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| EMI Drops Lawsuit Against Project Playlist, Licenses Catalog Instead Posted: 25 Mar 2009 08:45 AM PDT
Music search and streaming service Project Playlist may finally be turning the tide in its ongoing battle with the music industry. EMI Music, one of the three major labels which was suing Project Playlist for copyright infringement, dropped out of the litigation and is announcing today that it has licensed its entire catalog to the service instead. EMI joins Sony BMG, which was never part of the lawsuit, in licensing its digital catalog of music to Project Playlist. That is two down, two to go. Warner Music and Universal Music Group are still party to the suit. If Project Playlist CEO Owen Van Natta can get them to license their catalogs as well, maybe the vultures circling the company will go away. The service is currently banned on both Facebook and MySpace. Getting the other two labels on board would be necessary for lifting those bans. Warner and Universal don’t seem to be in any rush to settle, however. And Project Playlist doesn’t have much time. The number of U.S. unique visitors going to its site has dropped from 10.4 million in November, 2008 to 6.1 million in February, 2009, according to comScore.
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| Spare Change On Track To Process $30 Million In Micropayments On Social Apps This Year Posted: 25 Mar 2009 07:46 AM PDT
While advertising revenues have been disappointingly low for most applications on Facebook and other social networks, another option app developers are increasingly turning towards is micropayments for virtual goods or premium features. Both Facebook and MySpace have admitted that they are working on their own payment systems, and Apple could play a role as well since it already has a payment system in place for iPhone apps (although even Apple is running into some bumps). While the bigger players are fiddling with their payment system plans, nimbler startups are moving in to fill the gap. One of these is Spare Change Payments, which is trying to become the Paypal of micropayments. A year after launch, more than 700 apps across Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo use Spare Change for micropayments. Spare Change is processing $2.5 million a month in micropayments, which is a $30 million annual run-rate. The apps that are having the most success with micropayments are games and ones that sell virtual goods. Over a million people have already signed up for Spare Change. Hundreds of thousands of those use it actively on a monthly basis. And it is not all nickels and dimes. Last year, 250 people spent more than $1,000 apiece on digital goods through Spare Change. Now, the company is making it easier for consumers to pay through Spare Change with a new payment widget that pops up in each app instead of sending people off to a separate payments page. You can choose between several payment methods including a credit card, Paypal, Spare Change credits, or through your mobile phone bill. Once you buy a minimum of $2 worth of Spare Change credits, you can use them as currency for apps that charge as little as $0.10 at a time. It is also introducing a PIN ID for users who choose to tie their accounts to a credit card so that they can use the same PIN across any app that uses Spare Change. The experience is designed to be familiar to anyone who has ever downloaded an app from the iTunes store. You enter your PIN, and then go back to the app. The company accepts payments from 190 different countries. The first app to launch with the new widget is Mind Games on Facebook. It requires developers to add only three lines of code. Spare Change will roll it out to MySpace and Bebo soon. Spare Change is designed specifically for social networks. Customer support is done via the direct messaging systems inside each network, and the company analyzes the social graph to sniff out fraud. For instance, it looks at how many friends someone has and other factors to assign risk scores to individual consumers. Spare Change has been bootsrapped with only about $500,000 in seed funding, and two of the co-founders (Mark Rose and Simon Ru) previously worked at Paypal. For micropyaments, Spare Change is much cheaper than Paypal, which offers its own micropayment option. Paypal charges 5 percent plus $0.05 for transactions less than $12, but only for premium accounts that qualify (otherwise, for most small accounts, it is the normal rate of 2.9 percent plus $0.30) . In contrast, Spare Change takes a processing fee of 8 percent for each transaction. CEO Lex Bayer points out that while Paypal has a micropayments offering, it does not seem to be a huge priority. “PayPal is not well designed for micropayments or digital goods,” he says. The logic driving Paypal is to encourage larger transactions because that is where Paypal makes more money. A bigger concern for him should be if Facebook, MySpace, or Apple ever decide to jump into the micropayments game. Meanwhile, he has an opportunity to stake out a piece of the micropayments market and fight it out with the other startups eying the same prize. For instance, Zuora recently launched subscription billing for Facebook apps, Zong and Mobilecash are trying to tap into mobile payments (although the fees are still too high). Whoever figures it out first will be collecting more than just nickels and dimes.
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| Spark Capital Launches Seed Funding Program Start@Spark Posted: 25 Mar 2009 06:51 AM PDT
The latest venture fund to set up a separate seed financing program is Boston-based Spark Capital, a profilic investor in Internet and new media companies such as Twitter, Boxee, Tumblr, Veoh and KickApps. The initiative is dubbed Start@Spark, and is primarily geared towards startups from the Boston and New York areas. Early-stage investments will amount up to $250,000, and will not be restricted to information technology companies but also periodically be granted to startups offering financial or educational services. Entrepreneurs who get into the program will have access to Spark’s partner network and legal counsel, and will also be prepared for a second, more formal round of funding at a later stage if progress is deemed satisfactory by the firm. You can apply here. This is not the first program of this type we’ve seen. In fact, it seems like they’re popping up all over the place, conceivably thanks to independent initatives like Y Combinator and TechStars who’ve paved the way. Charles River Ventures debuted its “QuickStart” program back in November 2006, Sequoia simply invested $2 million of its own fund into Y Combinator to give them more runway, and other firms have set up platform-specific seeding funds in the past (e.g. Kleiner Perkins’ iFund and Bay Partners’ Facebook-apps only fund). We should probably note Spark Capital in fact a partner to TechStars, and General Partner Bijan Sabet is listed as a mentor for the seed program, but undoubtedly they’ll be competing for the same investment sooner rather than later. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Online Deal Marketplace FatWallet Gets A Facelift Posted: 25 Mar 2009 06:00 AM PDT
Online deal marketplace FatWallet.com is getting a makeover. FatWallet redesigned its existing site to give it a slick, user-friendly interface. The money-saving site also added a new feature to organize its deals called Coupon Search, which is stocked with with online coupons for consumers. And FatWallet expanded its roster of retail partners. While the site originally had relationships with 800 retailers, it now gets deals from over 2,400 online retailers. FatWallet also revamped its Cash Back feature, which consumers get cash back from shopping at certain sites. The cash back feature actually has some pretty good deals. For example, if you book a United Airlines flight, you could get 4 percent back. The site also offers consumers a forum where they can share money saving tips and shopping deals. FatWallet has deals from some pretty well-known retailers like Dell, Sephora, Macys and Travelocity. And FatWallet’s forums for consumers are fairly extensive and useful, ranging from threads addressing the the best deals on tech gadgets to which credit card to get. Online coupons are becoming increasingly in demand as consumers looks for deals in the current economy. It’s of no surprise that FatWallet made its coupon offerings more prominent than before, especially when the competition for online coupons is stiff. CouponCabin, Retailmenot.com, Smash Deals, Gotodaily, and SavingPiggy are just a few of the multitudes of online coupon databases that compete to offer consumers the best deals at checkout time. But FatWallet has created other incentives for consumers to check out its site, like the community forums and cash back features, so perhaps the site could differentiate itself from the pack in the future.  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Yahoo Shuttering Travel Bargains Site FareChase Today Posted: 25 Mar 2009 04:23 AM PDT
The service let customers perform comparative searches for pricing on flights, hotels, cruises and cars, but it was apparently not enough of a strategic product enhancement for Yahoo Travel, hence the company discontinuing it altogether to tighten its focus and cut costs in these difficult times. Sounds like a plan to me. According to Travel Weekly, Yahoo signed a new agreement with partner Travelocity in late February 2009, ensuring that the latter could continue its role as the primary booking engine for Yahoo Travel. In the past, Travelocity sparred with Yahoo over the prominent role that Yahoo gave FareChase on Yahoo Travel. This is the latest deadpool decision from Yahoo in a long series of announcements. The company had previously sold off shopping engine Kelkoo and shuttered online storage service Briefcase, photo sharing service Yahoo Photos, social network Mash, live video streaming service Yahoo Live, Ads in RSS, web-based video editing service JumpCut and student community website / job board KickStart. Which service could be next on the chopping block? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Please Miss, How Do You Re-Tweet? - Twitter Heads To UK Schools Posted: 25 Mar 2009 03:23 AM PDT
And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science. The draft plans were due to be published next month, but have leaked early. Children will also learn "fluency" in keyboard skills, and how to use a spellchecker. Luckily they will still be taught how to spell themselves, rather than rely on Mr Clippy. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Radionomy Doubles Funding For Custom Internet Radio Platform Posted: 25 Mar 2009 03:18 AM PDT
Radionomy, based out of Brussels, Belgium (yes we do have a startup scene here), has secured more funding in order to bring more enhancements to and enable scale for its personalized web radio application, which it is debuting in public beta today. The size of the financing round wasn’t shared in detail, but the startup did say its total capital now exceeds €1.5 million (roughly $2 million). Radionomy essentially offers everyone a chance to set up their own Internet radio station free of charge and share a personalized radio show complete with music programming, jingles and commercials with friends and the rest of the world. Users get to tap into readily available music libraries and jingles and add custom sequences, interviews, reports and podcasts to the mix, enabling anyone to build a genuinely personalized radio show and broadcast it for free, worldwide. Radionomy takes care of the associated costs (including royalties), and shares advertising revenue with radio station creators, relative to the size of their audience. Read more about the project, which is European in scope, right here. I’ve known the company and its founders for a while and have always been quite skeptical of the concept, since there are so many options these days for users to build custom music playlists and stream purchased (or non-purchased) tunes on the Web, leading me to believe few people would bother to set up their own radio station. But I’ve been playing around a bit with it earlier this morning, and have to admit it’s all pretty well executed, with lots of social features and decent search functionality. Turns out traffic to the web radios built by users is picking up nicely too. The company reports a growth of 175% in terms of audience in the past 4 months, and also says nearly 1 million unique users paid a visit to the platform in December 2008, citing independent research performed by Médiamétrie//NetRating. Also, about 26,000 users have registered for the invitation list so far, waiting to be accepted to the public beta version, which the company is launching today. The company has set its goal to 5,000 user-created radio stations by this Summer. Radionomy says it’s going to put more focus on developing its presence in France, where it claims to have become the number one music streaming website, before Last.fm, Jiwa and other more established players. They were probably cheering when Last.fm yesterday announced that they would be turning Last.fm Radio into a subscription-based paid product for its users outside of the US, UK and Germany. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| White House Using Google Moderator For Town Hall Meeting. And AppEngine. And YouTube. Posted: 24 Mar 2009 09:05 PM PDT
In just a few hours 6,932 people have submitted 7,037 questions and cast 236,048 votes on the site - which proves out the AppEngine promise that you can build highly scalable applications with little effort. The top question, based on votes so far, is “As a student, who like so many others works full time and attends school full time, only to break even at the end of the month. What is the government doing to make higher education more affordable for lower and middle class families?” Google also hosts the President’s video message for the meeting, on YouTube. I’m surprised he’s not wearing a Google tshirt, too. Google should be paying him an endorsement fee for all this promotion (Obama previously used Moderator for his Change.gov transition site). See our recent coverage of Google Tip Jar, which also uses Moderator. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| MySpace Toolbar Launches To The General Public Posted: 24 Mar 2009 08:25 PM PDT
MySpace has just launched its official toolbar, giving users immediate access to their MySpace activity notifications regardless of what site they’re currently browsing on the web. MySpace has been testing the browser plugin since last year (we originally wrote about it in December), but it was only available to a limited number of users. Beginning today, it will be available internationally to all users, and the site will begin to publicize it. The toolbar is available on Windows for Firefox and IE users, as well as on Mac for Firefox (there’s no Safari support yet). You can grab it on this page, which also includes a nifty interactive demo of the toolbar so you can get a feel for it before installing the plugin. Using the toolbar, MySpace members can update and keep track of their status updates, messages, comments, and other alerts. The toolbar also includes links to a variety of MySpace’s services, along with its Google-powered search engine. I don’t think I’ve installed a browser toolbar since around 2002, but there’s no question that many of MySpace’s devoted users will love to get their friend requests and messages in real time. There have been a handful of unofficial MySpace toolbars released in the past, but they are occasionally broken when MySpace rolls out site updates and had to use scraping to detect status changes. But while they may not offer the same functionality and stability as the official plugin, some of them do offer one nifty feature that the official toolbar doesn’t have: the ability to hit a button to ‘Simplify’ a MySpace user’s profile, removing the irritating flare that some users seem to love so much.
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| No! Never Surrender To Your Users, Facebook. Posted: 24 Mar 2009 06:18 PM PDT
The camel/horse quote (no disparagement to camels meant, of course) perfectly captures the problem when too many people have input into a product. Seth Godin talks about how the Walkman would never have been built if Sony had asked its customers what they wanted (see Purple Cow). A few days ago Robert Scoble talked about how a Porsche would be a Volvo if they let their buyers decide on features: “if you asked a group of Porsche owners what they wanted they'd tell you things like "smoother ride, more trunk space, more leg room, etc." He'd then say "well, they just designed a Volvo."” The bottom line is, when you listen to your users, you get vanilla. feature creep. boring. It takes a dictator to create the iPhone and change the course of an entire industry. Imagine if Steve Jobs let other people add features to that device. So I’m surprised that Facebook, which has stared down its users so many times in the past, is folding on the most recent redesign flareup and reverting back to some old features. Just because, oh, a million people demanded it. Facebook has always pushed the envelope with users, and those users always hate it (the original News Feed was hated, now people are up in arms to keep it from changing). In an interview last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked with me about how users are willing to accept change over time, and that Facebook would continue to push things along. Suddenly, though, they surrender because a few users have a belly ache over a redesign. If they wanted to make these changes anyway, they shouldn’t have titled their blog post “Responding to Your Feedback.” They should have just continued to ignore the ranting, and announced further changes. Showing that you’re listening to feedback just invites more of it. Someday, if they’re not careful, someone is going to do to Facebook what Facebook did to MySpace, who in turn did it to Friendster. Making users happy is a suckers game. Pushing the envelope is what makes you a winner. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Facebook Relents: Users Get More Control With Redesign Tweaks Posted: 24 Mar 2009 05:28 PM PDT
Facebook has just posted a lengthy letter to its users on its official blog detailing some of the changes we’ll soon be seeing on the site’s recently-redesigned homepage. Included among the new features are live updating to the homepage stream, which will make the homepage truly real-time (previously it would show up-to-the-minute results, but only when you refreshed the page). The feed will also begin to include photos tagged from your friends to the feed - something that I’m very surprised wasn’t included when the new homepage debuted (photos are often the first thing I check when I log into the site). Users will also have more control over what items from third party applications will appear into the stream (apparently users have been complaining that these have had too strong a presence in the current version). In a move that may be meant to appease some of the many users calling for the ‘Old Facebook’, the blog post also notes that the home page’s Highlights section will attempt to “mirror more closely the content that the earlier News Feed provided”. In my experience the current version of Highlights has been pretty underwhelming, but I don’t think that’s because it’s presenting news I’m uninterested in. Rather, I find the Highlights section to be too small to display many meaningful stories, and I feel like I’ve trained myself to look at the center of the page, so I often forget to look at Highlights entirely. These changes (especially the new Highlights) are clearly at least partially in response to very vocal base of users who hate the redesign, but Facebook isn’t going to be reverting back to the old News Feed any time soon. And really, it shouldn’t. As Robert Scoble pointed out, customer requests can easily lead the businesses they’re complaining to astray. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Whiskey Media Quietly Growing, Innovating With Former CNET Team Posted: 24 Mar 2009 03:26 PM PDT
We first covered the company in October 2007 with the launch of Political Base. It was, and is, notable because it’s built as a “structured wiki” - freely editable by anyone, but the data isn’t just one big unstructured blob like you see on Wikipedia and other wiki sites. Each section of a page is a separate silo, making it much easier to slice and dice data, and cross link around the site. Political Base was the primary inspiration for how we structured our own CrunchBase database of people, startups and venture funds. PoliticalBase is a PHP application and separate from Whiskey Media’s newer sites, ComicVine (comics), GiantBomb (games) and AnimeVice (anime). Those three new sites are entertainment and media focused, and written in Python using the Django web framework. More sites are coming this year on that platform. ComicVine originally launched in late 2006 as a PHP application, but was ported to the new platform last April and now sees over 10 million monthly pageviews. The newer sites, GiantBomb and AnimeVice, have 10 million and 800,000 monthly page views each. Most users are male, in the 13-30 demographic. Not bad for a startup with a handful of employees that’s burned through very little capital. And like Wikipedia, the readers create most of the content - they’ve added a million pieces of content to the sites to date, says Bonnie. The sites don’t look anything like Wikipedia, having a rich content experience more like Wetpaint, an unstructured wiki site that lets users create new wikis on any topic. Third parties can also access the content on various Whiskey Media sites via an open API. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Trusera’s Health 2.0 Portal Nearly Out Of Money Posted: 24 Mar 2009 02:26 PM PDT
Trusera, a ‘Health 2.0′ site founded by former Amazon exec Keith Schorsch, is facing tough times. The startup is nearly out of money, and Schorsch says that unless it can raise more funding by the end of April, it will have to shut down on April 30. Trusera launched ten months ago, offering users a community where they can share their stories about how they’ve dealt with health conditions. Instead of simply segmenting users into different groups according to the disease they are dealing with, Trusera also takes other information into account, including a user’s hobbies, location, and age. Using this data it tries to match users up with each other, so that their experiences and tips can be shared with the people who stand to gain the most from them. The other benefit of this matching system is that users can elect to receive Email updates whenever a new match submits a story or tip, which means that users don’t have to worry about constantly searching the site for new information. Trusera is well designed, with a friendly interface that lends a sense of community that makes the site seem like more than just a reference guide. It also has a few innovative features in the works, like a writing assistant that offers users tips as they write about their experiences (Schorsch assures me that it is nowhere near as annoying as Microsoft’s infamous Clippy). But while it has grown a dedicated user base, it is still fairly small (which isn’t too surprising given that it has been around less than a year). The site faces off with a plethora of competitors in this space, which include everything from similar online portals to more basic forums. Many sites also revolve around individual diseases, which can further segment these communities. While Trusera may be forced to close at the end of next month, Schorsch says that the company will continue to maintain the website content and platform on private servers, which they can reactivate down the line should they come across new funding. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| iPhone App Developers Gripe About Payment Delays and Dismal Customer Service Posted: 24 Mar 2009 01:42 PM PDT
Are iPhone app developers getting paid on time from Apple? Not all of them. On this iPhone developer forum, there are numerous threads from developers who are complaining about delays in payments for January and not being paid the amount of money the developers are in fact due from sales. And we’ve received one complaint directly from an iPhone app developer that Apple is late on its payments for January. Apple’s contract, which is embedded below, says that payment will be made to developers within 45 days of the end of the month. That would have been a week ago. Developers are expressing a number of gripes with Apple that extend beyond just being paid on time. We also hear (and read) that reaching Apple by phone is a complete nightmare. Emails to Apple go unanswered and customer service reps put developers on hold for 30 minutes to an hour and sometimes hang up on callers after they’ve waited to speak to an agent. Each month Apple sends iPhone app developers a financial report, detailing their sales for the month but in February, Apple sent out this email:
We’ve heard from one developer that he’s yet to have received the February report and its nearly April. To make matters worse, another iPhone developer says that even after receiving the report of how much he should be paid, he was grossly underpaid by Apple, by nearly $10,000. From the looks of the complaints on the forum, there are a number of developers who are frustrated with Apple’s customer service and payment system for iPhone developers. We have contacted Apple for a response and will update this post if we hear back. In the meantime, if you are a developer and have had trouble receiving payment or dealing with Apple, please let us know in comments.
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| Netflix Creeps Into Facebook With Netflix Updates Posted: 24 Mar 2009 12:13 PM PDT  Movie recommendations have most often been through word of mouth, but Netflix wants you to work harder to talk about the movies you watched over the weekend. The Netflix Updates application for Facebook users allows you to share your movie ratings with friends and view friend's ratings through your news feed. I am expecting the common reactions: "But I don't want everyone to see my ratings!", "I hate Facebook!", "I hate change!" As with any Facebook application, you can control what your friends see. You can have Facebook prompt you before publishing any stories from Netflix Updates, or you can have Facebook update automatically without prompting. There is also an option to have your stories posted in one-line, short, or full. I put mine to one-line because I don't want to contribute to the clutter already on my friend's news feeds. |
| Shapeways Rapid Prototyping Service Enters the Brass Age Posted: 24 Mar 2009 11:36 AM PDT  We've been in love with Philips off-shoot Shapeways for months now and the service just got nominally better. While you can still fab in plastic, today you will be able to fabricate the first 3D items in brass, a cool and unusual addition to the Shapeways service. Right now you can only create brass "ring poems" - a fairly limiting proposition - from now until March 31st. The "ringpoem maker" lets you choose a font and a design and Shapeways will do the rest, creating a unique napkin ring for your special occasion. The rings cost $50 each. |
| MySpace Music Announces Executive Team (Internal Memo) Posted: 24 Mar 2009 11:26 AM PDT
The key new executives are Jamie Kantrowitz (SVP Strategy and Global Marketing), Alex Maghen (CTO), Nancy Taylor (Lead Counsel, VP Business Development & Legal Affairs), Roberto Fisher (VP Product and Operations) and Frank Hajdu (Executive Director, Strategy & Business Development). The memo from MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe to all MySpace and MySpace Music employees is below. Kantrowitz, Hajdu and Fisher were previously with MySpace and transition over to the music team. Maghen previously was CTO of both Yahoo Music/Launch and MTV Networks Online. Taylor has held a number of senior management positions with major music companies, most recently as SVP of Warner/Chappel Music. Fisher was previously Senior Director of Product for Yahoo Music. We’ve been bullish on MySpace Music, and despite the relatively slow feature progress since launch they’ve recently made significant improvements to the product (best of all it isn’t sluggish any more). MySpace Music (and premium video, including music videos) remains MySpace’s last significant competitive advantage to Facebook (and Facebook knows it). Chris DeWolfe memo: Hi everyone, On the heels of some incredibly positive and productive Music industry buzz last week surrounding the SXSW festival, I wanted to take a moment to spotlight the enormously talented executives who will be responsible for turning the MySpace Music JV into the dominant 360 degree music experience on the Internet. I'm thrilled to introduce Alex Maghen (Chief Technology Officer) and Nancy Taylor (Lead Counsel, Vice President Business and Legal Affairs) - who will be joining Courtney Holt (President), Jamie Kantrowitz (Senior Vice President Marketing and Strategy), Roberto Fisher (Vice President, Product) and Frank Hajdu (Executive Director, Business Development) on the MySpace Music senior executive team. The vast knowledge and experience that these individuals bring to the table spans across all areas of the business including mobile, digital music, sales, and online marketing and creates the rock solid foundation necessary for the continued growth of the MySpace Music business and brand. Check out their bios below and please join me in welcoming them to the team. Finally, the music team has been working diligently over the last few months, turning out meaningful new product enhancements that have helped to greatly improve the user experience on MySpace Music. The Top 8 New MySpace Music include: 1. New Player I am so proud and excited about what this team has already accomplished. Keep your eyes and ears open—there's more to come! Best, ******************************************** Courtney Holt serves as President of MySpace Music a landmark joint venture among MySpace, The EMI Group, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony ATV. Prior to joining MySpace Music Courtney served as Executive Vice President of Digital Music for the MTV Networks Music and Logo Group where he oversaw all digital initiatives for the company's MTV, VH1 and CMT music brands, as well as for Logo. In this role, Courtney was responsible for identifying ways to further engage audiences across a spectrum of touch points, expanding the reach of the music brands online and content syndication. He also worked closely with Integrated Marketing and Ad Sales teams to drive new business partnerships and advertising models within the MTV Networks Music & Logo Group portfolio. Courtney's team led the way on a number of instrumental initiatives that are providing the audience with the new means to interact with music including the recent launch of mtvmusic.com. He also helped broker the creation of Rhapsody America, a joint venture between MTV Networks and RealNetworks and worked to develop the partnership between Rhapsody America and Verizon. Prior to joining MTV Networks in 2006, Courtney was Senior Vice President of New Media, Creative and Strategic Marketing at Interscope Geffen A&M. There he embraced emerging technology to break new marketing ground, galvanizing communities of fans around top musical artists. Beginning his career in the early 1990s as a freelance producer and director of music videos and commercials, Courtney was eventually appointed director of video production for Atlantic Records, where he introduced the concept of shooting live performances for electronic press kits and enhanced CDs and was responsible for some of the earliest artist broadcasts on the Internet. Aware of his accomplishments, A&M tapped Holt in 1996 to serve as their VP of New Media. At A&M, Holt championed the development of DVDs, online viral marketing campaigns, wireless artist channels and interactive music videos in the promotion of artists. Throughout his career and as a veteran of the recording music industry, Courtney has earned recognition for embracing technology and changing the way labels traditionally promoted artists. His strategic initiatives helped usher in a new era of music marketing, which continues today. His vision is to continue shaping the way artists connect with their fans and ensuring that music lives across multiple platforms by further cultivating the sense of community that already defines and differentiates the MySpace Music experience. Courtney earned a BS degree in Film from Boston University in 1990. He currently resides in Los Angeles. ******************************************** Jamie Kantrowitz is SVP of Strategy and Global Marketing for MySpace Music. In this role, Jamie will also oversee the strategy expanding MySpace Music's rich media platform of content partnerships and original programming, artist strategy and label relations, consumer and product marketing initiatives. Jamie is also responsible for spearheading the expansion of the MySpace Music platform across the company's international territories. She will be based in New York, where MySpace Music will have an office. Prior to this role, Jamie served as MySpace's Senior Vice President, International Marketing and Content based in London. She played an integral role in overseeing MySpace's successful expansion into 30 international territories. Jamie joined MySpace in 2004 as VP of Marketing and Content. In this role, Jamie was integral in the original growth of MySpace's entertainment properties, including MySpace Music and created and managed strategic marketing and promotional campaigns both online and offline. For her innovative work at MySpace Jamie has been previously placed on Ad Age's Top 50 Marketers and Billboard Magazine's "30 Under 30 to Watch" list and was honored in. Prior to working at MySpace, Jamie spent time as the Digital Director for Rock the Vote during the 2004 Presidential election. Jamie also worked at Radar Magazine as its Marketing and Special Projects Director and at KPE, Inc., a New York-based digital media studio where she led the project teams that developed digital business and marketing strategies for clients such as Nickelodeon, J Records, and Ralph Lauren Media. A native of the Los Angeles area, Jamie graduated from Emory University. ******************************************** Alex Maghen serves as Chief Technology Officer for MySpace Music. In this role, Alex leads all technological and platform initiatives for MySpace Music. With over fifteen years of experience overseeing and developing interactive media technologies, Alex brings a wealth of knowledge to his position, and is poised to reinforce MySpace Music as the most innovative music product in existence. Alex is no stranger to the CTO position, and brings with him six years of CTO experience in Online and Mobile Media. As CTO at Yahoo! Music / Launch Media and at MTV Networks Online, Alex drove a broad and highly integrated set of online properties which dramatically advanced the business and market goals of those companies. Alex developed new business and revenue opportunities in content and data syndication, including content integration with both online and on-air content partners. At Boston-based Groove Mobile, Alex led the mobile music platform's product, architecture, and overall technology initiatives. Alex began his career at AT&T, where he managed development of interactive products and programming for AT&T's interactive television trials. Most recently, Alex has served as acting CTO and Head of Product for various Israeli Digital Media companies, helping them structure their business, organizations, and Product Architecture to best fit potential partnerships with larger international partners. Alex has Bachelors degree in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has also taught at New York's School for the Visual Arts. He currently resides in Los Angeles. ******************************************** Nancy Taylor serves as Lead Counsel, VP Business and Legal Affairs for MySpace Music. In this role, Nancy oversees the company's business and legal affairs in the US and internationally with respect to the recently launched MySpace Music. Nancy and her staff work to ensure that MySpace Music maintains its position as an industry leader and innovator while complying with applicable laws. Nancy is a seasoned entertainment attorney and has held creative and senior management positions with major music companies, most recently as Senior Vice President, Office of the Chairman & CEO of Warner/Chappell Music Inc. Prior to this, Nancy served as Vice President and Deputy Counsel, Business and Legal Affairs, and Head of West Coast Operations for Arista Records. Apart from her professional duties, Nancy sits on various charitable boards and committees, and is active in politics and in the faith community. Nancy graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts in History and earned her Juris Doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Nancy currently resides in Los Angeles. ******************************************** Roberto Fisher is Vice President of Product and Operations for MySpace Music. Roberto is an Internet music and digital media veteran known for his deep expertise in and passion about the space. He has nearly two decades of product and management experience in Internet, media, and rights management products, services and technology. Roberto currently oversees product management, program management, design, and analytics for MySpace’s new joint venture with the music industry. Prior to his current role at MySpace Music, Roberto was Sr. Director of Product for Yahoo! Music where he drove digital media and connected device strategies, managed key music and technology partnerships, and grew content catalogs and offerings. Roberto played a central role in the successful growth of Yahoo!’s music business from 2001 through to 2008. During that time, he played key roles in building up Yahoo! Music to be the Internet’s number one music destination, and to be the leading provider worldwide of Music Videos and Internet Radio. Prior to Yahoo!’s acquisition of LAUNCH Media in 2001, Roberto was VP of Product for the website and VP Technology and Operations. Before he joined LAUNCH, Roberto worked on Internet, information, application and automation products and services for Citicorp, CB Richard Ellis and Oracle Corporation. Roberto held various product roles over the nearly 7 years he worked at Oracle in Global Operations, in Product and Product Line Division, and in the Applications Division. During his time at Oracle, Roberto led early efforts to apply database technologies to managing and retrieving rich media with associated metadata, to the use of relational databases for knowledge management, and to the delivery of content to various client types (PC, Internet, email, fax, and mobile). He was also a principal contributor to the launch of Oracle.com and oversaw the build out out some of the first Internet hosted and database driven B2B services. Education: Roberto graduated with Honors from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Values, Technology, Science and Society. ******************************************** Frank Hajdu is the Executive Director of Strategy & Business Development for MySpace Music, MySpace Inc.'s landmark joint venture with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, SonyBMG Music Entertainment, Sony ATV, and EMI Music. As the head of the Strategy & Business Development team, Frank is responsible for formulating corporate strategy regarding deal structure, site monetization, and user- and artist-facing products as well as executing content, e-commerce, technology, and M&A transactions. As a founding member of MySpace Music, Frank played an integral role in the creation of the business and product architecture of the new venture. Frank's role is cross-disciplinary, working alongside a broad range of MySpace Music departments including Product, Marketing, Technology, and Finance to create progressive music business models and user experiences which align the interests of labels, artists, and music fans. Frank has been instrumental to the execution of such landmark content partnerships as those with the four major labels as well as leading indie aggregators The Orchard and IODA. He has also brokered MySpace Music's digital sales partnership with Amazon MP3 as well as its copyright protection solutions with Audible Magic. Frank's team continues to explore and consummate numerous content, e-commerce, and technology partnerships while simultaneously developing do-it-yourself promotional and monetization tools for major, independent, and unsigned artists. MySpace Music aims to build upon MySpace's historically artist-forward approach by helping hard-working musicians to grow their fanbases, market their content effectively, and properly monetize their digital content and physical goods. Prior to joining MySpace in 2006, Frank held positions within Elektra Entertainment Group's Artists & Repertoire department as well as Credit Suisse's Private Equity division. Frank holds a B.A. in Business Economics from Brown University and an M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Raptr Spreads Its Wings With Gaming Partnerships Posted: 24 Mar 2009 09:58 AM PDT
Raptr, the social network for people who like to play and discover games, is partnering with several big-name gaming companies to license and distribute games and spread its reach. The Raptr Partners Program includes Sony Online Entertainment, NHN USA, Gala-Net as well as hardware companies Razer and Bigfoot Networks. Raptr says that its reach could potentially exceed over 10 million players with these relationships. Users interact with Raptr just as they would on a social network like Facebook, except everything revolves around playing games. They get the ability to know when and what games their friends are playing across various gaming platforms as well as the ability to instant message with their friends. Users can also share their stats, rankings, achievements, and characters with friends. And they can automatically broadcast their gaming activity to their friends on Raptr and other social sites including Facebook and Twitter. Raptr Partners Program will give Raptr access to deeper data and content and will allow partner companies to work with Raptr APIs as well. The deeper data creates a better experience for users and for gaming companies. The partnerships will also allow Raptr to distribute co-branded games to users and will offer partners a way to access Raptr’s social gaming platform and potentially have their games be broadcast over several social networks. Raptr has the potential to not only associate with some big gaming brands but to also extend its reach as a popular gaming platform. Raptr will work with Sony to add a number of titles from Sony’s catalog of subscription-based and free-to-play PC games. Gala-Net will distribute Raptr to players of its games on its gPotato portal and GamesCampus will work to distribute Raptr on games hosted at its sports-focused portal. Raptr will also be bundled with the Bigfoot Network's Killer NIC gaming network cards. As we wrote in our review of Raptr last year, Raptr is positioning itself as a central hub for social networking and gaming to integrate into one platform. And these partnerships should only help the network add more compelling games and reach more gamers. But we also wonder whether gamers will take the time to actually interact with the social networking features and create a profile on the network. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
No, it is not April Fools day - yet. The British government is proposing that Twitter be taught in elementary schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK's education system. 
Google is getting some major national exposure for both its 
“A camel is a horse designed by committee.” (
Former CNET cofounder and CEO 
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