The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Startup Digest Launches In Tokyo, Atlanta and Vancouver
- Graphic.ly Raises $1.2M For Comic Publishing
- FutureTap Reflects On “Where To?” iPhone App Acquisition, Talks Numbers
- Pinging In The New Year: Seesmic Acquires Ping.fm
- Thomson Reuters Acquires Discovery Logic To Boost Analytics
- Quantcast Raises $27.5 Million Series C Round From Cisco And Prior Investors
- AdNectar Serves Over 2 Billion Virtual Goods Over Social Networks
- Flurry Teams Up With comScore Weeks After Merging With Pinch Media
- Tweexchange Lets You Check Available Twitter Usernames And Domain Names
- Social Network Removes 5,000 Users For Putting On Weight During Holiday Season
- Twitter Kicks Off 2010 Hiring People Away From Google, Bebo, Ning And More
- TechCrunch, The Google Chrome Extension
- Google And Spotify Dance Over U.S. Launch
- NSFW: Hey! Look behind you! It’s the tablet of the future!
- Facebook Rolling Out Redesign To Some Users
- Bam! Avatar Hits $1 Billion In Ticket Sales In 17 Days, Already No. 4 All Time Movie
- The Dark Side of the Late 2009 M&A Surge
- Venture Funding Roared Back In the Fourth Quarter To Nearly $15 Billion
- Cheap Beer If You Check-In… Or Just Tweet.
- Zynga Investor Calls Scamville Debate Irrelevant And Unfair
- Facebook Wants To Know How You Feel About Their News Feed
| Startup Digest Launches In Tokyo, Atlanta and Vancouver Posted: 04 Jan 2010 09:00 AM PST
I like to go to events here in Silicon Valley, and meet new people, but sometimes actually finding those events in your city is hard to do—especially for entrepreneurs. There are sites like Plancast, and Upcoming that let you plan ahead, but there are also many other solutions. Startup Digest is hoping to be one of those solutions. Startup Digest isn’t a complicated web service or anything—it’s an email list. An email list that has attracted over 12,000 subscribers in the last 90 days. Plain and simple, you just subscribe to an email list, and then once a week, you get an email with five events that you should go to in your city. Currently, Startup Digest only has lists in Silicon Valley and New York City, but today, they are launching lists in three other cites; Tokyo, Atlanta and Vancouver. In each of those cities, there are curators that come up with the events and talk to event organizers and make sure their events are on the list. The business model side of things is pretty simple too. In Silicon Valley, which has the most subscribers, there is an ad in each of the emails at the top. Each ad spot in one email is $1,000 to $5,000. Not bad for an email list! The only costs Startup Digest has is sending the email out through Mail Chimp, and hosting their web site. It seems like a pretty smart idea to me, and it’s attracted folks like Guy Kawasaki, Dave McClure and a few other Silicon Valley heavyweights to subscribe to the list as well. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Graphic.ly Raises $1.2M For Comic Publishing Posted: 04 Jan 2010 08:30 AM PST
Graphic.ly, a content delivery system and community platform for the publishing world, today announced that they have raised $1.2 million in funding. Graphic.ly was originally named Take Comics, and was part of the 2009 TechStars program in Boulder, Co. Graphic.ly raised $1 million. The round was led by DFJ Mercury, and included Starz Media, LLC, as well as, Northstar Equity Investors. Individual investments as well came from David Cohen, Chris Sacca, Jake Nickell, Paige Craig and Dave McClure. Graphic.ly's first product, which focuses on comic publishers, creators and enthusiasts, provides an immersive social experience and marketplace around digital comics and associated merchandise. The company looks to expand its community and content platform and become the de facto solution for print media. Graphic.ly also has announced a partnership with Marvel Comics, one of the leaders in comics, allowing Graphic.ly users to read Marvel comics on the go, exactly like what Panelfly did on the iPhone. The company has brought in Micah Baldwin as the CEO of Graphic.ly. Previously, Micah was the Vice President of Business Development and Chief Evangelist at Lijit. Micah is also an advisor at TechStars, which explains the relationship between Graphic.ly and Micah. Graphic.ly is going to use the funds to expand development and marketing efforts and begin work on content partnerships. Also, the first 1,000 to use the code TECHCRUNCH will be able sign up immediately. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| FutureTap Reflects On “Where To?” iPhone App Acquisition, Talks Numbers Posted: 04 Jan 2010 08:13 AM PST
It did pretty well, but tap tap tap ended up putting the app up for sale in October 2008 regardless. German startup FutureTap outbid other potential buyers and ultimately purchased the iPhone app from tap tap tap for $70k upfront a couple of months later. In a blog post published earlier today, FutureTap’s Ortwin Gentz looks back at his initial expectations following the acquisition, and the way it turned out to be instead. He also talks about sales numbers in detail, which is why we think you’d be interested in the story, too. Since the acquisition – and beating FutureTap’s projections – the “Where to?” iPhone app made a total of $325.055 in gross sales. Apple took a $97.157 cut on sales revenue, so that means the young company made a $227.538 profit on the app in 2009.
FutureTap acknowledges that success depends on a combination of factors, like getting featured by Apple, releasing new versions and pushing the app by advertising across platforms. And speaking of advertising, Gentz has some interesting things to say about that as well (emphasis ours):
It’s interesting to see that paid advertising doesn’t work as well as getting featured by Apple, positive reviews and good rankings from users and simply by releasing upgraded versions at a regular basis. Another interesting data point revolves around internationalization: FutureTap has localized “Where To?” for 9 different languages, integrating local categories and brands in the app along the way. This contributed to a noticeable increase in non-US sales for the startup: while sales in the United States prior to the acquisition accounted for about 90% of the total, by December 2009 the non-US share increased to nearly 50%. Read the full post for Gentz’ reflection on the year after the acquisition of the app, and don’t hesitate to send us similar stories (we like it when startups are transparent about sales numbers and such). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Pinging In The New Year: Seesmic Acquires Ping.fm Posted: 04 Jan 2010 08:00 AM PST
The move positions the various Seesmic applications (web, desktop, and mobile) to be able to update some 50 social networks very easily. Seesmic is also acquiring the over 500,000 current Ping.fm users as well as the two co-founders, Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough, who are joining the Seesmic team full time. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur tells us that Duffy and McCullough are “becoming Seesmic shareholders obviously and key part of the management team.” On January 1, Le Meur wrote that a 2010 goal for Seesmic was to have 1 million status updates a day. This acquisition will make hitting that much easier as Ping.fm adds some 200,000 updates a day to Seesmic’s arsenal. Le Meur promises that all of the Seesmic applications will gain Ping.fm integration shortly. More importantly, Seesmic is promising to maintain and extend Ping.fm’s API and platform (there are about 100 applications that currently use Ping.fm for various reasons). Undoubtedly, they hope that this will be a compelling part of their upcoming plug-in support for Seesmic, as well. And Seesmic users will now be able to use Ping.fm’s core features such as being able to update via IM, SMS, and email. This addition is a big plus for Seesmic as they aim to become the go-to application for social network updating. Rival Brizzly, by comparison, can only update Twitter and Facebook. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Thomson Reuters Acquires Discovery Logic To Boost Analytics Posted: 04 Jan 2010 07:55 AM PST
Thomson Reuters is ringing in the New Year with an acquisition under its belt. The business news and information conglomerate is acquiring Discovery Logic, a company that provides customizable analytics and scientific research software. Discovery Logic will become part of the the healthcare and science business of Thomson Reuters. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Thomson says that the acquisition of Discovery Logic will help boost its research analytics offerings and and will provide increased workflow and scientific software to academic, government, non-profit and commercial professionals. Discovery Logic developers a software, called ScienceWire that aids with developing decisions around scientific discoveries and data. The software also serves as a database management platform. Thomson Reuters also recently acquired Breakingviews, a site that provided commentary on UK and European breaking financial news. Thomson was rumored to have paid close to $18 million in cash for the site. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Quantcast Raises $27.5 Million Series C Round From Cisco And Prior Investors Posted: 04 Jan 2010 07:20 AM PST
In the announcement, Quantcast says the extra funding will primarily be used to support the adoption of its recently launched Quantcast Media Program, which is essentially a marketplace where marketers and Web publishers can connect based on accurate and actionable data. In the release, Quantcast claims its free audience measurement solutions are now being used for some 10 million websites, and that its products are used by such media companies as NBC Universal, Time Inc., Hulu.com, CBS Corporation, Fox News, ABC Inc. and Bloomberg.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| AdNectar Serves Over 2 Billion Virtual Goods Over Social Networks Posted: 04 Jan 2010 07:00 AM PST
AdNectar, a word-of-mouth marketing service for agencies and brands fielding campaigns on social networks, announced today that it has reached 2 billion virtual goods served from its platform. AdNectar has clients ranging from Gillette and Funny or Die to Jelly Belly and Snapple/Dr. Pepper. Also, over 10 million virtual goods have been sent between friends on social networks. According to data from AdNectar, campaigns reach scale fast. For example, over 1 million Malibu Rum branded drinks were sent in two weeks; and over 1 million Nestle Toll House cookies were sent for the "Bake some Love" campaign. Engagement rates are also reportedly high for companies. Rates are anywhere from 2% to 6% because the campaigns tap into the implicit trust between your friends on these social networks. Also, brand impact is exceptionally high; 16% lift in purchase intent for Nestle Toll House, and 9% increase in brand favorability for Malibu Rum. AdNectar and virtual goods is definitely taking off, and brands are starting to realize that, and AdNectar is using that to their advantage. AdNectar and virtual goods is definitely taking off, and brands are starting to realize that, and AdNectar is using that to their advantage. AdNectar is based in Palo Alto, has 9 employees and has starting turning a profit. The company has only taken an angel round of funding from Larry Braitman, Tom Cole, Kevin Hartz, Brian O'Kelley, Jon Perlow, Russell Siegelman and David Shen. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Flurry Teams Up With comScore Weeks After Merging With Pinch Media Posted: 04 Jan 2010 06:03 AM PST  Flurry Analytics has been real busy this holiday season. They recently merged with Pinch Media to create the biggest (in terms of user base) mobile analytics platform on the market. Today, Flurry is announcing a partnership with comScore, Inc. to provide mobile analytics for comScore clientele. This will provide Flurry with a fresh new revenue stream and comScore with the ability to stay relevant with their analytics offerings to existing clientele. Essentially, comScore, inc. has a large sales force and existing relationships with big brands that pay comScore to provide them with analytics. These analytics come primarily through panel data, in which comScore uses a sampling of users as a way to determine web traffic and usage data. By selling Flurry's SDK to clients, comScore can remain relevant by providing mobile analytics on top of their existing web analytics package.
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| Tweexchange Lets You Check Available Twitter Usernames And Domain Names Posted: 04 Jan 2010 05:40 AM PST
If it turns out it’s not, you’ll get a list of possible alternatives. As a bonus, and thanks to a partnership with domain registrar and hosting company GoDaddy, you’ll also get to see which domain names related to your desired username are still available. Users can register or backorder domain names through GoDaddy straight from the site. When a Twitter username is ‘pending removal’, you can also opt to be notified as soon as it becomes available (Twitter deletes usernames 60 days after their suspension). Note that the latter service will set you back $5. The new Tweexchange is a product from Blast Applications, a New York-based developer of iPhone, Facebook and Twitter apps. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Social Network Removes 5,000 Users For Putting On Weight During Holiday Season Posted: 04 Jan 2010 03:45 AM PST
The social network, which prides itself in not letting ‘ugly’ people enter the site, claims these users had it coming by putting pictures of themselves celebrating during the holiday season, revealing that they ‘may have let themselves go’. The company also says ‘vigilant members, who take pride in the standards demanded by the site, called for action’. Following complaints, BeautifulPeople.com moved to place thousands of users back in the rating stage, after which only a couple of hundred members got back in after review from existing members. According to the company’s statement, most people that got banned for being ‘overweight’ came from the US (1,520), UK (832) and Canada (533). Is there a DespicableBehavior.com yet? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Twitter Kicks Off 2010 Hiring People Away From Google, Bebo, Ning And More Posted: 04 Jan 2010 02:41 AM PST
The biggest fish Twitter caught is likely Bakari Brock, a former attorney at Kilpatrick Stockton who has served as Corporate Counsel for YouTube and Google since September 2007. Listed as specialties on the man’s LinkedIn profile: “negotiation and drafting of music, video and software licenses; and counseling on copyright, ecommerce, and general policy issues.” His recruitment hints at Twitter preparing a proper content distribution play, which would clearly require some serious in-house legal talent. Brock brings heaps of field experience to the startup, and it’ll be interesting to see what his negotiation skill set and no doubt extensive professional network prove to be worth for Twitter. Also joining Twitter from the Mountain View company’s legal team is Anthony Wang, former attorney at Latham & Watkins and Managing Counsel for Google since May 2005. It’s not only Google losing key staff to Twitter, though. Gray also tracked these people, who are likely starting at Twitter today: - Paul Soals (ex-IT Support Engineer at Bebo and previously with Apple) Including these 10 persons, the list of Twitter team members now counts 156 people, although we should note the company also adds freelance workers to it. Other recent hires recently made by Twitter included the Mixer Labs team (through acquisition), Raptr’s Kevin Cheng and Yahoo’s Utkarsh Srivastava. Curious to see what the new year will bring for Twitter. (Picture from Flickr / Mags_cat) Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| TechCrunch, The Google Chrome Extension Posted: 04 Jan 2010 01:30 AM PST
I’ve enjoyed using Google’s Chrome browser ever since it was introduced back in September 2008, albeit using other browsers alongside for different purposes. With the launch of Extensions for Chrome, the need to occasionally fire up Firefox or Opera has diminished, and I doubt I’ll be using any browser other than Chrome much in 2010. Just to drive home the point that Google Chrome Extensions, though still in beta, is a crucial feature for the fledgling desktop browser. And now self-proclaimed TechCrunch addict and student at Illinois Institute of Technology Viggnesh Kandasamy has hashed together a basic extension designed to let Chrome users stay on top of what gets published on here. More reason to love Chrome Extensions (and more reason to love our fans). The add-on for Chrome is fairly rudimentary: installing it will add a favicon in the top menu that will open up a window displaying the last four articles published on TechCrunch when clicked. Clicking the headlines shows a short description before a ‘read more’ link, and you also get to share the link instantly on Twitter and/or Facebook. In addition, you get a box that allows you to run a search for companies, people and more who’ve appeared on this site or in CrunchBase. What more would you like to see added to the extension? Let us know in comments; Kandasamy will be reading them.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Google And Spotify Dance Over U.S. Launch Posted: 04 Jan 2010 01:26 AM PST
The U.S. launch has been delayed over aggressive negotiations with the labels over the price users will pay in the U.S. Spotify insists on free, the labels want to move away from that model entirely. We’ve heard that a compromise has been reached. Spotify will be free for users, but a “very limited” number of people will be able to use it. Much more interesting, though, are the conversations with Google that we’ve confirmed. The two companies sketched out a plan where Spotify’s excellent Android application would be build into the 2.1 version of Android and would launch in the U.S. with the Google Nexus One phone on January 5. The application – which is available in Europe and allows for offline syncing of songs – would give Google a much needed competitive answer to Apple’s iTunes. The Android could realistically be seen as a media consumption device, like the iPhone, with things like Spotify built into it. Google wanted Spotify badly enough that they were willing to cover the label costs for every user of $3 – $4 per month. Spotify would add advertising on top of it, as they do with the free version in Europe, to make additional revenue. Without Google paying those label fees there was no way Spotify could handle the costs of the user flow that 2.1 would provide. Currently, European users must pay for Spotify Premium to use the mobile versions of the service. We haven’t heard whether the deal was done, and there’s a chance Spotify will be part of the January 5 Google announcement. But our sources say the deal has likely gone cold, at least for now. When Spotify does launch in the U.S., though, look for a new version of the player that adds social elements – like social playlists – to the product. That’s a big weakness Spotify has against MOG, which uses social elements to aid discovery of new music. And Spotify will also supposedly let you play songs that you have on your hard drive (like via iTunes) that they don’t have in their library. That will help fill in the ever-decreasing gaps in their library, and make Spotify that much more compelling for users. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| NSFW: Hey! Look behind you! It’s the tablet of the future! Posted: 04 Jan 2010 01:16 AM PST
The first reason – obviously – is that “futurologist” isn’t a real job, any more than is “mixologist” or “sandwich artist” or “social media expert”. The second reason is that I am absolutely terrible at predicting things, especially in the field of technology. For example, almost a decade ago, I was one of the first columnists to declare that camera phones would never catch on, while at the same time predicting a bold and exciting future for red-button interactive television. In fact, looking back, there’s almost no successful technological advancement that I haven’t summarily dismissed, or an embarrassing flop in which I’ve failed to invest both my enthusiasm and my money. And it’s for precisely this reason that, until now, I’ve kept my mouth shut about the Apple Tablet. Whatever I say before the device is launched – if it’s launched – will almost certainly prove to be humiliatingly wrong and, as Mark Twain (or was it Abraham Lincoln?) put it, it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. But then in the past week or so, everyone and their dog has weighed in on the subject. Tablets have featured large on those ridiculous “…of the year” lists, either as the biggest controversies of the past twelve months, or as the most eagerly anticipated launches of the next twelve. Experts have decreed that 2010 will be the year of the tablet and, right here on TechCrunch, MG swung a punch at Betanews blogger Joe Wilcox after Wilcox dared to opine that “the world doesn’t need an Apple tablet, or any other”. In his spirited response, MG pointed to Apple’s history of confounding expectations but also argued the dangers of criticising companies for stepping outside their “comfort zones”. As he put it: “If Joe Wilcox ran the computer industry, we'd still be using typewriters.” For what it’s worth, my gut feeling on reading the back and forth was that both are right. Certainly tablets don’t meet an obvious need (my laptop does just fine for everything we’re told the tablet will do), they’re too large and fragile to be truly portable, but also too small and keyboard-less to make sense for home use. With the iPhone and the iPod, Apple took two established and hugely successful consumer devices – the cellphone and the portable music player – and blew our minds at how much they could improve on them. The only way Apple can make existing tablets easier to use is if they built one that was able to put itself away in a drawer after a week and permanently forget about itself. At the same time, though, MG’s broader point is sound: criticising Apple – and tablet makers in general – for thinking different(ly) is ridiculous. If companies only made things that commentators could see a need for we wouldn’t have cars or computers or Furbies or Pop-Tarts — or anything at all. Predicting that something is going to fail before it’s even launched is like betting against the future: easy to do, but likely to end in embarrassment. When I first heard rumours about the iPhone, I was quick to dismiss it. At that time cellphone manufacturers were releasing new and improved models every thirty seconds; each new release was like a tsetse flying clockwise around the Boston Matrix; zipping from Rising Star to Problem Child to Dog, but dropping dead before it could make it to Cash Cow. The idea of a company with no history in the cellphone market launching a single model of phone, and then tying it to a single operator (thus forcing a significant number of potential customers to break their existing contracts if they wanted in) was idiocy by any metric. And yet, Apple’s reinvention of the cellphone was so complete – its vision so advanced – that all of the naysayers now look like short-sighted idiots. There’s no reason why the same couldn’t happen with the tablet. Really then the only logical thing to do is to wait and see what, if anything, Apple launches. It might be a Cash Cow, it might be a Dog. No sense in trying to guess and looking like a fool. And yet there is one aspect of all this tablet hype that puzzles me: While we futurologists and dorks and fanboys eagerly await and debate this device – this game-changing, category-defining, content-selling device – no one seems to have noticed that it already exists. It’s called the Amazon Kindle. When the Kindle appeared back in 2007, media’s last analogue hold-out – the book – was suddenly catapulted into the digital age. We’d had e-readers before, of course, much like MP3 players existed before the iPod. But by integrating with the world’s largest bookstore and creating Whispernet to allow customers to buy tens (now hundreds) of thousands of ebooks from anywhere in the US (and now much of the world), Amazon created something truly game-changing. If you need proof of the impact the device has had since its launch, just look at the recent statistics: Amazon sold more Kindle books on Christmas day than normal books – a fact that, even arguing that people generally buy fewer physical products online on Christmas day, still demonstrates the creation of a significant market that didn’t exist before. Look at the reaction from competitors: the Kindle’s success prompted Barnes & Noble to hurriedly develop the Nook and you can’t move in a Borders store without hitting a demo station for the Sony Reader. Look at the reaction from publishers: frantically revising (or creating) their ebook strategy in response to the threat of mass-piracy and an exodus of their most loyal paying customers from hardback to ebook. And look at the anecdotal evidence: your mom has a Kindle. And yet all of that has happened without the mouth-frothing orgy of idol-worship that we’ve come to expect with the appearance of any must-have new product. Partly this is because Amazon doesn’t have any physical stores and so there was no TV footage of lines around the block on launch day. Then there’s the fact that books are inherently less cool than cellphones or music. But mainly it’s because we’ve become so used to Apple’s magical product launches that we’ve conditioned ourselves to ignore the possibility that anything incredible could be created by anyone else. The idea that Amazon – a humble retailer – could produce a digital device that changes the way we consume media is too ludicrous for words. Only Steve has that kind of power. Thus we must wait for Steve before we get excited about a tablet-shaped device. All hail Steve. Unfortunately, your mom doesn’t give a shit about Steve – and nor do most people. What they care about is that the Kindle replaces the one book they carry in their bag every day with a single device that stores thousands of books but still doesn’t hurt their eyes like a laptop – or tablet – screen would. The current model also replaces their newspaper, if they want it to, and pretty soon it’ll be able to replace their magazines. All without taking up more room. Like the iPhone let us swap our cellphone for something far better, and the iPod put paid to our clunky old music player, so the Kindle neatly replaces something we already carry around: the printed page. And this is where the Apple Tablet has a problem. Unless Steve Jobs has managed to change the law of physics, his tablet will have a traditional retina-burning screen to allow it to display movies and web content. As a result it can’t – and won’t – replace the Kindle, with its E-Ink technology, as an ebook reader. This will present consumers with an interesting dilemma: to either keep their Kindle (or Sony Reader, or Nook) for reading on the move, or replace it with a tablet that provides a cool way to access web and video content, but sucks for reading. Unfortunately this is where Apple has shot themselves in the foot: the iPhone is such a good portable media device that all but the most obsessive geeks will choose to keep the Kindle and stick with their iPhones for the rest. If Apple really wants to launch a new and awesome portable device, it shouldn’t be dicking around with multimedia tablets at all. Instead the company should focus its efforts on producing an ebook reader that addresses all of the flaws with the Kindle. I’m talking full-colour, low-power screens that are readable in any light. I’m talking a cool Apple-style user interface. I’m talking about forging deals will publishers to sell bestsellers for $5 rather than $9.99. I’m talking about having it available in retail stores, and not being tied to any single retailer. I’m talking about making the damn thing bendy. In short, I’m talking about doing for e-readers what the iPod did to MP3 players: take a product that people have shown that they actually want and innovate the hell out of it. But then again, this is just another reason why I could never be a futurologist.The job of a futurologist is not to predict the future based on practicalities, but rather to write fantasy fiction about what they hope the future will hold. A futurologist would never advise Steve Jobs to temper his vision, or to fret about what moms will carry with them in their bags. A futurologist would simply assume that Apple will be able to invent with some kind of magical screen capable of displaying high definition movies one minute and print-sharp ebooks the next. Or perhaps a new type of device that makes the very idea of books redundant. As a cynical non-futurologist – a pessimologist if you like – I sit somewhere between MG and Joe Wilcox. I passionately hope that the Apple Tablet will become the only portable media device I need to carry, but at the same time – because of the Kindle – I just can’t imagine a possible universe in which it will succeed. Also, I still think I’ll be proved right about camera phones. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Facebook Rolling Out Redesign To Some Users Posted: 04 Jan 2010 12:38 AM PST
Facebook seems to be rolling out its new site design to at least some people outside the company, although none of us at TechCrunch have yet to be graced with its presence. The new design is “exactly” like the screenshots that GigaOm posted on December 27, says one source. Applications are taking the biggest hit, as Facebook announced in October. The search bar has been moved from the right to left-center and the navigation bar is simplified. Notably Facebook has removed the double link to your profile. Settings and login/logout have been combined into a single “account” drop down. There isn’t a whole lot to hate here, but Facebook users have a fine tradition of trashing any changes to the site, and this will likely not be an exception. Any of you on the new version yet? Let us know, and send in those screenshots. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Bam! Avatar Hits $1 Billion In Ticket Sales In 17 Days, Already No. 4 All Time Movie Posted: 04 Jan 2010 12:01 AM PST
The box office amount is fueled by 3D and IMAX ticket sales, which are more expensive than regular movies. It has brought in $352.1 million domestically and $670.2 million internationally. $66.4 million has come in from IMAX theaters. We are unabashed fans of the movie – see my review of Avatar here. I’ve now seen it three times in 3D, but haven’t seen it in IMAX yet. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| The Dark Side of the Late 2009 M&A Surge Posted: 03 Jan 2010 09:01 PM PST
That pain was felt by venture capitalists as well. I've argued for a while now that once the gains from 1999 and 2000 fall off the ten-year index of VC returns, we're going to be looking at an industry that has returns at or below the S&P 500. Given we're coming out of a "decade of zero," that's a pretty bad thing. Especially for an asset class that is (supposed to) take huge risks in the name of potentially outsized returns. Dow Jones VentureSource is releasing its year-end liquidity numbers for 1999 this morning and no surprise—it's just another data point nail in the coffin. At a high level you can put a good spin on the facts: In the fourth quarter acquisitions rebounded mightily. Public companies snapped up some 86 venture-backed companies for a total of $7.3 billion and three IPOs raised a—let's be honest—paltry $220 million. And the median amount paid for a company in the fourth quarter was more than $100 million for the first time since 2000.
But as frequently happens in quarter-to-quarter surveys, that $100 million number was skewed greatly by a few large deals, most notably, Zappos's $1.2 billion purchase by Amazon. Overall, for the year the median acquisition price was just $27 million.
And the overall rebound in fourth quarter liquidity is only impressive compared to the nine months prior. For the year, the industry produced just $17.1 billion in returns, 34% less than the $26.1 billion generated in 2008. And that wasn't a particularly good year. The surge in M&A and talk of some promising companies waiting in the wings to go public aside, this industry is in as much trouble as ever for three simple reasons. If these reasons don't get addressed the 2010s may be worse than the '00s for the asset class. 1. The Math Doesn't Work. An industry that invests roughly $20 billion a year (or even more), can't survive on returns of roughly $20 billion a year. The basis of a portfolio investing business is that the hits have to make up for the losses—not just pay for themselves. It doesn't matter how much you believe in innovation, how much you believe in the Valley and how much you believe in venture capital itself—the numbers are now and have for the last decade been hopelessly out of whack. Unless investors can discover an area that can produce many billion-dollar homeruns like the ecommerce, enterprise software and telecom did in decades past, there needs to be dramatically less money investing in early stage firms, period. As we speak, many once proud venture firms are having a hard time raising their next funds, and many are turning towards less-desirable limited partners out of necessity. A host of funds were supposed to close in 2009 and haven't yet. Watch the news in 2010 closely: If firms are taking money from state pension funds, raise an eyebrow. Back in the early 2000s state funds came under pressure from Freedom of Information Act requests to divulge information about underlying portfolio investments and privacy-conscious VCs turned their backs on those pension funds as a result. Anyone going back to them now was likely told no by nearly everyone else. Of course, those firms will still be in business. But not all firms will once their current funds are depleted, and ultimately, that's a good thing for the industry. 2. M&As Alone Will Not Sustain VCs. While it's true that the bulk of exits VCs get are from acquisitions, this is not where the bulk of returns come from. The economics of venture capital are based on homeruns. That's why some 5% of the industry makes some 95% of the money. And those big hits come from IPOs or in some cases the threat of an IPO that makes a publicly-held competitor pay a huge premium for a startup. This is why M&A values surged so high in the late 1990s. Companies like Cisco had to shell out hundreds of millions or even billions to buy a company because it was so easy for them to go public. That's not the case today and when you only have a handful of companies out buying, even a Google or Cisco shopping spree can only net so much in returns.
3. The Perilous Ripple Effect. There is a way that venture capital can adjust to a new normal of smaller exits with smaller multiples: Taking less risk and selling early. That means a switch of focus from building companies to building products. This is how much of the world outside Silicon Valley invests now. The benefit is it requires less capital and less risk. If you build something of value, there's a likelihood you can get $5 million or even $20 million for it. But that's the cap of what you're going to get without a business to back that product up. But that's OK economically, because you have fewer failures since you're taking less risk. Indeed in 2009, Dow Jones found that companies raised a median of just $18 million in venture capital before getting acquired. That's 18% less than in 2008. And the companies sold faster. It took a median of five years to get an exit, versus six years in 2008. A lot of entrepreneurs and angel investors argue there's nothing wrong with this. With far less capital needed to start a company these days, what's wrong with a smaller exit? You're still making money, right? Not every idea has to be a $1 billion one to be worth starting. That's true for a bootstrapped or angel-funded startup, but not for venture backed deals and the Valley at large. That kind of thinking will eventually destroy an ecosystem that is built on a foundation of homeruns paying for all mistakes. Put another way, the reason we are so famously free to fail in the Valley is that a big homerun can economically make up for those failures. That is what has set Silicon Valley apart for decades. If that changes, the output of the Valley will change too. And don't forget: The companies providing these modest exits are the homeruns from previous decades. Without the past big hits of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco, who'd be paying $20 million for your Web 2.0 app today? Consider that Facebook—a company that was ridiculed by the press and analysts for not selling for $1 billion or less back in 2006 —has already bid $500 million for Twitter and acquired FriendFeed. Good thing for the Valley Facebook didn’t listen to critics. You don't have to look too far to see what a world where VCs only build-to-flip would look like. It's largely happened already in lifesciences. The industry that gave birth to Genentech, Amgen and a lot of promise for returns, job creation and cures, has now turned into big pharma's outsourced R&D lab. I'm not blaming investors. Because of the high costs of clinical trials, biotech companies used to go public to fund clinical trials. But in the post-2000, SarbOx chill it became all-but impossible for pre-clinical trial, pre-revenue companies to go public. That meant the work had to get financed another way, and that other way was licensing deals with big pharma. Unfortunately, that means a lot of the value from those breakthroughs goes to big pharma, all but ensuring the next Genentech or Amgen may never be created. But tech doesn't have those costly restrictions. Do we really want to embrace and celebrate an M&A only world of returns anyway? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Venture Funding Roared Back In the Fourth Quarter To Nearly $15 Billion Posted: 03 Jan 2010 08:19 PM PST
After a year when venture funding was in the doldrums, it roared back in the fourth quarter of 2009 to nearly $15 billion, according to a tally of the venture rounds in CrunchBase. The total value of disclosed fundings for the quarter was $14.85 billion, up 113 percent from a year ago (when the total was $6.96 billion), and up 78 percent from the third quarter of 2009 ($8.35 billion). Some of the big funding rounds of the quarter included Zynga’s $180 million, Playdom’s $43 million, and RockYou’s $50 million. But clean tech cleaned up even more, with Horizon Wind Energy bringing in $318 million in financing, Silver Spring Networks adding $105 million to its coffers, and Sun Run Generation raising $90 million. While the quarter saw a robust return to higher levels of investing, it was not enough to counterbalance the previous three quarters of tepid investing. The total amount of capital deployed over the full year of 2009 was $32.6 billion, which was lower than the $38 billion total for 2008. The first two quarters of 2008 were relatively healthy, with $11.5 billion and $11.8 billion raised in venture rounds, respectively. It wasn’t until third quarter of 2008 that the bottom really fell out. Venture capitalists kept their purse strings tight until the third quarter of 2009, when they started to ease them open The total number of funding rounds increased 51 percent sequentially between the third and fourth quarters to 1,078. The number of fundings in the third quarter of 2009 was 715, and the year before it was only 618. So venture activity definitely picked up in both dollars and deals. Will these new levels set the tone for 2010?
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| Cheap Beer If You Check-In… Or Just Tweet. Posted: 03 Jan 2010 07:46 PM PST
That has started to happen recently, as venues are getting wise to the idea of using these special deals. For example, Patxi’s Pizza, a Bay Area-based restaurant, recently announced that it would offer a special deal to anyone who simply tweeted that they were at the restaurant, and showed their server the tweet. To be clear, they also have the same deal in place if you check-in on Foursquare, but using Twitter in a way similar to Foursquare is interesting. One issue with venues offering these deals through Foursquare is that the service is still relatively small and unknown. Twitter, by comparison, is much larger and has become a known entity in the media and other areas of the mainstream. A public tweet by someone that they were at a certain restaurant is potentially a much more powerful form of free advertising for the venue than a Foursquare check-in. Of course, there’s a downside too. Since Twitter is more popular, doing deals such as the tweet one could mean the restaurant would have to give out a lot more free stuff (depending on what the deal is, obviously). But again, it might be worth it for the free advertising. Foursquare has another potential leg up as well. Because they’re predicated around the concept of the check-in, they can keep track of who is checking in the most and give out “mayorships.” So far, deals surrounding harder-to-obtain mayorships are at least just as popular as the check-in deals. And some venues appear willing to offer more to these known loyal customers. Patxi’s, for example, offers a you one free pizza a week if you’re the mayor. For checking-in or tweeting, you only get a free soft drink or $1 beer. Another location-based service, Gowalla, is working on its own similar concept for venue deals. Since that service is largely based around the picking up and dropping of virtual goods at venues, if you got a special good, you could trade it for a free item at a restaurant, for example. This too, is more of a game element, and beyond what Twitter can easily do. Still, I’d bet that we can expect to see a lot more of venues offering deals to people who tweet about being at a place. And because they don’t have to work on any sort of arrangement to get their deal placed in an app like Foursquare, there’s a much lower barrier to entry for these venues. They could simply tweet about how to secure the deal, as Patxi’s did. And perhaps Twitter is even thinking of officially offering something along these lines when it rolls out its supposedly premium offering to businesses at some point this year, as it tries to pull in more revenues. Then of course there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room: Facebook. If and when Facebook implements its location element, their 300-million-plus user base will be awfully enticing for a lot of venues looking to promote. [photo: flickr/andre charland] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Zynga Investor Calls Scamville Debate Irrelevant And Unfair Posted: 03 Jan 2010 02:19 PM PST
In a post about Etsy a few days ago a commenter brought up the Zynga/Scamville stuff. Wilson replied “Citing techcrunch on the zynga stuff is a joke.” He waded into the subject again today on another of his posts, saying in a number of comments “i’ve tried hard to stay out of that debate because it is a false debate…zynga makes almost all of its revenue on virtual goods…the “scammy ads” thing is total red herring that everyone got excited about but is almost entirely irrelevant” and “nobody who got involved in that shitstorm took the time to really do the work and look at what Zynga did and did not do. or compare it to Google and everyone else who does way worse on a daily basis…the whole thing totally annoys me. it’s not fair.” He also said numerous times that we didn’t have our facts straight, and that we didn’t take the time to understand what really happened.
Hogwash. Fred Wilson is a brilliant investor, but he’s conflicted and wrong yet again. There were a total of 22 Scamville posts (see updates) on TechCrunch alone. For the most part we left Zynga alone, until we were slammed in the face with CEO Mark Pincus on video saying "I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues” (how do you take that statement out of context?). Pincus also said “we need to be more aggressive and have revised our service level agreements with these providers requiring them to filter and police offers” in a post about Scamville. And Facebook took one of their games offline for a few days for a violation of their terms of service around scammy offers. Zynga had claimed in the past that fully 1/3 of their revenue came from offers. Some of that wasn’t legitimate, likely tens of millions of dollars, and other companies have said that the bad stuff tended to push out the good stuff. There is an excellent argument that you can continue to find most of these scams on Google and other search engines. But a big difference is the incentive that social games give users to enter into these scams via virtual currency, as well as the fact that they targeted teens without credit cards by pushing mobile subscription offers. Google is wrong to post these ads. But that doesn’t make what Zynga has done right. I think Pincus took the right steps to move his company in the right direction, and I think the industry is on the right track now, and Zynga looks to be a legitimate business even without scammy offers. I support Pincus as an entrepreneur. But to deny that there was ever a problem is irresponsible. And to suggest that we didn’t take the time to understand the facts is outrageous. In addition to the 22 posts where we spoke to dozens of sources on and off the record, I asked Pincus to go on video with me to tell his side of the story without editing. He declined. Zynga continues to be a very close partner to Facebook. They share a major investor, DST. A facebook board member, Marc Andreessen, is also an investor in Zynga. And Zynga is Facebook’s largest advertiser. The fates of these two companies are deeply aligned, and there has been more than a little evidence of wrongdoing. The relationship between Zynga and Facebook needs more scrutiny, not less. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Facebook Wants To Know How You Feel About Their News Feed Posted: 03 Jan 2010 01:19 PM PST
In a survey Facebook is asking some users to tell them how they “feel” about the news feed. One question ask “How have the following affected how you feel about your Facebook experience?” Users are asked to respond to “trouble keeping up with all the posts in my News Feed” with “made me feel a lot worse” to “made me feel a lot better.” Normally a survey would just ask if people like something or not. But Facebook seems concerned with causing stress and guilt to users by throwing too much information at them. I guess some users, feeling overwhelmed, may just give up on the news feed altogether (this is common with Google Reader, where people fall so far behind that they just give up). Facebook is trying to solve a big problem – personalized news – that hasn’t really been solved by anyone yet. Asking users what they think isn’t likely to give them the answers they want. A lot of the questions also deal with privacy and user confusion over what information about them gets published for others to see. Too many privacy options combined with frequent changes to how Facebook deals with privacy is clearly leaving users confused and frustrated. The pure Twitter approach is at least understandable – you see everything from everyone you follow, and if there’s too much info you just stop following people. And accounts are either public or private. Simple and easy to understand. Facebook should just do the simple thing that works. In my opinon. Here’s the survey:
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While there are well over 100,000 iPhone / iPod Touch applications available in the App Store today, early adopters might remember the 
Well that didn’t take long. Just four days in 2010 and we already have an acquisition. Social networking application 
Audience measurement company 
No doubt seeking attention by making controversial decisions and statements, elitist social networking site 
Good catch by 
James Cameron will shortly be responsible for the two highest grossing films of all time. After just 17 days Avatar has gathered 
With the year—and decade—coming to a close, the business press has been awash with stories about just how lousy the '00s were. As Paul Krugman 
One of the most compelling aspects of the location-based service 
Zynga investor 
Facebook seems a bit neurotic about the news feed. 
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