The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- LiveFyre Wants To Ignite Realtime Intelligent Conversations On The Web
- About @EricSchmidt: Google CEO Gets A Better Twitter Name
- Report: Bing Searchers Still More Click-Happy Than Google Searchers When It Comes To Ads
- CrunchGear’s Uberprize: A SMART Board 685ix Interactive White Board
- Mark the Spot: Tell AT&T Where the iPhone Sucks
- Lazyfeed’s New Realtime Interface Tips Into Information Overload
- Youtego Launches Tool For Self-Visualization
- Zemanta Opens Up Recommendation Engine For Bloggers
- A New Virtual London Arrives Slowly, Like The Traffic
- Qype Makes Europe Tough For Yelp, Reveals Traffic And Social Plans
- Can OpenID Be Commercialized? Investors Bet $3.25 Million On JanRain
- Google’s Busy Week
- Clear2Pay Secures $74 million Led By Aquiline
- Google’s Coolest 20% Project: Liquid Galaxy
- Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Twitter (With An Awful Name)
- See That Funny 2D Barcode In The Store Window? It Might Pull Up A Google Listing.
- Aardvark Mulls Over A $30+ Million Offer From Google
- With iTunes, Apple Conditioned Us For The App Store
- Lazy Sunday: Twitter Takes The Day Off
- Getting It Right And Getting It Wrong With The New Media
- TC50 DemoPit Startup LIFEmee Lets You Record And Share Your Entire Life Online
| LiveFyre Wants To Ignite Realtime Intelligent Conversations On The Web Posted: 07 Dec 2009 09:00 AM PST
“What doesn’t exist is a place to have intelligent, face-paced, realtime conversations,” LiveFyre CEO Jordan Kretchmer tells us. He notes that while users have been trying to do this on Twitter and other services, the conversations often lack the content needed to be cohesive. That’s why a central part of LiveFrye is content. When you find a story on the web, you can share the link in LiveFyre, thus starting a “fyre” (a conversation thread) about that topic. Once a fyre is started, things get interesting. Any site user can join in to share their opinion on the subject. These comments come in in realtime, maintaining a flow. But one issue with that is often people will get into side conversations, and one of LiveFyre’s key features is a way to easily split those off into what are called “Breakouts.” Just as the name indicates, these are side conversations that can also be had in realtime with other members participating in the main fyre, but may want to veer off course a bit. The UI for this is intuitive as in the main fyre, there is a notice to all participants that a breakout is happening, which they can then see in a column ot the right of the main stream. Fyres also feature live-threading to keep things in order. And when replies come in specifically to something you said (using the same @reply syntax that Twitter uses), those are highlighted to make it very clear that someone is talking to you. You will also get a notification at the top of the fyre showing you have a message directed specifically at you. Another nice feature is that if someone shares another link within a fyre, LiveFyre will automatically detect it and put it in a “Fyre Links” area in the left side column. This way the links people are refering to are visible for all to look at at any time even as the main fyre stream keeps moving.
Taking a step back, the main area of LiveFyre is the key to discovering what to talk about on the site. The main screen consists of the latest “Breaking Fyres” at any given moment. These items, stacked on top of one another, show the headline, a thumbnail for a story, tags, and how many people are in the fyre talking about it. A big component of the site is that everything is color-coordinated to let you know how “hot” a particular fyre is. The more red it burns, the hotter it is. “Hotness” is determined by active participation in a fyre. And actually, there is a timer on each fyre, so if the conversation dies down, eventually, that fyre will burn out and will no longer be featured prominently. It is possible to reignite fyres though if people start talking about it again. Another key component of the site is that not everyone can start a fyre. In order to begin a conversation about something, you must have the “Fyre Starter” badge, which not everyone will have at first. The idea here is to make sure the quality of conversations remains high. And users who do things such as start high quality fyres will be rewarded at various levels with other kinds of badges. While LiveFyre’s focus is taking the conversation outside of places like Twitter, Kretchmer acknowledges that was very much the driving force behind the site initially — to see what people were talking about on Twitter, and bringing those conversations over to LiveFyre. And while the service may be more content-centric now, it’s still very much about using Twitter and Facebook. You can sign up with your Twitter credentials to set up an account, and there is also Facebook Connect integration. Obviously, both of these services will be vital for LiveFyre spreading the word about conversations being had on their service. Another company interested in realtime conversations, Lissn, launched at TechCrunch50 this year. But LiveFyre COO Henry Arlander believes their product is almost the opposite of that because Lissn was more about passive conversations whereas LiveFrye is very active.
So what’s the business model behind all of this? Well LiveFyre, like many startups, have lofty plans for the future (think conversations about products), but they’re actually launching with a revenue model in place as well. Alongside today’s beta launch, the company has struck a deal with MINI Cooper to sponsor the site for the first few days. After that, they have other brands lined up as well, we’re told. That’s just a basic model, but LiveFyre promises some other interesting things that they’re not quite ready to talk about yet. Also interesting are the plans they have to work with communities that provide the content for their conversations, such as blogs, to ensure they’re not simply moving the emphasis away from those sites. But again, that’s for a later time. For the beta launch, LiveFyre is giving 200 TechCrunch readers access to Fyre Starter badges (so you can start fyres). Simply send you email address to this email address to get your invite code. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| About @EricSchmidt: Google CEO Gets A Better Twitter Name Posted: 07 Dec 2009 08:54 AM PST
Last night, we wrote about Google CEO Eric Schmidt joining Twitter. Unfortunately, he chose a truly awful name for his account, @eschmidt0. We wondered why he didn’t pull some strings to get @ericschmidt, an account which was under suspension and likely available. Well voila! Today he has done just that. Eric Schmidt is now @ericschmidt. And yes, Twitter has finally verified the account. He’s gone from about 70 followers when we posted last night to over 5,000 already. We’ll take full credit for that — all we ask for in return is that he retweets us more than he does his other friends, like Heidi Montag. So what will become of eschmidt0? Apparently someone else already has it. Listed under the name “Just Me” they already have 44 followers (and rising fast). Their first tweet is “Hi.” We better update that story from last night. Update: Google’s Matt Cutts tweets that eschmidt0 now belongs to “Felipe Barreto,” perhaps that’s the name he entered before “Just Me.” Maybe he’s trying to ride the Eric Schmidt wave. And it looks like it’s working. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Report: Bing Searchers Still More Click-Happy Than Google Searchers When It Comes To Ads Posted: 07 Dec 2009 08:16 AM PST
Are people who arrive at a Website through an organic search on Bing more click-happy than those who come from Google? Back in July, we reported some numbers from search-advertising network Chitika which showed that people from Bing clicked on ads about 50 percent more than people from Google. Chitika just ran the numbers again, and the clickthrough rate (CTR) from Bing searchers is now about 75 percent higher. The actual CTR for Bing is 1.74 percent versus 0.98 percent for Google, compared to a 1.50 percent CTR in the summer. Google’s CTR is almost the same. Chitika is basing these numbers on 134 million ad impressions across 80,000 sites, so it is a snapshot. It is measuring the proensity for people to click on an ad at asite after arriving there from a search engine via an organic search (i.e., not a paid search ad). While Bing’s associated CTR went up, it’s actual share of search traffic went down to 5.75 percent from 8 percent last time. So the increase in the CTR could be skewed by its relatively small market share. Ask and AOL, which both represent even smaller shares of traffic to Chitika’s network, also have higher CTRs than even Bing, with AOL searchers clicking on ads at a 2.5 percent rate. Is a group’s propensity to click on ads inversely related to its tech savvyness? You be the judge.
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| CrunchGear’s Uberprize: A SMART Board 685ix Interactive White Board Posted: 07 Dec 2009 07:58 AM PST  This week we're going to go a little crazy. We'll have daily giveaways but we're going to offer you the chance to totally go nuts and win a SMART Board 685ix short throw magical whiteboard with installation included. What's that you say? What will I do with a whiteboard? Good question! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mark the Spot: Tell AT&T Where the iPhone Sucks Posted: 07 Dec 2009 07:05 AM PST  I recently noticed that almost all of my calls in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, hardly a data hotspot, drop at least once. Every single one. Now I know what people mean when they say AT&T sucks. Well now there is an electronic version of that crosswalk button for me to push whenever my signal degrades. This app, free in the App Store lets you pinpoint your location when the call was dropped. Expect a good constellation of points around my house. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lazyfeed’s New Realtime Interface Tips Into Information Overload Posted: 07 Dec 2009 06:58 AM PST
Today, Lazyfeed, a realtime interest feed reader which launched at our first Realtime Crunchup, is changing its look. Instead of a Google Reader-style interface with a menu of different feeds in the left-hand pane and the actual feed taking up most of the screen, it is taking more of a tile approach. Your screen fills up with tiles as you add interests you want to keep track of (such as “Web,” “iPhone,” “Google,” “movies,” “wine,”) and each of those tiles keeps constantly updating in realtime as new stories about those topics appear on blogs and news sites across the Web. Lazyfeed is trying to solve the problem of how to present realtime information in the most digestible way. It goes out, scours more than one million blogs and does a pretty good job of matching stories to your stated interests, so it helps you discover new stories you might not have otherwise found. But with the new interface, which should be live later today, you quickly descend into information overload. With just a dozen topics, you end up with a dozen tiles constantly updating (founder Ethan Gahng calls it “Lazyfeed Squared”). You are supposed to watch the news as it unfolds. There is something pure about this approach which reminds me of how you can watch a topic unfold on realtime search engine Collecta, which also presents information in a realtime stream. But one realtime stream is hard enough to keep up with at one time. Twelve or more just starts to hurt your brain. Lazyfeed makes it easy to add topics and tries to guess what topics you are interested in based on your current feeds. If you want to dive into a topic, you click on one of the tiles, and then you get a more traditional feed view in lightbox window. It then shows the most recent stories about that topic. You can click again to read the full post or excerpt and can share any post via Twitter, Facebook, or email. By using the most recent stories as its filter, Lazyfeed does a good job at capturing news as it breaks, but that is not all that it captures. I don’t want to harsh too much on Lazyfeed because at least it is experimenting with ways to make feed reading relevant again by injecting more of a realtime flow into the experience. It should be applauded for that and for trying to come up with new visual metaphors for consuming information. But it’s only solved half the problem. The harder part is coming up with a filter for realtime information that goes beyond most-recent-first. I want my feeds to be comprehensive, authoritative, and garbage-free. It’s a tall order that nobody’s yet delivered, but I’m hopeful that startups like Lazyfeed will help us find our way. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Youtego Launches Tool For Self-Visualization Posted: 07 Dec 2009 06:10 AM PST
Launching today, Youtego is a new tool for self-visualization on the net. The company’s goal is to help bring the concept of self-visualization to the web, so that you can project a visual image of yourself—what you believe, feel, know, have to teach or are capable of doing. Self-visualization is the term that Youtego uses to explain the process of associating pictures with what your self-image. The process of self-visualization in Youtego is a combination of semantics (words and phrases) and its visual representation (pictures and photos), about yourself. In the end, you get the combination or matrix of visual objects that you personally define and visualize. As a result, you start matching with people by elements, which are called Tegos, that you define. Once you sign up for an account, you start by creating a ‘Tegoset’. For instance, I made a Tegoset showing my computers because I’m really into computers. With a Tegoset you have the ability to explain what you like and enjoy without to having to write anything — it’s all done through pictures. You fill your ‘Tegoset’ with any visualized images that you think relate to the Tegoset and see who else matches those in the site. After you create your ‘Tegoset’, you create individual ‘tegos’. You also have the option of creating a story, that goes along with your Tegoset and tego. Once you have the words and pictures that you define, Youtego then connects photos from Flickr, Picasa, and Google Images. From there, you can share the tegos with the rest of the world. A neat feature of Youtego is the ability to take pictures of the Tegos, and turn them into videos with a combination of music — It reminds me a lot of Animoto, actually. Youtego is a similar service to iMindi, a TechCrunch50 finalist from 2008. You might also remember iMindi as the startup that got ripped up by TechCrunch50 panel expert Mark Cuban as the “biggest bunch of bullshit I've ever heard in my life.” Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zemanta Opens Up Recommendation Engine For Bloggers Posted: 07 Dec 2009 05:22 AM PST
For those that do, however, being regularly featured as a ‘related content’ source could drive significant traffic for a small blog, and presumably that’s Zemanta’s gamble. While it risks diluting the quality of those links, it gives joe-blogger another reason to keep using the service. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A New Virtual London Arrives Slowly, Like The Traffic Posted: 07 Dec 2009 05:14 AM PST
The virtual world, which distinguishes itself from the likes of Second Life by building exact replicas of well known cities, launched back in 2006 and while London was always planned to follow Berlin and Singapore, it feels like it’s been a long time coming. And tough luck if you are on a Mac – the 3D browser only supports Windows XP and Vista. Even now, virtual London is incomplete. Initially, users are only able to visit London’s famous Soho district, “stretching virtually from Oxford Street down to Trafalgar Square including the world-famous Piccadilly Circus and China Town.” However, Oxford Street in particular is at the heart of London’s shopping region and the home to many famous brands. And that’s probably the point. Virtual worlds are all about business and Twinity is no exception. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Qype Makes Europe Tough For Yelp, Reveals Traffic And Social Plans Posted: 07 Dec 2009 04:49 AM PST
In Jan 2009 Qype had 8m uniques across Europe. As with Yelp, Qype members evaluate businesses, places or services such as bars, restaurants, you name it. Today it has 17.7m uniques and the split is now: 5 million in germany, 4 million in the UK and 4 million in France. Spain is on 1m uniques. It now has reviews of 450,000 businesses in Europe from over 50,000 cities. Currently Qype has more than 10,000 businesses each month that sign up across whole network. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Can OpenID Be Commercialized? Investors Bet $3.25 Million On JanRain Posted: 07 Dec 2009 03:30 AM PST
JanRain just got a vote of confidence from three U.S.-based venture capital firms: we’ve learned that the startup has recently raised a $3.25 million Series A round of financing led by DFJ Frontier with participation from RPM Ventures and Anthem Venture Partners. JanRain’s flagship product is RPX, an SaaS platform for on-site acceptance of OpenID accounts for registrations and other activities, which as you may know can just as well be your MySpaceID, Windows Live ID or your regular Facebook, Google, Yahoo! account. It’s worth noting that RPX is a solution that works both ways, as it also enables users to publish their activities on client’s websites to multiple social networks. According to JanRain, its solution is already being used on more than 170,000 websites today, including those of Sears, Kmart, FOX News, Scout24, Universal Music Group and EMI Music. The software comes in three flavors: a free version that supports up to 6 interface providers and includes basic profile data, and two professional versions, the cheapest one starting at $100 a year. There’s a clean overview of available plans and corresponding pricing on the RPX product website. JanRain is really one of the only horses in this race, but the adoption of OpenID hasn’t exactly been stellar so far. Investors are now betting millions on the assumption that the Portland, Oregon company, founded in 2005, has what it takes to effectively mass market and sell authentication systems to website publishers based on OpenID and other online identity technologies. Would you? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 07 Dec 2009 02:34 AM PST
Monday: Tomorrow morning, the company is holding an event in Mountain View, CA to talk about the evolution of its search product over the years. That may sound ho-hum, but they are also promising to introduce a “few new features that we hope will change the way people search in the future.” Presenting will be no less than Google VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, Google Fellow, Amit Singhal, and Google VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra. All heavy hitters. Is this Google’s answer to the Bing event last week, where they showed off the impressive looking new Bing Maps beta product? You can bet that whatever they unveil, it won’t involve Silverlight. And I wouldn’t bet against it involving Twitter in some way, just like Microsoft’s announcements did. Tuesday: This is far from certain, but word is that Tuesday could be the day Chrome for Mac beta finally gets released. We know the launch is imminent, as the beta version is now complete and the team has moved on to getting the left-out features working. But there is one bug that might hold up the launch (it popped up late after all the beta blocker bugs were previously eliminated). It’s definitely worth noting that on the Chromium Development Calendar, December 8 (this Tuesday) is the date listed for “4.0 Beta to Beta Channel.” Chrome 4.0 is already in beta testing for Windows, and before that launched in early November, the calendar featured the same message. No word on the Linux build, but that could certainly go beta on Tuesday as well. Also worth noting is that 4.0 is scheduled to go “stable” on January 12, so that may be the Chrome 4.0 official launch (at least for Windows). Wednesday: This is the day that Google will officially launch Chrome Extensions, is the latest thing we’re hearing. We noted over the weekend that at some point this week (and probably mid-week) this would happen, and it looks like Wednesday (and possibly Wednesday evening) is the day. The one-two punch of launching Chrome for Mac beta and then having Chrome Extensions would be nice, except for the fact that Chrome for Mac beta won’t support them right away. But the latest builds of Chromium do, so everyone will be able to try out the new extensions at launch. The Rest: So that’s the first three days of the week with possible things on each day. And if you count Sunday as the start of the week, I guess you could throw in Google CEO Eric Schmidt finally joining Twitter as another event. Is Google going to give us a breather on Thursday and Friday? Who knows, but at this rate they’ll probably announce that they are dropping all support for IE on Christmas. [photo: flickr/bramus] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Clear2Pay Secures $74 million Led By Aquiline Posted: 07 Dec 2009 02:05 AM PST
Clear2Pay, which is profitable, specialises in secure electronic payments and disrupts the existing legacy payment silos in banks. This investment is taking place in the context of the sale of all shares held by Belgium VC Gimv to Aquiline. The sale has a positive impact of €2.2 million (EUR 0.10 per share) on Gimv's last published equity value at 30 September 2009. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google’s Coolest 20% Project: Liquid Galaxy Posted: 07 Dec 2009 01:57 AM PST
Apparently, the reason for the name change is that the booth now displays much more than just Street View. Google has made a modified Google Earth client so that you can go anywhere in the world in the device now. And you can even go to the Moon and Mars with it. “It felt more like a ride than a computer program, something between an observation-deck and a glass-walled spaceship. As a result of this totally seamless, immersive experience, we decided to name it the Liquid Galaxy,” Google writes. While the company notes that this is still very much a 20% project for them, they are “working hard to improve it.” Hopefully that means two things: 1) Turning it into a Star Trek-style Holodeck. 2) Figuring out how to make it less than 10,000 degrees inside (thanks to all the screen heat). Below, watch the video we took of the thing from Google I/O this year. Google notes that it’s currently touring around the world at various tech conferences. And they also apparently have a few on their campuses.
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| Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Twitter (With An Awful Name) Posted: 06 Dec 2009 10:49 PM PST
Back in March, Google CEO Eric Schmidt caused a little controversy when he was quoted as thinking of Twitter (and the other micro-messaging services like it) as a “sort of poor man’s email systems.” He later clarified his remarks a bit. Tonight, he has joined the service. Current Googlers such as Hunter Walk (YouTube) and former Googlers such as Chris Sacca welcomed Schmidt to the service tonight, pointing to his account, eschmidt0. Yes, you’d think he could have gotten a better name (for example, ericschmidt is currently suspended, and presumably available). But maybe he’s continuing Google’s love affair with 1s and 0s. [Update below, he got @ericschmidt] So what was Schmidt’s first tweet? Like any good Twitter user, he took some time for self-promotion:
His second tweet? Another self-promotional one:
Yeah, he’s going to fit right in here. (Well, as soon as he gets a real avatar, at least.) Back in April, talk swirled that Google was thinking about buying Twitter. Apparently, the company didn’t not want to sell — even for a billion dollars. Twitter has since raised a huge new round of funding at a billion dollar valuation. In August, Schmidt sat down with us for a interview that spawned two posts (and a mention of Twitter). Update: And just like that, Schmidt now has the @ericschmidt name. So yeah, don’t follow that other one. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| See That Funny 2D Barcode In The Store Window? It Might Pull Up A Google Listing. Posted: 06 Dec 2009 08:59 PM PST
What if every store had a bar-code sticker on its window so that you could pull out your iPhone, wave it in front of the bar code and get all sorts of information about that business—the telephone number, photos, customer reviews? Starting on Monday, you’ll be able to do that at up to 190,000 local businesses throughout the U.S. Google has mailed out window stickers with two-dimensional bar codes (aka, QR codes) to the most-searched for or clicked-on businesses in its local business directory. Anyone with a QR code reader in their phone can scan it to call up a Google Mobile local directory page for one of these “Favorite Places,” which generally includes a map, phone number, directions, address, reviews, and a link to the store’s website. (It’s a mobile version of Google Places). Local businesses can also set up coupon offers through their Google directory page, which would turn the QR code into a mobile coupon, and help entice someone standing outside a store to come in: “If you found us on Google, you get 20% off.”
Japan is already QR-crazy. Google wants the U.S. to be next. In conjunction with the QR code sticker roll-out, Google is also giving away 40,000 Quickmark QR Code Reader apps for the iPhone, which normally cost $1.99 apiece. But you can use any QR code reader. There are a bunch of free ones, some on Android phones as well. There are now over a million local businesses which have claimed their Google local listing, up from a few hundred thousand last summer. If these QR code stickers become popular in the U.S., it could encourage more small businesses to claim their listings and give Google cleaner data. In the near future, Google Maps on mobile phones will also start including businesses as points of interest. Google calls these “smart maps” internally. As the businesses are added, they are clickable, and their Places page pops up. Google will be adding these businesses incrementally. “They are selected based on their PlaceRank,” says John Hanke, VP of Google Earth, Maps, and Local. PlaceRank is like PageRank for places It tries to figure out how prominent a place is based on factors such as “references on the Web, reviews, photos,” says Hanke, “how many people know about it, how long its been around.” Maybe they should put the PlaceRank on the sticker. A high PlaceRank could become a badge of honor, like a high Zagat’s score. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aardvark Mulls Over A $30+ Million Offer From Google Posted: 06 Dec 2009 06:46 PM PST
The company is also talking with other potential buyers, say our sources. And even if no one else comes to the table, they have a difficult decision to make. At least one venture capitalist has offered to put new money into the company at a similar valuation, and the founders may be in a position to sell some of their personal stock in that round as well. So the decision comes down to sell now and take the guaranteed money, or roll the dice and go for the big win. This is a fairly common situation. Automattic (the creators of Wordpress), for example, turned down a $200 millionish offer to be acquired in 2007 and instead raised a new round at a similar valuation, taking money off the table for founders/execs. Aardvark lets users ask their friends and others for advice and information. They recently launched a website version of the service as well. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| With iTunes, Apple Conditioned Us For The App Store Posted: 06 Dec 2009 05:18 PM PST
That speaks to what I think is an obvious, but largely overlooked part of the success of the App Store. While Apple’s two sexy devices (the iPhone and the iPod touch), make apps very simple to use, it’s the iTunes experience that makes them easy to obtain. Without the latter, the former simply wouldn’t matter. We’ve spoken previously about how Apple’s tight control of its ecosystem and its competitors lack of such structure has helped build the App Store into what it is, and insured that it continues to outpace its rivals. But at its core, the App Store works so well because it was built upon a foundation that was proven: iTunes. Since Apple was able to grow iTunes into the biggest force in online music (and actually, the biggest force now in retail music overall), it conditioned its customers with something very important: The idea of paying for digital goods with one click through a piece of software. Customers had already bought billions of songs through iTunes by the time the App Store was born. And the App Store offered the same exact process, using the same method of payment already stored in iTunes. This is crucial. Imagine if someone else had tried to launch an app store as its own entity, do we really think it would have exploded in the same way? That seems unlikely, and actually, others had tried similar ideas before, but they never took off. As the blog Webomatica pointed out today, we live in an online world now where many of us expect apps connected to the web to be free. That’s really all iPhone apps are too (though yes, some are more involved and take longer to develop), yet we’re okay with paying for many of them. “Example: I wouldn't pay a dime to play Bejeweled 2 online. But paying $2.99 to play it on the iPhone seems reasonable. That reality-distortion is illogical, but it's here right now, and a very big deal.” blogger Jason Kaneshiro writes. This fact hasn’t escaped me either. I won’t pay to play a game online, but in the App Store it’s “click buy, click buy, click buy” without a moment’s hesitation. It’s just so easy and I’m used to spending a certain amount of money on iTunes every month. Again, there is no doubt that the iPhone/iPod touch played a huge role in all of this, but my point is that Apple made it as easy as can be for customers by placing the App Store on top of iTunes. And as a result, since customers are wiling to pay for these apps, it lit a fire under the third-party developer community, which continues to fuel the App Store. It’s a cycle. And it remains one that will be very hard for a competitor to break because they don’t have this iTunes ecosystem. It’s the gift that keeps on giving for Apple. [photo: United Artists] Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lazy Sunday: Twitter Takes The Day Off Posted: 06 Dec 2009 03:29 PM PST
It’s so lazy, in fact, that no one is even bitching about Twitter being down on FriendFeed, even though it has been for a good 30 minutes now. There is also no update on the status blog. It’s weird. It’s eerie. Twitter is quietly down. It is really news anymore when Twitter goes down? Not really. But they’ve been doing such a good job at staying up for a while now that hiccups like this and the one last week are at least worth noting. Especially when new COO Dick Costolo emphasizes how Twitter will have absolutely no problem scaling going forward. As always, you should study up on our list of 15 alternate things to do when Twitter is down. Update: And she’s back. A little over a half hour of downtime it looks like. Update 2: Deja vu? Looks like Twitter has a canned message for the Status page to note downtime, so I’m not sure why it takes them so long to get it up. It’s smart to default to “about” 10 minutes ago though when it’s really “about” triple that.
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| Getting It Right And Getting It Wrong With The New Media Posted: 06 Dec 2009 01:22 PM PST  The internet (the blogosphere to be precise) is still a bit of a mystery to many in tech and entertainment. It's weird to think that companies whose job it is to reach tech-savvy consumers aren't using this tool correctly, but it's also no secret that the biggest and most influential companies are often the slowest to adapt. At any rate, they're learning, but some are learning faster than others. Here I chronicle just a few standout cases. Note that many companies are bunched under the PR heading, which is in the second half of this post for reasons which will become obvious. Also, it's a bit awkward talking about the "new media" right after I denied its existence, but for the purposes of this post please just consider it to mean big blogs, news aggregators, and social or bottom-up media. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TC50 DemoPit Startup LIFEmee Lets You Record And Share Your Entire Life Online Posted: 06 Dec 2009 10:56 AM PST
To recap, LIFEmee allows you to store, manage and share all significant aspects and events of your life: Your daily health condition, relationships, jobs, schools, possessions, hobbies, family members, pictures, notes etc. etc. The main idea is to give users a platform for organizing their lives online by collecting and structuring this kind of information for lifetime use. Users can not only review all data they fed into their “lifestream” (all data aligned along a time line) in retrospect but also lay out their plans for the future. The information can be shared or kept strictly private. LIFEmee is still loaded with too many buttons and icons, but the new site is much simpler to use than the TechCrunch50 version. The site’s co-founders say after having collected feedback from early users all around the world, they tried to make it more accessible, integrate it with existing social networks and redesign the entire layout. A Japanese version was added a few weeks after TechCrunch50, too (at the event, LIFEmee launched in English only). In the new version, users don’t need to register on the site anymore but can log in via Facebook Connect. Status updates on LIFEmee can now be pushed to Facebook and Twitter profiles automatically. But what’s more interesting is that it’s now possible to scrape Facebook status updates and tweets and post them on LIFEmee where they will be (theoretically) stored forever and in one place.
Layout-wise, a few key elements were dropped from the splash page. You won’t find the “Last Will” button anymore, for example (early LIFEmee users deemed the option to upload a Last Will and Testament as “too dark”). The central “MyLife” area was replaced with two distinct functions, DailyBoard and LifeBoard. Whereas DailyBoard operates similarly to Twitter (asking “How are you feeling now?”), the LifeBoard is the place to go for writing a diary, keeping track of your health condition or making future plans. For example, you can upload a picture of the dream house you plan to buy 5 years later on the LifeBoard and lay out which steps are to be made by which points in time to achieve that goal. And LIFEmee added a number of other bells and whistles (i.e. a new search function that lets you search up comment and status update from LIFEmee, Twitter and Facebook at the same time, easier uploading of pictures and items, additional options to invite friends etc.) that make the service a bit more worthwhile. But the question is if we are already at the the stage where we are willing (and dedicated enough) to store our entire lives on the web. LIFEmee is still in alpha, which means there are still a few kinks that need to be ironed out, but the site is ready for you to take at least a test run. LIFEmee competes with similar offerings like dandelife, thisMoment and Rseven on the mobile.
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People often attempt to have conversations with others on Twitter, but if it goes more than a few tweets deep, it’s a mess. FriendFeed was a better haven for conversations, but those were often just based on tweets moved over to a small community — a community which is 
Last week I met with 
I thought December was supposed to be a quiet month, where people go on vacation, and companies don’t launch new things. I was wrong. This week is shaping up to be a very busy one for Google as they could have as many as three substantial launches in three days.
Pretty big capital raise today. 
At Google I/O this year, one demo booth stood out above all others: 
Social search service 
As you may have 
Usually when Twitter goes down it happens in the middle of some sort of event that causes a rush of tweets. Today is just a regular old lazy Sunday, and yet here we are, with it being down.
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