The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- The Facebook Death Star Moves Across The Web Universe (Slides)
- China Scales Down Controversial Web Filtering Plans
- Help Key: Why 120Hz Video Looks “Weird”
- In A Tight Economy, Outsourced Developers On oDesk Work 100,000 Hours A Week
- DreamIt Releases Ten Startups Into The Wild
- Videos: Probably Fake Apple Tablet In Action. But Awesome.
- CheddarGetter Wants To Get Your Startup Some Cheddar (Invites)
- Social Mobile Games Are Hot. $3 Million Hot
- It Begins: Celebrities Start Whoring Themselves As Virtual Gifts On Facebook
- 23andMe Agrees To Pay For Tweets If You #BlameDrewsCancer
- Google Reader Unleashes A Gaggle Of Nice Social And Feed Management Updates
- YouTube Places New Emphasis On Search With Homepage Tweaks
- OS X Snow Leopard May Beat Apple’s Timetable. On The Prowl In Just Two Weeks?
- FanSnap Raises Another $5.2 Million For Its ‘Kayak For Event Tickets’
- Yelp iPhone V.3 Hits The AppStore - Find Local Deals
- Chrome For Mac Continues March Forward With Bookmarks And Better Flash
- Google Privacy Opt Out Announced Via The Onion
- Full Details On Mint’s $14 Million Series C Round
- Oh, By The Way: The Palm Pre Phones Home With Your Location
- Facebook Grew Twice As Fast As Twitter In July
- Socialcast Introduces Official Developer API For Cross-Company Collaboration
- Wear Your Favorite Place on Earth
- Another Positive Sign For The App Store: Proof Of A PR Team
- iGoogle Releases Social Gadgets
- That Coming IPO Boom? Think More OpenTable Than Google
| The Facebook Death Star Moves Across The Web Universe (Slides) Posted: 13 Aug 2009 07:32 AM PDT
In June, Facebook became the fourth largest site in the world after only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo sites. But how did it get there? Click through the slideshow above to see the advance of the Facebook Death Star across key markets (the U.S., UK, France, Italy, and Spain). Each slide shows a snapshot in time, starting with January, 2008 to June or July, 2009. The charts are based on comScore data and show the relative reach (X-axis), usage (y-axis), and time spent (size of bubble) on various popular sites in each market over time. Facebook is represented by the blue sphere. You can see how it moves across the Web universe passing sites such as AOL, MySpace, and YouTube (overseas) and getting a larger and larger as it progresses. In the U.S., Facebook’s growth continues at a remarkable pace, but the changes in the UK and France are the most dramatic. In the UK, in particular, note how a year ago it was it was neck and neck with Bebo, but by June Bebo had shrunk and lost reach, while Facebook had gone on to pass Yahoo, YouTube, and eBay as well. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| China Scales Down Controversial Web Filtering Plans Posted: 13 Aug 2009 06:59 AM PDT  (Relatively) good news from China for the World Wide Web as a whole today: The government today announced it will (partially) back down over its controversial internet monitoring filter software "Green Dam Youth Escort". As a reminder, the software is supposed to protect Chinese web users from harmful content, especially from online porn, and was to be made mandatory with all PC shipments in the country from July 1 this year.
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| Help Key: Why 120Hz Video Looks “Weird” Posted: 13 Aug 2009 06:56 AM PDT  I've been testing an HD projector here at the house and, in its initial, out-of-the-box setting we found that the picture was ridiculously "sharp." The picture, I suppose, looked like an old Dr. Who episode where the action on screen is smoother than the background, creating a jarring disparity when watching movies with lots of movement. It's sometimes called the "Soap Opera Effect." We decided to do a little digging to figure out why. Most film is recorded at 24 frames per second, but your LCD TV probably either displays at 60 fps or 120 hz (hertz is just a measurement of frequency per second). There are three main ways to cope with this. First is to simply display each frame longer, this is the oldest technique in LCD tech. However, its undesirable side effects include the possibility of motion blur, or of judder. Judder is an artifact of adjusting the framerate and it looks like a sort of stutter in movement that would otherwise be smooth (a slow pan, for instance). The second technique is one used on Plasmas and CRT TVs. Instead of showing a bright image the whole time, they display the frame, then a short frame of either darkness or a very dimmed picture. This alleviates much of the issue with judder and motion blur as it allows your brain to fill in the gap faster than you can consciously notice. It is also an old technique, and is used in theaters. It provides the traditional cinema feel.
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| In A Tight Economy, Outsourced Developers On oDesk Work 100,000 Hours A Week Posted: 13 Aug 2009 06:26 AM PDT
The economy may still be trying to pick itself up, but one beneficiary of tighter budgets is outsourcing marketplace oDesk. Web developers and software engineers looking for project work can find jobs on oDesk, and employers can post jobs. Workers download PC-monitoring software which lets employers keep track of exactly how long they are on the job, even if it is in their pajamas at 3 AM. As a result, oDesk publishes aggregate data on the “oConomy” and how many collective hours a week are being billed through its service. In July, the hours worked on oDesk surpassed 100,000 a week for the first time, and $65 million worth of work was posted on the site. In contrast, oDesk workers are earning about $6 million a week (because the value of job postings is for the entire job and not all get filled). oDesk takes a 10 percent cut, implying an annual revenue run rate of $7 million or $8 million. That is still a drop in the bucket of the overall tech economy, but it is an indication that outsourcing is growing in the down economy. Competitor Elance, which covers a broader set of industries, shows similar trends. oDesk is backed by Benchmark Capital and has raised $29 million, most recently a $15 million round last year. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| DreamIt Releases Ten Startups Into The Wild Posted: 13 Aug 2009 06:00 AM PDT
In a similar vein as Y Combinator, TechStars, Launchbox, and other incubators, DreamIt Ventures provides up to $30,000 in seed funding and twelve weeks of tutelage to local startups in exchange for equity. Below is a description of each company in DreamIt’s class of 2009, as provided by DreamIt co-founder Michael Levinson.  Notehall URL: http://Notehall.com Notehall is an online marketplace that allows college students to buy and sell lecture notes and study guide materials to fellow classmates helping them get an edge in their specific classes and best prepare for exams. Notehall is currently active and generating revenue at the University of Arizona, Arizona State, and University of Kansas and has 13,000+ active users and 5,500+ documents available for sale. In Notehall's marketplace, college students have earned over $13,000 from selling their class notes and study guides. While at Dreamit, Notehall has successfully launched an automated recruiting campaign at Drexel University and is planning to rollout its service to more universities beginning in Fall 2009. Notehall is also in the process of completing a capital raise.
OurShelf is a social cataloging site that lets users manage their belongings, lend or find the items they need faster and cheaper. Users save money from borrowing short-use items such as books, music, movies, and videogames from friends and they make money from selling their unused items to multiple third-party sites, like eBay and Craigslist. The site provides users with a digital shelf. They can catalog their belongings through an import functionality or OurShelf’s search engine. A populated shelf allows users to create a highly personalized shopping and item management experience. OurShelf achieves this by laying an item graph (complete with related items and reviews) over a social graph. It's like del.icio.us, except for the physical goods users own. OurShelf is in public beta.
For many people, the amount of information coming into their inboxes is overwhelming. And for news-tracking professionals and resource-strapped small businesses, this information overload costs precious time and money. There has to be something better than Google Alerts. Parse.ly is a tool that tries to understand users’ unique interests to filter and prioritize content from thousands of news and blog sources across the web. Parse.ly always tries to show users the content most relevant to their interests first, so they will spend less time on low-value items. Parse.ly also automatically learns users interests, and recommends increasingly relevant content over time. Moreover, Parse.ly is designed with a spare web interface to provide people with the most productive reading experience.
Postling is a tool that helps small businesses face the daunting task of social media marketing. The company comes from two founders of Etsy.com (Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik) and Etsy’s former head of product management (David Lifson), Postling lets users publish content simultaneously to the major social media platforms, including blogs (Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Tumblr), Twitter, and Facebook. In addition, marketers and entrepreneurs can view and respond to comments left by readers across various social media. Small business owners told the Postling team that they would be willing to pay for a social media marketing tool that saves them time and spares them from learning how to navigate yet another website. They listened and created Postling. The service costs $9/month or $90/year.
SeatGeek is a web application that forecasts sports and concert ticket prices on the secondary market, analogous to what Farecast (now Bing Travel) does for airline tickets. For ticket buyers, this application helps them determine whether they should buy a ticket now or wait until the price drops. For sellers, it helps them identify the optimal time to sell their tickets and increase their profits margins. SeatGeek's crawlers have compiled millions of ticket transactions and have also aggregated other factors that influence ticket prices. SeatGeek’s patent-pending technology uses this data in an algorithm that attempts to accurately predict ticket prices. Currently, SeatGeek offers a free version for ticket buyers that is monetized through affiliate fees. In October it is launching a premium subscription service for brokers and other ticket sellers
Straight Up English is an innovative Web-based English-language learning company. Straight Up English is hoping to solve the most persistent speech challenges for non-native speakers of English, helping them improve comprehension and communication in areas such as word stress, intonation, and pronunciation. The company applies research-based teaching methods from linguistics and education, allows for feedback and self-correction, and has a consumer-oriented, intuitive interface. Straight Up English has a deep focus on oral communication skills unique to English and its multi-modal approach. It is creating web and mobile applications, as well as cultivating English-as-a-second-language communities among students and teachers to build brand awareness.
Three Screen Games is producing social games across all three screens (pc-mobile-tv). Their first game, released this August, will be FanGamb, short for Fantasy Gambling. FanGamb is a new online game for sports fans that creates a competition between friends to see who the best sports bettor is. FanGamb is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional fantasy sports games by being more fun and keeping players more engaged. While all sports fans can enjoy the game, the marketing plan is focused on reaching male sports fans, ages 16 to 25. Three Screen Games is in the final process of closing a six figure seed round.
Trendsta is a marketing platform that puts products in the hands of the most influential teens on the web. Trendsta tracks those teens as they create buzz about those items. Since this summer, Trendsta has landed a number of notable clients including Atlantic Records, Penguin Books, Neutrogena and Polaroid. Trendsta works with the most connected teens who have been written up in publications including Teen Vogue and the New York Times. Trendsta’s partners helped build myYearbook, Owned (a top 10 Facebook app) and several lead-generation websites. Now they are solving the problem of how marketers can connect with a generation that can no longer be reached through traditional advertising channels.
Jobaphiles.com is an online marketplace where employers can auction their part-time jobs and one-time gigs. Through a transparent bidding process, Jobaphiles enables employers to hire the most qualified and competitively priced applicant, saving them time and money Employers post jobs, and job seekers bid down the wages. Job seekers effectively compete for a job by having knowledge of other candidates' qualifications and their bidding price, and employers are able to hire the most qualified person that fits their budget.
Kidzillions is an online allowance and chore management system that lets kids spend and save online. Unlike other online allowance systems, Kidzillions combines the benefits of budgeting, saving and responsible spending, helping kids learn essential lessons about personal finance and accountability in a cashless society. Kids like it because they’re able to work for real money to buy real stuff easily, and parents like it because their kids are excited to save and (hopefully) do extra chores around the house. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Videos: Probably Fake Apple Tablet In Action. But Awesome. Posted: 13 Aug 2009 12:58 AM PDT Simply by Apple’s law of averages, the likelihood that the following two videos are real, is very small. If someone was able to sneak out one video of the Apple Tablet in action, it’d be a miracle, but two? Now you’re just tempting fate. Still, that isn’t stopping Brian Lam of Gizmodo from wondering if there could be something to these (even though his colleague disagrees). And you know what, even if they aren’t real, Apple should consider hiring whoever made them, because this seems like the right idea. Sure, certain details are off, like the text alignment on some of the elements as ZDNet points out. But just look at this system in action. It’s like having multiple iPhones on the same giant touch screen (and that may actually be exactly what this is). Regardless, whatever this is or isn’t, I want this. I was unsure if the app model would be better or worse than running a version of regular OS X on the Apple Tablet, but I’m definitely leaning towards better recently. And after seeing this, I hope Apple is too. Also enjoy some images posted in the MacRumors Forums of the same purported device.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| CheddarGetter Wants To Get Your Startup Some Cheddar (Invites) Posted: 13 Aug 2009 12:17 AM PDT
The idea is to have a service with an interface that any developer can figure out, but at the same time, has flexible options so that it can support models like subscriptions, micro-billing, or donations. And the main key to all of this is its rich APIs, which you can read about here. Using CheddarGetter, you won’t have to worry about declined credit cards, coding for pricing changes, handling trial times and all the complicated stuff that comes with payments. And the services does things like automate email sending for confirmations, and gives you an analytics package, to make your job easier. The key part aside from ease of use is obviously cost. And CheddarGetter sounds pretty compelling with prices starting at $39 a month. Larger rivals can charge hundreds of dollars a month for the same services. And CheddarGetter has no setup fees, transaction fees or percentage fees. It’s simply the $39 a month and then forget about it — assuming you stay small. If your startup takes off and you need to manage beyond 1,000 customers, the prices obviously go up. The Advanced package is $169.00 a month for up to 10,000 customers, and the Premium package is $549.99 a month for up to 50,000 customers. Or, if you only slightly go over the alloted number of users, there is a small per-customer overage fee you can choose to pay rather than upgrading. And no matter what payment scale you’re on, there are zero transaction and setup fees. CheddarGetter is the first startup to launch from SproutBox, an Indiana-based incubator. It’s currently accepting applications for a new crop of early-stage startups, but hurry, the deadline is August 15. The service isn’t set to launch until September, but we have 100 invites to give away now. Simply visit this page and use the code TECHCRUNCH1 in the ‘Got a Beta Code?’ box.
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| Social Mobile Games Are Hot. $3 Million Hot Posted: 12 Aug 2009 11:07 PM PDT
Seattle-based Z2Live, a new mobile social gaming platform, is announcing a second round of financing tomorrow - $3 million from Madrona Venture Group (also Seattle based), topping off the $1 million they raised from Madrona last year. Paul Goodrich from Madrona is on the company’s board of directors. The company describes itself as “the first mobile multiplayer game platform,” and has created a multiplayer platform for the iPhone/iPod Touch products. They also offer a set of services to implement subscriptions. The platform, they say, supports a wide variety of social games, including: turn-based casual games, racing games, role-playing games, and eventually the most sophisticated first-person shooters. The platform is free, Z2Live takes a cut of revenues from the games. The company has a complicated corporate structure. Z2Live is a division of Zero260, which launched another product this year called PhotoFeedd. The companies were founded by David Bluhm and Damon Danieli. A YouTube video shows a sample game called Showdown: Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| It Begins: Celebrities Start Whoring Themselves As Virtual Gifts On Facebook Posted: 12 Aug 2009 08:18 PM PDT  It was only a matter of time. Over two years after its virtual goods marketplace opened, Facebook has cast away its innocence and started to sell virtual gifts emblazoned with celebrity faces and paraphernalia. Leading the charge is worldwide music star Britney Spears, who now has six gifts prominently appearing in the marketplace. Britney’s set of gifts was designed in collaboration with Susan Kare, the famed designer responsible for creating the icons on the original Macintosh, as well as many of Facebook’s other virtual gifts. The initial selection includes a schoolgirl outfit, a birthday cake, a multicolored balloon, and a classic shot of Britney’s performance with a boa constrictor. And in case you were worried that these digital masterpieces were somehow counterfeited, fear not: the press release we received says that they were all “signed by Spears herself”. Seriously. Of course, these will sell like hotcakes to Britney’s legions of fans (she has over 2 million on Facebook alone). And they’ll also likely get a fair bit of use from mischievous young men who will send them to their friends and giggle incessantly. Either way, Britney and Facebook win: each gift costs $2 (most gifts cost half that), and you can be sure Britney is getting a piece of the action. It’s only a matter of time before we see a bevy of other celebrities sporting their own sets of gifts. And in a way, it’s sort of sad — I’ve always enjoyed virtual gifts because they were charming, featuring things like cupcakes and penguins. Granted, there have certainly been some corporate sponsored gifts (someone gave me Coors Light bottlecap at some point), but even then they were usually hand drawn. The photographs of Britney just look out of place. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| 23andMe Agrees To Pay For Tweets If You #BlameDrewsCancer Posted: 12 Aug 2009 06:48 PM PDT
The genetic testing startup has agreed to donate $1 for each of the first 500 unique tweets that use the hastags #blamedrewscancer and #23andMe. These tweets will start counting after the site reaches its 10,000 person who has tweeted for the cause, which will be sometime tonight. The money will go towards the LIVESTRONG foundation for cancer research. 23andMe is also donating 5 of its new $99 research kits, to be raffled away to Blame Drew’s Cancer followers, also to benefit the LIVESTRONG foundation. Along with that, 23andMe is donating a kit to the namesake of Blame Drew’s Cancer, Drew Olanoff, to add his results to their Research Revolution project. And soon you’ll be able to buy the $99 kits through the Blame Drew’s Cancer site, with $5 of each sale going to LIVESTRONG, Olanoff tells us. In addition to all of that, 23andMe has agreed to be the main sponsor of Olanoff’s 24-hour Blame-a-thon happening on 9-9-09, and being streamed live to the web. This is another example of Twitter being used for charitable purposes. Last week, we wrote about TwitCause, a service that wants to spread the word about various good causes on Twitter — much like Causes does on Facebook and MySpace. BlameDrewsCancer is taking more of a grassroots approach, but it appears to be working. Watch Olanoff in the video below. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Google Reader Unleashes A Gaggle Of Nice Social And Feed Management Updates Posted: 12 Aug 2009 05:39 PM PDT
But that’s hardly all this update contains. You can also now easily send feed items to a number of places including Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blogger, and others. To enable any of these, simply go to the “Settings” area of Google Reader and enable the ones you want to use. If the services you want aren’t listed, you can even customize the “Send To” feature to enable sending items just about anywhere. Another new feature allows you to easily subscribe to feeds owned by people you are contacts with. This is an obvious, but nice addition, as it makes it easier to locate feeds you may be interested in — assuming, of course, that you’re actually interested in the people you follow on Google Reader. This feature also includes Twitter updates, so you can easily import all of those and see that person’s tweets through Google Reader if you don’t feel like scanning Twitter all day. But the best feature of the bunch may be the ability to have more control over the “Mark all as read” functionality. We all use the “Mark all as read” button when we’re too far behind on our feeds to possibly catch up. But now you can just mark items that older than a day, a week, or two weeks as read, saving the newest ones for you to still be able to read. That’s a great idea. Google Reader still has some social issues, but it’s hard to argue with any of these features.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| YouTube Places New Emphasis On Search With Homepage Tweaks Posted: 12 Aug 2009 05:29 PM PDT
The new version has eliminated most of the clutter and color of the old design, in favor of something that’s unquestionably more Googleish. Before now, navigation buttons like “Home” and “Videos” were likely the first thing people looked at — now, there’s no question that the default action on the site is going to be search. The layout also does a better job categorizing the main features of the site: the left side is now dedicated to finding videos, the right is dedicated to uploading and managing the clips you’ve seen. It may not sound like a huge deal, but just as very small tweaks on Google can have a major effect, a minor change to YouTube’s design may well change the way people use the site. I won’t be surprised if YouTube sees a marked boost in search queries as a result of the new masthead.
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| OS X Snow Leopard May Beat Apple’s Timetable. On The Prowl In Just Two Weeks? Posted: 12 Aug 2009 05:16 PM PDT
Amazon put Snow Leopard up for pre-order a few weeks ago with the following note: “Please note: Official release date has not been announced by Apple, though they have indicated this product will be released sometime in September.” September is also the timetable that Apple gave at its WWDC event in early June. But with the GM version already out there, there are whispers that Apple may have beaten that goal. Friday, August 28 is the day Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is hearing, and he has a very good track record of being right about such things. As we noted last week, OS X 10.5.8 was likely to be the last update before OS X 10.6 dropped. But an August ship date would certainly be a welcomed surprise. That would also mean nearly a full 2 month head start over Windows 7, which is scheduled to ship October 22. August 28 is also just two weeks from this Friday, so if Apple is really going to launch it then, expect some kind of press release in the next few days. Earlier today, AppleInsider gave some details about the Snow Leopard installation process, which apparently has quite a few differences from the OS X Leopard install. OS X Snow Leopard is going to sell for only $29.99, as Apple is considering it mostly a performance upgrade over OS X Leopard. But the performance improvements are expected to be significant, and the footprint of the install has been significantly reduced (due mostly to the fact that it’s Intel-only). [photo: flickr/wwarby] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| FanSnap Raises Another $5.2 Million For Its ‘Kayak For Event Tickets’ Posted: 12 Aug 2009 05:11 PM PDT
FanSnap allows users to search dozens of ticket providers at once, including sites like StubHub, eBay, and RazorGator. The site now claims an index of 13,169,532 available tickets to 33,653 different events. The site goes well beyond standard price listings too — instead of simply showing a Craigslist-style list of available tickets, FanSnap offers a visual map showing off exactly where in a stadium each ticket corresponds to. It also shows how valuable each ticket is using using a color key and alerts users to tickets it deems to be the best buys. For more, check out our full review of the service here.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Yelp iPhone V.3 Hits The AppStore - Find Local Deals Posted: 12 Aug 2009 04:45 PM PDT
Version 3, which should be available soon, adds more useful features. The one that really stands out is “Sales And Offers Near You” which lets users find deals that are physically close to them. Sort by distance (in blocks), price, whether the business is open right then, or by neighborhood. Businesses can add special offers for free on their business page. Other features include movable maps, and new ways for users to add content. Users can vote on reviews with UFC buttons (useful, funny or cool) and send compliments to reviewers. Users can also now follow Talk conversations via the iPhone. Too bad none of this stuff is available on the Android. I might actually use it. Oh well, at least I can watch via the video below: Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Chrome For Mac Continues March Forward With Bookmarks And Better Flash Posted: 12 Aug 2009 03:04 PM PDT
The latest builds of Chromium for Mac have added support for the importing of bookmarks and now features a bookmarks bar by default. This was one of the features that many users had been stating they would need before they started using it full time. Well, now those users can. There’s also good news on another front: Flash is now much more usable in Chrome for Mac. Previously, we wrote when it started working to play videos on YouTube, but now you can actually pause and jump around those videos just like on any other web browser. One word of caution is a few times, entering HD mode for YouTube videos caused the Flash plug-in to crash. But, as Google has been touting, the crash did not crash the whole browser, instead I just got a small drop-down notification that to plug-in was shut down. Opening a new tab, re-enabled it. There is also a slightly new Tab homepage in these latest builds. And there is now the ability restore thumbnails that you have previously removed on this Tab page, which is nice. And while I’m not entirely sure that this is new, you can set the default search engine as well. Though, humorously, Bing is not an option, only Live Search is. While I’ve been using these Chromium builds on and off for casual browsing, mostly just to test them, I think I’ve hit the point where I’m ready to try using it full-time. I’m simply having a hard time finding things that don’t work on it. Sure, plug-in support isn’t fully baked yet, but as a non-Firefox user, I don’t really use plug-ins anyway. And yes, many of the themes are hideous, but the default one looks pretty nice — though I would like to see nicer-looking folders for bookmarks. The yellow ones remind me of Windows 3.1. As DownloadSquad noted earlier today, these latest builds of Chromium are labeled as version 4.0+. Might we see an official public launch of Chrome for Mac when the software is ready to hit version 4.0? It’s looking possible, and I’d bet that will be sooner rather than later.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Google Privacy Opt Out Announced Via The Onion Posted: 12 Aug 2009 02:37 PM PDT
For some additional time wasting this afternoon, see some of Google’s April Fools jokes mixed in with more Onion stories. One of the links below is actually a real product. Try to guess which one before you click on any. Via CrunchGear
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Full Details On Mint’s $14 Million Series C Round Posted: 12 Aug 2009 02:29 PM PDT
The $14 million round was led by DAG Ventures, and also includes newcomer Founder’s Fund. Existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and Sherpalo Ventures all participated as well. Patzer declined to comment on the company’s valuation, but says that it is “decidedly an up round” and that it was preemptive. Mint hasn’t disclosed its revenues, but Patzer says that they’re up 8x year over year. Since launching at TechCrunch40 in 2007, Mint has grown to 1.4 million registered users, tracking $175 billion in transactions and $47 billion in assets. The site also reports that it has identified $300 million in potential savings offers for its users. It primarily makes its money by generating leads for financial institutions, but it’s also sitting on a goldmine of user data that it hasn’t even begun to tap into yet. Because Mint pulls data directly from financial institutions, it knows where people are shopping and how much they’re spending. It can use this anonymized data in aggregate to track performance of entire industries or even individual stores. Up until now Mint hasn’t done anything with its merchant level data, but it’s beginning to open that up to press (see the chart below for a look at how the downturn is affecting grocery stores, which shows high end stores like Whole Foods and Bristol Farms taking a big hit in the down economy). This kind of data can be very valuable — don’t be surprised if we start seeing Mint leverage in other, more lucrative ways.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Oh, By The Way: The Palm Pre Phones Home With Your Location Posted: 12 Aug 2009 01:37 PM PDT  This is going to end well, and no one will be upset about this. Also, everything I said in that last sentence is probably wrong. When Debian developer Joey Hess started tinkering with webOS, he noticed that it was sending something to Palm once a day. Surely, Palm wasn't sending anything too potentially incriminating without making it blatantly obvious to the user, right? Wrong. Update: Updated with Palm's statement on the matter.
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| Facebook Grew Twice As Fast As Twitter In July Posted: 12 Aug 2009 01:20 PM PDT
If it wasn’t bad enough that Facebook bought FriendFeed on Monday and turned on real-time search to better compete against Twitter in the Stream Wars, and is playing around with a lite version that resembles Twitter even more, now Twitter really has something to worry about. Facebook is growing faster than Twitter in the U.S., even though it is more than four times larger. In the month of July, according to the latest estimates from comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the U.S., which was 14 percent higher than in June, 2009. Twitter, in contrast, only saw 21.2 million unique U.S. visitors to its Website, a 6 percent rise compared to the month before. In absolute terms, Facebook added about ten million new visitors in the month of July versus roughly one million new visitors for Twitter. At 87.7 million uniques, Facebook moves from the sixth largest Web media property in the U.S. to the fifth, passing the combined sites of Fox Interactive Media (80.9 million uniques) and coming within striking range of AOL (104.8 million). That is just in the U.S. Facebook is already the fourth largest site in the world (and Twitter is doing better worldwide as well, with a total of 44.5 million unique visitors in June). Note that these estimates are only for Twitter.com and do not include mobile or desktop clients such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic, or Tweetie, but it should be a good proxy for overall growth. Even if you double the numbers for Twitter, Facebook still trounced it in July (and the Facebook numbers don’t include activity on other sites other apps via Facebook Connect either). These are month-over-month comparisons. On an annual basis, Twitter is still growing its audience much faster (2,614 percent ) than Facebook (124 percent) because it is coming off such a smaller initial base of users and this was the year it entered hypergrowth. But that hypergrowth seems to have slowed since the end of April, at least in the U.S. Between April and July, Facebook grew 30 percent in unique U.S. visitors, while Twitter only grew 25 percent, so it is more than just a one-month aberration. So what happened in June to accelerate Facebook’s growth? I don’t think it was the vanity URLs. Rather, on June 24, Facebook turned on the “Everyone Button.” Facebook members who didn’t have public profiles (i.e. most people) all of a sudden had the option to share items in their stream with everyone else on Facebook, and they could decide to do this on an item-by-item basis. The more items that are shared publicly, the more people who can see them. I believe this is what happened (and have asked Facebook for confirmation). Not only did this drive more people to Facebook, but it also increased the time spent on the site by a whopping 36 percent in June versus July. Twitter saw its time on site grow 26 percent in the same period, although in the chart comparing the two below you can hardly tell because Facebook users spent an estimated total of 15.8 billion minutes compared to 4.75 million minutes for Twitter. What that tells me is that the stream becomes more engaging the more public it becomes.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Socialcast Introduces Official Developer API For Cross-Company Collaboration Posted: 12 Aug 2009 01:14 PM PDT
With the new Socialcast API, both internal IT folks or outside developers can extend the product with new functionality. And companies who are partners can expose their Socialcast activity streams to each other for cross-enterprise collaboration. Rather than just confining the stream to one organization, this would make it more like a true enterprise version of Twitter, or the recently acquired FriendFeed, where you may follow colleagues inside and outside your company. The API allows developers to build native clients or internal applications, accessing the Socialcast activity stream. To get access to the Socialcast API, you’ll have to already have an account, and from there, you’ll find all the information. Socialcast Founder and CEO Timothy Young mentioned that Socialcast aims to be a platform, and not a tool like Yammer, or Twitter. Socialcast currently has over 7,000 companies, both free and paid accounts. When asked about the security of the API and Socialcast platform, Young acknowledged that security is a big concern and that Socialcast takes security very seriously with SSL encryption. Socialcast has raised a total of $1.4 million from True Ventures and is based in the South Park area in San Francisco, Calif. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Wear Your Favorite Place on Earth Posted: 12 Aug 2009 12:58 PM PDT  Do you guys remember my belt buckle? It's cool, right? What could be cooler than a QR code belt buckle? How about a silver brooch that displays a topographical map? I know, right?! At almost 300 euros the Earth Brooch imposes a pretty hefty premium for a one-of-a-kind gift, but you've got to admit that it is pretty cool.
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| Another Positive Sign For The App Store: Proof Of A PR Team Posted: 12 Aug 2009 12:23 PM PDT
Now, to be clear, the email we’ve received has nothing to do with any App Store issues, and is instead just a pretty standard PR email promoting some iPhone/iPod touch apps for the upcoming NFL season. But the key here is that it came from someone in “App Store Public Relations”. From what I’ve heard, the company fairly recently broke the iPhone PR team in two, with one side focusing on the hardware, and the other on the App Store, and this would seem to be proof of that. In the past, I’ve received similar emails, but they were always from the more general iPhone PR or Apple PR teams. Of course, this doesn’t ensure that the App Store PR team will be any more responsive to inquiries about problems with the store, but it looks like it could be another positive step in the direction of more communication, which is good. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| iGoogle Releases Social Gadgets Posted: 12 Aug 2009 11:53 AM PDT
In an interview yesterday, Google VP Marissa Mayer and iGoogle Product Manager Rose Yao said they hope to engage users with social games and sharing with friends. We then played a quick game of Scrabble on iGoogle. We saw some early tests of social gadgets from Google earlier this year. This is the latest enhancement to iGoogle, which Google launched in 2005 and has been pushing as an alternative home page by periodically promoting it on Google.com. According to the latest Comscore stats, they still trail Yahoo’s 44 million monthly visitors - iGoogle is second with 25 million monthly visitors, followed by My MSN with 4.6 million and Netvibes (which has tried its own social platform) with 1.3 million. Things haven’t changed all that much from 18 months ago. There are a total of 60,000 or so gadgets available on iGoogle today. The available Gadgets: Google gadgets
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| That Coming IPO Boom? Think More OpenTable Than Google Posted: 12 Aug 2009 10:27 AM PDT
Sure everyone brings up LinkedIn and Facebook as the potentially huge homerun IPOs in the wings, but a lot of the companies queuing up look more like OpenTable. The reservation Web site deserves props for making it out in a tricky time— the weekend it was picking its bankers one declared bankruptcy and another sold itself to a competitor. And yes, the price has impressively stayed above the $20 opening. But take a closer look at the deal: Only three million shares were floated to the public. No wonder the price has held– hardly anyone is in the stock. With a whopping 18 million still owned by insiders and investors, OpenTable looks more like a private company that just did another round of funding than a public company. Given that insiders of other private companies are increasingly cashing out shares in later private funding rounds, is there practically a lot of difference returns-wise between a heady Series E or a small IPO with such a tiny float? OpenTable’s real test will be what happens once insiders start selling to get liquidity. CEO Jeff Jordan addressed that in his first post-quiet period interview, shot last week for my Yahoo show, TechTicker. (Clip below, around the seven minute mark.) Jordan also notes at the two minute mark in this clip that since OpenTable priced, he's been getting a flood of calls from Valley CEOs who are thinking about filing, so expect the mini-registration boom to continue. Actual returns for the beleaguered asset class, however, will be a different story. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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Philadelphia based 
Say you’re a startup, and say your plan is to make money (crazy I know), but maybe you don’t have the infrastructure in place to accept payments for whatever your business model is. There are plenty of solutions out there to do this for you, but 
A couple months ago, 
A few days ago, I sent out 
As the most popular video portal in the world, it comes as little surprise that YouTube is also effectively the second most popular search engine, coming after only Google in overall search queries. With that in mind, it’s a bit surprising that the site hasn’t done a better job at featuring this ridiculously popular functionality — instead of placing the search box at the far left or right side of the screen, as most sites do, YouTube has instead tucked it a bit off center, embedded in its somewhat cluttered masthead. In light of this, YouTube has decided to totally revamp the design of the top of its homepage, and will be rolling out a new version today.
There’s been 
We’ve already written a half dozen times or so about how the Mac version of Google’s Chrome browser continues to surge towards 
The Onion 
Apple’s App Store policies have been under fire for months now. It looks like tensions are starting to thaw following 
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