Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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The EPA Gives Could Give the Chevy Volt a 230 MPG Rating. What?

Posted: 11 Aug 2009 07:13 AM PDT

You know that strange viral marketing campaign popping up around the Interwebs as of late? Well, we know what it means now thanks to GM's CEO Fritz Henderson and it's somewhat impressive - and a tad dubious. GM is claiming that under the new EPA guidelines, the Chevy Volt will hit 230 MPG. The Volt would be the first car to ever earn a triple digit number. Take a look at the current high-mileage kings and that 230 MPG rating really sinks in. The EPA handed the Prius a 51 MPG city ranking and the Insight a 41 MPG. The EPA says that the Ford Fusion hybrid can get 41 in the city and the Camary Hybrid 40 MPG in the city. With hyper-mileage tactics like killing the engine to coast down hills and fancy pedal work, a few obsessed drivers have pushed a few of these cars into triple digit territory.


In a Move I’m Calling “Too Little, Too Late, Too Proprietary,” Major Labels, Apple Are Introducing Their Own File Format

Posted: 11 Aug 2009 06:48 AM PDT

For years you've been using the well-supported, ubiquitous file format called MP3. It's an international standard, it works just fine in every media player, and other universally-accepted formats are in place for the album artwork, lyrics, and what have you. Sounds like you're ready for a new, unified format that no one has ever heard of and, if introduced five or six years ago, might have been revolutionary! Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI are all throwing their weight behind the CMX format, soon to be the laughing stock of the internet.Oh, did I mention that Apple, who makes like 200% of the MP3 makers in the USA, is making their own competing format, which pretty much guarantees that CMX will only be usable by things like Windows Media Player?


Video: Hitler Is Not Pleased About Facebook’s Acquisition Of FriendFeed

Posted: 11 Aug 2009 04:09 AM PDT

picture-151Seriously, these never get old. An enterprising soul has tonight re-created the pivotal Hitler scene from the movie Downfall, but done so with subtitles explaining why Hilter is so mad that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed.

This meme seems be done for just about everything on the web these days, but this one is particularly good because it’s full of good insider-y references. And it closely echoes some of the actual backlash against the news today which played out on FriendFeed.

Among the choice lines:

  • “It was a complete talent grab.”
  • “I even remember what it was like before Robert Scoble got here!”
  • “I used FriendFeed to argue about Obama and talk about health care, and to like tons of pictures from NASA that were awesome, not to spend my time posting pictures of bacon and talking about mangoes!”
  • “Of all the companies, they went with Facebook. They could’ve been acquired by Google and I would’ve been happy for them. Or even Twitter: That I could understand. But Facebook?! What the hell?!”
  • “Don’t worry, we still have Plurk.”

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Apple Planning Some Super Secret Social App?

Posted: 11 Aug 2009 03:45 AM PDT

picture-142Again, this is nothing but a very vague rumor for the time being, but it’s also very interesting. Following up on its iTunes 9 rumors, Boy Genius Report claims to have new details from the same trusted source about what iTunes 9, and specifically the social aspects of it, will entail.

As expected, the tipster says you’ll be able to broadcast songs you’re listening to out to various social networks. But the really interesting thing is the reference to some new social application that Apple is supposedly getting ready to launch. It’s not clear at all if this would be a desktop app or an iPhone app, but it is said to be something that consolidates your various social networking activity from around the web into one place.

Is Apple planning a FriendFeed-killer after Facebook has already essentially killed FriendFeed? That would certainly give the team a good reason to sell, if they caught wind of that. But who knows, it could be anything, or it could very well be nothing. Hopefully we all know by now how rumors, especially Apple rumors, work.

Regardless of what Apple has in store, if there are social elements added to iTunes, it will be a big move for the company. Right now, they basically have absolutely no social strategy beyond a bit of Facebook and Flickr integration in iPhoto. And yes, there are plenty of apps that use Facebook Connect, but that has basically nothing to do with Apple itself.

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Delicious Creator Quietly Launches Threaded Twitter Conversations

Posted: 11 Aug 2009 03:17 AM PDT

picture-121Joshua Schachter is best known as the creator of Delicious. But a few years after he sold it to Yahoo in 2005, he left the company and joined Google. Since then, he’s been known to speak his mind about Delicious’ overall direction (which he doesn’t seem to like), and it’s pretty clear that he still has the desire to create. And that’s exactly what he did tonight, quietly launching a new service he’s developed called a tiny thread.

The idea is simple, take tweets and thread them together to form conversations, adding context. This works by using the a tiny thread site to both start new conversation threads, and add your comments to old ones. After authenticating via OAuth, your comment is then sent back to Twitter, with a link back to the a tiny thread conversation page.

The site’s look is sparse (not entirely unlike early Delicious), but it’s very easy to follow conversations. You can see a good example thread here. Right now, the threads only go one level deep, so it actually very much resembles a FriendFeed comment section. FriendFeed, was of course just bought today by Facebook, and its future is uncertain.

Other sites have attempted to thread tweets together in the past, but the results vary because of things like retweets that either break threads or add too much noise. Right now, it appears you can only add to these a tiny thread conversations on the site itself, so it works pretty well. But when you send the tweet back to Twitter, it just reads, “I joined a thread: is this thing on?” followed by a link to a tiny thread. It might be more interesting if it said what you actually said in the thread, enticing people to click on the link to read the full context.

It would seem that Schachter, who has been tweeting out links to this for about the past hour or so, did this on his own time, rather than his Google 20% time. Again, it’s extremely simple, but kind of interesting — especially in a post-FriendFeed acquisition world.

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Yellix Pulls Facebook Contacts And Their Status To Your Cell, As They Call

Posted: 11 Aug 2009 01:13 AM PDT

Today Yellix, a self-funded mobile startup from Vienna hits the crowded mobile app market. Yellix offers an interesting way of connecting your Facebook friends with your mobile device. By installing the free Facebook application onto your cell phone your Facebook friends are matched with your cell contacts - in real time. There are a number of apps out there that do this, but few pull real-time info from Facebook.

It’s not entirely clear how this is done technically but the app runs on Android, RIM BlackBerry, Symbian or Windows Mobile platforms. When you get a call the app syncs with the Facebook app and immediately lets you see who is calling, their Facebook profile picture and the last status update of that person.

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RXVantage Taps Into Massive Pharma Sales/Marketing Budgets

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 11:10 PM PDT

New startup RXVantage is releasing a really smart SaaS product into a huge market - drug and medical device marketing.

Selling stuff to doctors is really big business - $60+ billion a year in the U.S. alone is spent annually in marketing to physicians by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. 175,000 reps visit offices and hospitals 110 million times per year to pitch their wares.

Today, pharma reps drop by offices in person just to schedule an office meeting with the physician down the road. They often do sample drops of medications and do a little pitching while the doctor signs for them. The average drop meeting lasts 22 seconds, for which a rep might wait up to 2 hours.

Top prescribers are visited by more than 100 reps per week, and meetings are scheduled as much as a year in advance.

Enter RXVantage.

RXVantage is “Open Table for doctors” - it’s web based scheduling software that doctors and pharma/medical device companies use to calendar those visits, manage appointments, etc. It’s free for all parties to use, and premium features are available to the marketers if they choose.

The company is just preparing to launch nationwide but has had a 2 year closed beta in Rhode Island and Massachusetts with 450 doctors and 400 reps from 75 different pharma companies. The results - 94% of the doctors pitched started using the system, and the average rep reported 4-5 more appointments per month.

The premium version of the software, which is $25/month/rep, allows those reps to get alerts on canceled appointments (and an opportunity to fill it), targeting of relevant doctors and other features.

The company has raised $1 million to date and is currently raising a second round of financing.

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Dell to Launch China-only Mobile Phone After All, Calls It “Ophone mini3i” (Updated)

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 09:03 PM PDT

We broke the news on Dell launching a China-only cell phone on Sunday, and today major Chinese news portal 163.com reports the device is on its way: What Dell will be offering in China is an Android-powered "Ophone" called the mini3i. China Mobile, the world's biggest carrier, will distribute the device and plans to launch it as early as "in the middle of this month" (which could mean any day this week). China Mobile plans to establish Ophone as a new brand and sell a number of devices from different makers under it. Apart from Dell, Lenovo and another Chinese company called Dopod [CN] (aka HTC) are expected to release Ophones in the next few days.


YC-Funded JobSpice Makes Resumes Web Friendly, With A Facebook Co-Founder At The Helm

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 08:45 PM PDT

When most people are faced with the task of building their resume, they fire up Microsoft Word, trudge through a few generic looking templates, and export their page to HTML. Usually this results in something that’s either boring, weird looking (because of formatting issues), or just plain ugly. JobSpice, a new startup that’s launching tonight, is looking to help users build web-friendly resumes that are as good looking as they are easy to customize.

JobSpice comes with a good pedigree: it is part of the latest batch of Y Combinator funded startups, and is co-founded by Andrew McCollum — a Facebook co-founder who served as the social network’s original designer.

Of course, there are already plenty of ways to build your resume — aside from Word, there are a number of online services that will do it for a price, though founders McCollum and Dane Hurtubise say that these generally can be pricey, going for upwards of $100.

In contrast, JobSpice is free, and it goes a long way toward making resumes visually appealing with a minimum amount of effort. To do this, the site takes advantage of the naturally structured formatting of resumes and optimizes it for the web. JobSpice uses CSS to style the resumes it generates, which means you can totally rework the appearance of your resume with a minimal amount of effort (and experienced web designers will be able to tweak their resumes to their hearts’ content).

At launch JobSpice only has around ten designs available, but it’s allowing users and graphic designers to submit their own designs to the library, which will then be shared with everyone. For now all of these designs will remain free, through the company hasn’t ruled out offering premium designs at some point in the future.

Because of the modular design of each resume built by the service, JobSpice makes it easy to customize resumes for each person you send them to. Simply check off which sections you’d like to include in your resume depending on what an employer is interested in, and the site will generate a unique URL for that version of the resume. You can also easily export your resume to PDF.

To monetize, JobSpice has a few strategies in mind. In the short term, they’re going to offer premium features like custom domains. Further down the line, the company is hoping to use its service to streamline the hiring process, allowing employers to more effectively search through candidates and to help candidates find jobs. Given that there are obviously some very established sites in this space like Monster and CareerBuilder this is likely going to be quite challenging, though there is certainly still plenty of room for improvement on these.

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Caffeine: It’s Google On Red Bull, Or Something

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 08:23 PM PDT

2906514471_01fd1a7549Search Engines are like sharks: If they stop moving, they die.

Okay, I’m not even sure if that’s really true about sharks. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But still, it is true about search engines, in that they have to keep innovating and updating, if for nothing else to stay ahead of spammers. Google, as the king of search engines, obviously has been doing that constantly throughout the years. Some of the changes are noticeable, but most are subtle tweaks on a rolling basis.

But today, the company has begun testing a new engine for its search product that’s a big enough change that it felt compelled to let the world know about it. Codenamed “Caffeine”, it promises to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

The test, available here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, really doesn’t look any different at first glance. And Google notes as much, saying that these changes are primarily under the hood. When you hear that, most people will probably assume this means speed in showing results.

So is it any faster? It’s hard to tell. Most results on Google are already so fast, that shaving a nanosecond here or there hardly seems to matter. By Google’s own counter (which show up along the top of every Google result page next to the number of results), the results are mixed. Sometimes Caffeine wins, sometimes regular old Google wins.

But reading Google’s statement, it seems that by “indexing speed” they may mean the speed at which they index pages behind the scenes, putting them in the results. It’s difficult to test that immediately, it seems like something you may start to notice over time as content comes in faster.

One thing I do notice is that across the board, Caffeine seems to have more results in its index than regular Google does. But it’s hard to tell if that really matters since most people never get to the end of the millions of results for items (and for most, in fact, you can’t).

In terms of actual results, they seem to be mostly the same. Doing the same search on each, a few results change positions, and some different ones appear, but it’s largely the same for the words I tested.

Google’s Matt Cutts worked on the project and has a Q&A on his own blog that is interesting. Here’s my favorite part:

Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?
A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we've done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don't think we'll ever stop trying to improve.

To me that brings to mind two companies immediately: Twitter and Bing. Those are the two services doing the most interesting things around search right now that could potentially challenge Google. But the Google team claims it has been working on this project in secret for the past “several months,” so if you believe that, it stands to reason that this at least probably isn’t a direct response to Bing, which is newer.

And I like that answer. Too many companies focus on directly going after competitors by doing exactly what they’re doing, or attempting to. With Caffeine, it doesn’t appear Google is trying to do that, but instead is just trying to improve what it already does well. Of course, you can have that luxury when you’re the king.

I do wonder though if Google doesn’t do anything to change the appearance of its results, even if those changes are meaningless (adding more pictures, etc), if users won’t perceive that its rivals are out-maneuvering it. Still, better results cannot hurt, especially as some tests suggest that the rivals may be catching up to Google in that regard.

Google is doing this public test now to get feedback from users, presumably before deploying it into wide release on google.com.

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[photo: flickr/mararie]

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Ooyala Brings In Jay Fulcher As New CEO

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 08:18 PM PDT

Last month we reported that Silicon Valley based Ooyala, a service that manages video streaming for websites, was looking for a new CEO to take the business to the next level. Today they’ll be announcing that new CEO - former Agile Software CEO Jay Fulcher is now the CEO of Ooyala, and his first day on the job was today.

Founding CEO Bismarck Lepe will remain on board as President of Product Strategy.

From my post last month:

And now they're considering the hire of a new CEO, we've confirmed. Bismarck Lepe, the current CEO, says he's actually been looking for his replacement for the last year. This isn't being driven by the venture investor, Sierra Ventures, he says. And in fact the founding team retains stock and board of directors voting control, making their consent a requirement of any CEO change. Lepe just feels as though he isn't necessarily the guy to take the company to the next level, whatever that may be. So he's retained a search firm to find someone better than him to run Ooyala.

The company is certainly doing well. We first covered them in late 2008 and they already had big name customers like National Geographic, TV Guide, AOL, and Warner Brothers. Today, Lepe says, they stream 250,000 - 350,000 hours of video a day through partners. One Michael Jackson video last week racked up 70 million views in just 36 hours.

Agile Sofware was acquired by Cisco in 2007 for $495 million. Ooyala has taken just $10 million in funding to date.

Here’s a video with the whole exec team, including Fulcher:

Update: The press release:

Mountain View, CA– Ooyala, the leading provider of end-to-end video platform applications and services, today announced the appointment of Jay Fulcher as President & Chief Executive Officer. Former CEO and Co-Founder Bismarck Lepe, who led the company since its inception in early 2007, has been appointed President of Product Strategy, reporting to Fulcher.

Most recently, Fulcher served as President & CEO of publicly held Agile Software, where he helped establish Agile as a market leader as it became the fastest growing product lifecycle management (PLM) company in the industry. Fulcher led the sale of Agile to Oracle in late 2007. Prior to Agile, Fulcher spent five years at PeopleSoft, where he led the transformation of PeopleSoft’s $1+ billion global services organization after being President of its $400 million Products Division. Prior to PeopleSoft, Fulcher held senior executive positions at Red Pepper Software and SAP.

“Jay brings the necessary experience, track record and passion to lead our company. We are extremely pleased to have attracted a CEO of Jay’s caliber to Ooyala,” said Bismarck Lepe, co-founder of Ooyala. “He will have an immediate impact on our aggressive plans for growth.”

"I am really excited to be joining Ooyala during this period of hyper-growth,” said Jay Fulcher. "Online video is an increasingly fast growing and strategic market, as traditional and new media channels finally converge. Ooyala is well positioned to not only be the industry's best video platform, but to provide the most personalized video experience to consumers and the most lucrative monetization platform to content owners. Ooyala’s innovative products and customer-centric philosophy will enable the company to become the leader in this market." Fulcher was attracted to Ooyala because of its focus on developing game-changing technology and the impact IP-based video will have on the future. “IP-based video is now a powerful reality and with that comes opportunities to better target advertising and deliver the content consumers want on their terms,” said Fulcher.

Ooyala already has over 500 global media and enterprise customers including Warner Brothers, Electronic Arts and Sybase. “Ooyala has been able to grow faster than any other Online Video Platform company because of its focus on technology, customer success and personalization,” added Fulcher. “I am excited by the prospect of taking that early success and leveraging it to build a large, innovative and profitable business.”

Fulcher will join Ooyala and become a member of the Board of Directors, immediately.

Embeddable Video: Introduction & FAQ with Ooyala Founders and New CEO: http://www.ooyala.com/blog

About Ooyala Inc.
Ooyala is a video technology company that provides a comprehensive software platform enabling the delivery, management, and monetization of high quality online video content. Its innovative analytics engine and monetization server allows for video content owners to maximize the value of their content. Ooyala’s partner portfolio includes over 500 enterprise and media companies including Warner Brothers, Wenner Media, Fremantle, Armani, Sybase and Electronic Arts.

For more information please visit www.ooyala.com.

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Nambu Wants $80K-$100K For Tr.im, Considers Shutting Down Its Twitter Client

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 06:54 PM PDT

picture-81Earlier today, we reported on Bit.ly offering Tr.im parent Nambu Network, a couple of ways to ensure all its links don’t die when the service stop supporting them at the end of the year. Nambu rejected those, as it is instead looking to sell. Now we know the price it’s asking for: As of right now, they’re seeking something between $80,000 and $100,000, three separate sources have told us.

Not surprisingly, all three are balking at that price. After all, the main reason Nambu is giving for folding Tr.im is that it can’t compete against Bit.ly when Twitter is actively promoting and using it as its default link shortener. Still, several other parties have reached out to us to say that they are interested in purchasing the service (though they did not appear to know the price tag).

We’re also hearing that Nambu Network is also considering shutting down its Nambu Twitter client, again citing Twitter’s preferential treatment of others. Currently, Nambu has a desktop and iPhone client.

Again, Tr.im URLs are going to be supported through the end of the year, so there is still plenty of time for a buyer to step in and scoop up the service. But with so much negativity surrounding it now, and not great numbers to begin with, will anyone?

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Pics: The Facebook/FriendFeed Deal Signed Under The Cover Of Night

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 05:46 PM PDT

With all the hoopla over the Facebook’s $50 million acquisition of FriendFeed today, it’d be nice to see how it actually went down. And now we can, thanks to pictures FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, who posted some pictures of the two sides immediately after signing the deal in the wee hours of the morning.

As you can see in these pictures, this deal was obviously important enough to Facebook that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself is there. Also pictured from Facebook is Vaughan Smith the director of corporate and business development. From FriendFeed, there were three of the co-founders Buchheit, Bret Taylor and Jim Norris (Sanjeev Singh, the fourth co-founder, was not there because he was getting on a plane, Buchheit notes).

I’m still not entirely sure that these pictures are of the deal signing, and not of the crew getting ready to play a game of pick-up basketball.

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The Cost Of FriendFeed: Roughly $50 Million In Cash And Stock

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 04:32 PM PDT

picture-71Everyone is obviously talking about the Facebook/FriendFeed deal, but everyone wants to know one key detail: How much did Facebook pay? Now we know: Facebook paid nearly $50 million when you add the $15 million it paid in cash with roughly $32.5 million (based on current valuations) in stock, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The stock is the key part of this deal. Its value is derived from the $6.5 billion common valuation after a recent purchase of employee stock by the Russian investment group DST. But what’s really interesting about the stock is that these are options that vest over a set period of time (”several years,” says WSJ), just as employees in the company get. Compared to the Parakey deal in July 2007, in which the company got only cash and no stock, this seems like a pretty nice deal (assuming that Facebook’s stock eventually pans out, of course).

Another interesting question about this is what Benchmark Capital, FriendFeed’s outside investor, got? It’s certainly possible that they’re taking the cash, while the FriendFeed employees take the stock. Benchmark invested a small part of the company’s $5 million round in early 2008, so a $15 million exit would be pretty solid. But that’s all just speculation, it’s hard to know what Benchmark is getting for sure.

What else is interesting about this $50 million number is that it is 1/10th of what Facebook was apparently willing to pay for Twitter late last year. One big hold up in that deal was that Facebook was offering mostly stock, while Twitter wanted more cash (we heard roughly 20% would have been cash, with the rest coming in stock). Another big problem was that the stock Facebook was offering Twitter was apparently valued based on the ridiculous $15 billion valuation after Microsoft’s investment in October of 2007. The $6.5 billion common stock valuation seems much more reasonable. Too bad for Twitter.

[photo: flickr/tracey o]

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Drama: Zynga Founder Mark Pincus Gets TRO On Old Tribe.net Colleague

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 04:29 PM PDT

Something dramatic is going on between Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and one of his old employees at Tribe.net, a company he cofounded in 2003. Pincus has obtained a temporary restraining order on Darren McKeeman, formerly the IT Director at Tribe. Cisco acquired the company in 2007.

Pincus hasn’t returned a request for comment, but the TRO was filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco.

McKeeman is prohibited from contacting Pincus at all, and must stay at least 50 yards away from him. He is also explicitly prohibited from any of the following to Pincus: “harass, attack, strike, threaten, assault (sexually or otherwise), hit, follow, stalk, destroy personal property, keep under surveillance or block movements.” He is also restricted from purchasing guns or other firearms, and must sell or turn in any guns that he owns.

McKeeman’s only response so far: “Note to everyone: don’t lie in things you file in court! It will come back to haunt you! I’m quite happy these morons did lie, though.”

Someone pass the popcorn.

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Facebook Flips The Switch On Real-Time Search, Goes After Twitter Where It Hurts

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 04:21 PM PDT


Just hours after we broke the news that Facebook had acquired FriendFeed comes Facebook’s announcement that it’s deploying its improved search product to everyone. This improved search functionality, which has been in testing since June, gives users the ability to search through shared media and status updates from their friends and the Pages they follow. And, perhaps more importantly, it lets users search through updates shared to ‘everyone’. The gloves are off — Facebook is going after Twitter where it hurts.

The new search will be a breath of fresh air to anyone who has previously tried to search Facebook for, well, anything. Under the old system, users had to browse through clunky categories to find their results, and there wasn’t a way to search though status updates or shared items at all. Now you’ll be able to simply click through different tabs on the left side of the page to jump between different categories, much as your would jump between Friends List on the Facebook News Feed. Another change is the way Facebook lets users ‘Search The Web’ — now these results are shown as a filter, rather than on their own page. And Facebook has also changed the search engine from Live.com to Bing, Microsoft’s rebranded and improved search engine.

These changes are especially important because search has long been one area where Facebook fell well behind Twitter. Twitter Search has become an amazing tool for finding the most up-to-date information on a variety of topics, including everything from breaking news to movie reviews. Facebook has slowly been making headway in this area by allowing users to share status updates with ‘everyone‘ (before that only your friends could see status updates). But until now there hasn’t been an easy way to actually search through those public updates, which made the feature useless to most people.

Now you’ll be able to jump over to Facebook search, click ”Posts By Everyone” and use it in much the same way you would use Twitter Search. You’ll see a list of matching updates from other users on Facebook, and a message at the top of the screen will update in real-time, alerting you as new updates containing your query come in.

For the time being it looks like Facebook isn’t promoting the feature too heavily — the ‘Posts By Everyone’ is the last item in the list of search filters, and I suspect that Facebook has relatively few users who are sharing their updates with the public in the first place. That will likely change soon though, as Facebook is planning to roll out a new suite of privacy options that will suggest that users begin sharing some of their data publicly.

Facebook’s 250+ million active users still dwarfs Twitter’s userbase, so even if only a small fraction of them begin using these new features, it won’t be hard for Facebook to become a serious contender in the real-time search race.

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Benchmark Capital’s Big Day

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 03:38 PM PDT

If you’re a partner at Benchmark Capital, you’re having a very good day and celebrating two separate portfolio acquisitions.

That’s sort of like an unassisted triple play in baseball, it just doesn’t happen that often. Maybe that’s why the team looks so darn happy in their website picture. Partner Peter Fenton (labeled Rock Star in photo) led both deals.

The first is Friendfeed, which was acquired by Facebook for an undisclosed sum. Benchmark was the sole venture capital investor in Friendfeed, which raised a $5 million in an early 2008. Benchmark now has stock in Facebook, the hottest IPO prospect in Silicon Valley right now.

The second is the much larger deal - VMWare’s $400+ million acquisition of Springsource, an enterprise and web application development and management startup. Benchmark was the biggest investor in Springsource, which raised a total of $15 million in two rounds of financing prior to the acquisition.

These weren’t the only wins for Benchmark this year, either. They were also investors in Pure Digital (acquired by Cisco for $590 million) and OpenTable (went public in May).

Benchmark still holds the record for (probably) the best venture investment in history - they turned a $6.7 million investment in eBay in 1997 into $5 billion by 1999. Partner Bill Gurley talks about that deal and Benchmark in general in our video interview with him last year.

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VMWare Acquires SpringSource

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 03:21 PM PDT

picture-15Today VMWare has announced the acquisition of SpringSource, a provider of Web application development and management services. The deal closed at a $420 million valuation, with $362 million in cash and equity plus an assumption of approximately $58 million in unvested stocks and options.

SpringSource is a notable proponent of “lean software,” a concept that is gaining traction in the enterprise space as a means of accelerating the delivery of business applications in the cloud. With the acquisition, VMWare and SpringSource will partner with goals of delivering a platform that allows clients to “more efficiently build, run and manage applications in both internal and external cloud architectures.”

"VMware has led the modernization of datacenter infrastructures through innovative virtualization and cloud architectures, providing customers with cost savings, agility and choice," said Rod Johnson, chief executive officer, SpringSource. "The SpringSource team and community are committed to revolutionizing the way companies build, run and manage applications. By combining forces, I'm confident that we'll be able to deliver a set of truly remarkable solutions that dramatically simplify enterprise IT."

The move comes shortly after a small exodus of talent from Google to VMWare. It is also interesting to note that Benchmark Capital is SpringSource’s largest investor, with Peter Fenton sitting on the company’s board of directors. Benchmark is also an investor in FriendFeed, so the firm is likely enjoying a nice start to the week.

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Facebook Takes FriendFeed To Take On Twitter

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 02:36 PM PDT

picture-53So, Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. But what does it mean? Well despite the rhetoric of some that this is a minor deal because FriendFeed’s audience was small compared to that of its acquirer Facebook, or even Twitter, this deal should actually have some wide-reaching implications for the future of how many of us use the web socially.

Talent And Features

Let’s be clear, from what all involved parties are saying, this was a talent acquisition. Facebook has no need to integrate the entire FriendFeed service into its site which has over 250 million users. Actually, it already has a FriendFeed, its News Feed. But as we’ve pointed out numerous times, Facebook’s News Feed was simply not as good as the social stream FriendFeed had created. So instead, what Facebook will do is integrate the best features of FriendFeed, with the help of the people who built them.

Actually, Facebook had already been basically doing that (whether on purpose or not), something which led me to write in my very first post for TechCrunch back in April (appropriately titled “You Will Be Using FriendFeed In The Future — But It May Be Called Facebook”) the following:

But I think it's FriendFeed that Facebook should be more closely following [rather than Twitter], given what it wants to do with its service. That's especially true when even more information starts coming into the site by way of Facebook Connect. Twitter has exploded in popularity because it's so simple — but it's far too simple for everything that Facebook want to do. But FriendFeed seems to be morphing into exactly what Facebook wants to be.

Given that FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor said that there had been talks between the two sides for a while, it would seem that Facebook understood that. The incredible speed at which FriendFeed was developing and deploying new features — features which Facebook should have — was too hard to ignore.

Social Feeds

And why any of this matters is that an improved News Feed is what Facebook needs to hold off the challenge from the company that once spurned it, Twitter. Twitter is still growing fast, and its more-open nature is turning it into the social platform of choice, something which Facebook used to be.

Facebook has a great opportunity to be the web’s central hub thanks to its Facebook Connect product which not only allows users to sign into other sites with their Facebook IDs, but also brings data back into Facebook from all around the web. But as was evident after the last News Feed (and total site) redesign, it has been difficult for Facebook to figure out how to handle and best showcase all that social data coming into the site.

FriendFeed has been very good at that, albeit on a much smaller site. But it’s not like these FriendFeed guys are amateurs. Almost the entire team comes from Google, including co-founder Paul Buchheit who was integral in the building of a little service known as Gmail.

Messaging

Speaking of Gmail, this is pure speculation, but what if once the News Feed has been updated, if Facebook decides to use Buchheit and co.’s services to build a better messaging system? MySpace just completely revamped their system, and Facebook’s is pretty poor.

Of course, one could also argue that with a killer social stream, it may negate the need for a revamping of the email system. After all, FriendFeed does messaging very well right now with its combination of public and private comments and posting.

Filtering

One aspect that is small but hugely important for the social stream, is filtering. Facebook had been getting better at it with various groups you could place contacts into to sort your stream, but FriendFeed was again, much better.

Here’s a perfect example. When one of your contacts on Facebook posts and item that you don’t care to see, you have the option to hide it. But if they’re constantly posting the same type of item, you can only either hide them each time, or hide that entire user. With FriendFeed there were several more options, including hiding elements from just a certain source, as well as automatically unhiding items if a friend had “liked” it.

I could go on; let’s just say FriendFeed’s method is much, much better.

And Twitter? Yeah, they badly need filters, pronto.

Search

Twitter Search has shown a glimpse of the power of being able to get at up-to-the-minute information in real-time. But again, FriendFeed does it better. Twitter search isn’t able to scan farther back then a couple weeks, but FriendFeed search scans the service’s entire history.

And FriendFeed search actually does update in real-time. This constant flow may annoy some users, but FriendFeed smartly implemented a system that pauses when you hover over one element. Twitter has been experimenting with real-time refreshing of search on its new widget, but the main search product still requires a manual refresh.

And Facebook search? Well, they finally rolled out a revamp of it today, after several weeks of testing. Previously, it was quite bad, scanning only static information. It’s better now, but still not at the level of FriendFeed search. Down the road, this acqusition should help that as well.

The Open Debate

But today’s acquisition also extends beyond that of Facebook’s services. A lot of current FriendFeed users are expressing displeasure with the move because they saw FriendFeed as a true bastion of hope for an open social stream versus Facebook’s closed method. While Facebook’s Chris Cox is saying the right things today about Facebook’s desire to be open, and there has been some progress, the process has been really slow. And plenty wonder if Facebook really wants to be open at all.

The same people also see Twitter as more open, but still relatively closed use of the social stream, because its APIs are limited. FriendFeed, which recently launched a new version of its own APIs had the respect of the developer community for their openness, if nothing else. Now, a lot of users are upset at the prospects of a very open service being lured behind a wall.

The Twitter Paradox

Something else that is interesting in all of this is just how reliant FriendFeed has been on Twitter as a source of its data. We saw this first hand the other day when Twitter went down (and cut off its APIs) due to the DDoS attacks. FriendFeed was much, much quieter without the tweets coming in.

Facebook has applications that allow you to import your tweets to update your status as well, but as we’ve seen, neither side seems to particularly care when those applications just stop working for weeks, or break.

The FriendFeed team clearly saw the value of Twitter in their ecosystem, but with Facebook, it’s wouldn’t be surprising if the emphasis will be less on Twitter, and more on Facebook’s own status updates. But if Facebook is smart, they may let FriendFeed do to its News Feed exactly what it did to the FriendFeed stream, which is open it up to all those Twitter updates.

The reason is that while Twitter itself remains important in that scenario, it’s possible that with Facebook’s 250 million plus users, a lot of the conversation (meaning comments) will start to take place on Facebook (just as it did on FriendFeed). This will slowly devalue Twitter over time as users realized they can have these conversations and cut out the middle man. This happened to a smaller extent when FriendFeed added the ability to post your own messages right to FriendFeed.

The Big Picture

This acquisition is a very smart move by Facebook to bolster its product, especially as it relates to the real-time web. One thing it does not do however, is make Facebook simpler. I’d still argue that Twitter has an inherent advantage over Facebook because it is so much simpler to use, resulting in a much lower barrier to entry. But naturally, with the complication comes a lot more data, and data is ultimately be the key for a larger battle for the web, so it’s a trade-off.

Where this leaves FriendFeed as a service is still up in the air. The team has said FriendFeed will continue to run as-is for the time being, but made no promises about the future. Cox’s comments seem to indicate that FriendFeed will be a sort of farm system for the big league Facebook, which I’m sure will piss off plenty of FriendFeed devotees.

Eventually, one way or another, it’s hard to see FriendFeed as it stands now, continuing on. Facebook will begin to take up too much of the FriendFeeders’ time, and it will languish. It’s sad, but that’s the web. Not every service can flourish. There simply aren’t enough users with enough time to use all of them.

So this move was also smart in a long-term sense by FriendFeed because it ensures the awesome technology it has fostered with FriendFeed will continue on, and could one day reach a billion people.

One thing is for certain, the Facebook/Twitter battle just got a lot more interesting. And those are always fun to watch.

[photo: flickr/conerwithonan]

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First Interview After Acquisition With FriendFeed And Facebook

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 01:18 PM PDT

Details on the Facebook acquisition of Friendfeed story that we broke earlier today are still coming in. But we had a chance to talk with Friendfeed cofounder Bret Taylor (pictured right) and Facebook VP Products Chris Cox a few minutes ago to discuss the deal and the product integration plans going forward.

On How the Deal Happened

Cox and Taylor won’t talk deal terms or even if the deal was stock, cash or a mix (likely all stock or mostly stock). Friendfeed has raised just $5 million in an early 2008 financing, and is backed by Benchmark Capital.

Taylor said “this is an 11th hour deal,” (sounds like it was finalized last week and there was quite a party) but that the two companies have been talking for some time. “Things heated up in the last couple of weeks,” he said, after the two were on a panel together at the Real Time CrunchUp on July 10.

Product Integration

We’ve heard from one source that, like the 2007 Parakey acquisition, the deal is largely a talent acquisition by Facebook, and less about the Friendfeed product. Friendfeed has 12 employees, and all but one are engineers.

Taylor and Cox say that the Friendfeed product will live on independently, and eventually Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook. But the Friendfeed team is not being kept whole. Some employees will now report to Cox, others to engineering head Mike Schroepfer. In my opinion that means, long term, the Friendfeed product itself is unlikely to be a big priority.

But Facebook is clearly excited about Friendfeed’s ability to innovate and launch new products. Taylor said “The basic idea is that Facebook doesn’t want to disrupt the product…they’ll take a lot of ideas that work well on Friendfeed and see how they apply to Facebook, and over time they’ll look at how to integrate the products.”

He also said that Friendfeed and Facebook agree on a few main philosophical points around openness. “Facebook’s focus on Facebook Connect and openness is also a central tenet of Friendfeed. Some of our ideas on Friendfeed can really accelerate Facebook’s product plans.”

Cox agreed, noting that Facebook is focused on being a platform and a service, and not just a destination site. “Friendfeed’s core values, portability and aggregation of content created everywhere, will happen at an accelerated pace at Facebook.”

Note that translations are rough, I took notes and I usually can’t read my own writing.

Friendfeed will move out of their Mountain View offices and join Facebook at their Palo Alto headquarters shortly, Taylor said.

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Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Updated)

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 12:05 PM PDT

Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.

At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.

Obviously Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. One of these is the way stories are ‘floated’ to the top as new users comment on them. And FriendFeed’s system is truly real-time, unlike Facebook’s feed which users have to manually refresh.

But the biggest win here for Facebook is the FriendFeed team, which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers. Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don't be evil” motto. Other ex-Googler co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh.

And so begins the next step in Facebook’s assault on Twitter.

Update: Be sure to check out our interview with Facebook VP Products Chris Cox and FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor, where they share their thoughts on the future of FriendFeed and its integration into Facebook.

Update:
FriendFeed has just posted a note to their blog confirming the announcement. FriendFeed’s Bret Taylor writes that the site will continue operating for the time being, but that the company is still “figuring out its longer-term plans for the product”. Likewise, the API will continue to function for the time being.

Update 2 :: Facebook has just issued the following press release:

PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed's four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook's engineering and product teams.

"Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends," said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. "We can't wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world."

"As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they've built and their desire to have us contribute to it," said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google's "Don't be evil" motto, added, "It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook's engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group."

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they've brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

"Since I first tried FriendFeed, I've admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

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OMG Yahoo Gets OMG.com For Cheap

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 11:47 AM PDT

picture-42Yahoo has been active in the domain buying and selling space the past few months. Today, it was revealed to be the buyer of OMG.com, which sold last week for $80,000, according to Domain Name Wire.

It’s a great domain, and a really, really great price especially considering the image-centric TMZ.com-rival it has called yes, OMG. (Note: I had no idea it actually existed, at least partially because it didn’t have the omg.com domain — well, and also cause I’m not into celebrity gossip. But supposedly, it’s big.)

Of course, Yahoo has a history of obtaining good domain names and doing nothing or next to nothing with them. It sold contests.com in June for $380,000 after sitting on it for many years. It also sold WP.com to WordPress parent Automattic in April of this year.

Given the numbers for recent sales, it does seem like Yahoo scooped OMG.com for a bargain basement price. As we said, it sold contests.com for $380,000, which also seemed cheap at the time when you compare it to something like candy.com, which sold for $3 million in June. And in February, toys.com sold for $5.1 million.

Sure, “OMG” is not even really a word, but it has become a common phrase in pop culture and would seem to be worth more than $80K in a world where candy.com sells for $3M — especially since it’s only 3 letters.

[photo: flickr/quinn.anya]

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Too Much Time Behind the Computer? Kankles Hurt? Try the Vibram Five Fingers

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 11:26 AM PDT

I thought I'd share this review with the TC audience because you seem like a fit lot and interested in the outdoors. Correct me if I'm wrong. So, we begin: I swore I'd never wear them. We called them the Five Fingers of Suck a few years ago and I was sure they were crazy. Friends, I'm here to tell you I was wrong. And I'm sorry. Here's my story: I ran a marathon a few years ago. I got plantar fasciitis and couldn't run after the marathon. I worked through that inflammation, but by the time I was ready to run again I had gained thirty pounds. Wham. Shin-splints. So I was a fat former runner with leg problems. The prognosis wasn't good. So I tried a few things - the elliptical, weight training, losing some freaking weight - but the thing that saved me were these shoes.


Tr.im Cuts Off Bit.ly’s 301works Idea, Wants to Sell

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 11:01 AM PDT

9658510_1825cd3df4Yesterday, upon hearing that the URL shortening service Tr.im was shutting down, Bit.ly, the largest URL-shortener, stepped in with a proposal. The offer wasn’t to buy the service, but rather to propose that Bit.ly host Tr.im’s URL-mappings indefinitely, or that they join the 301works.com project, a sort of archive for shortened web links. Tr.im parent Nambu Networks has rejected that ideas, and instead wants to sell the service, Bit.ly writes today.

And that’s too bad, because while the idea wasn’t a perfect solution, it would have at least saved many of the URL’s shortened with Tr.im that are now scheduled to stop working by the end of the year. Bit.ly’s idea behind 301works is essentially to let all of the URL-shorteners bulk-upload links every week, which would then be stored on that service. “We thought this was a useful idea — something that was inexpensive to execute and important for the industry,” Bit.ly writes.

But when the idea was first proposed back in April, Tr.im and the other URL-shorteners turned it down initially. The main problem is thought to be privacy (some shortened-links are private on some services). But Bit.ly also thinks the reluctance to get on board may be related to one company ruling all of this, so it has reached out to some non-profits in the hope that they can take over.

The reason why Bit.ly wants this 301works service should be pretty clear. There’s a large uproar right now following Tr.im’s demise on whether or not anyone should actually be using URL-shorteners just in case something like this happens. Even the all-powerful Twitter-endorsed Bit.ly could go away some day, is the thought. But an archive of these links that is maintained outside any one service could help put people’s minds at ease.

Bit.ly says that using Amazon’s servers, it could have 301works up and running in a matter of weeks.

Again, this all sounds nice, but if the other guys don’t get on board, which Tr.im clearly isn’t ready to do, it’s kind of pointless. Bit.ly says that if someone does buy Tr.im and wants to use 301works, to let them know. Clearly, Bit.ly has no interest in buying the service.

[photo: flickr/russeljsmith]

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