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- PlaySpan Strikes Deal With THQ To Power Micropayments
- Is the Internet Finally Robbing the Greedy Financier’s Gravy Train?
- WooThemes Expands To ExpressionEngine; More Themes Coming
- Did Skype Cancel Your SkypeOut Credits For Inactivity? You Might Get $4!
- Kodak Files Lawsuits Against Apple, RIM Over Digital Imaging Technology Patent
- Oneforty Rolls Out Premium Twitter App Marketplace; Raises $1.9 Million
- Google China Employees Given Holiday Leave, Networks Being Scrutinized
- Eventbrite Adds Former Ticketmaster CEO Sean Moriarty To Its Board
- Blippy Shows Its Own Funding On Blippy. And Now Everyone Can See.
- Guardian Media Group Acquired PaidContent Parent For $6.5M, Not $30M
- SGN Founder Steps Aside. Randy Breen Takes CEO Role
- A Quick And Dirty Fix For The 27-inch iMac Screen Problem
- French Retailers Revolt Against E-book Hegemony
- MoVoxx Launches ‘GeoSense’ Location-Based Ads For SMS And Mobile Apps
- Google v. Baidu: It’s Not Just about China
- iPhone Doubles Up Android On Mobile Ad Click Rates; Both Destroyed By Symbian
- Precision Polling Is A Survey Monkey For The Phone
- Soul Searching: Google’s position on China might be many things, but moral it is not
- Slingshot Labs’ Demise Overblown As SocialPlan Is Acquired By MySpace
- YouTube Helps Vevo Overtake MySpace Music In The U.S. (Plus, Top Ten Music Properties)
- Viacom’s EPIX Lands Cable Deal With Mediacom Communications
- 3D Porn? The Studios Are Way Ahead Of You.
- AboutUs Buys Jyte, Aims To Spread The Cred Even More
- RealNetworks Executive Shakeup Continues, Founder Rob Glaser Out As CEO
- An iPhone Ad Disguised As A User-Editable Vampire Weekend Music Video
| PlaySpan Strikes Deal With THQ To Power Micropayments Posted: 14 Jan 2010 08:55 AM PST
Micropayments startup PlaySpan has struck a major deal with games publisher THQ to power payments for its virtual currency. PlaySpan powers micro-payments across over 1,000 video games and virtual worlds and has virtual goods storefronts on Facebook, MySpace, within games and on its standalone site. THQ will be using PlaySpan's payment methods to allow online gamers to purchase ICE (the company's virtual currency) for the game Dragonica Online. PlaySpan’s platform is attractive to many game publishers because it offers more than 85 global payment methods. And the payments platform also provides a comprehensive credit card processing and fraud risk management services. Dragonica Online is a popular free-to-play multiplayer online casual game that allows players to purchase additional content and features via ICE cash. The micropayments startup has been doing fairly well in the space, striking similar deals with Nickelodeon and hi5. PlaySpan recently revealed some telling numbers about the strength of the virtual goods space, reporting that over $30 million was spent on virtual gifts this holiday season. Last year, PlaySpan acquired micro-transaction app developer Spare Change, which powered micropayments across 700 social networking apps on Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Is the Internet Finally Robbing the Greedy Financier’s Gravy Train? Posted: 14 Jan 2010 08:35 AM PST
In all these examples companies suffered and good people have lost their jobs, including many of my friends when it comes to media. But mostly, the Internet has acted like Robin Hood—taking big fees from greedy fat cat middlemen, giving more value for a lower price for the end users, and breaking the barriers for new entrants. Here's the second most amazing thing about the Internet: The fact that there are still industries it's barely touched. One of those is finance. Sure we had eTrade, Ameritrade and Scottrade in the early days, but opaque, confusing, regulated finance is still largely the same. And as we discovered with last year's financial meltdown, that's not a good thing. Fortunately, though, we're starting to see change from several different –and surprising– avenues. An obvious first foray into finance 2.0 was Mint.com. Thanks to its sale to Intuit, Mint helped validated the category in a Valley that's suspicious of Wall Street. But Mint was still pretty basic in terms of a financial revolution. The UI was excellent and there were new features, but people were used to managing money online via their bank, Quicken or Microsoft's Money. Mint's greater contribution was convincing investors and entrepreneurs that finance is still a viable category. Hot on its heels, a newer– and far more ambitious—pack of online finance companies are threatening to really upend, piss off and steal fat cat fees from existing players. Say it with me: Hallelujah. We've written about most of these guys already, but they're worth taking a look as a group to see just how big this impending revolution could be. They're attacking different parts of the finance industry, but they have one thing in common: Finally aligning interests between the finance professionals and the users. This list isn’t exhaustive but these are the names I’m most excited about: -Wonga is remaking payday lending. It charges high fees for a lender, but incents people to repay quickly, meaning overall the fees for emergency lending are much lower. Wonga makes money only when debts are paid off—unlike most credit card and payday lenders that make more money the longer you're in debt and the bigger those debts are. -kaChing is remaking mutual fund investing, cutting fees from an average of 3% to 1.5% and giving more transparency into what investments fund managers are making now, not just past returns on decisions they've already made. In the past, fund managers have been paid more by how many assets they can get under management than on how well they perform. That in turn makes the funds' performances worse, because they can't get in and out of stocks quickly. By giving investors more transparency into how investment decisions are made and exposing them to more boutique fund managers, kaChing hopes to flip that around. -Square and Bling Nation are changing how we make payments, adding convenience and, in many cases, eliminating fees from ATM withdrawals and those levied by Visa and Mastercard. It's a boon for pretty much everyone else the transaction touches including end users, retailers and even banks. "I underestimated the level of hatred there is for Visa and Mastercard," says Wences Casares Bling Nation's founder and CEO. -On the "does-the-world-really-want-this?" front is Blippy, the social payment site that could bust opaque pricing wide open, when people can compare how much they pay for, say, a hotel room, with how much their friends paid. Blippy is comparatively TBD. It'll test whether people are getting more comfortable sharing financial information the way they've gotten more comfortable sharing contact and location information in the last ten years. That answer might be no. But when it comes to fees and pricing, transparency does usually lend to lower prices. If these companies are successful, this would be as radical a shift for the finance industry as when the music industry had to start selling by the song and not the album. Think back to how revolutionary that was at the time—and how much the labels fought it tooth and nail. Now imagine a financial transaction where you didn't assume there was a catch, extra fee or damaging fine print. Imagine a financial world where everything is upfront and institutions don't profit off your financial naiveté; a financial world where making money isn't a zero sum game that the house is all but guaranteed to win in the end. It's as common-sense-and-yet-controversial as when open source and software-as-a-service pioneered business software that actually worked and that employees actually used. Finance has been so anti-innovation and so anti-consumer for so long, these companies don't have to be perfect to be huge. And the margins are there. For instance, Casares, who has built and sold two online financial services companies already, says the cost of digital transfers have plummeted, but the banks haven't passed those savings along. That's similar to what we saw in telecom. Remember how expensive it used to be to call someone one state away? If mobile companies hadn't collapsed prices, we'd likely still be paying those fees. Combined investors in these companies include well-heeled names like Khosla Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Greylock Partners, Accel Partners, Marc Andreessen, Sequoia Capital, Evan Williams, Balderton Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and DAG Ventures and they have put a combined $80 million into these companies, which isn't much considering the potential. For instance, if kaChing can get to $10 billion in assets under management, it will be a $100 million revenue a year business. And $10 billion in assets wouldn't even crack the top 100 funds in the massive $11 trillion mutual fund universe. To put it in further perspective, Square’s valuation is already half of what these companies have raised combined. And here's the most important part of this trend: These new financial services companies are not being built to flip. Instead, these companies are thinking big—a rarity in the Web world right now. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Casares's view on how selling has made him a "failure" as an entrepreneur. Don’t expect him to do it again unless things go horribly wrong. Errol Damelin spent years studying payday lending before starting Wonga, and having already sold a few companies, expects this to be his big one. Similarly, Square founder Jack Dorsey is already the second largest individual shareholder in Twitter. That's just paper money now, but it's safe to say his financial future is pretty assured. With Square, he's out to prove he can have more than one big idea. Likewise, veteran entrepreneur Philip Kaplan was lying in cushy wait at Charles River Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence before he jumped for Blippy. You don't jump for something you don't expect to be a real business. But of all the companies mentioned in this post, kaChing may be the least likely to sell. I met with the company's CEO Andy Rachleff and founder Dan Carroll last week. Rachleff—a founder of Benchmark Capital during its eBay funding glory days—has made plenty of money and was looking forward to a life of teaching at Stanford. He quit that to be kaChing's CEO and he certainly didn't do that to sell for a few million. He doesn't even take a salary from kaChing. He called Mint—also a Benchmark investment—a "disappointment" for selling so early and said he made it very clear that if he was leaving his plush, retirement-esque life it was to build a big, public company. (See what Mint's founder Aaron Patzer says about that view in the clip below at the 6:09 minute mark. Patzer was on NBC's Press:Here last week. Go here for the whole show.) I think finance just became my favorite category of startups. Step one of building the next billion dollar Web powerhouse is a good team. Step two is a good product. Step three is market opportunity. But an all-important step four is saying "no" to quick money offers. Every decade Silicon Valley produces a handful of huge multi-billion dollar public companies. I'm betting the '10's see at least one finance company in that category….finally. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| WooThemes Expands To ExpressionEngine; More Themes Coming Posted: 14 Jan 2010 08:00 AM PST
WooThemes, a maker of premium themes for WordPress, is moving its focus from just WordPres to other platforms with todays launch of ExpressionEngine themes. With support for ExpressionEngine blogs, WooThemes is currently launching two paid themes, Coffee Break and Fresh News, and one free theme, Bueno. All three are compatible with ExpressionEngine 2.0, as well. According to WooThemes Co-Founder, Adii Pienaar, the company is working over the next few months to port all of their most popular WordPress themes over to ExpressionEngine. The Standard Package (Single Site License) costs US$90, while the Developer Package (Multi-site License) is priced at US$180 for the themes, much like the WordPress theme pricing. In addition to the new ExpressionEngine themes, WooThemes also has Drupal, Joomla and Textpattern themes in various stages of development right now.
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| Did Skype Cancel Your SkypeOut Credits For Inactivity? You Might Get $4! Posted: 14 Jan 2010 07:10 AM PST
When you put $10 into your Skype account for those SkypeOut calls to regular phones, you expect that money to be there, . . . well, forever because Skype is so cheap you can call Japan for a few dimes. But Skype was being sneaky and basically taking all unused credits (and presumably recording them as revenues) if no SkypeOut calls were made after six months of inactivity. That’s right, they were taking your money without delivering any service. Well, that got Skype sued for that in a class action which they just settled for all of $1.85 million. It only applies to U.S. Skype users who had to forfeit their credit and comes to $4 per user, which may not sound like a lot, but in Skype terms that could last you another six months easy. Since the parties settled, the case never went to court, but the plaintiffs argued that what Skype was doing was no different than what numerous retailers and other businesses used to do with gift cards. Somebody would buy you a gift card and if you didn’t use it within six months or a year, it would “expire,” even though the money had already been paid and no goods were ever exchanged in return. States passed laws to crack down on the practice. The plaintiffs decided to bring their case under those laws and apply them to Skype Credits. From the notice sent out to Skype users who are potential class members:
The settlement affects anyone who bought Skype Credit before December 31, 2009 and subsequently had it canceled after 180 days of inactivity. While the settlement is a piddling amount, the bigger winners are future Skype customers. Skype is discontinuing the practice. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Kodak Files Lawsuits Against Apple, RIM Over Digital Imaging Technology Patent Posted: 14 Jan 2010 07:07 AM PST
The complaint, filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission, claims that Apple's iPhone devices and all RIM's camera-enabled BlackBerry phones infringe a patent that covers technology related to a method for previewing images. Separately, Kodak filed two suits today against Apple that claim the infringement of patents related to digital cameras and certain computer processes. In a statement, Kodak says it remains open to negotiating an agreement with both Apple and RIM, which it claims to have tried reaching for years. Kodak says it has licensed digital imaging technology to some 30 companies, including major players like Nokia, Samsung, LG and Motorola, and that all those companies currently pay royalties to Kodak over use of its patented technology. Said Laura G. Quatela, Chief Intellectual Property Officer, and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company:
On Dec. 17, in an action involving Samsung and Kodak, an ITC Administrative Law Judge issued a ruling declaring that the Kodak patent covering color image preview (No. 6,292,218) was valid and enforceable, and that Samsung's camera-enabled mobile devices infringed upon that Kodak patent. Samsung and Kodak have since settled. Kodak is now seeking from the ITC a limited exclusion order preventing the importation of infringing devices marketed by Apple and RIM. In both U.S. District Court actions against Apple, Kodak is seeking to permanently enjoin Apple from further infringement as well as unspecified damages. In the first suit against the Cupertino tech giant in District Court, Kodak alleges infringement of two patents generally covering image preview and the processing of images of different resolutions. In the second suit, Kodak alleges infringement of patents that describe a method by which a computer program can "ask for help" from another application to carry out certain computer-oriented functions. The patent at issue in that suit, Kodak notes, was also the subject of litigation with Sun Microsystems, in which a federal jury in 2004 found Sun's Java software infringed; that case was settled by Sun paying Kodak for a license for the patents. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Oneforty Rolls Out Premium Twitter App Marketplace; Raises $1.9 Million Posted: 14 Jan 2010 05:57 AM PST  There’s no doubt that Twitter has managed to create a vibrant ecosystem of third party apps and services around its microblogging platform. When we wrote about oneforty, a social app directory for all things Twitter, last year, the startup’s founder and CEO, Laura Fitton, hinted at the eventual roll-out of an e-commerce marketplace where third-party developers can sell their apps. Last week, we broke the news of the imminent launch of the marketplace and today, the e-commerce platform is officially being launched. Effective today, developers can integrate with oneforty’s e-commerce tools to sell apps directly through the site. Developers must sell at a minimum price of $0.99, and oneforty will take a 25% commission from each sale. Apps that are sold above a certain price ($14.50) will have their commission fees dropped to 20%. The payments system will be powered by PayPal. Apps for sale will be featured prominently on oneforty’s home page, allowing developers greater visibility if they are participating in the marketplace. Fitton says that the marketplace is still a work in progress, and is still very much an alpha test to see what developers need and want from the platform. As of today, there are 117 apps available for purchase on oneforty out of 2300 apps, services and clients listed on the directory. Those who are participating in the e-commerce platform include Socialtoo and Twilk. Developers can also sell their apps on multiple sites; oneforty isn’t demanding that developers only sell on their platform. Oneforty also collects affiliate fees (5%) from apps listed on the iPhone app store. At this time, Oneforty will only support one-time purchases, meaning there will be no subscription-option. But they hint that down the road there will be more options available. Oneforty will continue to allows developers to accept donations on their Oneforty pages even if they don’t participate in the e-commerce platform. Oneforty will continue to pay the PayPal fees for this service, and promises the developers 100% of the donations. So, not only does the site fill a gap in the Twitter ecosystem but it also has a definitive monetization plan, which is a challenge in itself. Combined with the launch of the e-commerce platform is the announcement of the startup’s series A round of funding, which we wrote about here. Oneforty has raised $1.9 million in funding led by Flybridge Capital Partners with Javelin Venture Partners, Dave McClure, Roger Ehrenberg, Andy Sack and others participating. The funding will fuel new hiring and accelerate platform development. Oneforty has raised a total of $2.25 million in funding, including seed and angel funding. Oneforty, which was part of the Boston Techstars Class of 2009, has an attractive platform, which was why shortly after its launch, rumors started flying about Twitter looking into buying the service. Fitton declined to comment on these acquisition rumors but there’s no doubt that the platform is sure to have caught the interest of Twitter, at least as an attractive off shoot of the microblogging service. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Google China Employees Given Holiday Leave, Networks Being Scrutinized Posted: 14 Jan 2010 05:14 AM PST
While Google denies other reports stating that its China employees would effectively stop working today and that business in China is ‘operating as normal’ according to Bloomberg, the IM conversation that we were forwarded reveals that Google China workers no longer have access to company systems. The fact that Google employees are seemingly unable to log onto internal systems could be a result of the internal security tests and scans, but Google has apparently also asked China employees to ‘relax at home’ for an unspecified time. Meanwhile, many are expecting that Google.cn will not be online much longer. Google said Jan. 12 in a blog post that it had been subjected to cyber attacks originating from China along with 20 other companies (reportedly including Yahoo), prompting the company to reconsider the way it conducts business in the country. Google stated it would end self-censorship of its Chinese search engine in China, and that it may end up closing the site and shutting down its China offices. China this morning responded (vaguely) to the whole ordeal, saying that it “welcomed global Internet companies, provided they obey laws that restrict their content”. Said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu at a regular briefing in Beijing today: "The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet." To be continued, no doubt. (Image via CNReviews, credit goes to Junya Wang / Flickr) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Eventbrite Adds Former Ticketmaster CEO Sean Moriarty To Its Board Posted: 14 Jan 2010 05:00 AM PST
If ticketing startup Eventbrite wants to become the Ticketmaster of do-it-yourself events, it just added a new board member who might have some ideas on how to get there. The company just added Sean Moriarty to its board of directors. Moriarty was previously the CEO of Ticketmaster, which he helped build into an events juggernaut between 2005 and March, 2009, when he left the company. Whereas Ticketmaster rules ticketing for large events at concerts and sports stadiums, “Eventbrite is coming at event management from a grassroots effort,” says Moriarty. “It is effectively providing tools that did not previously exist.” Eventbrite lets anyone create and sell tickets for events ranging from backyard BBQs to TechCrunch 50 (we use Eventbrite for many of our conferences). Last year, Eventbrite sold more than $100 million worth of tickets. Eventbrite takes various fees for paid tickets, including 2.5 percent of the ticket price, plus another 3 percent if it acts as the payment processor instead of a credit card or Paypal. (Watch our recent interview with the founders and Sequoia VC Roelof Botha). By that point, Ticketmaster had better watch out. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Blippy Shows Its Own Funding On Blippy. And Now Everyone Can See. Posted: 14 Jan 2010 04:03 AM PST
The large angel round was led by Charles River Ventures. Also participating are Sequoia Capital, Evan Williams, Jason Calacanis, James Hong, Ariel Poler, and Ron Conway. A pretty impressive list. Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan is also putting his money where his mouth is and investing. The fact that Charles River Ventures is leading the round should surprise no one since Kaplan left his role there as an Entrepreneur In Residence to help launch Blippy. CRV’s Saar Gur is also taking a seat on Blippy’s board. Alongside the funding news, Blippy has another big announcement: They’re opening up to everyone today. You’ll no longer need an invite; simply visit the site and sign up. So why did Blippy feel the need to raise $1.6 million? “There was a lot of interest,” Kaplan says. “We trust this gets us through at least the next 12 to 18 months. Enough time to prove the model,” he continues. And that model is key. While the site may be controversial right now, the possibilities are interesting. If Blippy is able to prove that people don’t mind sharing their purchase data, a number of potential business plans could spring up. Affiliate fees are an obvious one, but think about featured vendors, and maybe even Blippy credit cards eventually too. For now, Blippy is happy with the way things are going. Already, the service has some 5,000 members from its closed-beta. Those users have shared over $4.5 million in purchase — and over 100,000 different purchases, Kaplan says. Just a few weeks ago they were only at $1 million in purchases. The service recently added a bunch of new online stores and services such as Threadless, Netflix, and GroupOn. These services can not only show how much you spent, but also what you specifically bought. For example, on Threadless you can see individual shirts you’ve bought. Going forward, Blippy has some bigger goals. One of those is working with credit card companies to show all individual purchases. Right now, this is hard to do because a lot of vendors don’t provide that information. But plenty are wiling to for an idea like this, where everyone can see what others are actually buying, Kaplan says. Kaplan also notes that a number of startups are already using protected accounts on Blippy to share their expenses with others in the company. And yes, Blippy is working on an iPhone app. And while there is no open API yet, they’re considering that too. With the opening up to everyone, Blippy will allow you to find your friends on Facebook and Twitter that are also using the service. But for now, none of your Blippy data with flow back to either of those services. That will eventually come, but they’re working on keeping it simple for now, Kaplan says. You can probably imagine the uproar when this purchase data starts flowing into your Facebook stream. Kaplan also shared a humorous unofficial competition going on throughout the site. Apparently, a number of users are trying to make the smallest purchase possible (above free). Right now, the winner was able to buy one Tootsie Roll with a credit card, for $0.03. What about the biggest purchase? $15,789 on a industrial freezer. The average purchase price for things on Blippy is $42, apparently. With it now open to everyone, it will be interesting to see how that changes. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Guardian Media Group Acquired PaidContent Parent For $6.5M, Not $30M Posted: 14 Jan 2010 03:47 AM PST
This morning, industry trade outlet PressGazette revealed that the price that was actually paid for ContentNext Media was £4 million, which would today convert to roughly $6.5 million. Accounts filed with Companies House by the Guardian Media Group subsidiary earlier this week revealed the previously undisclosed terms of the deal. So where did that £15 million (then $30 million) figure come from? According to PressGazette, that sum was dependent on the highest possible future performance figures for the media venture. Guardian Media Group told PressGazette that it still considers ContentNext Media a “good strategic fit to the business” but that the "carrying value" was “impaired following difficult trading conditions”. Since we all know the global economy started falling apart shortly after the acquisition deal was signed, it’s isn’t much of a surprise to find out that those ‘highest possible future performance figures’ were not achieved. I’ve reached out to some of the people on the ContentNext team to get their side of the story and will update accordingly. ContentNext was founded in 2002 by Rafat Ali and funded by Greycroft Partners in 2006. They are one of the new media companies we respect most, and we’re glad to see they’re still alive and kicking and keeping us on our toes 24/7. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| SGN Founder Steps Aside. Randy Breen Takes CEO Role Posted: 13 Jan 2010 11:45 PM PST
SGN is one of the top gaming publishers on the iPhone, with 15 million unique installs of games like F.A.S.T and Skies of Glory. Revenue in this market will almost certainly explode this year with the October 2009 launch of in-game payments for free Apple appstore applications. Companies like SGN, ngmoco and Tapulous are all in a prime position to tap into that growth. 2010 may be as good for these companies as 2009 was for the social gaming companies like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom – big financings and acquisitions across the board. The press release is below. SGN NAMES RANDY BREEN CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Palo Alto, Calif. – January 14, 2010 – SGN, a leader in mobile social gaming, today announced that Randy Breen has been named SGN's chief executive officer. Shervin Pishevar will remain focused on SGN in his day-to-day role as founder and executive chairman. Since joining SGN in an interim role as chief operating officer, game industry veteran Breen has been pivotal in providing leadership in all aspects of corporate operations including game production, business development, marketing, strategy and executive management. "Over the last five months, Randy has done an incredible job leading the company and I look forward to continuing to work closely with him," said Pishevar. "With the industry preparing for explosive growth this year – resulting from massive expansion in the iPhone, Android and tablet marketplace – I strongly believe that Randy's experience and knowledge will be instrumental in building SGN into the largest mobile social gaming company of 2010 and beyond." SGN entered into the iPhone market in 2008 and has since had more than 15 million unique downloads – resulting in an average of one in three iPhones and iPod Touches that run at least one of SGN's games. To date, the company secured $15 million in one round of funding and has expanded globally with more than 100 employees worldwide. "Working with Shervin and the team over the past five months has exceeded all of my expectations coming into the company," said Breen. "I've witnessed the birth of EA and Lucas Arts' gaming business, but I've never seen such an immense opportunity in gaming as SGN has ahead of it." "This is a great day for SGN as Shervin Pishevar – one of the most dynamic, passionate and innovative entrepreneurs I've worked with – has joined forces with one the most experienced gaming leaders to help take SGN to the next level," said David Sze, Greylock Partners. "Shervin has been instrumental in taking SGN from being just an idea to one of the leading mobile social gaming company's in the world. Breen and Pishevar are a dynamic duo that will push SGN forward in the mobile social gaming space." Breen brings over two decades of industry gaming experience to SGN including fifteen years at EA. Starting off in production roles, Breen moved into the lead executive producer and creative director position for EA. His next five years were spent at LucasArts Entertainment, a subsidiary of LucasFilm, as vice president of product development where he helped build and scale their gaming business. For more information, please see http://www.linkedin.com/in/RandyBreen. About SGN Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| A Quick And Dirty Fix For The 27-inch iMac Screen Problem Posted: 13 Jan 2010 11:27 PM PST
Amazingly, Apple still has yet to reply to these messages piling up. Yes, they issued what they said was a fix for the problem, but that was actually before our post. Obviously, for many people, it did not work. I happen to have one of these affected Macs, and randomly, I think I’ve stumbled up an easy, but janky fix. It doesn’t solve the issue, but it does seem to eliminate for a while. If you go to Settings, click on Expose & Spaces, and locate the Active Screen Corners portion of Expose, you’ll have an option to set one of the corners of your screen to “Put Display to Sleep.” Set one corner to do this. The next time your screen starts flickering, activate this hot corner and put your display to sleep for a few seconds. When it comes back on, it should be okay (for at least several hours in my experience). Alternatively, I’ve found that if I restart my computer it helps too. But that’s a pain since you have to close everything you are working on, obviously. The resolution appears to work because the problem would seem to be related to overheating. Several commenters in the forums noted this, and I’ve noticed it as well. If you put your hand behind the iMac when the flickering problem is going on, you’ll notice it’s hot. Really hot. Almost scalding hot. Again, it’s a somewhat janky temporary fix, but sadly it’s all we have now. Or you could try sending your iMac back. But I’ve done that once too — the iMac I got back still has the issue.
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| French Retailers Revolt Against E-book Hegemony Posted: 13 Jan 2010 07:22 PM PST  Like them or not, e-books are here to stay. Personally, I don't like them — but that's mainly because e-book readers have been ugly, clumsy, and limited in function and selection. The tidal wave of readers we saw at CES, however, suggests that even die-hard curmudgeons like myself may soon be among the faithful. What this means, of course, is that e-books, while a real business already, are going to be looking at serious growth over the next two years. And since that necessarily will impact negatively the sales of real ink-on-paper books, retailers are looking for a way to ride the e-book wave. French retailers, like most in the world, are in an awkward position. So they've gone arm-in-arm to see the wizard, in hopes that France will set up some sort of national e-book "hub," by which I suppose they mean website or software. There's something noble in this scramble for self-preservation, like an antelope kicking a lioness in the jaw, but it seems to me that it's too late: the pride is closing in.
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| MoVoxx Launches ‘GeoSense’ Location-Based Ads For SMS And Mobile Apps Posted: 13 Jan 2010 06:43 PM PST
To do that, the company recently launched a new pilot with Citysearch, which it’s using in combination with MoVoxx’s directory of phone numbers and associated user details to target their GeoSense ads. MoVoxx CEO Alec Andronikov says that plenty of other companies have tried to perfect location based, real time advertising, but that they’re usually lacking one of three elements he says are required for success: a wide reach, a way to determine where the user is to serve the local ad, and a way to monetize. Andronikov says that MoVoxx has each of these covered. For the scale side of things, he says that the company has a core SMS network that yields 300 million impressions a month, and another 400 million impressions through in-app advertising on smartphones. He says that the company has also built out tools behind the scenes to optimize which users receive which ads. It does this by building profiles of user information for each phone number in its system (things like gender and interests), gathering this data from its other products that publishers have implemented. To determine the user’s location, MoVoxx can use CellID from in-app ads; for SMS messages, it relies on Useful Networks, which works with the carriers to gather location information, even on phones that don’t have a GPS. Finally, there’s the revenue side of things. One of the problems with making a location based ad platform is getting local merchants on board — you can’t exactly go door to door to sign people up. That’s where Citysearch comes in. Citysearch has built out a database of 70,000 local merchants who have opted into mobile-based advertising. MoVoxx has access to these companies through a local merchant API, and can automatically build out WAP pages for each using data from Citysearch. Andronikov says that MoVoxx is also working with other local merchant aggregators besides CitySearch, like iPromote and Marchex, to build out its database, and does direct deals with larger brands like McDonalds and Warner Bros. The flow for the user is straightforward (you can see an example in the image below). First, they receive an location-based ad promoting a local merchant. This could come, for example, at the bottom of an SMS message sent by ChaCha Answers. This text-based SMS ad would then link to a WAP page featuring the company’s address, phone number, and other information. MoVoxx makes money both from the initial ad unit (on a CPC basis) and from secondary actions on the WAP site. Users can also opt-in to receive proximity alerts, which allows users to specify if they’d like to receive SMS-based offers from nearby merchants (you can specify certain categories you’re interested and how often you’d like to receive alerts). The ads come alongside SMS content the user has already elected to receive, like ChaCha Answers or Reuters Business News.  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Google v. Baidu: It’s Not Just about China Posted: 13 Jan 2010 06:11 PM PST
Today, as the story has unfolded, Chinese residents have openly "mourned" the loss of Google by putting flowers and candles out at the company's Beijing headquarters. (Picture above was taken by Junyu Wang.) That's striking for two reasons. First, it shows the Chinese government's grasp on censorship has already measurably slipped. And second, it shows that Google's moral-high ground stance was even effective within some parts of China. But there's a third—and potentially more impactful—way this move could play into Google's market position long term. Take a look at this December 14 eMarketer release on worldwide search numbers. It not only shows Baidu walloping Google in China with double the market share, but it shows that this battle is quickly becoming more a global one. Forget China, Baidu is now the third largest search site in the world and it's nipping at Yahoo's heels to become number two. Yahoo had 8.9 billion searches in July of 2009; Baidu had 8 billion. That's more than double the number four player, Microsoft, which had just 3.3 billion searches worldwide. For the record, Google is still light-years ahead of everyone with 76.7 billion searches. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t view Baidu as a global threat. We tend to have the view that China is some copycat Internet backwater, and that's just not true. China has formidable engineering talent, plenty of venture capital, the world's largest Internet audience, and in many cases better methods of monetization, especially when it comes to games and social media. Several people argued today that Google's pull out would damage the Chinese Internet by leaving only one search player, or suggested it could be opportunity for one of Google's US rivals. Such pundits don't get how scrappy and fast-moving China's own entrepreneur scene is. If there's a void, it'll be filled locally. I have no doubt VCs in China are already in talks with savvy entrepreneurs. But as growth in search and the Internet-at-large goes global, Google's biggest competitors will increasingly come from China. With it's announcement this week, it just communicated a powerful message to the world's democracies or other anti-Chinese factions: Baidu is in the Chinese Government's pocket; we're not. As I pointed out yesterday, this could loom large when it comes to future acquisitions. A number of Chinese Internet companies are building hoards of cash and valuable stock currencies. It's possible those companies will start competing with Google for acquisitions both in the Valley and the rest of the world. Google, after all, has announced that its shopping spree is heating up, and given the woeful state of its competitors in the US (Yahoo and AOL are too damaged to out-bid Google; Facebook doesn't yet have a stock currency) Chinese Internet companies could emerge as its chief competitors for hot properties and talented staffs of engineers. I'm not suggesting that this is why Google made the move, nor do I know if the senior executives even view this as a potential threat. But should a Chinese Internet company make a bid for a US Internet gem, this week's events will no doubt be brought up as a reason the US government should block it—something we've already seen when Arab companies have bid for ownership of US port controllers and financial institutions. That could prove a pretty savvy side-benefit for the search giant as the Internet battles of the next decade start to heat up. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| iPhone Doubles Up Android On Mobile Ad Click Rates; Both Destroyed By Symbian Posted: 13 Jan 2010 05:54 PM PST
Some new December data from the mobile advertising company Smaato suggests that it’s actually Symbian that kills both the iPhone and Android. Now, I know what you’re thinking: that’s because Nokia, despite the buzz surrounding the sexier smartphone devices, remains the biggest mobile player in the world. But actually, the numbers are for the all-important click-through rates on the various platforms. As you can see in the chart below, with the average CTR on ads for all mobile platforms set to 100, Symbian led the way by far with a 161 score. This was followed by the iPhone (and iPod touch) with 119. Android? They’re way down the list with a 65. Only Palm and BlackBerry fared worse.
So why is Symbian doing so well with click-through rates? Smaato suspects is may have to do with the high saturation of Nokia devices in emerging markets. But they also note that the CTR in the U.S. are higher for Symbian, though on a much smaller scale since Nokia isn’t nearly as popular here. In terms of overall usage, Symbian makes of some 46.2% of the phones that Smaato tracks. RIM (BlackBerry) is in second place with 20.6%, but the iPhone is quickly catching up, with 17.8% after experiencing huge growth this year. But Smaato expects Android to the the big mover in 2010, likely going from just 3.5% now to over 10% by the end of the year. Something else interesting from the report: Quattro Wireless tied Millennial Media as the top-performing mobile ad network in the U.S. That’s significant since Apple just acquired Quattro after Google stole AdMob away from them. Smaato didn’t specify AdMob data in its report.
[photo: flickr/jm3] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Precision Polling Is A Survey Monkey For The Phone Posted: 13 Jan 2010 05:50 PM PST
Precision Polling has launched to provide an easy way to create and launch phone surveys, taking a page from the model that simple online survey sites, like SurveyMonkey, have pioneered. Precision Polling is self-service website that lets you design and run phone surveys start to finish. You simply create a questionnaire through a web interface, call the site’s hotline to record your voice, and then give the site a list of phone numbers to call. Once those steps have been completed, Precision Polling will start making calls You can also choose between dialing out to a list of people, or letting people call in. It costs the surveyor just 10 cents per call. Users can see data and results in real time via a customized Web-based dashboard. On the backend, the site is using services like Twilio to power its service. Seattle-based Precision Polling was founded by Gaurav Oberoi and Chuck Groom, who formerly started and sold social money management tool BillMonk.com to mobile payments startup Obopay. The pair also recently worked at Xmarks and Amazon. The startup should be able to gain traction in the space, especially for government and non-profit initiatives. Phone polling is an expensive endeavor and Precision Polling sees to simplify this process. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Soul Searching: Google’s position on China might be many things, but moral it is not Posted: 13 Jan 2010 04:56 PM PST
How exciting! Google has issued a statement saying it’s un-censoring its search results in China! And it’s threatening to pull out of the country completely, in retaliation for an alleged (and, we’re led to infer, government-backed) attempt to hack the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents! As a tech story, it has all the makings of a classic diplomacy thriller; a modern-day Cuban Missile Crisis with Google as Adlai Stevenson, waving photos of hacked emails at China’s Valerian Zorin. “Don’t wait for the translation! Just answer yes or no!” Meanwhile, Google slowly provocatively moves photos of Tiananmen tanks back onto its Chinese image search. Unsurprisingly for such a bold move, Google’s statement – that it would no longer be bowing to Chinese censorship, having spent four years doing precisely that – has sparked debate amongst my esteemed friends and colleagues in the blogosphere. On one side, Robert Scoble has congratulated Google, almost unconditionally. “Google has EVERY INCENTIVE to kiss Chinese ass,” he says, “that's why this move today impressed me so much.” And to those who say that Google’s behavior to date has been overly sympathetic to the Chinese government? Um, he’s sorry…
Meanwhile, on the other side of the debate is TechCrunch’s own Sarah Lacy whose take is pretty well summed up by the title of her post “Google's China Stance: More about Business than Thwarting Evil“. She asks…
So who is right? The Economist seems to be siding with Sarah, quoting her in a piece bearing the punderfully British title ‘Google errs‘. Meantime Robert has support from search expert Danny Sullivan and a Google Spokesperson who writes "This is not about market share. While our revenues from China are really immaterial, we did just have our best ever quarter [in China]." The truth is I don’t know who precisely why Google made its decision. I wasn’t in the room when it was discussed. But here’s one thing I do know: anyone who is applauding Google for taking a stand against censorship needs – ironically – to sit the hell down and shut the hell up. For four years, Google complied with the Chinese government’s demands that they censor search results. It did this in the hope of becoming the number one search engine in China, a goal it failed to achieve. You can argue – reasonably – that there’s nothing wrong with Google operating under the laws of a country, much as eBay is banned from listing Nazi memorabilia in Germany. Self-censorship is the cost of doing business in China, and it’s a price that Google decided was worth paying. Or you can take completely the opposite view: calling Google evil for ever setting foot in Beijing. But whatever your view, you have to accept that Google spent four years, and earned vast sums of money, operating under China’s censorship laws. And now only when they suffer an attack that threatens to damage their business worldwide – “What? The communists can hack my Gmail?” – have they suddenly found a conscience. This may be a case of scorched-earth diplomacy on the part of Google, it may just be pure retaliation against a government which tried to hack their servers or it may be a shrewd business move dressed up as “taking a stand”. But what it’s absolutely not is a “moral position”, nor one that they should be particularly applauded for, any more than a man who has spend four years beating his wife should be applauded when he decides to stop. If anyone should be applauded it’s the man who didn’t beat his wife in the first place: companies like Twitter and Facebook whose refusal to work with the Chinese government lead to them being blocked last July. Taking a moral position four years too late – whether you’re the first or the last to do so – is like suddenly declaring that you oppose the Iraq war now you’re no longer standing for the Senate or renouncing your own steroid abuse once you’ve retired from professional sports. Which is to say, it’s taking no moral position at all. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Slingshot Labs’ Demise Overblown As SocialPlan Is Acquired By MySpace Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:59 PM PST
In other words, some of the people affected by today’s changes aren’t being laid off — they’re being shifted over to MySpace along with the SocialPlan project. SocialPlan was built by Slingshot as a replacement to MySpace’s underperforming events feature, and first launched in March 2009. It quickly gained steam, overtaking Evite in the number of invites sent by July 2009. Since then, it’s apparently done very well — Berdakin sent along a graph showing its growth, which we’ve included below. Doing the math, it looks like SocialPlan is now used to send around 4.3 million invitations a day (Evite reports 600,000 invitations sent per day). Given its success, it’s pretty obvious why MySpace would want to take over the project.  Berdakin wouldn’t comment on the project Slingshot is currently working on, but it seems likely that it’s the mysterious WSJ Connect “LinkedIn Killer” we first reported on last July. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| YouTube Helps Vevo Overtake MySpace Music In The U.S. (Plus, Top Ten Music Properties) Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:36 PM PST
The biggest U.S. music service on the Web in December was Vevo, a new entrant which is a joint venture between Google, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music. Dubbed the “Hulu of music videos,” Vevo attracted 35.4 million unique visitors in December, 2009, putting it above the 33.1 million visitors who went to MySpace Music, according to estimates put out today by comScore. Considering that Vevo only launched on December 8, that is a pretty good showing. A closer look at the numbers shows, that nearly all of that audience came from YouTube, which hosts a Vevo channel. Of the 35.4 million visitors which comScore counts for Vevo, 32.6 million (or 92 percent) are attributed to YouTube. In one fell blow, YouTube has helped to push MySpace Music from the No. 1 spot. Not only does this illustrate the distribution might of YouTube, but it also shows how professional content is still hard to beat, even on YouTube. The Vevo channel is already the most viewed channel on YouTube, with nearly 13 billion views across all Vevo and all of Vevo’s sub-sites, which include the individual artist channels for Lady Gaga, Kings of Leon, Timbaland, and many others. Here are the top ten music services as measured by comScore in unique U.S. visitors for December, 2009. The only real startup is Jango (No.7), with 9.6 million, but the comScore numbers include some lyric sites it also owns. ToneFuse Music, No. 8, is almost entirely a collection of lyric sites. Rhapsody rounds out No. 10 with 6.5 million (Last.fm would be No. 11 with 6 million). Top U.S. Music Services On The Web (in unique visitors, December, 2009)
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| Viacom’s EPIX Lands Cable Deal With Mediacom Communications Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:35 PM PST  Epix, the movie and entertainment streaming network that works across your TV, computer, and mobile phone, has landed a third cable provider for its service: Mediacom Communications. This week the network also landed a deal with Cox Communications. We wrote about the service here and here. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Jointly backed by Viacom, Lionsgate, Paramount, and MGM, EPIX provides access to over 15,000 movie titles. The company originally signed a deal with Verizon FIOS, which was somewhat limiting considering only some 2 million people use Verizon’s cable service. Cox brings more clients to EPIX with its base of 6.2 million customers, which including 2.7 million digital cable subscribers. And Mediacom, the 7th largest cable provider in the U.S., will bring with it a base of 1.3 million subscribers in 22 states. One of our main issues with EPIX was that it was tied to Verizon FIOS but it appears that the company is steadily adding more cable providers to distribute its service. Epix was also said to be close to an agreement with the Dish Network, which would bring a large list of 14 million subscribers. Unfortunately, the platform offers a sliver of available movies out there, since it only includes only the movies available through the studios that are backing the company. But EPIX is useful because it transcends over the TV and your computer and its fairly easy to use. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| 3D Porn? The Studios Are Way Ahead Of You. Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:28 PM PST  For years the central question when any new television technology comes out is whether explicit entertainment providers will adopt it. In the case of 3D TV, friends, there's no question: 3D TV is here and its here to stay... but will it be popular? We talked to someone close to the industry, Kathee Brewer, who offered some insight on the future of 3D pr0n. Kathee is a former editor-in-chief of trade journal AVN Online and a co-founder of irreverent sex, politics and culture site DailyBabylon.com. These days she plagues readers and editors across the spectrum with freelance articles about all sorts of useless information but today she sat down with us for in IMterview about the future of 3D in porn - and why it's already a moot point. CG: So 3D porn. Great or amazing? Kathee: uh.... How about "Too soon to tell?" There are some really good things about it, and some, frankly, scary things about it.
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| AboutUs Buys Jyte, Aims To Spread The Cred Even More Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:02 PM PST
The terms weren’t disclosed, but you don’t need to consult any wikis to realize this is likely a very small deal. AboutUs is just getting started, having raised a relatively small amount of venture capital (most recently $2.5 million from Voyager Capital) over the past few years. On Jyte, people can toss out a claim, e.g. “There’s no one who can park a car in reverse better than me”, about yourself or other persons (hence ’spreading the cred’ as they call it). The community – made up of people you know or don’t know at all – subsequently opines with votes, comments and related claims. Basically, you can use Jyte to validate claims by putting them out there and let others have their say about them. How Jyte fits into AboutUs’ strategy is a complete mystery to me, but here’s what CEO Ray King had to say about the purchase:
Based on this blog post from 3 years ago, Jyte was built by entrepreneur and OpenID advocate Scott Kveton, JanRain’s Brian Ellin and Dag Rorek Arneson. Update: I’ve been informed that Jyte was actually under ownership of JanRain, so this is a transaction between AboutUs and JanRain. Kveton last week announced that he sold online bacon store – yes, really – bac’n to competitor BaconFreak.com. Read up on that, it’s a cool story. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| RealNetworks Executive Shakeup Continues, Founder Rob Glaser Out As CEO Posted: 13 Jan 2010 01:47 PM PST
Real hasn’t had a hit product in many years, and its stock has long been stagnant. The nail in the coffin for the current executive team may have been the recent dismissal of the company’s suit against Walt Disney and other movie studios. The suit alleged that the studios were violating anti-competition laws for blocking Real from selling their DVD copying software, RealDVD. As of August 2009 Glaser owned 51.97 million shares of RealNetworks, or around 38.4% of the 135 million shares. The press release is below:
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| An iPhone Ad Disguised As A User-Editable Vampire Weekend Music Video Posted: 13 Jan 2010 01:01 PM PST
In this app, the mobile analytics and advertising company Medialets is serving up an ad for the new album, Contra, by the band Vampire Weekend. At first, the ad just peeks out at the bottom of the NPR app, but if you click to expand it, it quickly takes up the entire device. So why would you want to do this? Because it’s a video for Vampire Weekend’s new song “Cousins” — and thanks to some of the iPhone’s unique features, you can actually interact with the ad, shaking your iPhone to change how the video looks. Sure, it’s not a huge amount of customization, but it’s much better than normal methods of advertising and it creates a sense of interaction with the ad. Naturally, you can also click the screen to show an option that will allow you to buy the album on the device. Companies like Google and Apple, two of the most important players in mobile right now, are scooping up some of these mobile ad companies left and right these days. Clearly, they think there’s a bright future for the medium as well. Watch the ad in action below. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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The most amazing thing about the Internet is how many industries it's wrecked. File sharing and iTunes forever changed music's economics; blogging and other forms of online content have killed old media; and open source and software-as-a-service have brutalized the expensive, on-premise enterprise software products.
A tipster informs us that an IM conversation with a friend who works for Google China in their Shanghai offices has revealed that all Google China workers have been given holiday leave. Bloomberg published a 
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When 
When we last wrote about the 
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When you think about mobile advertising, you might think the iPhone or Android are the hot platforms (thanks to 
Earlier today Valleywag 
Ads on the iPhone, just as ads on the web, are something most users want to avoid. But some of the ad companies that are specifically targeting newer smartphone devices such as the iPhone are becoming increasingly inventive with their approach to advertising. A good example of this just launched today in the | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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