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- Seedcamp Founder Saul Klein Talks European Entrepreneurship, Spotify and the Real-Time Web
- (Cornell Study) What Entrepreneurs Want From VCs: Independence And Faster Feedback
- Hotmail Co-founder’s New Firm Acquires A Second VoIP Startup: Mobivox
- Ridiculous: Verizon Pays ASCAP $5M Interim License Fee For … Ringtones
- Seedcamp Announces Its Six Winning Startups For 2009
- We Hold Twitter Ransom For $100 Billion Dollars
- Twitter’s Shortened URL Expansion Stopped Working For Bit.ly Links
- Exclusive Interview With Steve Ballmer: Products, Competition, The Road Ahead
- Liftopia Raises Another $1 Million For Variable Ski Resort Ticket Pricing
- Fluther Raises $600k From Top Valley Investors For Crowd-Sourced Answers
- Video: Symantec Shows The Danger Of Shortened Twitter Links
- PayPal Co-Founder And Founders Fund Partner Joins DNA Sequencing Firm Halcyon Molecular
- Bing Comes To The iPhone Via Robotvision
- It Took A Year, But Fitness Gadget Fitbit Will Finally Launch
- Dropbox Reaches 2 Million Users; Continues to Grow
- So at Least Pierre Omidyar Is Trying to Change the World
- Verizon Passes On The Palm Pre
- Google Sites Get Liberated By New API
- One Year Later, Google’s Project 10^100 Lives! But Overwhelmed Google Needs Your Help.
- Waze Turns Turn-By-Turn Navigation And Mapmaking Into A Free Game
- Leaked Email: Quincy Smith Of CBS Wants To Counter “Reckless Hulu Streams”
- CrunchBoard: Wikimedia, Yammer, Electronic Arts and More!
- Yahoo Brands Flickr; Users Retaliate
- More Investors Pile Into Twitter’s Funding Round, Now Reportedly Close To $100 Million
| Seedcamp Founder Saul Klein Talks European Entrepreneurship, Spotify and the Real-Time Web Posted: 25 Sep 2009 09:00 AM PDT  It's been a big week for European entrepreneurship, what with 20+ startups emerging at Seedcamp and Dopplr getting picked up by Nokia (or does it just feel that way since I'm here with GeeksOnAPlane for the first time in four years?). In any case, Seedcamp's six winners were announced earlier today. If you're not familiar with Seedcamp, it's a startup mentorship and funding program for European entrepreneurs that shares basic tenets with US-based Y Combinator and TechStars, among several others. I had the opportunity to sit down on Wednesday with Seedcamp founder Saul Klein and ask him about a variety of topics ranging from the idiosyncrasies of European entrepreneurship to Spotify, smart energy, and the real-time web. In addition to founding Seedcamp, Klein is a partner at Index Ventures and a founding partner at The Accelerator Group (TAG). A transcript of the interview follows below.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| (Cornell Study) What Entrepreneurs Want From VCs: Independence And Faster Feedback Posted: 25 Sep 2009 07:59 AM PDT
What do entrepreneurs want from venture capitalists? A new Cornell study by Ola Bengtsson (now an assistant professor of finance at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Frederick Wang looked at the stated preferences of entrepreneurs as expressed in comments and ratings on VC-ranking site The Funded. The study, which is based on opinions from roughly 1,500 entrepreneurs about 526 U.S. venture capital firms, tries to assess what they value the most from VCs. In general, entrepreneurs view independent venture capital firms more favorably than strategic, corporate, or government VCs. They do a pretty good job of identifying which VCs have the best track record (which Bengtsson checked against VentureEconomics data), but just because a VC has a good financial track record doesn’t mean he or she will be the most helpful. And one of the things entrepreneurs value the most from a VC is quick feedback (positive or negative) when they are doing due diligence because time is money, and startups don’t have much of either. Bengtsson shares some of his conclusions: 1. Entrepreneurs can correctly identify which VCs have the best historical track record but they do NOT perceive these investors to be more able to add value pre- and post-investment. This result is surprising but found in my analysis of more than 1,500 unique entrepreneurs and 500 VCs. 2. Entrepreneurs view private partnership (independent) VCs more favorably than other VC affiliated with corporations, financial institutions or government agencies. Thus, independence is good. 3. Entrepreneurs who have interacted with more VCs have a less positive view of these investor's ability to add value pre- and post-investment. This suggests that entrepreneurs learn over time that each VC is less unique and useful. 4. Entrepreneurs like when VCs conduct fast due diligence and give feedback on the business plan. Time is a scarce luxury when you run a startup. 5. Many entrepreneurs express concerns that some VCs have tensions within their organization/partnership. The entrepreneur may like the VC partner he meets but turns down the VC because of potential internal conflicts. Bengtsson admits that there is a potential for selection bias in his study since the data comes from entrepreneurs who choose to be vocal about their opinions on The Funded. But he also points out that “they at least reflect how an important population of entrepreneurs evaluate the VCs they have encountered” and that when he dug into the data he didn’t find an unusually negative or positive bias. More importantly, the study tries to make conclusions about how preferences differ for different types of VCs. If The Funded attracted overwhelmingly negative entrepreneurs, that wouldn’t explain ehy they prefer independent VCsand private equity partnerships (PEPs) over corporate VCs or their ability to correctly asses a VC’s track record. The study is embedded below.
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| Hotmail Co-founder’s New Firm Acquires A Second VoIP Startup: Mobivox Posted: 25 Sep 2009 07:01 AM PDT
The young company had raised a single round of funding that amounted up to $11 million nearly two years ago from high-profile investors like Flybridge Capital, IDG Ventures and Brightspark Ventures. In a statement, Sabse Technologies says it wil integrate Mobivox’s solution into its own offering and retain most if not all employees:
The news comes just three month after Sabse, which was founded by well-known entrepreneurs Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail co-founder) and Yogesh Patel, agreed to acquire VC-funded Jaxtr, also without disclosing the amount it had paid for the startup. That means the serial entrepreneurs’ newest venture, which as far as we know has raised no institutional venture funding to date, has significant cash in the bank and aims to move fast in the VoIP calling and conference market by picking up strategic assets left and right. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Ridiculous: Verizon Pays ASCAP $5M Interim License Fee For … Ringtones Posted: 25 Sep 2009 06:14 AM PDT
Even the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sided with the plantiffs in the case (AT&T and Verizon Wireless), called the organization’s claims downright ‘outlandish’ and urged a federal court to reject the “bogus” copyright claims. Imagine my surprise to find out that Verizon has now agreed to pay the ASCAP an interim license fee of more than $4.99 million for songs the phone service provider uses in ringtones for its customers. Meanwhile, the two sides will continue to debate how much the group should receive for the tunes. For the record: carriers already pay royalties to song owners for the right to sell snippets to their customers in the form of ringtones. The ASCAP, however, told a federal court that each time a phone rings in public, the phone user is violating copyright law and thus carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what the group claims is cell phone users’ copyright infringement. ASCAP has made it clear that it has no intentions to effectively start charging mobile phone users for playing ringtones, just mobile phone service providers for making it possible for them to do so. But as the EFF says in its rebuttal, consumers could find themselves targeted by other copyright owners for “public performances” if the ASCAP should prevail, not to mention the stifling of innovation in the field and the fact that it could ultimately increase the cost for the average mobile consumer. All this brouhaha brings back fond memories of the time the ASCAP went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire. I wonder if they ultimately complied to the copyright claims and coughed up a couple of millions for the right to sing “Row, Row, Row” at summer camp nights, too. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Seedcamp Announces Its Six Winning Startups For 2009 Posted: 25 Sep 2009 04:02 AM PDT
Each startup has won €50,000 to develop their product, in return for Seedcamp taking a stake worth between 5-10% of the company. In each case the exact stake has not been released. As we wrote earlier this week, overall the standard was strong this year and many of the VCs and CEOs I spoke to during this week have remarked on how much the quality of startups in Europe has improved, especially as reflected in this year’s Seedcamp vintage. So the winning teams are: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| We Hold Twitter Ransom For $100 Billion Dollars Posted: 25 Sep 2009 02:57 AM PDT
By way of sarcasm, Fried raises a number of points. But the key ones he hits on are valuations, revenues (or lack thereof), business models, and hype. And he chose an easy target in Twitter, which has no shortage of naysayers who simply cannot believe the amount of funding and valuation the service keeps getting. But Fried undoubtedly knows how the game is played, and by picking on the current “it” company, a few people noted that his post looked more like a case of sour grapes. But his points are still definitely worth talking about. Valuations Fried jokes that 37signals is valued $100 billion based on a group of people who are paying $1 for 0.000000001% of the company. His point is that valuations based on investments are ridiculous. But that’s not entirely true. Certainly some are — Microsoft’s investment in Facebook that pumped its valuation to $15 billion is a great example. But the key point there is that Microsoft wasn’t making an investment in Facebook hoping to get rich when the company eventually has an exit. Rather, it was making a small (1.6%) strategic investment mainly to keep Google away. At the time, everyone went mad over the $15 billion number, but it was never realistic to begin with. Since then, Facebook (which has grown a lot in size) has raised real money at valuations that are much less. So did Microsoft get screwed? No, because it was never about the money. But in Fried’s example, lets assume that the $1 investors are putting money in hoping to eventually get it back. If they really are paying $1 for 0.000000001% of the company, putting the valuation at $100 billion, those investors are going to want an exit of more than $100 billion (leaving out the various types of deals and options they could have surrounding an exit). So that $100 billion number does have meaning. And likewise, without knowing the details of its latest round, the $1 billion number probably does have meaning for Twitter. If an when it closes this latest $100 million round, those investors are going to be looking for an exit of more than $1 billion. You can bet that T. Rowe Price wants to make money on this deal, as do the firms involved. And they clearly think Twitter is worth more than $1 billion dollars. And they’re hardly alone. Revenues & Business Models Fried jokes, “In order to increase the value of the company, 37signals has decided to stop generating revenues.” And continues, “Once you have profits, it's impossible to just make stuff up.” That is absolutely true, and Mike wrote a great post recently about that very dilemma Twitter could well face shortly. But this is Fried pulling out the tired “Twitter makes no money” card. Let’s be clear: If Twitter wanted to right now, it could make money. (Well at least revenue, if not profits.) They would simply have to turn on advertising (which they can now do thanks to a recent change in their TOS) and some amount of money, and probably not an insignificant amount, would start rolling in. At the same time, if it did that, investors would have a better idea of their business potential and that could make some wary of sky-high valuations if the numbers weren’t stellar — which both Fried and Mike rightly note. But as Twitter has stated numerous times, its real intention for making money (at least right now) is not to go the way of ads, but instead to do professional accounts and tools. It would seem that Twitter is getting closer to rolling that out, and they’ve said the plan is to start making money before the end of this year. We’re closing in on that, so it seems safe to assume that new investors have a pretty good idea of Twitter’s strategy here. And if that’s the case, they clearly like what they see enough to pour in $100 million (again, assuming that round closes). With this rumored new round, Twitter would have some $130 million in the bank. Like Facebook before it, that would give the company plenty of time before they had to start making any meaningful amount of money. Actually, Facebook just this past quarter went cash flow positive for the first time — after taking over $700 million in funding throughout the years. Twitter seems downright svelte by comparison. The point is, they will have plenty of cash, and as such, plenty of time to worry about getting the right business model in place. And these investors would not be investing if they didn’t think that would happen, obviously. Hype “Bhatnagar admits the math [for valuations] is mostly a guess but points out that ‘the press eats it up.‘,” Fried writes. That’s undoubtedly true, we the press do eat this stuff up. Big numbers are sexy, and lead to interesting, or at least lively, discussions. But again, this is Fried suggesting that valuations based on investments are crazy. In some cases, they are, but not always. And provided that both the writer and reader understands how they work (which, admittedly, is quite often not the case), they can be a useful point of reference. "37signals will lead the new global movement filled with imaginary assumptions on growth and monetization potential," he continued. "We're excited to roll out a list of unconfirmed revenue possibilities that involve crowdsourcing, a robust set of widget creation tools, 3G, augmented reality, social stuff, and an app store. Also, everything we make will include a compass,” Fried concludes. Though he later backtracked from it, it seems pretty clear that Fried is suggesting that Twitter is pretty much all hype. We touched on this a bit yesterday, but ultimately, this still remains to be seen. But what’s humorous is that on the sidebar of his very post, Fried himself has a Twitter widget, and it’s actually above his list of 37signal products. This isn’t quite as bad as the people who loudly proclaim that Twitter is all hype — on Twitter. But regardless of where you fall on the hype debate, all that really matters is that the investors obviously don’t think it’s hype. And they’re apparently still pouring money into it with the belief that it will be the next big thing. How big? Big enough to have an exit north of a billion dollars. How do I know? The valuation told me.
[photo and video: New Line Cinemas] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Twitter’s Shortened URL Expansion Stopped Working For Bit.ly Links Posted: 25 Sep 2009 02:22 AM PDT
I’d recommend anyone never to click short URLs without knowing where it goes, even when it comes from people you know and trust, because that’s not a guarantee for safe links either. In that regard, it doesn’t help that Twitter Search now no longer appears to expand Bit.ly URLs, which is the default web address shortener used by Twitter. Update: and poof, it works again. We’re not sure when this problem started occurring, but Twitter app developer Mallikarjun Reddy noticed it earlier today and adds that it is not an issue on Bit.ly’s side since its API for URL expansion seems to work just fine. Fortunately, the expansion for most other URL shorteners still functions, but since bit.ly is the most widely used tool of its kind on the social network, this is not something to simply brush off. Even if bit.ly is doing its own part to warn users of malicious links, Twitter has a responsibility to its users to protect them as good as they possibly can. One more item to add to the ever-expanding to-do list of Twitter’s engineers. Update: yes we use bit.ly when we push content to our Twitter stream. No, that has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote above. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Exclusive Interview With Steve Ballmer: Products, Competition, The Road Ahead Posted: 24 Sep 2009 09:54 PM PDT Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer visited Silicon Valley on Thursday for his annual meeting with top venture capitalists to talk about Microsoft product strategy. This was his first visit to Silicon Valley since announcing the search partnership with Yahoo in July. I had a chance to sit down with him just after that event for a hour-long one-one-one interview. In the first 10+ minutes of the interview Ballmer gives his high level thoughts on major Microsoft products and strategies (including Windows, Windows Mobile, Internet Explorer, Bing, Azure, Mesh, Natal and others), competition, the future of search and search marketing, Microsoft’s “three screens and the cloud” strategy, the recent acquisition of Interactive Supercomputing and, yes, even his thoughts on Twitter. A few interesting points from the video interview:
He also says that Microsoft obviously won’t be the only player in the new market, and joked that some people “for whatever crazy reasons don't want to be on windows, might want to be on linux:”
- On search innovation: Ballmer says that search innovation, both as a product and a business model, has largely stagnated over the last five years. He also thinks competition will drive more innovation in the future. “I think if you look out the next 10 years we're going to see more innovation in search,” he said. - On Why Microsoft won’t build a branded phone, as they have with the Zune and Xbox: Smart phones, like desktop and laptop computers and televisions, are “non-niche devices,” which he defines as 300 million or more units per year. These markets are large enough that there will be multiple manufacturers, and it’s unlikely that any single vertical vendor will dominate the market. It makes sense, he says, for Microsoft to be a vendor of the platform and services for these types of devices. So, don’t expect a Microsoft branded phone.
- On Microsoft’s acquisition strategy: Microsoft acquired 15 companies in FY2009. Ballmer says to expect roughly the same level of activity in the future. “I'm guessing we're gonna want to buy about 15 companies again next year,” he says. He says most of those will be smaller transactions ranging from $50 million – $400 million. And those companies will have to “really fit well with our technology platforms and distribution,” he added. - When I half-jokingly asked if Twitter fits well with Microsoft’s technology platforms and distribution, he responded “Twitter would be great, yeah. I mean, not that we're talking about buying Twitter…” And he then went on to say that he thinks the Twitter guys are “fiercely committed to staying independent.” For the rest of the interview we took a deep dive into each of these topics, and over the next few days we’ll have a few follow up posts on each area of discussion in detail. There is some absolutely amazing content to come. The full transcript of the video is below. Full Transcript: Michael Arrington: This is Mike Arrington, I'm here with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, hello Steve. It's been a year since I've had a chance to sit down with you, you're back in Silicon Valley – what brings you here? Steve Ballmer: We do an annual event where we bring together venture capitalists, and try to make sure they understand where we're going, and we understand where they're going, cause there's going to be opportunities for us to partner with their portfolio companies, try to get their portfolio companies to build on and alongside of things that we do. There'll be chances for acquisition, and we do that once a year, and we happen to be doing that today. I'm down in the valley probably 7 times a year, and this is sort of more of a valley day because we're with the VC community. MA: The last time you were in the valley, is that when you did the yahoo deal? SB: Last time I was down here probably was the announcement of the yahoo deal. I've had kind of a quiet two months of travel since I was down here at the end of July for that. MA: I have a couple questions about that but we can hit those later. You guys have a lot of new product initiatives, I think some are big ideas, big new businesses, possibly some are what you call an enabler, something like that. You've got big buckets – Bing is out, Windows 7 is coming out, Azure, I think you guys have said by the end of the year, Mesh is there, Project Natal, and others. How do you feel about big buckets and all of these products – your babies? SB: Well, it's great to have a year where you have a lot of stuff that you can kind of be excited about, if you lead a company like ours we have a lot of very exciting products for the consumer and frankly for the enterprise customer, although that tends to get a little less press attention I would say, but it's a fun year. It also is a good year to say then that it's a good year to go build business and it's a good year to lay the seeds for the next generation of businesses that can be good, and whether it's what we're trying to do with Bing, or do with Natal, the next 12 months is shaping up to be very promising. MA: One of the big things you talk about is something you call "three screens and the cloud." I'd love if you could dive a little bit into what that means from a business standpoint but also from a user standpoint and what they're going to get out of this when it finally comes together. SB: Yeah, the reason I like the little phrase "three screens and the cloud" isn't just that it's true and it's what we started talking about it at CES but I kind of like the alliteration (?) of "Three Men and a Baby." Every time I say it I think, "Three Screens and the cloud," "Three Men and a Baby" if you remember the movie, but I think what it really refers to is a fundamental shift in the computing paradigm. We used to talk about mainframe computer, mini computer, PC computing, client server computing, graphical computing, the internet; I think this notion of three screens and a cloud, multiple devices that are all important, the cloud not just as a point of delivery of individual applications, but really as a new platform, a scale-out, very manageable platform that has services that span security contacts, I think it's a big deal. You lay natural user interface technologies on there, and platforms on there, and then you start revitalizing the UI platform. What you're seeing on phones and TVs, people want more than what's called the classical graphical user interface: touch, voice, camera, gestures – all of that stuff whether it's Natal or the touch stuff, in iphone or Windows 7 or whatever it is. It is the next big generational shift in the computing platform. And people are going to want applications, I'll call them that, or services, depending on whether you like old fashioned words or new words, but they're going to want things that service them across those environments. So when I'm away and just have my phone with me I still may want to check in on the action – my favorite xbox competition, or I may want to play games with somebody who's in a different environment. We're sitting watching television, and we want to share with somebody who's not physically present – we want that to work to somebody who might be a family member, who's on their PC in a hotel room traveling tonight. So you got to think about it as one integrated computing infrastructure. Now, whether it will all come from one company, and what are the standards, and what are the points of proprietary differentiation, all of that's going to get kind of played off. Now in our own case, you know we're going to try to share technologies, so that we get kind of synergy from a developers perspective. Windows on the phone, you know, Windows PCs controlling TVs, the Windows PC of course itself, Windows Azure in the cloud, so we have a lot of work that's trying to share technology, but obviously you don't want exactly the same experience on a little screen and a very big screen and a mid-size screen. MA: Ok, you talked about Azure in the cloud, but does it work if somebody's using Amazon web services or something like that. Although we're talking more about the developer side now, but are you planning to interoperate as much as possible. SB: As much as possible implies that infinite complexity's a good thing. Of course, it's unreasonable to say that you're going to completely support only your own three screens and only your own cloud. I wish that it were true. We have to make our screens and our cloud first and best, but clearly there are going to be people for example who don't want to be in the cloud, that want to be on premise, that for whatever crazy reasons don't want to be on windows, might want to be on linux, for gosh sakes. MA: Yeah, crazy. SB: For me, I'm allowed to say that. And we need to interoperate, but we do need to be first and best in support and in integration of our own platforms. MA: Ok, fair enough. Search. Congratulations, Bing is now one of the major services, they're saying Bing has now achieved 10% of the market share, up actually quite a big percent over 8, 8 and a half – that's a big percentage jump, and it seems to be pretty quick, and it seems to be steady and sticking. So congratulations on that. SB: Thank you. MA: But, search. Bing is clearly, I think everyone agrees, Bing is a good step forward. I think people who thought they would test them out, a lot of them are sticking, but looking forward 5 years from now, search innovation over the last say, 10 years has been somewhat interesting but will the next 10 years of search innovation be more interesting than the last 10 years? SB: Let me say something dramatic – I think the first five years there was innovation in business model, there was innovation in approach, give credit to competition, the last 5 years there's been some, quote, innovation, which is really things like digitizing, maps and books, or whatever the case may be, adding the larger content base to the corpus of information. But in some senses the UI, the approach, the algorithms have changed less in the last five years, then more … so I think if you look out the next 10 years we're going to see more innovation in search. And, of course, that'll be best served by good competition in the market and, y'know, at this stage, hopefully with the government approval of our deal with Yahoo, the good competition better come from us. Otherwise I don't think we'll see some of that innovation. But whether it's natural language, visualization, change in the UI, change in the business model… Business model on search is making life tough for other content providers, makes life tough for some of the merchants… MA: yes SB: We're not an incumbent, we can play with user interface, we can play with business models, we can do some things that maybe the incumbent can't do. MA: Yes SB: And the incumbent does some things pretty well too, and we're gonna have to hustle to catch up, and they have a lot of years of tuning those relevance algorithms, and we've got a lot of work to do. MA: Though you talk about UI, you know, and sometimes it seems like people talk about search problems as, first of all, the search engine understanding the query, and I think that's where you're talking about UI. SB: Well, that's where I'm talking about natural language, MA: Right. SB: Actually, UI I'll talk about the presentation of the results MA: Literally, the sort of… visual presentation of the app. SB: Ya, and I think it matters, actually, search isn't unlike every other application; the way you present things actually does matter. MA: What will your market share be in 10 years, on search. SB: Oh, I don't know. I mean, making forecasts is sort of not, not a sane practice. A lot more than we have today! MA: It would be great for me if you answered, but… (Steve laughs) MA: The Zune HD: A hit. Seems to be a great device. Still haven't had my hands on one. Do you have one on you right now? SB: I don't actually. MA: It seems like a lot of people really like the Zune HD, it's selling out. When you look at the Zune and the Xbox, you seem to be more than capable of creating, successful end consumer devices that are hardware tied to services. When do we get our Microsoft phone? I know you guys keep saying “We will not build a Microsoft branded phone…” SB: Well let me ask you a question. I'm going to answer your question with a question. Which is to say, look, lets just break hardware devices into two broad categories. Really high volume, and more niche. And I'll call anything that's under about 50 million a year niche. And I'll call anything that's north of 300 million a year non-niche. PC's are not niche devices. Part of the reason I think they're non-niche devices is, multiple people can manufacture them, they all interoperate, they work together, etc. TVs are not niche. You know, there's more than well over 300 million of those sold a year. They interoperate in that case mostly based on standards, but with some innovation. Phones are not niche. The categories where, I think, a single player can control a large percentage of the volume are the smaller categories. What does Apple sell every year of iPods: 30 million, order of magnitude, something like that. What is the whole video game market is maybe 30 or 40 million in units a year. But when you get these categories that are 300 million, 500 million, a billion, a billion-five a year, the truth of the matter is you're gonna want multiple points of manufacture, with a lot of innovation around it whether its supply chain, for geographic diversity, and our basic play with our software is to try and be super high volume. So I think you can have an Apple in the phone business, or a Rem, and they can do very well, but when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that's gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software that's sold by somebody who don't make their own phone. And, we don't wan't to cross the chasm in the short run and lose the war in the long run and that's why we think the software play is the right play for us for high volume, even though some of the guys in the market today with vertically oriented solutions may do just fine. MA: You just bought Interactive Supercomputing a couple of days ago now. Why? SB: Well, one of the big pushes for us, we, we're in the server business, if you .. if you look at all the things people do with servers today, we do pretty well at most of them. The two areas in which we have, are least successful are web, where about half the web servers are Windows and half are Linux, we're competing, and workin' at it; and the other one is high performance computing. Scientific supercomputing-like applications. And the truth of the matter is, this is never about price, it's always about, have we done enough to solve problems, compared with what you could do with the roll-your-own of Linux and Open Source. We took a look at it and said, no, we really want to be in the high performance computing, super computing space, and we're gonna get after it. We're gonna get after it with infrastructure, we're gonna get after it with tools and applications, and as part of that strategy, we made the, uh, deal to acquire Interactive Super Computing. MA: Okay, great. And you've bought fifteen companies in fiscal 09 – I think, is that right? SB: Yeah, about right, yeah. MA: Does that stay steady? Increase next year? SB: I'm guessing we're goning to want to buy about 15 companies again next year, if, just sort of a guess. Most of the things we buy are smaller. We probably pay some place between 50 million and 3 or 4 hundred million. And then occasionally we'll do something bigger. But most of what we buy, it'll probably be about the same order of magnitude, it'll probably mostly be companies that have 50, 100 to 200 employees, And really fit well with our technology platforms and our distribution. MA: Would Twitter fit with your technology platforms and distribution? SB: Twitter'd be great, yeah. I mean, not that we're talking about buying Twitter… I mean, the Twitter guys want to stay independent, that's great. Using – making Twitter an asset to one of our businesses, that would be the real question for us, how does it fit, but obviously, yknow, they've got a lot of kind of buzz and interest at this stage, but, no, I think they're fiercely, uh, committed to staying independent, which, which I respect. MA: Great, thanks. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Liftopia Raises Another $1 Million For Variable Ski Resort Ticket Pricing Posted: 24 Sep 2009 09:34 PM PDT
Liftopia allows ski resorts to offer variable pricing for tickets based on much how traffic they anticipate seeing on the slopes — in other words, resorts can lower their prices if they think they’re going to have a slow day the same way an airline does if a flight might not fill up. Some resorts have been able to do this to a limited extent with ‘peak season’ tickets (a ticket for Christmas time would cost more than one a month or two later), but up until now they haven’t had a good way to adjust their pricing on a daily basis. Liftopia gives them this option. From the consumer’s standpoint using Liftopia is easy, and will be familiar to anyone who has ever purchased a plane ticket online. Pick a region, a resort to look at, and a date range, and the site will present a list of tickets, some of which are discounted as much as 60% (there’s also a flexible date option). The site launched back in 2006, but initially saw slow growth due to industry skepticism. Since then things have been picking up — by last spring the site had grown to include around 65 resort partners, and Liftopia will have over 120 in time for this season. Among the new resorts to sign on this year:
Liftopia seems to be really picking up steam, and it’s a win/win for skiers who get to save money as well as for resorts, who can boost sales when they need too. There’s one small caveat for now though: because few resorts have finalized their pricing for this year, Liftopia’s inventory will be limited for the next few weeks, so you may need to check back later to book your tickets. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Fluther Raises $600k From Top Valley Investors For Crowd-Sourced Answers Posted: 24 Sep 2009 07:43 PM PDT
Using Fluther is pretty straightforward: you visit the site and ask a question, then wait for other members to answer you in real-time (the site offers a reply system similar to FriendFeed’s that lets you view these responses immediately). Whenever you ask a question Fluther reaches out to other members on the site through Email and (optionally) IM alerts, channeling the questions to members it thinks knows the most about the topic. Fluther faces a few major competitors, including Aardvark, which also lets you outsource your questions to other users on the web. The biggest difference is who each service turns to for answers — Aardvark tries to pair you with knowledgeable people using your social graph (typically you’ll be referred to friends or friends of friends). Conversely, Fluther sends its questions to members that it deems to be the most knowledgeable, independent of your social graph. You can syndicate your Fluther questions out to Facebook, but co-founder Ben Finkel says that there isn’t a strong emphasis on this. Another player in this space is Mahalo, which launched its Mahalo Answers product last December. Finkel says that Mahalo’s approach, which incentivizes users to answer questions by offering them monetary rewards, inevitably leads to having people trying to game the system with low quality answers. Instead, Fluther is relying on users to submit answers as a show of good will, though it does offer a points reward system for the best answers. It can be hard to attract users with that model, but we’ve seen it work before on sites like Wikipedia and Finkel says that Fluther has developed some very dedicated users. Fluther soft-launched back in summer 2007, and is seeing around 600,000 monthly unique visitors. Tonight’s news confirms reports of a funding round based on SEC filings. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Video: Symantec Shows The Danger Of Shortened Twitter Links Posted: 24 Sep 2009 07:04 PM PDT While there is often a lot of talk about the downside of URL shorteners being that if they go down, they take your links with them, the much more obvious and real problem is that they very easily mask potentially bad sites. We’ve been seeing this more and more in both public tweets and DMs, but luckily so far most of those have just been worms meant to replicate themselves, rather than really bad viruses. But security software company Symantec released a video today to show some very bad links in action. As you can see in the video below, clicking on just one link infected a computer a dozen or so times in seconds. Obviously, Symantec’s intention is showing this is to sell their software that helps to protect against these attacks, but the point is still a good one to make. While URL shorteners like Bit.ly have begun warning users about potentially harmful links, others don’t bother. And let’s be honest, most of us click on links from friends regardless of what URL shortener they are using. Yesterday, Twitter was bombarded by tweets using the hashtags “beforesex,” “aftersex,” and “duringsex.” It wasn’t long before people were using those tags to send out malicious links. It’s a problem because virus makers know that any trending topic is likely to be searched for a lot, so they can just ride that wave and catch unsuspecting users who are curious to click on links. Google’s Joshua Schachter, who started Delicious, wrote about this and the other problems with URL shorteners earlier this year. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| PayPal Co-Founder And Founders Fund Partner Joins DNA Sequencing Firm Halcyon Molecular Posted: 24 Sep 2009 06:29 PM PDT
PayPal co-founder and Founders Fund Managing Partner Luke Nosek is tackling a new field: DNA sequencing. Nosek sent out an email (which we’ve pasted below) saying that he has joined Halcyon Molecular, a human genome sequencing firm, as founding president. According to the email, Halcyon will sequence complete human genomes in less than ten minutes and for less than $100. This is significant drop in price and time from existing genome sequencing labs that take weeks and thousands of dollars to process DNA. Nosek writes that he will continue to lead The Founders Fund's genomics investing, but his primary role will be leading and advising Halcyon as the company progresses and readies for launch. Nosek adds that Peter Thiel, fellow co-founder of PayPal and Managing Partner at Founders Fund will be joining Halcyon’s board. When Halcyon Molecular finally launches, its pricing and timing could be revolutionary. 23andme, which reads and tests parts of the human genome and was co-founded by Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki, is similar in theory. But 23andme doesn’t do a full genome scan, which Halcyon promises to do, but rather looks at SNPs, which are regions of high variability in the human genome.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Bing Comes To The iPhone Via Robotvision Posted: 24 Sep 2009 04:30 PM PDT
Bing is beginning to find its way onto the iPhone through apps that build on top of its APIs. One that just hit the iTunes Store is an augmented reality app called Robotvision (iTunes link). Like other AR apps, it uses the video camera on the iPhone 3GS, as well as the GPS and the compass to bring up data about nearby restaurants and shops, including reviews. It gets this local business data from Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Once you find a place nearby, you can call it the business from within the app. A lot of this functionality is already in the current Yelp iPhone app hidden as an Easter Egg, but Robotvision has some nice extra features. For instance, a feature is triggered by looking down at the screen, which shows the business and others like it as pins on a map. You can toggle back and forth between augmented reality view and map view depending on how the phone is positioned. (see video demo below). Robotvision also shows you nearby Tweets and geo-tagged Flickr photos. I’m not sure how useful these are in an augmented-reality app. Basically, these are best suited for surfacing information about a place directly in your view or right around the corner. There are plenty of Twitter apps, like Twinkle, that show you nearby Tweets. For the most part these are pretty useless unless they are people you know. I guess it would be cool to be able to point your phone’s camera to a crowd and see related Tweets from people in that crowd, but Robotvision isn’t quite that advanced yet. Last month, Microsoft announced its Bing iPhone SDK, which this app is using. Here is a video demo recorded last month: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| It Took A Year, But Fitness Gadget Fitbit Will Finally Launch Posted: 24 Sep 2009 04:15 PM PDT
Fitness gadget Fitbit was a hit at last year’s TechCrunch50, where it created a ton of buzz and was a runner-up for the top prize. Of course, we all know that it takes hardware companies longer to launch than software startups and since last September, Fitbit has been working tirelessly to refine the product, establish distributions channels and tweak its online platform. Now we won’t have to wait any longer, since Fitbit will officially open up to the public on Tuesday. The site you see currently is the beta version and will feature a redesign as well on Tuesday. So what does Fitbit do? The sleek little device clips onto your clothing and tracks your movement, sleep and calorie burn throughout the day and night. Fitbit, which costs $99, uses the information it gathers about your movement to help you determine how much exercise you've been getting and how many calories you've burnt. It can also tell you how many steps you have taken and how well you've slept, all based on its internal motion detector. By clicking a little button on the device, you’ll see a small blue LED screen that will alternate between the steps you’ve taken, the calories you’ve burned, your distance, and gives you a gauge of how high your activity level is. This is shown via a small flower that will grow as you exercise more (though I’m told that you will be able to switch your icon). Here’s the really innovative part—the device is wireless so all data gets automatically synchronized to your computer and then the web through a wireless base station, so you don't even have to plug it in. If you are within 10 feet of the device (it plugs into your computer via a USB cord), the station will sync with your device. In order for the wireless functionality to work you need to install a syncing software that runs on both Macs and PCs. Once synced, you can view your health dashboard online. The dashboard is fairly simple and organized. You input your age, height, weight, and gender and are given basic info of how many steps you’ve made in a day and a breakdown of how active you are within the day, showing the highs and lows of your activity. The site will even break down particular activities and measure the intensity of workout. In terms of caloric burn and intake, Fitbit will calculate how many calories you burn in a given day, and if you log in your nutritional info, will also compare that to how much your intake was, making it ideal for anyone who wants to lose weight. And Fitbit has made it easy to input any type of food by already integrating the nutritional value of most types of food, cuisine and even restaurant chain foods, which cuts out a large amount of work for you.  One of the features that I find particularly compelling is the ability to monitor your sleep pattern. If you wear the device while sleeping, it will give you a snapshot of your “sleep health.” As you fall in and out of sleep, the Fitbit tracks the movements that your body makes and can tell you how long it took you to fall asleep, how many times you woke up throughout the night and the actual time you were asleep vs the time you were in bed. You will be able to see all of this detailed information on your dashboard. And to make sure that the device is comfortable for people to wear during the night, you can slide Fitbit onto a wristband that is provided. Fitbit’s co-founder and CEO, James Park, told me that when it comes to running and walking, Fitbit is 99 percent accurate in its reporting of steps and 90 percent accurate for caloric burn. But Fitbit isn’t as accurate for other types of activities, like weight-lifting and biking. To mitigate this problem, the online dashboard lets you input exercise types and times manually and Fitbit will calculate how many calories you burned based on health information it has collected. On Tuesday, the site will be open to the public and all of those individuals who pre-ordered the device over the past year will finally receive their Fitbit. While the site will be the only place you can order the Fitbit, Park says that in Q4 you’ll be able to buy the Fitbit online and in retail stores but declined to name which stores he’s partnered with. Fitbit raised a cool $2 million last October and Park says they are looking to raise more to up manufacturing and distribution channels. Fitbit will also become more social, letting users form groups where they can compare their fitness goals and activities. The site will also take a page out of Mint.com’s book by letting you compare your activity and fitness with other anonymous people who have similar weight, height, and gender. While using the personalized dashboard is free, Fitbit will soon be rolling out premium paid features such as customized fitness coaching and guidance. So what’s the competition? There are similar products on the market that offer the same functionality as Fitbit, such as the Philips Activity Monitor or the BodyBugg or Nike/iPod gear (which doesn’t measure sleep patterns). But the beauty of fitbit is in it’s pricing and in its sleek structure. It fits in any pocket and is so small and unobtrusive that it could be hooked into a bra. Both the Philips and BodyBugg products are bulky, making it difficult to wear 24-hours per day. The advantage of the BodyBugg is that it measures calories burn by heat, which is a more efficient and accurate way of measuring calorie burn. Fitbit counts calories via motion, but that’s also why it’s easy to wear. I wasn’t at TechCrunch50 last year but after seeing a demo, I’m already excited about this product after being frustrated with the limitations of pedometers that I’ve used. The ability to wirelessly connect to the online dashboard takes a lot of the work out of actually making sense of the data. And being able to understand your optimal balance of diet, workouts and sleep is valuable. It seems that Fitbit was worth the wait. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Dropbox Reaches 2 Million Users; Continues to Grow Posted: 24 Sep 2009 04:14 PM PDT
Just earlier this month, Dropbox rolled out a brand new redesign of its web interface, and new search as well as many other features. Dropbox has been very secretive about numbers, especially financials, but these figures indicate that it is definitely gaining traction. Dropbox submitted its iPhone application in the middle of August. It still has not been approved. According to CEO Drew Houston, Apple rejected the application two weeks after submitting to the App Store, but since then they have fixed all the bugs, and re-submitted the app. Dropbox was one of the finalists for TechCrunch50 one year ago. The company is based in San Francisco and has raised $1.5 million from Sequoia Capital.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| So at Least Pierre Omidyar Is Trying to Change the World Posted: 24 Sep 2009 03:47 PM PDT
Techies who did follow the conference likely did so through the tweets and TwitPics of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. After founding one of the biggest successes in Silicon Valley history Omidyar bucked the serial entrepreneur trend and turned to angel investing and do-gooding. At the conference he announced another big move: His philanthropic investment firm, The Omidyar Network, is committing $30 million towards backing high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets, specifically Sub-Saharan Africa and India. It's an interesting fill-the-gap strategy between mainstream venture capitalists looking to benefit from the emerging world's booming demographics but frequently stymied by cultural and logistical challenges and micro-loans, which the Omidyar Network has already done a good deal of in these regions. VCs look for companies that could be worth hundred of millions or even billions of dollars and a lot of the infrastructure for that kind of growth like management teams, attorneys and the like are still lacking in many emerging economies. The result is the bulk of US investments for emerging markets goes to China, and a smaller but still substantial amount to India and not a lot in the rest of the world. On the other end of the scale, micro-loans are frequently aimed at lifting individuals out of poverty by funding a trade, not an entrepreneur building a business that could serve hundreds of thousands or millions of the world’s poor. Omidyar's $30 million investment is a step in between. These will be investments, loans and sometimes grants for entrepreneurs looking to build high-growth, high-impact ventures that can have an out-sized affect on the poverty stricken region where some 10 million people live on $2 or $3 a day. I grabbed Omidyar and managing partner Matt Bannick for a quick call in between their elevator rides with the former President of Nigeria and hitting up Ted Turner for business advice. I asked them the question that would-be-backers of my own book on global entrepreneurship asked me when I was selling it: Why should we care about entrepreneurship in Africa and India, when we can't even fix poverty-stricken areas of the United States like Detroit? "We think while everyone may have been born equal they don't have access to equal opportunities and the greatest disparity is in the developing world," Omidyar said. "That's also the most vastly growing population and the place where we can have the greatest impact." And certainly $30 million goes a lot farther in the poorest areas of Africa and India than it does in the U.S. But the core point Omidyar added last: "This will have a huge impact on humanity overall. If you're an American, you're going to benefit from this." Let’s ignore altruism for a minute. There's the self-interested humanitarian case that the more stable emerging economies with exploding populations become, the greater the likelihood they'll form stable governments, or even adopt free-market economies. But there's also the self-interested business case: The reality is the world's economic growth is no longer happening in the U.S.. It's happening in India, China, Africa, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil and a host of other smaller countries. There is innovation and entrepreneurship already there. Billion dollar companies will be formed. The question is, does America and the Valley want to play a role in that? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Verizon Passes On The Palm Pre Posted: 24 Sep 2009 03:15 PM PDT  In a rather surprising move considering Verizon's lack of compelling handsets, the nation's biggest wireless carrier has decided it's going to pass on the Palm Pre, if reports are to be believed. This is a serious blow to Palm's aspirations, and their stock took a 5% hit as if to rubber-stamp it. Although the team here is divided over Palm's new efforts (and advertising strategy), I think we were all secretly rooting for Palm just a bit. After all, WebOS is impressive and the Pre and Pixi are solid little devices — but Verizon doesn't think so, or at least not anymore. Nobody can deny that sales have been underwhelming — half a million is about where I'd place them, which is no way to launch a giant-killer. That's Verizon's first complaint, and you can't really blame them. Okay, strike one.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Google Sites Get Liberated By New API Posted: 24 Sep 2009 03:01 PM PDT
For those that aren’t familiar with it, Sites is the reincarnation of Jotspot, which Google acquired back in 2006 (though the two products look totally different). The product is Google’s easy-to-use website and wiki builder that’s widely used by businesses, though there’s a consumer option available. The new API is part of Google’s recently launched Data Liberation Front, which consists of a team at Google with the “singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products”. In other words, it’s Google’s attempt to ensure that if you’re no longer pleased with one of its services, it should be fairly easy to pick up and go somewhere else without losing any of your data. It also gives businesses a chance to create their own local backups — something that Google says has been among Sites’ most requested features. But there’s plenty you can do with the new API beyond just data export. Businesses will now be able to update their Sites pages from third party apps (Google offers the example of updating a Sites page when a new lead is added to your CRM). You can also use the API to download your entire Google Sites account to your desktop, which would be helpful if you were in a region with minimal Internet connectivity. You can get an idea for what the API is capable of by checking out the open source import/export project and Sharepoint Move for Google Apps, both of which use the Sites API. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| One Year Later, Google’s Project 10^100 Lives! But Overwhelmed Google Needs Your Help. Posted: 24 Sep 2009 02:23 PM PDT
With a post on the Google Blog today, Google has let everyone know that it was simply overwhelmed by the response it received about Project 10^100 (Google’s Marissa Mayer has made comments recently saying the same thing). Over 150,000 idea submissions came in written in 25 different languages. Google says it took over 3,000 employees around the world to go over all of them. But they’re still not done. And they need your help. Because there were so many submissions, Google has decided to group them together into 16 different overall theme ideas. And starting today, they’re asking you to vote to help figure out which of the 16 themes the project’s advisory board should be looking at to pick the 5 projects that will get funded. In its post, Google notes multiple times that this process has taken much longer than anticipated. It’s taken so long, that it’s actually surprising that they didn’t turn to this crowd-sourcing method earlier for help. The fact that 3,000 employees were tied up in this seems rather insane. Still, the project remains a good idea and the themes seem interesting. So go vote and help Google let their employees actually go back to their regular jobs. Voting will end on October 8 (two weeks), at which point the the advisory board will pick the five finalists which Google will then reveal. Then it will ask for proposals from individuals or organizations that want to help implement these ideas. Here are the 16 themes:
Update: As Andrew Mager notes in the comments, this also appears to be Google’s first use of reCAPTCHA the anti-spam service that also aims to help digitize books.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Waze Turns Turn-By-Turn Navigation And Mapmaking Into A Free Game Posted: 24 Sep 2009 02:02 PM PDT
The reason Waze can be free while other turn-by-turn apps are expensive is that their maps are entirely user-generated. Waze simply lays down a foundation and users build out the roads just by using the app. And the company makes it in your interest to help them not only by offering turn-by-turn functionality, but also by turning the mapping of uncharted areas into a game or sorts. If you’re on a road that no Waze user has mapped before, you will see little dots and your car icon will turn into a Pac-Man-like character, to eat the dots and collect points for it.
If you’re in an area with other Waze users, you will see them represented by icons (of their choosing) on your screen. You can also easily send reports of traffic incidents to Waze and to services like Twitter. Obviously, you probably don’t want to do that while you’re actually driving, but it’s a kind of cool little element of the mapping service that seems perfect if someone else is in the car with you. And these real-time mapping updates are really the key to all of this. While turn-by-turn navigation is great, the real end-game for Waze is to have full map data for the entire U.S. and presumably, eventually, the rest of the world. The service initially launched in Israel, and it has already seen some 180,000 downloads there which has led to 91% of the map for that country being built. In fact, the data is so good that it is ready to be licensed out to other companies, I’m told. When the data for the U.S. get to the same level, that will be the plan as well. And it’s a compelling business model because Waze basically has users building their maps for free, so they are able to then license that data at much better rates than the two big mapping companies, Navteq and Tele Atlas. And the company says that by relying on this user data, it is able to update its maps much faster. This means the service can offer things like real-time traffic information (you get pinged if there is bad traffic based on your driving pattern — stop and go, etc) and road construction. All of this information is passed to Waze anonymously. You can find Waze for the iPhone here, for Android here, and for Windows Mobile, Symbian and other devices here. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Leaked Email: Quincy Smith Of CBS Wants To Counter “Reckless Hulu Streams” Posted: 24 Sep 2009 01:55 PM PDT
There is no love lost between CBS and Hulu. You won’t find any full episodes of CBS shows on Hulu, and CBS’s own site TV.com is so similar in look and feel that one might call it a product of envy. So it should come as no surprise that the knives are still out for Hulu at CBS Interactive. An email with an article critical of Hulu from CBS Interactive CEO Quincy Smith that was passed around internally (excerpted below) landed in our inbox. Smith confirms that the email is real. Earlier today, he passed along an article from Contentinople titled “Execs Rip Hulu for Giving Away Content” which quotes media executives on a panel laying into Hulu for giving away TV shows for free. The panelists in the article also praise the cable industry’s proposed TV Everywhere model which will make TV shows and movies available online only to consumers who are already existing cable TV subscribers and can be authenticated as such. Smith passed along the entire article to his executive team, along with a note wondering “how hard it would be to prove that some ratings declines are a result of reckless hulu streams.” CBS’s ratings for the Fall Season premiers have been doing relatively well, compared to other networks. The implication Smith seems to be making here is that maybe the other networks are down because their audience is going online. If he could prove that, it would make his strategy of shunning Hulu look smart. But he then writes that “Authentication is a nice option.” And his SVP Anthony Soohoo later chimes in: “Authentication will play a huge role in 2010.” Hulu itself may add subscription and pay-per-view options to its service, according to Ruport Murdoch. Smith also mentions some “findings” that support “packing more ads” in online videos. So what can we conclude from all this? CBS will either be more conservative with its full streams online, or pack them with more ads. Maybe that is what the findings are all about, that online audiences will tolerate more ads for quality content. It is certainly easier to put more ads in online videos than to try to put up an authentication wall (which is really just a pay wall by another name). Here is the email except (the only thing I didn’t include is the full text of the Contentinople article which you can read at the link above).
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| CrunchBoard: Wikimedia, Yammer, Electronic Arts and More! Posted: 24 Sep 2009 12:00 PM PDT
For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Yahoo Brands Flickr; Users Retaliate Posted: 24 Sep 2009 11:23 AM PDT
It appears that a few days ago there was a slight change to Flickr’s logo: an addition of a small Yahoo logo to the right side so it reads “Flickr from Yahoo.” In response, many Flickr users have taken to the photo-sharing site’s forums to express their horror at Yahoo’s branding on Flickr. The underlying fact is that Flickr users, many of whom are techy hipsters, just don’t mix well with “middle America Yahoo” as Bartz put it a few days ago at the unveiling of Yahoo’s $100 million marketing campaign about “Y!ou.” Bartz said to a roomful of journalists and bloggers:
Yahoo also got into a bit of a sticky situation with users when it removed a photoshopped image posted on Flickr of President Barack Obama that makes him look like the Heath Ledger (Joker) character from The Dark Knight. Flickr took the image down, citing a DMCA notice, adding that "We very much value freedom of speech and creativity." Thomas Hawk had a good overview of all the gory details. Strangely, the company not only took down the image, but also removed the Flickr page and comments, even though this isn’t required by the DMCA. And then, in what was a totally contradictory move, Yahoo shut down the forum discussions about the political controversy, cutting off further political discourse about the image. Judging from the comments in the discussions surrounding the (re)branding of Flickr, users don’t want to be reminded that Yahoo bought Flickr. On the forum, users call Yahoo “stale” and think the logo is “horrifying” and “ugly” with many writing that they’d rather ignore the fact that Yahoo even owns Flickr. It’s kinda sad that even though Yahoo owns one of the most popular photo-sharing sites on the web, Flickr’s users would rather not be reminded of that fact. Perhaps Yahoo should start to make nice with its younger, hipster users that reside outside of middle America.  And here’s something for laughs—a funny mockup from a community member:  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| More Investors Pile Into Twitter’s Funding Round, Now Reportedly Close To $100 Million Posted: 24 Sep 2009 09:37 AM PDT
Twitter is about to raise a boatload of cash. Last week we broke the news that Twitter is raising another round of funding at a $1 billion valuation and that one of the new investors in that round is Insight Venture Partners. Initially, Twitter was trying to raise $50 million, but demand for its shares is so great that it is raising even more. The WSJ is reporting that the round may close as early as later today, and that Twitter may end up raising close to $100 million. In addition to Insight Venture Partners, another new investor is T. Rowe Price. In February, 2009, Twitter raised $35 million at a $250 million valuation. Raising that much cash at a $1 billion valuation should hold it over until it decides to go public or is bought for a ridiculously large sum. (The price to acquire it just went way up). It also will put Twitter in the major leagues, and give it the resources to keep scaling its service. No more excuses for outages or technical hiccups. More details as they come in. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
VoIP services company 
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (
37signals
Normally, when you use 
- On Microsoft’s “three screens and the cloud” strategy: Ballmer says it’s a “fundamental shift in the computing paradigm.” He added “We used to talk about mainframe computer, mini computer, PC computing, client server computing, graphical computing, the internet; I think this notion of three screens and a cloud, multiple devices that are all important, the cloud not just as a point of delivery of individual applications, but really as a new platform, a scale-out, very manageable platform that has services that span security contacts, I think it's a big deal.”
Given my recent rants about Silicon Valley's ratio of 
For the last 18 months 
Every so often, we get pinged about Google’s 
Turn-by-turn navigation was one of the features that iPhone users were most looking forward to with the release of the iPhone 3.0 software. Unfortunately, as 
I got a chance to see Waze in action at the 
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