The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Fred Wilson: The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Links”
- Former MySpace Exec Shawn Gold Raises Seed Funding For Stealth Startup Cocodot
- Taptu, the Alternative Search Machine for iPhone
- Flip Announces Flip Channels, Adds Easier Video Sharing
- Armorize Lands More Funding For Web App Security Technology
- BOKU Launches, Makes Some Mobile Purchases For Mobile Payments
- That Reinvention Of The Web Thing Opera Was Talking About? It’s Called Opera Unite
- Adobe AIR Zooms Past 200 Million Installs, And We Have Some Apps To Recommend
- iPhone 3G S Shipments In The Air For June 17 Arrival
- With An iPhone And Android Strategy, Imeem Mobile Pushes Past A Million Users
- Are Silicon Valley Startups More Likely To Be Acquired?
- Behold! The New Facebook Headquarters.
- Facebook Has A Program To End Hunger Too. Downloading IE8 Not Required.
- OpenCalais Updates Tagging System To Be More Social And Recession Friendly
- Twitter Reschedules Maintenance To Allow Iranian Protests To Continue
- Spiceworks Spices Up Social IT Management Software
- Is QuickTime X The Missing Link For Flash On The iPhone?
- FriendFeed Blocked In Iran, The Service’s Most Active Region
- Bezos Doesn’t Like Google’s Book Settlement Either
- Brightkite For Android Coming Soon, Beta Access Open Now
- Twitter Takes A Breather
- Facebook Finally Catches Up To MySpace In The U.S.
- Ngmoco Hires Away Sega President Simon Jeffery To Head Up iPhone Game Network
- Facebook Employees Speak Their Mind On Holocaust Denial
- YouTube: Choose Your Own Adventure, Emphasis On “Ad”
| Fred Wilson: The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Links” Posted: 16 Jun 2009 09:03 AM PDT
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who is an investor in Twitter, argues that the value of Twitter is “all about links.” Today at the 140 Characters Conference in New York City, Wilson gave a presentation ostensibly about how to make money from Twitter. The value of Twitter, he says, is in “the power of the passed link.” He compared Twitter’s recent organic growth to the early growth of Google (minus any mention of Twitter’s recent slowdown) and shared some analysis of traffic to the Websites of his portfolio companies and his blog. Google is the dominant source of traffic, but over the past 12 months Twitter traffic has been growing 30 to 40 percent per month. It is becoming a significant source of traffic to those Websites, to the point where it is now bringing about 20 percent as much traffic as Google. Wilson predicts that at current growth rates, Twitter “will surpass Google [as a source of traffic] for many websites in the next year.” And that just as nearly every site on the Web has become addicted to Google juice, they will increasingly try to find ways to get more links from Twitter. Because Twitter equals traffic. (We’ve noticed a similar trend at TechCrunch, where Twitter is now our second largest outside source of traffic after Google). Moreover, he asserts that these Twitter links “convert better” than search links because they are often pre-filtered and come in the form of a recommendation from someone you are following. And while spam is a growing issue, it is somewhat mitigated by the ability to unfollow anyone who abuses your trust. Given these dynamics, Twitter needs to “inject a paid model” into its service, says Wilson. He is clear that he is not speaking on behalf of Twitter: I am not telegraphing anything here. It is the obvious thing to do. If they don't do it, someone will figure out how to do it as a third party application. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was sitting right next to me when Wilson said this onstage. He didn’t seem surprised by anything Wilson was saying. But how exactly is the best way to inject paid or sponsored links into Twitter? Again, looking at Google might be instructive. Google delivers traffic to Websites through a combination of organic and paid links. The paid links amount to billions of dollars in revenues for Google, but they wouldn’t work without the links in natural results. Twitter needs to come up with unobtrusive ways to inject sponsored Tweets with paid links into people’s Twitter streams. It is still not clear, however, how it can do this without turning off users. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Former MySpace Exec Shawn Gold Raises Seed Funding For Stealth Startup Cocodot Posted: 16 Jun 2009 07:37 AM PDT
We didn’t get that either, but apparently Gold is close to announcing several alliances with some of America’s biggest consumer brands pre-launch, so our expectations are on the high side. And investors are interested, too. The startup has just closed its first round of financing, securing seed funding from investors like Anthem Venture Partners and William Morris’ Mail Room Fund. The amount raised was just south of $1 million. For your reference: Gold was the former President of Intermix Media, the company that used to be eUniverse and owned the MySpace website before it was sold to News Corp. for a reported $670 million. He was also President of Weblogs Inc, which was acquired by AOL for $25 million back in 2005. We’ll be keeping a close eye on Cocodot for the foreseeable future. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Taptu, the Alternative Search Machine for iPhone Posted: 16 Jun 2009 07:11 AM PDT  Everyone moans about the lack of Flash on the iPhone, right? Let's face it: if someone makes a solid Flash implementation for the iPhone there would be substantially less interest in making native iPhone apps. You could create a rich user environment in the browser, and the iPhone App Store would be less and less relevant. As things stand now, I prefer native apps over browser apps for iPhone services. I use the dedicated mail client to access my GMail account, rather than load the mobile GMail interface in Safari. I use a dedicated Twitter client, FaceBook client, and LinkedIn client rather than load the mobile version of those sites (assuming a mobile version even exists!). Often, though, no native client exists, and you're stuck using a web site. It can be a real pain to find a mobile-friendly version of the sites you need, sometimes. Enter Taptu, the alternative search machine. This free app provides iPhone-friendly search results in a surprisingly intuitive way.
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| Flip Announces Flip Channels, Adds Easier Video Sharing Posted: 16 Jun 2009 06:51 AM PDT  Not content to let others do the heavy lifting, Pure Digital, now part of Cisco, has added Flip Channels to their popular - and surprisingly useful - FlipShare software. The software is pre-installed on every Flip devices (we have the HD) and the Channels are yet another way to upload and share your videos in the interwebs. Videos sent to your channel can be viewed at FlipShare.com or using the FlipShare iPhone app, also available today. The software also supports DVD authoring and standard sharing with YouTube and MySpace. I sent a video to myself using the service, a real cinematic magnum opus. You cannot formally embed videos sent to channels - you can embed them on the sly using the actual HTML or grabbing to a site like Posterous - but obviously you can embed videos sent to YouTube.
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| Armorize Lands More Funding For Web App Security Technology Posted: 16 Jun 2009 06:01 AM PDT
Armorize, provider of web application security solutions, has secured a Series B round of financing from its (unnamed) Silicon Valley-based Series A investors, Estonian seed fund Ambient Sound Investments and Asian firm Birch Venture Capital. For your information, ASI is the investment vehicle of Skype’s founding engineers. They’ve recently invested in a European community network for pet owners, which we covered last week. Armorize provides Web application security solutions such as malicious code detection, real time web application protection, and static source code analysis services throughout the system development life cycle, under brand names like CodeSecure, SmartWAF, HackAlert and Archon Scanner. Armorize caters to a variety of industries, including finance, telecom, government, and technology sectors. The company was founded in 2005 and is based in Santa Clara, California with an additional office in Taipei, Taiwan.
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| BOKU Launches, Makes Some Mobile Purchases For Mobile Payments Posted: 16 Jun 2009 04:20 AM PDT
Dead simple mobile payments for micro-transactions on the web are slowly gaining traction and a new, well-funded player has entered the growing space. Recently launched mobile payments startup BOKU has acquired competitors Paymo and Mobillcash and raised $13 million in Series A funding from Benchmark Capital, with Khosla Ventures and Index Ventures participating. BOKU did not disclose how much the startup paid to acquire Mobillcash and Paymo. BOKU, Paymo and Mobillcash all function in a similar way to make micropayments for games and applications. BOKU’s system doesn't require users to have a credit card or bank account. Users enter their cell phone number on the site, reply to a Paymo text message and then all virtual charges are automatically charged to the user's monthly cell phone bill. It's disarmingly easy. BOKU is gaining a significant international base with the acquisition of Paymo and Mobillcash. Paymo and social network hi5 recently partnered to let members in 24 countries use their mobile phones to purchase hi5 Coins, hi5's virtual currency. Paymo is available to hi5 users in the U.S., Canada, France, Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia and Colombia thanks to a cash system that accepts and processes various types of currencies. Paymo’s technology can be accessed in 45 markets around the globe, enabling mobile payments in Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Paymo recently expanded service in the U.S. after striking deals with mobile carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile to allow users to make online purchases using their phone. Mobillcash is UK-based and has a strong presence mainly in Europe. With these acquisitions and global reach (53 countries), BOKU has been able to secure partnerships with most major global mobile carriers. BOKU’s will initially launch its services on Hi5, Puzzle Pirates, Aeria Games, and on multitude of apps on Facebook and MySpace.  Paymo has said in the past that 75 percent of the online community worldwide does not have a credit card but 3 billion consumers own a mobile phone. And the market for online payments via mobile is being driven by the growth of virtual goods and games on social networks and mobile applications. With that in mind, mobile payments, which avoid credit cards or bank accounts, have the potential to take off. But there is one obstacle to mobile payments seriously becoming a viable micropayment option. Often, mobile carriers charge costly fees to the payment systems (which are then passed on to the consumer) remains a serious problem. BOKU says that different cell phone carriers charge varying fees that range between 10% to 50% of the purchase price, which is a pretty large amount in transaction fees. As we said in our earlier analysis, this could pose a significant roadblock to these types of services, which channel user payments through mobile carriers. It appears that it would be hard to sustain these fees in the long term. But if mobile carriers lower their fees, mobile payments have the potential to be the go-to way to pay for microtransactions. And BOKU, with its recent acquisitions and funding could be in prime position to make this happen in the space. Competitors to BOKU include Zong (a former TechCrunch 50 exhibitor) and Netsize. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| That Reinvention Of The Web Thing Opera Was Talking About? It’s Called Opera Unite Posted: 16 Jun 2009 01:29 AM PDT
We told you last week that browser maker Opera was generating quite some buzz by being secretive about their plans to ‘reinvent the web’. Well, the company this morning unveiled what it was referring to: technology that essentially turns every computer running the Opera browser into a full-fledged Web server. Behold Opera Unite. You can use Opera Unite to share documents, music, photos, videos, or use it to run websites or even chat rooms without third-party requirements. The company extended the collaborative technology to a platform that comes with a set of APIs, encouraging developers to create their own applications (known as Opera Unite services) on top of it, directly linking people's personal computers together, no matter which OS they are running and without the need to download additional software. The company recognizes that the current services are fairly basic, but says this is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ll take a deeper dive in Opera Unite real soon, but I’m impressed with what it looks like on the surface. This is a really good idea at its core, and I encourage you to read Opera product analyst Lawrence Eng’s blog post on the subject for more background and an idea of where Opera is heading with the concept. A small excerpt:
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| Adobe AIR Zooms Past 200 Million Installs, And We Have Some Apps To Recommend Posted: 16 Jun 2009 12:39 AM PDT
On to the news: by means of a blog post, Adobe Systems has just confirmed the number of installs for Adobe AIR that had been floating around the Web ever since CTO Kevin Lynch mentioned something along those lines at the recent Flash Camp Keynote in San Francisco: 200 million, double the amount the company touted at the end of January 2009. The number was reached a little over two weeks ago, about 16 months after its debut on the market. Whether you’re aware that you’ve installed Adobe AIR at some point or not, or whether you think the 200 million installs is actually on the low rather than the high side (I think the number is fairly moderate), there are some really good applications out there that you don’t know yet but might want to check out: Allows users to upload music, videos, and photos to imeem. This app will automatically discover all your iTunes playlists and enable you to easily zip them over to your imeem profile. You can also drag and drop your desired tracks for upload to imeem, create custom playlists and share your music with others. An elegant search tool for Flickr, which utilizes several methods of its public API. Flair matches search queries by tags and makes it easy to jump to the original resolution upload (often easily wallpaper quality) and the source photographers photostream (by clicking their user icon). An intuitive and extensive desktop app for mind-mapping purposes, tied to web app Comapping.com. Use it to manage and share information more efficiently. Ebook reader for the Gutenberg online book library. Ebooks are available free of charge in both text and audio format. NetBook lets you search the Gutenberg database, download and read/listen to ebooks and store them in cache for offline use. Yes, Hulu has an official desktop application too, but this one is worth a second look (we’ve covered this one before). MYMediaplayer allows users to browse the Hulu library while watching videos, and you can dock the window to the side of the monitor so you can work and watch TV at the same time. Perfect for procrastination! You can find these and 500 other applications on the AIR Marketplace. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| iPhone 3G S Shipments In The Air For June 17 Arrival Posted: 16 Jun 2009 12:32 AM PDT Orders for the new iPhone 3G S are now in the air from Shenzen, China. And people who ordered them right away last week may be in for a treat - arrival two days early. A friend who ordered the phone as soon as he could got his UPS notice today that the phone has been shipped, and the tracking page on the UPS site shows a June 17 delivery date, two days before the phones will be available in stores. If it does arrive then, will AT&T activate it? Or will it be an iBrick for two days? We’ll check back with him as soon as it arrives for an unboxing. And if he’s amenable, a tear down. I want to see the insides of this thing first hand.
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| With An iPhone And Android Strategy, Imeem Mobile Pushes Past A Million Users Posted: 16 Jun 2009 12:10 AM PDT
Imeem Mobile for the iPhone, which we were the first to report on back in May right before it launched, already accounts for 1/3 of Imeem’s mobile users, we’re told. It’s been consistently in the top 5 music apps and near the top 50 overall in the App Store since then. But does that mean that it’s better than the Android version? No, in fact, it’s worse for one reason: It can’t run in the background. That of course, isn’t Imeem’s fault. Rival Pandora suffers from the same problem because Apple will not allow these apps to stay open while you do other things on your phone, or put its screen to sleep. That may change eventually, but it seems likely that this isn’t happening anytime soon. So, for now, Imeem has decided to continue this fully two-pronged approach to the mobile app world: Android and iPhone. On one hand it now has the sexy iPhone app, which gives them access to all those iPhone users. On the other hand, it has its fully-functional Android app, which offers much higher engagement. In fact, Android listening session lengths are more than twice as long as they are on the iPhone, Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell tells us. And the Android platform offers another advantage in that Imeem knows that its app is now on 2 out of every 3 Android phones out there right now. That’s pretty crazy. And 1/3 of the users who install the mobile version of Imeem are completely new to the service. Of course, all of these things are just fairly inconsequential stats if the service isn’t monetizing them in some way. There has been of a lot of speculation about Imeem’s future, after reports surfaced that some of the major music labels which had been backing it, were not seeing returns on their investment and were backing out. Warner Music was the one in particular that was unhappy. But reports today indicate that they’re back in the mix after renegotiating some kind of deal with Imeem. Caldwell wouldn’t comment on that, but we’ve heard that Warner is back in as well. This follows Imeem raising more money to continue onward last month. In terms of monetization, Caldwell said that Imeem beat their Q2 goal for ad sales, and that they’re particularly excited about the mobile ad numbers they’re seeing. And there’s apparently a growing interest in cross-platform ad buys, from advertisers who want access to the site, the mobile apps, audio ads, and the widgets that Imeem makes, all in one package. Pandora told us last month that it had been seeing some great numbers with regards to music downloads being driven by their app. Caldwell sounds less enthusiastic about those, but said the click-through rates are always good in that area because there’s such a high intention rate when it comes to buying music through the app. So with a million mobile installs and a firm commitment to the iPhone and Android platforms, what’s next for Imeem in the mobile space? Well, the company is taking a wait-and-see approach. When asked about the hot phone of choice right now, the Palm Pre, Caldwell is cautious. “We’ve been very judicious in our use of resources,” he says. But he notes that they are watching the Pre closesly (Pandora was one of the phone’s launch partners), and sounds much more interested in that platform than any of the other ones out there not named the iPhone or Andorid. “They [the other platforms] don’t have a great distribution model. It’s a total pain to install anything on the BlackBerry.” Instead of an expansion to another platform, we’ll have to make due with an update to the Imeem Android app, which is due shortly. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Are Silicon Valley Startups More Likely To Be Acquired? Posted: 15 Jun 2009 11:56 PM PDT Does where you start your company matter? Statistically, it may. Jim Karsten pulled data from CrunchBase to look at where startups are based and the likelihood of an acquisition. The results show that 41.2% of startups that we track are based in Silicon Valley, but that those startups account for 53.3% of the reported acquisitions. A startup based in Silicon Valley has a 6.9% chance of being acquired. New York startups come in second with a 4.9% acquisition rate.
More from John Cook, who’s hopelessly in love with Seattle. Also worth reading is Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman’s rant last year about Silicon Valley working too hard (my response, his last word). The bottom line is this. If you have the means, start your company in Silicon Valley. It’s the big leagues. Like I said last year to those crazy Seattleites that keep saying they’re basically a suburb of Silicon Valley: “If staring at lakes and skiing after work are important to you, don't pretend to be surprised when your startup doesn't cut it.” Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Behold! The New Facebook Headquarters. Posted: 15 Jun 2009 10:23 PM PDT
The new HQ is massive — some 150,000 square feet. It’s in a building that used to be owned by HP, but has been vacant for several years. It’s not only much bigger, but it’s much more open, so employees can actually see who they work with now. Check out the pictures and video of the tour below.
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| Facebook Has A Program To End Hunger Too. Downloading IE8 Not Required. Posted: 15 Jun 2009 08:42 PM PDT
Today, while at Facebook’s new headquarters in Palo Alto, we noticed that it too is involved in a campaign to end hunger. But rather than pledging to feed hungry people only if you download something from Facebook, the company is doing it on the down-low, asking its employees to help out, in its own cafeteria. As you can see in the poster in this post, ShareYourLunch.net asks you to “Share Your Lunch With 20 Children For Just $10.” Right off the bat this is better. First and foremost, rather than trying to tie the number of people being saved into some marketing number (8 for IE8), ShareYourLunch picks a round number that actually makes sense. Secondly, either ShareYourLunch is getting a worse deal, or they’re being more realistic with their money. While Microsoft’s promotion was saying that $1.15 would provide 8 meals (about $0.14 a meal), this campaign says that $10 will provide 20 meals (about $0.50 a meal). And these meals are for small children, not adults like at least some of Microsoft’s campaign would presumably be for. Third, rather than claiming it is providing 8 meals to people, when that really just means that it’s sending the charity a set amount of money based on some regulatory guidelines for what a “meal” is (here’s the crux of the statement I got from representatives from Microsoft on the matter: “The USDA defines a meal as 1.28 pounds of food”), ShareYourLunch is actually buying real food. From the site:
It just seems like Facebook is working towards ending hunger in a much more classy way, that’s not so misleading. That’s not to say that Microsoft’s money pledge isn’t helpful, mostly I just think it’s kind of tacky to tie it into a web browser promotion based on the version number. I guess if there’s ever an IE9, more people will be saved from hunger because they’ll be able to jack up the number of people fed to 9. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| OpenCalais Updates Tagging System To Be More Social And Recession Friendly Posted: 15 Jun 2009 07:26 PM PDT
Thomson Reuters’ OpenCalais, a service and open API that lets users to incorporate semantic tagging in blogs, content management systems, or website content, has been upgraded to include social tagging, integration for Spanish content, and improved linked data depth for companies. OpenCalais’ technology is powered by text analytics company Clear Forest, which was acquired by Reuters in 2007. OpenCalais, which is free, uses natural language processing, machine learning and other methods to analyze a document and finds the entities within it. CNET and Huffington Post are among the blogs and sites that use OpenCalais. OpenCalais 4.1 (released today) and 4.2 (to be released in a few weeks) will first include a new social component that will emulate how a human might tag a document. While OpenCalais is a semantic data extraction engine, it doesn’t necessarily take out the kind of tags a human would put on an article. For example, in an article about luxury cars, OpenCalais would be able to pick out BMW and Porsche as tags but wouldn’t necessarily pick out descriptions like “sports cars” or “automobiles.” OpenCalais’s technology will now generate these sort of tags, called “Social Tags,” and will analyze content and map it to a knowledgebase based on Wikipedia and other sites. The new version will also extract tags from content written in Spanish. OpenCalais previously supported English and French. One of the neat things about OpenCalais is that it lets publishers combine their content with Linked Data assets from Wikipedia, IMDB and other databases. The new version has also upgraded the Linked Data features for company data, linking to new enterprise information sites like our own CrunchBase. And OpenCalais’s semantic entity database has been spruced up to include recession relevant terms such as accounting changes, labor issues, layoffs, earnings restatements, delayed filings and more. Like Akismet andAnother player in this space is Zemanta, which we’ve reviewed here. div class=”cbw snap_nopreview”> Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Twitter Reschedules Maintenance To Allow Iranian Protests To Continue Posted: 15 Jun 2009 04:36 PM PDT
This is a good move by Twitter. It clearly didn’t want to have to move the maintenance window that it calls a “critical network upgrade,” but the #nomaintenance hashtag that has spent the entire day on the trending topic list, made it pretty clear that Twitter’s users don’t want the service going down at all during this important time. So Twitter worked with its network partner NTT America to reschedule the maintenance for 2-3 PM Pacific, which will be 1:30 in the morning in Iran, rather than during the day. Twitter uses the rest of the post to praise NTT America for its flexibility, but really this is all about Iran. The people over there are using Twitter as a tool of choice to spread information about what is going on, even as other outlets for communication are being blocked. [photo: flickr/.faramarz] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Spiceworks Spices Up Social IT Management Software Posted: 15 Jun 2009 04:15 PM PDT
IT software maker Spiceworks is launching version 4.0 of their desktop software suite that helps a company’s IT staff collaborate with each other and manage “everything IT.” The IT management software, which is free and ad-supported, is currently being used by 700,000 IT professionals at small to medium businesses to inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and run a help desk for their IT networks. The company says the upgrade will be rolled out later this week. The interesting part of Spicework’s software is that it includes a social network for IT pros that they use to help each other out. Its product roadmap is visible to all members, who can vote on which features they want to see next. The top feature, which will be in the new release, is a network map, visually showing every computer and network device on a company’s IT network, along with their relationships and bandwidth consumption. Spiceworks will be integrated with Twitter as well, allowing activity updates to be published to Twitter. IT pros at small and mid-sized companies can band together in buying clubs. And allows users to see how other IT pros have prioritized and managed various Windows Events. Users can now view Windows event background pages and read community group discussions on how to best troubleshoot and resolve related problems. Spiceworks calls this crowdsourced troubleshooting.
The new version also offers plug-ins to manage apps from vendors including Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel and Trend Micro. For example, the LiveOffice Mail Archive Widget will let IT staff archive email accounts from within Spiceworks from the dashboard itself. The Microsoft License Organizer allows users to automatically track Microsoft licenses and to order additional licenses when needed. Spiceworks charges companies like Microsoft and Intel to add these features. Spiceworks has ramped up its virtual help desk feature, letting users now control a help desk from a mobile phone. Users can create new tickets, edit & update existing tickets, and delete tickets remotely. Spiceworks recently added a host of plug-ins and social media widgets, letting users keep track track of alerts, tickets, new software, and new hardware, as well as inventory summaries. Spiceworks also lets users add themes and skins to the desktop, create customized user portals, and lets users drop in news widgets from RSS feeds and social networking widgets for Digg, Facebook, and MySpace  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Is QuickTime X The Missing Link For Flash On The iPhone? Posted: 15 Jun 2009 03:30 PM PDT
The blog, Cateto blog dug up this seemingly small detail that was overlooked during all the other Snow Leopard WWDC announcements. But it’s anything but a small detail. Because if it’s true, that means that this same functionality could very well make it to the iPhone and iPod touch, as Cateto points out. Unfortunately, Cateto doesn’t offer any further detail about how he found out about this .flv support. He simply states is as a fact (I’m going to presume he’s being playing with the developer builds), offers a screenshot, and goes into some detail about how it will work on Snow Leopard. Apparently, after taking a little bit of time to load (depending on the size of the file), the Flash video files will start playing in QuickTime without any conversion needed. And if you want to convert the file to something like H.264 (the video compression format Apple loves to use), you can do that too. So while this is by no means a surefire proof of Flash video support coming to the iPhone or iPod touch (as many commenters are noting, the .flv support doesn’t necessarily mean QuickTime would be a Flash player, it could simply play those files if you can get them from somewhere), it is pretty interesting. Apple has so far resisted allowing Flash videos to play on its device because it claims Adobe’s Flash Player offers poor performance on the mobile side of things. Perhaps Apple has taken a backdoor way to add a certain level of support for Flash video. Apple’s current page for QuickTime X doesn’t mention .flv file support, but it’s a skeleton outline of the software right now. [via Daring Fireball] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| FriendFeed Blocked In Iran, The Service’s Most Active Region Posted: 15 Jun 2009 02:58 PM PDT
By now, you’ve probably heard all about the controversy surrounding the Iranian election and subsequent protests. If not, check here for a solid roundup. And you’ve probably also heard how this has spilled over into the tech world because Twitter has been one of the key points of contact between those inside Iran dissenting, and the outside world. If Twitter escaped being blocked by the Iranian government, you’d think FriendFeed would have too, right? Nope. FriendFeed has been “almost completely blocked” in Iran, co-founder Bret Taylor tells us. You might not think this matters too much since FriendFeed is much smaller than Twitter in terms of users, but the service was hugely popular in Iran, Taylor says. In fact, Iran is one of the service’s most active countries, and it is the most active region as defined by comments per user per day, according to Taylor. Now you can see why Iran apparently wanted to block it. FriendFeed is great at facilitating conversations around topics. The reason for this is that it’s so quick to post a comment and have it be added to a thread. While this can sometimes lead to an angry mob situation, it also can be extremely effective at having a conversation about an important topic in real-time. Except, of course, when the Iranian government blocks you. The only people getting on to FriendFeed from inside Iran now are apparently doing so through proxies. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Bezos Doesn’t Like Google’s Book Settlement Either Posted: 15 Jun 2009 02:53 PM PDT
Google’s book settlement with the Author’s Guild has drawn an unusual number of critics and an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice. Amazon CEO Jefrey Bezos doesn’t like it either. Asked about the settlement onstage today at Wired’s Disruptive By Design Conference, Bezos replied: That settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited. It doesn't seem right that you should kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights. The class action settlement law . . . , you can't believe that is the way it actually works. Google’s book settlement gives it a blanket right to display the text of any orphan work (unclaimed books still under copyright), and to sell digital copies of such works. Since the majority of book actually fall under this category, the settlement would in effect give Google an exclusive right to show or sell these books. Amazon, the world’s largest book store, is not part of the settlement and would have no legal way to sell these same books without exposing itself to copyright violations. There is a way out of this. As I’ve suggested before:
Bezos also had some good advice for company founders and entrepreneurs: “Be stubborn on the big things and be flexible on the details.” On failure, he pointed out that only rarely is the cost of failure more than the cost of not trying anything at all: One of the reasons companies are so non-experimental is that they over-dramatize how expensive failure is going to be. Failure is not that expensive. You almost never hear a company criticized for failing to try something As long as it is not a bet-the-company kind of failure, most companies can survive. Amazon has tried and failed at auctions and search, for example. But its bets on Web services and the Kindle are paying off. The winners pay for the losers. That is important to remember. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Brightkite For Android Coming Soon, Beta Access Open Now Posted: 15 Jun 2009 02:25 PM PDT
The Android userbase may not be quite as big as that of iPhone OS - but man, they are one loud bunch. More so than any smartphone platform past, users of these two operating systems tend to consider themselves rivals of sorts; if you release an application for one, users of the other will begin to clamor almost immediately. It’s been about 8 months since the launch of their iPhone app, but geo-centric social network Brightkite is about to hush the calls of Android-toting Brightkite users everywhere. Brightkite’s CMO and Co-Founder Rob Lawson just wrote in to let us know that Brightkite’s Android debut should be submitted to the Android Market within the next few days, hopefully going live to all sometime within the next week. We’ve just cracked open a big barrel of Brightkite beta. Read on for our first impressions - or better yet, read on to find out how you can get beta access as well. First Impressions: If you liked what you saw of the iPhone app, you’ll probably like the Android app just as much - if not more. At first glance, I thought the Android app was missing a ton of functionality - that is, it seem that everything that’s placed in the row of tabs at the bottom of the iPhone port, such as Friends, the “Nearby” search function, Messaging, etc, was absent. Then I remembered that Android handsets have the advantage of a “Menu” hardware key. Pressed that - sure enough, everything I was looking for was tucked right in that little slide out drawer. It’s a great design decision; when it comes to designing for tiny mobile handset screens, every pixel counts. Moving these navigation items behind a single button press frees up about 15% of the screen real estate.
The interface is well polished, and the functionality is exhaustive - so is it perfect? Not quite. Just like most older brothers, the iPhone port is quite a bit faster than its fresh-faced Android sibling. The only time the Android app seemed quicker than the iPhone version was during the initial startup; after that, most actions took 2-3x longer. Of course, the iPhone release has been around for 8 months, and we’re dealing with beta software on the Android end. Chances are there’s some room for optimization. Beta access: You’re probably tired of hearing us blabber on at this point. iPhone this, Android that - you get it. You just want to play with it yourself. Fortunately, that’s pretty easy. Brightkite has sent over a few scannable QR codes which will get anyone with an Android phone into the beta. Here’s how:
If you’re running Android v1.5, otherwise known as “Cupcake”: If, for some reason, you’re still on Android v1.1: Disclosure: Brightkite’s competitor Loopt should be considered a TechCrunch sponsor, and Brightkite helped pay for the booze at a recent Crunchgear reader meetup. [PSGallery=2j8rwq53dv] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Posted: 15 Jun 2009 02:02 PM PDT
After experiencing torrid growth during the first months of the year, Twitter took a breather in May. According to new comScore data released today, Twitter had 17.6 million U.S. visitors in May, which is only 3.5 percent increase from the 17 million U.S. visitors comScore registered in April. One month does not make a trend, but this is a screeching slowdown from the 82 percent month-over-month growth Twitter had in April and 131 percent growth in March. Recent Compete data also points to a similar slowdown in growth. These are just U.S. numbers. (ComScore measured 32 million unique visitors worldwide in April). But up until now Twitter’s global growth rate has closely followed its U.S. growth rate. Remember, these numbers only reflect visitors to Twitter.com, not the actual number of registered or active users, which is much less. By one count, Twitter had about 11.5 million registered accounts in May. And probably about half of all consumption of Twitter messages occurs in mobile and desktop clients such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck, which comScore doesn’t capture. The past few months, more and more traffic was driven to Twitter as politicians, TV journalists, celebrities and cute cats discovered the service and promoted it. Many people visited Twitter out of curiosity and maybe never returned. The measure of Twitter’s success will be how many of those grazers become active users. A short-term breather is to be expected after the astounding growth Twitter went through earlier this year. But if Twitter can’t convince mainstream users to make it a daily habit, this one-month breather could turn into a longer stretch where the service tries to find its natural audience. What do you think, has Twitter peaked? Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Facebook Finally Catches Up To MySpace In The U.S. Posted: 15 Jun 2009 12:46 PM PDT
It’s over. Facebook is now as large as MySpace in the U.S., according to May data released today by comScore. Facebook actually passed MySpace by a smidgeon, with 70.278 million unique visitors compared to MySpace’s 70.255 million. While Facebook passed MySpace on a worldwide basis last year, as recently as last March, Facebook was still trailing MySpace by 9 million unique visitors. In May, Facebook gained another 2.8 million unique visitors in the U.S. MySpace, which has been stagnating lately and as a result now has a new CEO, lost about 700,000 unique visitors during the month. A few months ago, it looked like it might take Facebook until the end of the summer to catch up to MySpace, but it has already done so. Don’t expect MySpace to reverse this trend and regain its top spot anytime soon. Having just successfully launched its “vanity URLs,” Facebook looks to be on the verge of another hype cycle. Just 15 minutes after the launch, a half million people had signed up for vanity URLs. And as of sometime today, some 6 million users will have apparently signed up — just three days after it launched. Practically everyone is talking about the company once again, from blogs to the mainstream media. And all this stems from a feature (vanity URLs) that MySpace actually had from the get-go. That itself seems to speak to how over this game is. And when you reverse the situation —MySpace recently launched a site-wide IM toolbar, that looks a lot like the one Facebook had — basically no one talked about it. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Ngmoco Hires Away Sega President Simon Jeffery To Head Up iPhone Game Network Posted: 15 Jun 2009 11:53 AM PDT
iPhone game developer ngmoco is announcing today its own cross-promotion publishing network fro iPhone games. The publishing network, called Plus+, will be headed up by Simon Jeffery, the current president and COO of Sega of America. Prior to Sega, Jeffery was president of LucasArts. His new title at ngmoco will be chief publishing officer. This is a major hire for the iPhone game startup, whose CEO Neil Young is also a former star executive from the console gaming world (he came from Electronic Arts). Ngmoco is already one of the top game developers on the iPhone. Its hits include Rolando, Mazefinger, Star Defense, Topple, and WordFu. Jeffery will be running a new business for ngmoco, Plus+ Publishing. The company already cross-promotes its own games. For instance, about 15 percent of Rolando sales come from cross-promotion, according to Young. With Plus+ Publishing, outside iPhone game developers will be able to apply to become part of this cross-promotion network also. Ngmoco will offer to publish and market iPhone games under its own Plus brand, as well as simply cross-promote other games using its own popular games and the other games which become part of Plus+ (with different revenue splits depending on the level of service). Developers who want to apply can email gamemakers [at] ngmoco [dot] com. As part of Plus+, ngmoco is also going to launch its own iPhone social gaming network called the Plus+Network. For any game in the network, players will be able to create a single profile with friends, followers, leaderboards, a metascore across all the games, awards, play challenges, and a game catalog. (Friends are reciprocal, followers are one-way relationships). Ngmoco will roll out this social network in some of its own upcoming games, including Star Defense, Rolando 2, and a real-time first-person shooter. The social network will launch as a standalone network, but Young expects to integrate it with Facebook Connect and other existing social networks as well. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Facebook Employees Speak Their Mind On Holocaust Denial Posted: 15 Jun 2009 11:52 AM PDT
Facebook has also said “we have a lot of internal debate” about the issue. And based on what we’ve seen from public comments by Facebook employees, they remain proud of their company’s position on the issue. The first statement came from Ezra Callahan, currently on the PR team, who wrote “You do not combat ignorance by trying to cover up that ignorance exists. You confront it head on. Facebook will do the world no good by trying to become its thought police.” Facebook Spokesperson Randi Zuckerberg supported Ezra, saying “Really well-written, articulate, and insightful note by Facebook employee Ezra Callahan on being a Jewish employee and supporting Facebook's policy to not remove groups that deny the Holocaust." Over the weekend Facebook employees really got fired up over the issue. Six current and former employees commented on a post I wrote about advertisers starting to balk at their ads being shown around this content. Robert Scoble noticed the debate and started his own over on MobFeed. There is a common theme - that protection of free speech outweighs any damage caused by the existence of this content. That’s an argument that both eBay and MySpace have thrown out the window, by the way. I think it’s important that we force our government to stay out of deciding what’s permissible and not as speech, as much as possible. But private companies don’t have the luxury of a Constitution to force their hand, and free speech experts clearly think that private companies can and should make their own decisions on this type of content. They have the freedom to make subjective choices between right and wrong. To lean on the Constitution and argue a misguided notion that they are pursuing a higher cause isn’t just intellectual dishonesty, it’s irresponsible. To see this kind of hateful content with a Facebook logo sitting right next to it makes me embarrassed to be a member. Apparently, most Facebook employees are far from embarrassed. Those willing to speak out are uniformly in favor of keeping the content. The lone exception, Net Jacobsson, is no longer with the company. That’s a scary signal - one one that isn’t lost on current Facebook employees. The company has a policy and can use the Constitution to make its case. Stand with us or stand apart. Is there really not one single current Facebook employee who thinks this policy is wrong? The comments are below: Blake Ross: “I’m a Facebook employee, so I'll go on record: If Facebook changes its policy on this, it will be wrong, and I will not be proud. Our current policy is correct, notwithstanding your irrefutable citation of a USA Today op-ed.” Blake Ross: “And just to be clear, I'm speaking as myself, not as a representative of the entire company. I know this blog was confused about that the last time Randi decided to express her thoughts.”
Adam Mosseri (responding to me pointing out that he supports all speech, no matter how hateful): “The KKK is a terrorist organization which pose an active threat to the safety of others. Hateful messages to Jews are personal attacks which violate the rights and safety of victims. Denying the Holocaust is ridiculous and deplorable, but forming a group to talk about it isn't an affront on anyone's safety. Implying that the senseless murder of a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC means that all people with similar beliefs pose a threat to the safety of the others is not only irrational, but is also an offensive abuse of a tragedy to further a policy agenda that pays no respect to the victim or his family.” Ddam Mosseri (continues): “I believe that censoring someone because you disagree with them is wrong, but I acknowledge our obligation to the safety of our users trumps free speech. Taking down the KKK page, which contained specific threads, was necessary. You're saying that these Holocaust denial groups, none of which seems to have more than 140 members, are presenting a threat to the safety of other people, and I'm disagreeing. These groups are not responsible for the actions of the murderer in DC, and you're implying otherwise. Undermine my opinion all you like, call me a sheep if you like, but I was open about the fact that I'm an employee - which, incidentally, doesn't mean I don't have a right to my own opinion.” Dave Willner: “Full disclosure - Also a Facebook employee, simply expressing my own opinion. I find your apparent inability to accept that people at the company genuinely disagree with you remarkable. We all totally get that you hold your belief that Facebook's stance on this issue is the wrong one in good faith. But if you want to seriously claim some sort of moral high ground you should, at minimum, do those who disagree with you the courtesy of returning the favor. The stance the company is taking essentially aligns with the Constitutional restrictions on the US Government's ability to criminalize speech. Before anyone raises the canard, I totally understand and completely accept that Facebook is not bound by those restrictions. However, I also don't think that fact is relevant to the moral force of the arguments underpinning the argument. Either using coercive power to censor others except in cases of direct threats to violence is morally dubious or it isn't. If it is, then Facebook's policy here is the right one. If it's not, then the America's radical free speech protections are wrong. Getting a private company to do the censorship doesn't change the moral calculus.”
Blake Ross: “> at the end of the day you just want to fit in with your colleagues.” I”'m baffled by these odd rationalizations. Facebook is an extremely outspoken and heterogeneous group of people. Employees disagree with each other and the company all day every day, and quite loudly. I'll be the first to say that we really fuck things up from time to time, but fortunately this isn't one of them. We're disagreeing with you because we believe you are wrong. We have the same debates internally.” Andrew Bosworth: “Jessica - I'm pretty sure you just accused Dave Willner of empty rhetoric in the same post you compare him to a Nazi. Ironically, he is making a valid point and you are doing nothing but spewing hate. Don't you realize that has real implications in the lives of real people in the world? You aren't just enabling it, you're part of it! This argument is a microcosm of the issue in general, at what point is the judgment on hate speech just the majority enforcing its views on the minority? Yelling fire in a crowded building isn't protected (legally or morally) because it directly infringes on the physical safety of others, something they have a right to in our moral judgement. I think it is pretty clear that these groups pose no such imminent threat. They are distasteful and ignorant to all of us, but they should not be shut down unless they pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others, such as through threats of violence.” Dave Willner: “Please advance an argument against the idea that protecting free expression except to prevent direct harm is a moral imperative. Thus far, the collective response has consisted entirely of false equivalences, attacks on the idea of reasoning, ad hominems, incorrect/incomplete/misinformed assertions, and accusations of bad faith on the part of Facebook. I will not answer these in detail, since they simply are not arguments. However, since we are now in the business of quoting others, let me add some passages of my own: "…there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered…the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." - John Stewart Mill, "On Liberty" "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." - John F. Kennedy "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky "Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." - Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959″ Dave Willner: “@David Appletree - You're still evading the question. The fact that you don't like the politics of the person making a statement has no bearing on the truth of that statement. I'm not always Chomsky's biggest fan either. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand. @Jessica - While I still do not agree with your conclusions, I wanted to start by thanking you for earnestly addressing the argument directly. Quick note, I'm (still) speaking for myself here, not the company. I do not believe that Holocaust Denial, as an idea on it's own, inherently represents a threat to the safety of others. While despicable and untrue, it doesn't not necessarily call for violence against anyone. Any groups which actually directly call for violence, or are so directly racist that their prejudice is a de facto call for violence are already removed….regardless of the idea underdiscussion. I understand that attempting to dispute historical violence could potentially be used to undermine the victims of that violence, but that is simply not a direct threat. Look at the question this way - if Facebook were to remove Holocaust Denial groups, what else should the company also remove as categorically similar? Among other things, it would push the company towards removing any speech arguing that any other historical instance of wide spread violence didn't happen/wasn't as bad as the accepted narrative, e.g. 9/11 conspiracy theory, Armenian genocide denial, potentially groups like "Palestine is not country", large numbers of Serbian nationalist groups that dispute whether break away states are properly countries, etc. Those examples just scratch the surface. I think the crux of our disagreement is the notion you expressed by writing, "We wish to be clear — we have no issues with legitimate political discourse that is contextual, comparative, and truthful." While I, personally, have pretty definite views on the truth/falsehood of these issues, Facebook as a company does not and should not attempt to judge the truth value of ideas discussed in the content we carry, provided it does not meet a number of very clear exceptions (direct threats of violence, attempts to defraud our uses via spam/phishing, etc). Making judgements about truth value necessarily requires Facebook as a company to have an official version of the history of the world. It's relatively straight forward to have set views on the Holocaust. But the proposition gets much much more difficult when you try to take on issues that are less well known in the English speaking world, but matter no less to the lives of those they affected. Having a set version of the truth for all events ever/anywhere involving significant violence is an unachievable proposition on it's face. Plus, it's clearly censorious and runs directly counter to Facebooks purpose as a communication platform. I also do not believe it's teneble to special case the Holocaust. First, special casing any event inherently deprioritizes other peoples suffering, which I think is pretty morally dubious. While I totally agree that it was the worst instance of industrialized mass murder in history…I'm very wary of using that as grounds because it strikes me as weak place to think from. If a similar tragedy that claimed more victims happened tomorrow would the Holocaust be any less horrifying? Clearly the answer is no but the "worst ever" logic points to an answer of yes. If we then tried to special case two events, the question becomes why only stop at those two events? Anyway, while you've yet to convince me, thank for directly addressing the questions. This kind of discussion is productive for everyone, especially when we don't agree.” Dave Willner: "What if someone wanted to post a group entitled 'Most people who are gay are homosexual due to sexual abuse'? I have no idea whether this statement is truthful or not, but shouldn't Facebook leave it up so we could all engage in discourse about it? Investigate it? Hash it out? What if someone put up a group called 'The Bible frowns upon homosexuality' or 'Gays can choose not be gay'?….I'll tell you right now, FB employees who have their own fan page against California Prop 8 would go nuts if they saw such groups and they'd delete them faster than your head could spin." http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2201212877 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=150174035284 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=87767017523 “ Dave Willner: "If protecting the Freedom of Speech except in cases of direct threat is a moral imperative, then it's a moral imperative. If you think that it isn't, please explain why." Likewise, if you think discussion of the Holocaust can/should be handled differently than discussion of the many other incredibly horrible events in human history, please explain why. If you instead believe that it fits into a broader category of tragedies that can/should be handle differently, please specify which events and what criteria should be used to select them. Finally, quoting you above: "The only thing that gets you people to take action is negative publicity, the threats of lawsuits, or government action, etc." If that were the case, wouldn't we have already changed our stance? This article isn't exactly seem favorable.” Net Jacobsson (former employee): “As a former Facebook employee. I really disagree with their policy on this. This is not about freedom of speech - its about hate. Facebook can as a private company take a firm stance against hate on its platform. Even President Obama, said last week in Buchenwald that holocaust denial is hate.. "To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened," Obama said at a news conference at the gates of the camp. Such statements are "ignorant, baseless and hateful." Facebook is a very powerful platform for sharing, spreading information & organize people. I believe that with such a powerful tool demands a higher sense of moral responsebility. It is never too late to change and its is never too late to say "we were wrong". Again - this is not about the freedom of speech - its about hate.” Mark Slee: “Michael, you've crossed the line here. You are now taking advantage of the senseless murder of an innocent civilian and using it to further your own personal agenda against Facebook's policies. This behavior is shameful and dishonest. This murder has nothing to do with Facebook. Grow up. Rather than turning this travesty into a tool in your policy crusade, let's all show the victim and his loved ones the respect they deserve.” Update: comment screenshots taken from Holocaust denial groups on Facebook today:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| YouTube: Choose Your Own Adventure, Emphasis On “Ad” Posted: 15 Jun 2009 11:31 AM PDT
On a “small percentage of videos,” you will now have the option of watching one “Promoted Video” (a video someone is paying for YouTube to promote, so yes, an ad) at the beginning of the clip, or choose to see a few different in-stream ads throughout the clip. And if you choose the one long clip beforehand, you will get to choose which clip you watch. Unfortunately, “none” is not an option. Joking aside, this is sort of an interesting way to do advertising. I can’t imagine that many people will have the preference to watch one pre-roll ad over another, but the option to do either a pre-roll or mid-stream ad is a nice one. Hulu has been testing a similar option, though I have yet to see it. I would definitely opt to sit through a long ad before a show or movie plays rather than having the interruptions throughout. Of course, as we all know, most people would choose this pre-roll option and proceed to completely ignore the ad, so it will be interesting to see if YouTube sees that happen as well with this option. It seems smart that YouTube is including the pre-roll video ratings when you’re making your selection of which one to watch, so perhaps a high rating will entice some to watch it. And at least these promoted videos aren’t always just straight-up ads, and instead are sometimes people who really, really want their videos to go viral and are willing to pay for it. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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Former MySpace CMO 
We’ll say it right off the bat: there’s a good chance you have a recent version of Adobe Reader installed on your computer, so that probably means you’ve also installed 
It’s not clear exactly what data was pulled (years, transaction size, etc.), although there are more details 
Earlier tonight, we spent some time at an open house to show off the new Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Previously, the company had its HQ on what’s considered to be Palo Alto’s downtown area on University Ave. But that HQ was spread across a collection of buildings, and at nearly 1,000 employees now, Facebook grew too big for that. It needed a campus.
Yesterday, we wrote about 
Twitter had been planning to have a 90 minute downtime tonight for maintenance. Given what’s going on over in Iran right now, that was a problem. And so Twitter has decided to 
Now this is interesting. Apparently, the new version of Apple’s video playing software, QuickTime X, will support the playback of .flv files in Snow Leopard. Yes, Adobe Flash files.
The 
Adam Mosseri: “I don't understand how one can rationalize censorship, no matter how wrong or evil the message. It's not the place of government, news media or communication platforms to tell anyone what they can or cannot say. I'm a Facebook employee and speaking for myself, not as a representative of the company.”
Dave Willner (responding to another commenter): “Thinking carefully and in detail about an issue that affects more than 200 million people isn't "mental gymnastics", it a duty. Stop avoiding the question with ad hominems and false assertions. Argue against the argument. If protecting the Freedom of Speech except in cases of direct threat is a moral imperative, then it's a moral imperative. If you think that it isn't, please explain why. I am willing to be convinced…but only by actual reasoning, not by assertions of fact, accusations of bad faith, and the statement of simple equivalences.”
As we all know, advertising has been a tough nut for YouTube to crack. While a lot of videos feature overlaid ads at the bottom, some have been testing in-stream video ads that run before, during and after videos. Today, YouTube is starting to | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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