of Zite’s advantages is that “although we try to have a really good, clean UI, that’s not the value proposition.” Instead, Zite’s focus is on searching far and wide across the Web for news stories, and delivering genuinely personalized content — technology that carries over onto any platform.

FirstMark Capital Leads $7.5M Round In Social Shopping Startup Sneakpeeq

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 08:00 AM PDT

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Sneakpeeq, a social shopping startup that debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt last year, has raised $7.5 Million in Series A funding led by FirstMark Capital with participation from existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Metamorphic Ventures. This brings the company’s total funding to over $10 million.

The startup aims to replicate the experience of shopping for items in a retail store with a social twist. Similar to the way you flip over a price tag to look at the cost of at item at a store, Sneakpeeq doesn’t tell you the price instantly when you visit a product’s landing page. You click a “Peeq” button to find the price. The site features daily boutiques that offer discounts on clothes, shoes, home accessories and more from 1000-plus brands, from well-known names like Kate Spade and Puma to smaller designers and purveyors.

Sneakpeeq incentivizes engagement by turning user actions into discounts. By Peeqing, buying, sharing items on Facebook, and more, you earn badges on Sneakpeeq, which can then be applied for discounts on an items. Each boutique has a leaderboard where fans can compete by peeqing, sharing, and buying at products. Additionally, every member on Sneakpeeq builds a discovery profile through peeqing, sharing and buying things. Users can also see who shares common interests in various product categories including Taste (gourmet foods), Living (home), and Style (fashion and accessories).

The  startup’s key engagement metric is defined as the sum total of peeqs, loves and shares in a month. When Sneakpeeq launched last year, the startup was at 78,745 engagements per month. In January 2012, Sneakpeeq saw 600,641 engagements. and in March the startup is past 2 million engagements and the month is not over just yet. And founder Henry Kim tells us the startup is consistently doubling sales every month.

FirstMark partner Rick Heitzman, who is joining Sneakpeeq’s board is extremely bullish on the startup’s prospects as a social shopping destination, saying “We expect sneakpeeq to revolutionize online shopping, and become the definition of 'social shopping.”

The startup has also worked with Pinterest  power users and YouTube celebrities where they can curate their own boutiques. Eventually, the company will connect Sneakpeeq curators with brand partners to design products.

The new funding will be used towards brand growth and product development. Sneakpeeq plans to launch tablet and mobile apps soon, and will be furthering its expansion in Asia.

ShoeDazzle, Now 10M Members Strong, Expands To Offer Women’s Clothing

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:50 AM PDT

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ShoeDazzle, the subscription service that sends out its own selection of women’s shoe designs curated each month by celebrities and Hollywood stylists, has expanded its offerings to include women’s clothing and lingerie.

ShoeDazzle CEO Bill Strauss said in an interview (embedded above) that the expansion was inspired by the company’s subscribers, who have been asking for clothing to match ShoeDazzle’s shoes for months. ShoeDazzle, based in Santa Monica, Calif., was founded in 2009 and counts reality star Kim Kardashian as a co-founder and its “chief fashion stylist.”

The company has also tweaked its business model to let people buy items as often as they like, rather than on a once-per-month subscription basis.

ShoeDazzle has had robust growth recently, Strauss said, with its member base expanding from 3 million to 10 million within the past 12 months. Now that its offerings go beyond shoes, the company is considering a name change, but has not made a final decision as of yet. ShoeDazzle has raised some $60 million in venture capital funding and is not looking to raise more money at the moment, Strauss said.

Watch the video above to see Strauss discuss the expansion to clothing, how ShoeDazzle stacks up against competitors such as Beachmint, how ShoeDazzle designs and commissions its own products in-house, and why fashion and technology are really coming together right now.

How Do You Go Global Against Clones And Competitors?

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:36 AM PDT

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GoGlobal is Morten Lund's new venture. Earlier this month, Lund pitched GoGlobal live on stage at The London Web Summit. Despite a few people thinking it was a ruse, GoGlobal aims to be a platform to grow globally for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies. Lund says wants to take three to four companies in to 40+ countries every quarter. Here is the problem I think he is looking to solve.

As soon as an Internet startup shows signs of success, somewhere in the universe its business model is replicated with razor-sharp execution tactics. If the startup is under the radar, still, selling its products and services internationally is difficult without prior knowledge and business network.

Take online music streaming industry for example, its pioneer Spotify launched in Germany this month. Eagerly awaited by the German public, whose current suppliers of streaming music services include Deezer, Rhapsody, Rdio and Simfy, Spotify is now present in only 13 countries. Its French competitor Deezer has gone to as many as 45 countries and expects to conquer the world outside of the US by the end of 2012, according to its CEO Axel Dauchez. Will Spotify ever catch up?

First movers have good reasons to worry about competition. Deezer may not be a copycat, it was founded only 16 months after Spotify, but its plans to grow are much more aggressive.

So I spoke to a number of industry players to understand what it takes to grow an Internet business internationally.

Product Localization

Dauchez says that customizing the service was key to entering new markets. For Deezer it meant adding local artists, negotiating licenses with the labels for each individual country, and segmenting music into relevant genres (adding French Chanson for the Russian audience and Schlager for the German).

For some companies product localization may not need to be so extensive: for example Instagr.am did not do anything beyond translating its app into eight languages. For website translation tools from EasyLing or SmartLing could work well.

In mobile apps industry, app store optimization, including localization of the screenshots in the appstore promotional materials, can increase download rates of a mobile app by 30 percent according to the mobile expert Stefan Bielau.

Marketing

Distributing mobile apps internationally goes beyond Google Play and iTunes. Distimo lists 60 app stores, but some local ones would not be included. Publishing apps in those stores is still largely a manual task, according to Bielau.

For an online business operating in the B2C space a desirable marketing channel would be a global partnership with Facebook. Having accomplished that, Deezer enjoys a Facebook-driven user base growth of 20 percent per week.

Using other social networks such as Nasza klasa in Poland, Orkut, owned by Google and popular in Brazil and India, or Russian Facebook equivalent Vkontakte for marketing purposes also makes sense, as they are admittedly cheaper for user acquisition, although Facebook's audience is larger.

Earning money from some of the social networks may be tricky. According to Danil Kozyatnikov of Questli fromNovosibirsk,Russia, his social games company partnered with Russian social networks, but in some cases the company did not get paid.

Thankfully, for those with a sizable budget and B2C user acquisition can be done through advertisement. According to Siegfried Müller, the co-founder of a hugely successful Munich-based Travian Games (120 million registered users), advertisement networks are well established globally, and buying ads in different countries is an easy task. Travian is present in more than 50 countries.

Payment

All the "likes", clicks and registrations are useless without adequate payment methods. PayPal and credit cards may not always be a payment method of choice outside of the developed countries. Even in Germany bank account transfers are still preferred over other payment tools, and the country has one of the lowest numbers of credit cards in the EU.

XS Software, a Bulgarian online games company that sells its games in 80 countries, uses over 100 payment providers. According to the company's project manager Dimitar Yanchev, SMS payments are the third most popular payment method after PayPal and credit cards. This is especially true for those customers who have not yet reached the legal age to have a bank account or a credit card. Such payment methods can be quite expensive, as telcos take a significant cut as a commission. InSyria, for example, it can be as much as 80 percent of the total revenue.

Many countries have so-called e-wallets for those who are unwilling to use their bank account or credit cards for online payment. In Russiaand some Eastern European countries it is QIWI, in the Middle East and North Africa there is CashU, BoaCompra in Brazil, DotPay in Poland and ePay in Bulgaria. The way most of these e-wallets work is by allowing the customers to deposit money into the online account through a payment terminal or a kiosk. But even in Russia, ecommerce leaders such as Ozon still receive over 80 percent of payments as cash on delivery, as its CEO Maelle Gavet shared at TechCrunch Moscow.

In Serbia internet businesses cannot implement payment methods because it is necessary to register a legal entity there. In Eastern Europe the same requirement applies in Bulgariaand Croatia. A group of Serbia's leading ecommerce sites, which includes Limundo (Serbian eBay) and Kupindo (Serbian Amazon) is currently developing their own escrow-based payment system called Platindo which will eventually become an e-wallet.

There are of course payment aggregators such as Moneybookers, recently rebranded as Skrill, which offer integration of 100 payment methods in 200 countries, but they do not come cheap and according to Müller of Travian Games have a small market share in many countries.

Deezer's international roll-out did not go beyond credit card and PayPal payments for now, but the company intends to improve on this and other localization efforts gradually by establishing offices in 15 key countries, and participating in local scenes: marketing at festivals, and engaging local artists. Currently its international team is 20-strong, but the company expects to grow its total staff from 120 to 300 by the end of this year. As for payments, bundling its music streaming service with telcos' annual mobile phone contract is likely to boost their user retention and allow them to collect revenue from their telecom partners.

Online Piracy

Deezer's product is a digital good, and online piracy is its main competitor. Russian Vkontakte, for example, is blacklisted in the USbecause its users are enabled to freely upload music files and listen to them through Vkontakte free of charge. There is even a tool called Meridian that offers the creation of playlists using music on Vkontakte, all perfectly illegal and completely free. Dauchez believes that offering its users a premium music streaming experience. The rest is down to finding the right price point to get them to pay for it.

Logistics

For online retailers of physical goods, further challenges abound. I spoke to Jonathan Teklu, the managing partner of Berlin-based incubator SpringStar, which backed KupiVIP, the Russian version of Ventee Privee. He told me that when its founder, Oskar Hartmann, launched KupiVIP in Russia he had to buy a fleet of trucks to deliver goods to its customers.

Indeed, logistics is another significant operational challenge in many of the world's markets, where consumers are likely to cancel a purchase if no suitable delivery method exists. To address the challenge, Russian iTech Capital has set up QIWI Post, a joint venture with Polish Integer (owner of InPost), which leverages the brand of QIWI e-wallet and its network of terminals. QIWI Post is a terminal where a courier deposits a shipment, and buyers pay for the goods at the terminal and open the box using a provided code. Similar solutions exist elsewhere: for example in Germany, Estonia, and recently – thanks to InPost – also in Ireland under the name of Parcel Motel.

Other Issues

Companies looking to establish presence in the large developing markets such as Brazil or India will need a local partner to set up a legal entity, according to Teklu.

Educating online users is also essential. The online room and sublet reservation company AirBnB partnered with SpringStar in October 2011 to boost its international expansion. In Israel and the Middle East it is currently facing a problem of a cash economy, where the apartment owners prefer to be paid in cash, rather through an online transaction, an essential element of the AirBnB user experience. Changing such an attitude requires time.

Another example of having to educate consumers is India, where Internet users still have trust issues with buying online from unknown brands. A ticket-selling website MakeMyTrip engaged local travel agencies to let them use its website to book trips, and by so doing, educate their customers that it is safe to do so, according to Teklu.

These are few examples of challenges that come with need to grow internationally. Going back to Lund, he plans to target SaaS companies supporting them with legal, accounting, affiliate marketing and payment services amongst others, all offered as one platform.

Interested in what others thought of the idea, I asked Tom Cupr, from the Czech Republic, who has grown his daily deals business, Slevomat Group, into a 60 million Euro company with a presence in 7 Eastern European countries in just over a year. He said what's really important is execution, but then again, he thinks that GoGlobal could make international expansion a lot easier.

This post is written by our regular contributor Natasha Starkell, the CEO of GoalEurope, the outsourcing advisory firm and a publication about outsourcing, innovation and startups in Central and Eastern Europe. Twitter @NatashaStarkell. Gplus.to/natashastarkell.

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Dell Gives Up On Selling Smartphones In The U.S. (For Now, Anyway)

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:13 AM PDT

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I'd wager that only a few of you will remember that Dell sold their own smartphones, and even fewer of you still have ever actually owned one.

It should come as no surprise then that Dell, who entered the smartphone market less than two years ago, has announced that they have ceased sales of their last remaining smartphone lines: the Android-powered Venue and the Venue Pro Windows Phone. With those product lines getting the axe, Dell has (for now) put an end to their struggling smartphone business here in the States.

None of Dell's smartphones managed to gain critical mass in the U.S. market, thanks in part to hardware and software issues that plagued the likes of the Streak 5 and the Venue Pro. They haven’t given up the smartphone ghost completely though, as they'll continue to sell their devices outside of the United States. Their focus now, according to PC World, has shifted toward "emerging markets and higher-margin products."

The smartphone game can be a very tough one to crack — consumers, fans, zealots, and certainly us tech writers, demand continuous improvement from the companies that make our hardware. Make them bigger, thinner, faster, better looking, and do it several times a year. Those are tall orders even for entrenched players like HTC and Motorola, so for a company like Dell whose primary focus remains in PC hardware and software solutions the odds of building and maintaining a considerable stake in the smartphone market were against them from the beginning.

HP has learned that lesson all too well — after having spent an inordinate sum of money to throw their hat into the smartphone and tablet ring with webOS, they pulled the plug in what seems like record time. It takes more than cash and manpower to produce a hit, and in the end neither HP or Dell hit upon that crucial formula.

Right now though, Dell's future in mobile remains hazy. A Dell spokesperson confirmed that the company has plans to push out new mobile products later this year, though he refused to comment on what exactly those devices are (my money is on a slew of Windows 8 tabs with some funky form factors). It’s very possible that Dell intends to dust themselves off and jump back into the ring, but they’ll need a brand new strategy if they want to start playing with the big boys any time soon.

Nielsen: As U.S. Nears Smartphone Majority, It’s A Two-Horse Race Between Android and Apple’s iOS

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:06 AM PDT

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New numbers out from Nielsen today point to just how close the U.S. is to having more smartphone than feature phone users: the proportion that currently owns a smartphone, as of February 2012, is 49.7 percent, say the analysts, a big leap on the 36 percent who owned smartphones a year ago.

What’s increasingly clear in that growth is that, at least in the U.S., no other platform is proving to be a contender against Apple and Google’s Android.

Currently, Android-based smartphones account for 48 percent of all smartphones owned in the U.S., while Apple’s different versions of the iPhone account for 32 percent. Both of those shares have grown: in September 2011, Nielsen said that Android’s share was 40 percent and Apple’s 28 percent.

When it comes to smartphones that are getting bought, the power of those two platforms is even stronger. In the last three months, Android accounted (again) for 48 percent of all handsets purchased, while Apple accounted for 43 percent.

This growth was at the expense of Blackberry, now down to just five percent of handsets bought, with the rest of the other platforms — which includes Microsoft’s Windows Phone — accounting for four percent of purchased smartphones.

The big question for Microsoft/Nokia is whether Windows Phone will have what it takes to break out as a separate item in this list from the “others” pack. And the big question for RIM is whether it has what it takes to keep from becoming just another platform in the “other” category.

But while Android and Apple have cornered the market for purchases so far, there is still 50.3 percent of the market to play for, according to Nielsen’s figures. That’s still a lot of consumers, but most likely targeting a different kind of consumer from those that have bought handsets already.

Nielsen’s figures show a lot of momentum for smartphones in general: two-thirds of all handsets bought at the moment are smartphones, its analysts say.

[Photo: Paolo Camera, Flickr]

Millennial Media Shares Pop 100 Percent In Early Trading; Valued At Nearly $2 Billion

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:04 AM PDT

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Mobile ad network Millennial Media just debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MM," and saw shares pop 97 percent in the first trade of $25. The company initially priced its IPO at $13 per share last night, after increasing the range on Tuesday. At $25 per share, Millennial’s valuation jumps to nearly $2 billion. Trading reached as high as $27.90 in early trading.

Millennial which filed its original S-1 in early January, raised over $130 million in the offering, which is up from $75 million originally stated in earlier filings.

Millennial, which is one of the largest remaining independent mobile ad networks, currently serves ads to 200 million unique users worldwide, including approximately 100 million unique users in the United States alone. More than 30,000 apps are enabled by developers to receive ads delivered by Millennial.

From 2009 to 2010, Millennial’s revenue increased 195% from $16.2 million to $47.8 million, and the company took a net loss of $7.6 million, and $7.1 million, in those years, respectively. From 2010 to 2011, revenue increased 117% from $47.8 million to $103.7 million. In 2011, the company saw a net loss of just $287,000.

Founded by Paul Palmieri, the Baltimore-based company has raised $65 million in venture funding from Charles River Ventures, NEA, Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital and others. Palmieri issued this statement today: "Today is an exciting day for our company, and also a significant milestone in the maturation of the mobile advertising industry. We have spent the last six plus years helping create what's now a multi-billion dollar mobile application advertising market and we look forward to continuing to drive growth and innovation in the space."

In 2010, Palmieri jokingly called Millennial the quiet giant as competitors like Quattro (acquired by Apple) and AdMob (acquired by Google) stole the spotlight. Clearly that’s no longer the case.



Bleacher Report Doubles Down On Personalized Content, Brings Team Stream To The Web

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:02 AM PDT

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It’s been fun to watch Bleacher Report grow from some random publishing site for amateur sports writers to a full-blown digital sports network backed by $40+ million in venture capital. Today, with 25 million unique visitors per month, Bleacher Report has become the fourth largest sports media property on the Web. Over the last year or so, the popular sports network has been doubling down on its team-specific coverage, convinced that this has become the preeminent way that fans follow sports. Since January, the startup’s so-called Team Stream apps have lived on iPhone, Android, and the iPad, offering fans personalized dashboards with headlines, top stories, and tweets from their favorite teams. And today, Bleacher Report is bringing Team Stream to its home page.

Similar to its Team Stream apps, the new section of its homepage offers viewers realtime news on teams and topics from Bleacher Report’s bullpen of unpaid bloggers and professional sportswriters, as well as curated popular news from top sports destinations.

Team Stream allows fans to customize the homepage with content from as many of their favorite teams as they choose, and login to Facebook to save their team settings so that the news appears every time a user visits the site — but login isn’t required to access team stream. And as an example of Bleacher Report’s somewhat unique approach to sports news, your personalized Team Stream is curated by the site’s editors, rather than by RSS aggregation. It’s all hand-picked.

It’s also interesting to see the site taking a mobile experience and applying it to the desktop in a kind of reverse-publishing initiative. If it works on mobile, why not bring it to the Web?

Bleacher Report’s new homepage will also include a social module that features trending topics on social media networks, enabling fans to quickly share content with their friends, along with beefing up its “Lineup” section, which will now feature national sports stories and video clips to be periodically updated over the course of the day.

The move today becomes yet another example of how publishers are increasingly looking to focus on bringing personalized content to their readers as a way to encourage clicks, repeat visits, and engagement. Bleacher Report may be in the minority when it comes to sports media offering customized content, but this is sure to be just the beginning — after all, the sports team from my area is without a doubt superior to the sports team from your area — and I want to be able to prove that, across platforms.

Amazon And The NIH Team Up To Put Human Genome In The Cloud

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 06:53 AM PDT

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Amazon and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that the complete 1000 Genomes Project is being made available on Amazon Web Services as a public data set. The announcement, made at the White House Big Data Summit, will make the largest collection of human genetics available to anyone free of charge.

In case you’re light on the details, the 1000 Genomes Project is an international research effort started in 2008 that involves 75 companies and organizations working together to create a detailed catalog of the human genome, and all its 3 billion DNA bases. To date, over 200 terabytes of data have been created since the project’s start.

There’s now DNA sequenced from over 2,661 individuals from 26 populations, and the NIH is planning to add more samples this year.  The effort led to the techniques used to sequence the DNA of other species, going from the mouse to the gorilla.

The project started off with three pilot studies. Amazon began hosting the initial pilot data in Amazon S3 in 2010, so it’s not surprising to see the remainder of the data added today. The latest dataset is the most current, containing the DNA of 1,700 people.

The move to put the data up on Amazon, specifically, Amazon Web Services, aims to help speed up access to the research. Previously, researchers had to download data from government data centers or their own systems, or even snail mail it on discs.

The data will be stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) and can be accessed from AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR).

The 1000 Genomes Project is only one of many of the publicly hosted datasets found on Amazon. Others include data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Langone Medical Center at New York University, Unilever, Numerate, Sage Bionetworks and Ion Flux.

More details on the data itself are here.

Wanna Access Your Windows Desktop Anywhere Before Windows 8? WorldDesk Says It Has The Answer

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 06:25 AM PDT

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With Windows 8, Microsoft is introducing more portable, cloud compatibility in the form of Windows To Go, but what about those seeking a solution today that works on devices running Windows 7? WorldDesk claims to have an answer.

The Northern Irish-founded, now Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has launched a new virtualization platform that it says allows all Windows 7 users to carry their desktops around on any device, including some of the smallest portable devices of all, like a USB drive, a smartphone and an iPod. Written as a 64-bit platform, WorldDesk can also work via the cloud through a Dropbox integration it first announced in February at the release of a 32-bit version of the platform.

There are, of course, other online desktop vendors, like OnLive and CloudOn, offering similar solutions. The issue with these that WorldDesk is addressing, says its CEO Rao Cherukuri, is that competitors remain expensive and deliver poor user experience; they also do not offer mobile and offline storage.

The other main difference with similar virtualization services is that WorldDesk does all the processing on the end device: that means it can be used for processor-intensive programs like Photoshop, AutoCAD and HD Video. It delivers “the same flexibility and experience on par with local PC,” says Cherukuri.

The significance of extending the platform to 64-bit from 32-bit is that it gives WorldDesk a much wider target audience. Currently, Windows 7 accounts for one-third of the worldwide OS market share, with over half of PCs running it in 64-bit mode for higher memory and performance capabilities.

Given that the shift to Windows 8 will be gradual, WorldDesk is targeting legacy users of Windows 7, and Windows XP first. But it is also making a Windows 8 version, and has internal demos of Android also underway, so that when users do make the move to another platform, they will take their WorldDesk desktops with them.

The company has yet to release user numbers but says they are a “healthy mix” of end-user and enterprise customers throughout the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Because WorldDesk runs natively on the end device the service does not have any issues with corporate firewalls, but also has an enterprise-specific solution should an issue arise.

There is also the issue of whether the move to cloud services may ultimately invalidate solutions like WorldDesk’s. Cherukuri notes that current cloud services still lack the processing power for intensive programs (like Photoshop or AutoCAD), and besides, “Desktops have proven to be very sticky.”

TechCrunch Beirut Meetup This Friday #TCBeirut

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 06:22 AM PDT

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So ArabNet in Beirut is rocking, but we also wanted to make sure there was an opportunity for other startups in town to come say hi to TechCrunch while we’re here, so we are throwing together a TechCrunch Beirut Meetup!

The Meetup is organised in conjunction with entrepreneur platform Wamda, co-working space AltCity, and the Seeqnce tech incubator.

Here are the details:

Date: Friday, March 30

Time: From 7pm to 9pm (and onwards)

Location: Mezyan Pub, Estral Center (near Kabaji/Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf), Hamra, Beirut, Lebanon, WANA, Asia, World

Google Map: http://g.co/maps/h2fu3

Hashtag: #TCBeirut

Feel free to bring all your startup stuff like t-shirts, stickers and iPads to demo your startup/app etc (if you want).

I look forward to seeing you there!

Former Zong CEO And Founder And Mobile VP David Marcus Named President Of eBay’s PayPal

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 06:16 AM PDT

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After former president Scott Thompson departed for the CEO role at Yahoo, PayPal has named David Marcus, the former CEO and founder of mobile payments startup Zong and PayPal Mobile VP, as President (PayPal acquired Zong last year for $240 million). Ebay CEO and acting PayPal president John Donahoe posted the news this morning in a blog post.

From PayPal’s blog post: [Marcus is] going to lead PayPal with that "founder's perspective," to bring start-up energy to PayPal's unmatched global reach and digital payment capabilities. With David at the helm, we will have an even deeper commitment at PayPal, and across eBay Inc., to be a leading technology-driven and customer-focused product innovation company. We'll continue to focus on accelerating product innovation, driving consumer engagement and creating a world where paying anytime, anywhere and any way is synonymous with PayPal.

Marcus started his first company, GTN telecom, back in 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland, which was acquired by World Access in 2000. That same year, he founded Echovox, a mobile media monetization company that helps large media companies connect with their mobile audiences. Zong, which was spun out of Echovox, offered a mobile payments platform, that let you pay for items online via direct billing to your mobile phone. When PayPal acquired Zong last year, Marcus became VP of mobile for the payments giant.

Considering Marcus’s extensive experience in mobile, it’s clear the direction PayPal is going when it comes to the payments experience. Last year, the company processed $4 billion in mobile payments transactions and expects $7 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012. Marcus has been focusing his efforts of late on the launch of PayPal Here, a Square-like mobile payments hardware and software platform for small businesses.

PayPal has also been hard at work on an in-store payments technology for big box retailers, which has been adopted nationally by Home Depot.

You can see Marcus introducing PayPal Here in the video below.

Location-Based Shopping App Shopkick Adds Former Disney And Nike Exec To Board

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Andy Mooney

Geo-coupon system and shopping app Shopkick is adding a well-known retail and branding exec to its board today—Andy Mooney, the former Chairman of Disney Consumer Products and CMO of Nike. He joins Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and Kleiner’s Matt Murphy on the company’s board of directors.

For background, Shopkick provides an in-store, location-based mobile shopping platform, Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store. Once a Shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called "kicks" to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions.

National retail partners in the loyalty program include Target, Best Buy, Macy's, Crate & Barrel, Old Navy, American Eagle, Sports Authority, Toys R Us, Simon Malls and others, and 40 brands (P&G, Unilever, Kraft, Colgate, Clorox, Disney, HP, Intel).

Mooney was most recently Chairman of Disney Consumer Products overseeing Disney’s worldwide licensing, publishing and retail businesses. While at Disney, Mooney helped triple the company’s retail from $12 billion to $36 billion, created a larger retail presence for Disney, and developed two of Disney's largest franchises: Disney Princess and Fairies.

Prior to his 12-year tenure at Disney, Mooney was a long-time employee at Nike, where he was the CMO for the retail brand in the U.S. In that position, he collaborated with agencies to develop the iconic advertising campaigns 'Just Do It,' 'Bo Knows' with Bo Jackson, and others.

Considering, Shopkick’s partners are all major brands and retail stores, Mooney’s advice and guidance could be invaluable to the startup. The company has already been seeing explosive growth with more than 3 million current active users, 5 million walk-ins, 12 million product scans, 1 billion in-app offer views, as well as more than $110 million in-store revenue for partner retailers and brands in 2011.

Snapguide Makes It Super Easy To Make And Share How-To Guides On iOS

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 06:00 AM PDT

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Snapguide, which just launched on iOS, is rethinking the stodgy “How To” guide for a mobile generation. Thus far the consumption and creation of “How-To” guides on the web hasn’t been particularly groundbreaking, with SEO-optimized, paid contributor-written fare like eHow.com dominating the market. In contrast Snapguide was built to be super simple, fast and take advantage of your phone: Think of services like WikiHow as Facebook and Snapguide as Path.

“eHow was a pioneer in publishing content online,” says co-founder Daniel Raffel, “but it is a lot of ‘evergreen’ [and impersonal] content. We want to be a place where people share what they’re passionate about … ” he explains, saying that he could even envision a partnership with eHow eventually.

In fact, Snapguide is so well-suited to realtime mobile that it’s not shocking that Path founder Dave Morin is one of its backers, in an illustrious line of investors that includes CrunchFund and Index Ventures. The Snapguide co-founders are also of pedigree, with Raffel being, in addition to a Thomas Keller protege, one of the creators of Yahoo Pipes, and Steve Krulewitz formerly a member of Google's Chrome team.

The project, which currently boasts hundreds of guides from “How to make Sous Vide Chicken at Home” to “How to wear a scarf 5 ways,” was initially the result of a gift; Krulewitz gave Raffel the Tartine Bread book and Raffel took the complex recipes as a challenge — how does one break something down step-by-step to its most simple components in real-time? The solution was to use your phone, of course!

In order to make a guide, download Snapguide onto your phone, take a series of pictures (or a up to 60-second video) delineating each step in your process (Like, ‘Step 1. Cut a hole in a sock’ for my “How to make a sock bun” guide). Then fill in the text instructions. Because Snapguide is optimized for iPhone, you can also speak in your text and the app uses Nuance technology to transcribe it.

“We wanted to make it really easy to document a process in realtime with photos. And how you would cover something in realtime is different from how you would cover it after the fact,” Raffel says.

After you’ve got the initial steps down, you can delete, edit or rearrange their order and then publish your guide. Snapguide has social sharing functions to both Twitter and Facebook, along with its own internal “follow” graph, where you can see a timeline of guides created by people you’re following, in addition to which guides are popular. The app’s search function — which doesn’t exist yet on web — is also optimized for mobile. “It’s ridiculously fast, Raffel says.

Raffel eventually wants to give Snapguiders the ability to export their guides into widgets, and port them to any site across the web. This would be super-useful for communities and blogs like Beautylish and Refinery29, who traffic in “How-to” content. Here is Beautylish’s sock bun for example. “Imagine making that guide the old school way?,” Raffel says, referring to the process of individually downloading all pictures, and painstakingly formatting all the steps.

Raffel’s ultimate goal with Snapguide is to connect people who are  experts and passionate hobbyists with each other, and bridge these people and their experiences, “The space is ripe for disruption on mobile, and there’s a lot of tribal knowledge that hasn’t yet been captured.”

Google Ventures-Backed Kibits Lets You Share With Real-World Micro-Networks, Raises $1M

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 05:03 AM PDT

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Does the world need another mobile social app? A new startup called Kibits thinks it does, and its investors (including Google Ventures and Charles River Ventures) seem to agree.

The company’s iPhone (and iPod Touch) app is launching today. At first glance, it may look like another variant on group chat, but co-founder and CEO Matt Cutler says that even though he’s “an active user of multiple group messaging apps,” Kibits is doing something different.

For one thing, it’s designed to “complement real-world interactions.” That means you can form groups based on things like Facebook friendships, calendar appointments, and most interestingly, physical proximity, and that those groups became micro-networks where you can share anything you want. So you can chat, but you can also share videos, photos, locations, and even documents from iCloud and Dropbox. And it’s more persistent, meaning that shared content doesn’t just appear in a chat line and then scroll away.

For example, a group of friends or family members could create a group to stay in touch and share photos and videos with each other. Coworkers could create groups to coordinate meetings and share work material. And using Kibits’ proximity capabilities, you can share created groups on-the-fly at an event — say if you’re at a concert and want to let others see your photos, or if you’re at a meeting and want to share some documents with everyone there.

Cutler admits that Kibits has made its work more challenging by tackling a broad set of use cases, but he says the team has worked hard to build a “crisp user experience” that makes it easy to share in any of the above scenarios.

“The goal is that Kibits be a system that everyday people use for the conversations that matter,” he says.

The company is also announcing that it has raised a $1 million round of seed funding from Google, CRV, General Catalyst, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, SOSventures, Launch Capital, the CommonAngels Fund, and a number of angels. The round was actually raised near the beginning of the company’s one-year history, Cutler says, but is only being revealed now.

When asked about Kibits’ business model, Cutler says that initially, he’s more focused on attracting users.

“Over time, if we’re able to drive people to have great experiences, we think there will be ample opportunity for monetization,” he says. “It’s not something we’re thinking super-hard about.”

You can download the Kibits app here.

Bump Pay Lets You PayPal Someone With A Tap, But Only In-Person

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 05:01 AM PDT

Bump Pay Logo

Now it’s as easy as a fist-pound to pay a friend back for dinner, drinks, or a cab. Bump, the popular contact sharing app developer, today releases a new standalone iOS app called Bump Pay that lets you transfer money via PayPal to anyone in arm’s reach. But that’s also Bump Pay’s biggest limitation. Unlike Venmo where you send money to any phone number near or far, Bump Pay only works in-person.

The standalone app comes from Bump Labs, Bump’s experimental wing for trying out new features. Rather than risk complicating its 84 million-install flagship app right away, the developer will only bring money transfers to all its users if Bump Pay generates traction and delight.

To use the app, you just connect your PayPal account ahead of time, then type in the amount you want to pay, bump your iOS device against a friend’s, and confirm the payment. As long as you have a checking account connected to your PayPal, there’s no fee for the transfer. However, you’ll get docked a few percent if you’ve only got a credit card connected, and you can’t set up a new PayPal account from within the app. Your payment recipient also needs to have Bump Pay installed. You can’t send them money first and have them pick it up later. Finally, Bump’s technology has vastly improved over the years, but its apps still don’t always recognize each other on the first fist-clap.

Back in 2010, PayPal was one of the first companies to try out Bump’s APIs. These allowed PayPal’s app users to initiate money transfers by physically colliding their phones. PayPal dropped the Bump functionality from the latest version of its app in the name of simplicity, opening a window for a dedicated Bump Pay app. Bump has the money to experiment, considering its $19.9 million in funding from Y Combinator, Sequoia Captial, SV Angel Andreessen Horowitz, and many premier angels.

I’m a big believer in peer-to-peer mobile payments, however Bump Pay is much more limited than my current favorite Venmo and other apps from banks like Chase. I understand the desire for a streamlined experience — I like that Bump stripped out music and calendar sharing from version 3.0 of its primary app, and CEO David Lieb tells me this “hasn’t adversely effected anything. Various internal metrics for confusion in the app have plummeted.” But Bump Pay’s gone too far, eliminating many core use cases by denying you the option to pay people remotely.

If my friend drops me off in a cab, rides it home, and then wants to split the final cost, I can’t hit him back with Bump Pay until we see each other next. By then we might have forgotten…or just Venmo’d or PayPal’d each other. Plus I don’t want to pay fees on peer-to-peer payments…ever. So compare the two flows of when I want to pay a new user:

  • Bump Pay: “Hey, do you have a PayPal account? OK, is it powered with a bank account? Alright, then download Bump Pay and connect your PayPal account. Now stick your fist out.”
  • Venmo: “What’s your phone number? Ok, I just sent you money. Download Venmo to pick it up.”

Lieb tells me the reason behind the lack of remote payments is that “we found in our own use that when people weren’t with each other anymore, it’s hard to coordinate payment.” Personally I don’t find SMS that tricky, and I think the company may be too enamored with its software alternative to NFC. Still, I commend Bump Labs for trying something new rather than stagnating, and Lieb says there’ll be more products from its internal incubator in a few months.

Bump Pay could be the end of IOUs, and if added to the primary Bump app it could explode in popularity because Venmo is still tiny and doesn’t have an 84 million-install brother to piggyback on. Bump could dominate as soon as it realizes people can’t always sort out their debts right away.

Circl.es: Meet The Latest Dating Site That Uses Facebook To Help You Find Love

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 04:08 AM PDT

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Online dating is a hard nut to crack. First of all, it’s a very personal process ported to a largely impersonal medium — and then there’s the creep factor. Next, it’s a big business, but a small set of names dominate mindshare. Sure, with size and scale comes revenue, but it also brings less appealing byproducts like noise, faked pictures, lazy filtering, inadequate profiles, and the difficulty of judging actual interest from spam or “virtual winking”.

People have become more comfortable with the idea of dating online, but they don’t want an experience that explicitly (and constantly) reminds them of what they’re doing. Instead, eDaters want to avoid overexposure, and experience “newness” by going beyond their immediate social graph. Although it may sound counterintuitive, a new site launching today called Circl.es wants to give date seekers that feeling of newness by tapping into one of the most familiar platforms … Facebook.

Yes, to access Circl.es, users sign up with Facebook. But, why would I want my online dating site to do that, you ask? Founder Justin Krause says he recognizes that people hate bringing Facebook into the dating equation, but it’s essential because it potentially solves a few big problems with online dating: Verifying your true identity, showing real pictures, and filtering out all of your Facebook friends, i.e. your social circle.

Leveraging Facebook trims the signup process down to a couple of minutes, it also allows Circles to show you real, public Facebook photos of single people around you, and the same stuff you would see were you to visit the social network normally. In other words you see their real name, basic info, mutual friends, photos, etc. (You can customize this in privacy settings.) This also saves you from having to create a new profile. And, hey, instant user density, because it’s Facebook, where even your cat has a profile!

That’s great for time-saving and identity verification, but the real kicker is that nobody on Facebook can see that you’re using Circles, the app never posts to your Wall or anywhere else — and you won’t see people you know. Plus, you get to sort by location, making it easy for busy people to find people close by.

Circles is also attempting to limit overexposure, as users are served Facebook “snapshots” of potential matches, and just click “yes,” “no,” or “skip.” If you click “yes,” both users are notified, Circles sends you both emails, and lets you take it from there. If you click no, you won’t see that snapshot again, and that person never sees your profile. Only the people you’re interested in get to view your profile. When you’ve browsed all the profiles, you hit a “You’ve Seen It All Page,” and that’s it.

Circles gives you two weeks to meet up with an interest before the match expires, which is plenty of time to start a conversation, says Krause. Expiring matches also prevent weeks of endless email reminders, notifications, and spam.

The Circles Founder thinks that there are three elements to a decent dating site: Simplicity, subtlety, and honesty. Do those well, and you may have something. Either way, he can be sure he’s not alone, as there are more than a few trying to oust the eHarmonies of the world, like a redesigned Nerve Dating, DuoDater, Meexo, Ignighter, Grindr, theComplete.me and Yoke — to name a few.

Both of the latter sites are utilizing Facebook to make the dating experience better. Yoke.me, which Josh covered in depth yesterday, has a lot in the way of data to recommend it. While theComplete.me lets you go anonymous, Yoke makes use of the APIs of content recommendation engines like Netflix, Amazon, and Echo Nest to drive its matching. It, too, avoids posting your activity to Facebook walls, or sharing your activity with your friends. The two dating sites are comparable, but Krause thinks that Circles may have a leg up in the way it filters your Facebook friends out of results, and doesn’t intrude on mutual friends to ask for introductions.

He also thinks that filtering people you’ve said “no” to out of future results will help people really hone in on the right match. But music is a big ice breaker, and Yoke compares users’ Spotify, Rdio, or MOG listening data against Echo Nest's graph of how popular musicians are clustered to suggest potential matches based on similar musical interests.

Both sites are appealing alternatives to OkCupid’s unstructured profile data, especially for the Facebook generation. There’s likely room for both even in the cluttered online dating space, as they offer variations on the same major theme, catering to two slightly different approaches to dating and matching you with your next special someone. That being said, they both need work on their designs.

Online dating is definitely broken, and Circles offers a step in the right direction. For more, check out Circles at home here.

What do you think?

Confirmed: Canadian VC Firm OMERS Ventures Takes $20M Stake In HootSuite At $200M Valuation

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 02:14 AM PDT

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AllThingsD has reported, and we have confirmed, that OMERS Ventures, a Canada-based VC, has taken a $20-million investment in HootSuite, the social media management platform, with the company now valued at $200 million.

The investment is a secondary one, and will be coming in the form of purchases of equity from HootSuite’s existing shareholders. These include employees as well as existing investors. That list includes Blumberg Capital, Hearst Ventures, Geoff Entress and Millennium Technology Value Partners, who collectively have invested $4.9 million into the company: $3 million in debt and a $1.9 million capital investment.

HootSuite’s VP of marketing, Ben Watson, tells me that the company currently has 3.5 million registered accounts, up from the 3 million reported earlier this year, when the company said it was operating at an annual run-rate of $11 million in revenues.

The Vancouver-based company is expected to be making a formal announcement at 5 AM PT today. Update: Link to the official press release as posted on HootSuite’s blog is here.

This deal is one of the largest secondary VC investments to take place in the Canadian market in the last 10 years, and follows reports of another big secondary market investment in the social media space, in Foursquare. OMERS Ventures is the VC arm of the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System, a large pension fund in Canada.

Reuters is reporting that Blumberg is not among the VCs that have cashed out in the deal. And we have now confirmed with Watson that, in fact, all investors are staying in. “Everyone is maintaining significant ownership,” he said.

HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes is among those: “Ryan Holmes remains committed to building a billion dollar company, and this new investment partnership marks a new milestone in reaching that goal,” the company said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch.

What the deal signifies is that the company will have a lot more breathing space to continue its product development and growth. Watson told me that although Holmes has ambitions to make HootSuite into a billion-dollar company, “it’s hard to do that when you’re being a lean and mean startup.”

HootSuite currently has 140 employees and expects to bring its headcount up to 240 this year.

The investment is a testament to the ongoing attention in (and increasing value of) companies that are riding the social media wave and creating services to make money out of it.

HootSuite gives users the ability to monitor social media interaction across various networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It also provides custom analytics and allows clients of its dashboard to do things like give multiple users the ability to collaborate on updating a company’s social profile, schedule campaigns around messages and so on. It also offers mobile apps.

Customers include PepsiCo, Fox and the NBA among others.

It is also a sign of how the “freemium” model is gaining currency with investors. Watson says the “bulk” of HootSuite’s 3.5 million accounts take the company’s free offering, but there is an increasing number opting for the different tiers of paid service, too. Those include a “pro” option aimed at smaller businesses; an enterprise service for larger numbers of users; HootSuite Univeristy that involves a training/accreditation element; and one aimed at those reselling the product.

Barnes & Noble Incorporates In Germany, Closest Sign Yet Of European Nook Launch

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 01:02 AM PDT

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Just as Amazon is launching a new versions of the Kindle in Europe (but not the Fire tablet, yet), one of its big competitors is taking one more step in its bid to enter the European market: Barnes & Noble has incorporated a new company, Barnes & Noble Digital Media GmbH, in Germany.

B&N incorporated the German company on March 15, just around the time that the U.S. company came to London to promote the Nook to developers.

Apart from the fact that having a digital presence is essential for any bookseller looking to take a piece of growing revenues for e-books, expanding outside of the U.S. market is crucial for B&N if it wants to get more scale for the Nook — an important part of attracting more developers to the ecosystem and also improving its margins on the tablet. Currently the Nook only has around a 3.5 percent share of the market, according to IDC.

According to a report in the German-language Buchreport (Google translation here), the company will be based in Berlin. The report says that Eugene DeFelice will be running the operation; according to this Reuters profile, he is currently the VP, general counsel and corporate secretary of the company. It’s not clear whether this is an interim or permanent appointment.

When B&N hit London last week for its developer event, many came away from the sessions, on building for the Nook platform, with the sense that the idea of pitching to European developers was not yet fully formed. For starters, billing requires U.S. bank accounts, and getting paid for your apps would only be in U.S. dollars.

During the event, the company would not confirm whether the event was organized in the lead-up to launching its Nook tablet on this side of the pond. B&N’s director of developer relations, Claudia Romanini, said that there was no intention of opening B&N stores abroad — another reason it might partner with local companies to launch something, since she also noted that a key part of Nook marketing was around in-store promotions.

Indeed, there have been rumors swirling for months now that B&N will partner with large booksellers here to move ahead on such a strategy. In the UK, many believe its partner will be Waterstones, which has both spoken glowingly of the Nook, and has said it will be launching its own tablet later this year.

In Germany, Buchreport notes that there are several strong incumbent players, including Thalia and DBH, and these could be potential partners. Moreover, B&N already has a partnership with German bookstore aggregator BookWire.

But as with the UK, Barnes & Noble will be entering a crowded market; both Amazon and Apple are already doing very well over in Germany. A survey from the University of Hamburg noted that 57 percent of respondents had purchased books from Amazon, while 27 percent from Apple’s iBookstore.

In the Netherlands — another key market for B&N, and an obvious way of extending much of its current content given that so many there speak English — the bookseller reportedly in line for a partnership is Centraal Bookhuis.

[H/T to @arhomberg]
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