The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Silicon Valley, NYC Gain New Seed Funds
- BlueKai Raises $21 Million For Online Target-Marketing Data Exchange
- Local Advertising Booster Yodle Raises Another $10 Million
- How Apple Kills Hardware Innovation
- SpiderCloud Wireless Raises $25 Million, Total Funding Now $40 Million
- Ten-Year Venture Capital Returns Continue To Slide
- Netflix Adds About 300 Indie Films For On-Demand Streaming
- Facebook COO: 175 Million People Log Into Facebook Every Day
- Nokia, Pearson Set Up Digital Education Joint Venture In China
- Social Shopping Site ThisNext Confirms Funding, Acquires Stylehive
- Interview With Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina: “The Nation With The Best Brain Power Wins”
- Does Foursquare Have A Douchebag Problem?
- Amazon Caves To Macmillan’s eBook Pricing Demands
- Davos Interviews: Brightcove CEO Talks Video, Provides Tech Support
- Verizon’s New VZ Navigator 5 Lets You Send Your Location To Facebook
- TC50 People’s Choice Winner YourVersion Comes To The iPhone
- Google Labs Adds Search Icon To ‘Compose Mail’ Window In Gmail
| Silicon Valley, NYC Gain New Seed Funds Posted: 01 Feb 2010 09:02 AM PST
On the East Coast, meanwhile, things are in motion too, with the introduction of a new seed startup fund dubbed IA Venture Strategies that was founded by New York angel investor Roger Ehrenberg. SVASE and Cambridge West Ventures are looking to connect with startups and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, and have developed a program apt for very early-stage companies. Selected startups are eligible for up to $50,000 in venture capital in return for an unspecified ‘modest stake’ and deferred legal costs up to $15,000 from certain law firms from the region. The program also includes access to Sun Microsystems and Microsoft startup programs for software and hardware related support, as well as access to all SVASE events for 6 months and its network of VCs, attorneys and other useful partners. More info is available on the SVASE website. As for NYC-based IA Venture Strategies, this is a seed fund established by Roger Ehrenberg, a Wall Street vet that has been advising and operating dozens of early-stage companies across the financial technology, digital media and asset management sectors over the past few years. In an interview with peHUB’s Dan Primack, Ehrenberg disclosed that he’s raising up to $25 million for his new fund, and that he will focus on "big data" startups and invest seed capital up to $750k in each of them. More info about the new seed fund here, and for an overview of what’s going on in the Big Apple, check out Chris Dixon’s take on the news.
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| BlueKai Raises $21 Million For Online Target-Marketing Data Exchange Posted: 01 Feb 2010 07:27 AM PST
Launched in 2008, BlueKai aggregates data from shopping and research activities across the Internet and provides this data on-demand for marketers, ad networks or publishers to boost the quality and scale of their ad targeting initiatives. Data buyers include many of the top ten US online ad networks. The new funding will be used to further product development. In particular, BlueKai is looking to incorporate realtime technologies into its platform. The company recently launched an analytics feature that offers deep insight into consumer shopping behavior on the web. lBlueKai faces competition from fellow data exchange eXelate.
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| Local Advertising Booster Yodle Raises Another $10 Million Posted: 01 Feb 2010 06:47 AM PST
Yodle, the New York-based startup that helps local businesses advertise more efficiently on the web, has secured $10 million in Series D financing led by JAFCO Ventures and joined by Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, and DFJ. This latest round brings Yodle's total financing to $38 million. Yodle also released figures indicating the startup’s growth over the past year. In 2009, Yodle grew its revenue by 135 percent. The startup also expanded its local advertising network to over 75 hyper-local web publishers. The company, which started out in 2005, is a lead generation company focused on aiding small businesses advertise their wares in search results for all major search engines. If customers have a website, the ad will point directly to it and Yodle will track and optimize actions starting from clickthrough to phone calls, etc. If there’s no web presence yet, the small business can opt to work with Yodle to create a custom so-called AdverSite which acts as a basic call-to-action website or landing page for the advertisers. Yodle recently filed suit against three former employees alleging that the men 'hacked' into its computer systems and stole trade secrets and proprietary data, some of which was sensitive information about current and potential future customers. The company says it will use the funding for product development and continued innovation.
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| How Apple Kills Hardware Innovation Posted: 01 Feb 2010 06:26 AM PST  If there are two things you can count on its Death and the propensity of Asian electronics manufacturers to capitalize on a rising trend. In short, what we buy Asia makes and Asia is very happy about the iPad. And this chain of events, in turn, destroys hardware innovation. First we have this AP report about accessories makers. We haven't posted very many iPad accessories since the launch but trust me, we've been inundated. Every accessory and app company worth its salt has tasked its befuddled PR flacks to send us emails with subjects like "Supertech creates first iPad holster for cowboys" complete with rendered images of ridiculous accessories. Why do they do this? Because all they really have to do is make a call to a factory in Shenzhen and have a planeload made in a few weeks. It's that easy. This ties up resources, however, discouraging other manufacturers to try to make accessories for other devices.
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| SpiderCloud Wireless Raises $25 Million, Total Funding Now $40 Million Posted: 01 Feb 2010 06:24 AM PST
SpiderCloud Wireless provides the industry's first Enterprise Radio Access Network (E-RAN), a combination of Enterprise WLAN system architecture and UMTS small cell technologies designed to scale mobile broadband deployments inside the enterprise. More on the company and its technology is available in this December Forbes article. In conjunction with the financing, the company added Behrooz Parsay as its new senior vice president of engineering and operations. Parsay has previously held RF engineering and management positions with Aperto Networks, Ericsson, DIVA, Kestrel, and Lantern Communications. SpiderCloud Wireless is based in Santa Clara, California, with offices in New Jersey, Ohio and London.
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| Ten-Year Venture Capital Returns Continue To Slide Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:56 AM PST
Ten-year returns for Venture Capital firms continue to slide downwards for the 5 and 10-year periods ending on September 30, 2009 according to the Cambridge Associates U.S. Venture Capital Index, the VC performance benchmark of the National Venture Capital Association. As investments in startups during the lucrative 1990’s tech boom are no longer included, ten-year returns slide to lower and lower levels, dropping by nearly half from the previous quarter. The 10-year return fell to 8.4 percent from 14.3 percent in the previous quarter and from 40.2 percent one year earlier. The 5-year returns also declined to 4.9 percent from 5.7 percent in the previous quarter and from 10.7 percent one year ago. While returns are diminishing, investments continue to rise after a year when venture funding was in the doldrums. VC investments in fourth quarter of 2009 rose to nearly $15 billion, up 113 percent from a year ago. These numbers aren’t surprising, considering the drought in IPOs over the past few years.But venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain, with a handful of promising startups that could be ready to go public this year. In fact, Tesla just filed for a $100 million IPO on Friday.
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| Netflix Adds About 300 Indie Films For On-Demand Streaming Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:48 AM PST
In last week’s earnings release, the company revealed that almost half its subscribers now watch streams online, which translates to some 6 million people. For $8.99 a month, Netflix members can instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed to their TVs and computers via Netflix-ready devices. Capable devices include Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3 game consoles, Blu-ray disc players from Samsung and LG, Roku’s digital video player and TiVo’s digital video recorders, among others. Netflix is constantly expanding its content line-up, and has now signed non-exclusive licensing agreements to stream films from distributors The Criterion Collection, Gravitas Ventures, Kino Lorber, Music Box Films, Oscilloscope Laboratories and Regent Releasing.
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| Facebook COO: 175 Million People Log Into Facebook Every Day Posted: 01 Feb 2010 04:19 AM PST Last year we interviewed Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This year we interviewed her again. Notably, this time I brought a tripod with me and didn’t cut off Sheryl’s forehead. A year ago Facebook had 150 million users, and more than 200 million people visited the site monthly. I noted “You realize it's like 1 in 5 people in the world that are on the internet visit Facebook.” Sandberg replied, joking “So we have 4 in 5 more to go.” The thing is, they’re well on their way to getting those other 4. Facebook has more than doubled in size to 350 million registered users in the last year. By this summer well over half of all Internet users will likely visit Facebook each month. What’s more dramatic – Half of all registered users still log in to Facebook every day, says Sandberg in the interview. That’s 175 million people. And that doesn’t include Facebook Connect logins, only those people that visit the Facebook website.
This year, when I noted that users are still limited to 5,000 friends, she admitted “I failed you miserably,” and wouldn’t say if or when the limit might be eliminated. She did note that pages have no limit on fans, though. I also asked Sandberg about her views on how the tech community should respond to allegations of Chinese government sponsored hacking and censorship. Facebook doesn’t currently operate behind the Chinese firewall, although the site is available in Chinese. Sandberg’s response:
I was unable to get Sandberg to give me a direct answer on who she thinks competes with Facebook. But she did say that she hopes to integrate with her competitors broadly via Facebook Connect. They’ve certainly made progress there. At the end I asked Sandberg what her biggest regret was over her last two years with the company. Her response – “I would still like to see us move faster.” Facebook’s competitors, ranging from Google to Twitter and just about everyone in between, would probably like to see Sandberg do exactly the opposite of moving faster. The full transcript is below, courtesy of PhoneTag. Mr. MICHAEL ARRINGTON (Founder and Co-Editor, TechCrunch): I’m here with Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. Hello, Sheryl. Ms. SHERYL SANDBERG (COO, Facebook?): In our annual- Mr. ARRINGTON: Or traditional. Ms. SANDBERG: Traditional and annual. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah, second annual. Ms. SANDBERG: Second annual at Davos. Mr. ARRINGTON: Davos interview. Ms. SANDBERG: Interview. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Ms. SANDBERG: With a flip(ph) phone. It’s a TechCrunch flip phone, I noticed it’s branded. Mr. ARRINGTON: This year, your forehead is not cut off. And I have a tripod. Ms. SANDBERG: It’s very, very exciting. Mr. ARRINGTON: And so the production value of the TechCrunch is going up significantly. Ms. SANDBERG: Very exciting. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, we just have a few minutes of your time and I appreciate it. I know you’re running between meetings. Few questions. First of all, Davos is here. What do you think compared to last year? Last year, you said it was a bit somber, economy was down. What do you think this year? Ms. SANDBERG: I think in terms of overall economic perspective, it’s more unknown. Unknown. You see, so start to (unintelligible). You see that some people are saying, there’s a real recovery happening and looking forward to growth. Actually, particular focus I think on growth, China, India, Brazil emerging markets and others are saying, we’re not sure. The recession isn’t over. Job loss is a very, very serious issue. A lot of, you know, anger being expressed due to the lack of financial reform that still hasn’t happened. So, I would say, I’ve been here when I thought years were very, you know, sobering(ph). Mr. ARRINGTON: You’ve been here 10 years now, right? Ms. SANDBERG: I’ve been here a lot of years. I’ve been here years. Yeah. Where, you know, the world is on fire and, you know, everything is giving up and last year, I would say, the world is about to fall apart. And this year, it’s more moderated. It depends on who you are, where you are, and what you're specifically talking about. Mr. ARRINGTON: Did you participate in the panels this year? What were your favorite sessions? What do you think? Ms. SANDBERG: I did. I participated in a bunch of panelists. This morning, I did a thing on CNBC on how we get corporations to do gender equality and to care about gender equality. And that was actually pretty interesting. I was really impressed with Muhtar, the CEO of Coca-Cola. He said a couple of things that I really do not heard a lot of CEO say. He said that they’re really thinking about how they do. How they catch up real kind of more gender equality and took his corporate ranks. He got an example where there’s a woman he wanted to be (unintelligible) Europe and she (unintelligible) and couldn’t move and he said, traditionally, the career path of Coke is you have to move. And he said, this is going to work. So, we’re going to have, you know, exact, this is going to work. So, she had to stay, I think, it was France. We let her stay. Her team is not there but she is running Coca Cola Europe, obviously a huge (unintelligible). We need to make this work for her. And I thought, I’ve not heard a CEO say that. That was pretty incredible. Mr. ARRINGTON: Are you joining the board of Coca Cola? You're on Disney and on Starbucks Board? Ms. SANDBERG: I’m not joining the board of Coca Cola. Mr. ARRINGTON: That’ll be a kind of a cool third one Ms. SANDBERG: I am. I am (unintelligible) sports joining up the Disney work soon. Mr. ARRINGTON: Last year, Facebook did a bunch of in panel Facebook surveys and you have hundred of thousands of participants. Do Facebook do anything special this year in the event? Ms. SANDBERG: Yeah. I would say last year, we were more experimenting and we didn't. This year, we really did this. This year, we did polls at the last discussions(ph) and I think we had over 400,000 users participated in the poll. For me, you know… Mr. ARRINGTON: 400,000? Ms. SANDBERG: 400, 000. You know, Davos is a great event and I think an important event for getting world leaders together and corporations and you know, living(ph) in a very global world so keeping everyone together, you know. But, real people, they’re not really invited to Davos. I mean, they try and they reach out and they do a lot of reach out but they’re not here. And so for us being able to bring real people and real users into the Davos experience is incredible. We saw example after example of, you know, panel where experts are sitting there talking about something and they’ll say, what do people think? And we could do that in like 5 minutes and get, you know, 13,000 responses to whatever the question was. It was pretty interesting. Mr. ARRINGTON: Last year, you had a 150 million users of Facebook when we sat down exactly a year ago. Today, you have- is the last number you announced is 350 million? Ms. SANDBERG: 350 million. Mr. ARRINGTON: What’s the office poll(ph) when you hit half a billion? It’s summer, right? Early summer? Ms. SANDBERG: I don’t know what the office poll is but – and we’re not taking bets but we are really excited that even at such big numbers, our growth is continuing and so continuing to be so strong. As you get big, it sometimes easier to not grow at the same percentages and we are seeing incredible growth. I think, as importantly as a growth, is the continued engagement of our users. When I joined the company, we’re about 70 million and- Mr. ARRINGTON: Which is two years ago? Ms. SANDBERG: About two years ago, yeah. Almost two years. And we kept saying, probably 50% of our users come back every day. And you know, I keep telling people, God, stop saying that. Because every Windows(ph) or later adapters(ph) are not as, you know, engage. So, our later adapters are not going to come back everyday or 50% won't – stop saying that. But, this is Facebook and people do what they believe in, no matter what I think and people kept saying 50% and- Mr. ARRINGTON: You’ve almost stuck to that, haven't you? Ms. SANDBERG: We’re actually still at 50%. Mr. ARRINGTON: Forrester(ph) said a 130 million people a day sign in to Facebook. So, that’s even higher than that? Ms. SANDBERG: So the numbers are in the range(ph) of 50 million plus users and 50% comeback everyday, our numbers. 50% come back everyday. And I’ve never seen that and no one I know have seen that- Mr. ARRINGTON: Does that include your Facebook Connect, by the way? Ms. SANDBERG: No, that’s Facebook only. Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s completely separate. Yeah. How many people use Facebook Connect everyday? Ms. SANDBERG: I don’t know- Mr. ARRINGTON: That's on your website actually. It’s like 30 million (unintelligible). Ms. SANDBERG: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Last year, you made me a promise. There has to be at least a couple of hard questions. That soon Facebook users, not fan pages, Facebook users would have the ability to have more than 5000 friends. And that hasn’t happened yet. So- Ms. SANDBERG: I failed you miserably. I’m here to apologize publicly for our loss. So, what we’ve done already here is we know there’s an issue for people like you who have a lot of followers and more than 5000 people want to see what you have to say. We have made progress on(ph) year is opening up fan pages and giving them a lot more functionality. So one of the reasons when we talked about last year, you didn’t want to switch from having a personal page to a fan pages, you couldn’t, you know, post two users, you cannot reach out two users- Mr. ARRINGTON: You can have sort of one-on-one communication with- Ms. SANDBERG: That’s- you could(ph). You couldn’t do any outreach from fan pages last year. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, now you can. Ms. SANDBERG: Now, you can. So, now, while we still haven’t got you more than 5000 people on your front page, we’ve opened up fan pages and so that if you- people want to follow you and you want to respond to people and push information to them, you’re able to do that from your front page. So we have that developed. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK, great. So we’ll have normal user pages more than 5000 friends? Ms. SANDBERG: I don’t know but they will add more functionality to the fan pages or we’ll do that. Either way, I think the goal is, you know, you want to be able to communicate with people. They want to hear from you. They fanned you. They friended you. We want to enable that in the best way possible. So it’s clearly (unintelligible). Mr. ARRINGTON: One of the big things here this year is China. And obviously, the Google situation is still playing out. Facebook is still banned in China, is that right? And think of it you’re not behind the firewall. Ms. SANDBERG: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. I’m not asking any specific question on what Facebook plans are in China. It seems they haven’t changed. But as a sort of a leader in the tech community, what do you think should be our community's response to China? Should we work with the government as Google tried it and others tried to do? Should we pulled out and wait? What’s the right thing to do as human beings and as businesses? Ms. SANDBERG: You know- Mr. ARRINGTON: It’s a hard question. Ms. SANDBERG: It’s a hard question and everyone knows it’s a hard question. China is an important market, it’s a growing market and there are a lot of people that live there. And so when you provide a service, you provide a great service, you want the rest(ph) of the world to use it. And when you think about our mission, we want to connect everyone in the world. Connecting everyone in the world without China is not connecting everyone in the world. And I think that when you do go into China, you have to figure out how to work with the government, that’s very clear. When you go anywhere in the world, you have to work with the government and that’s poses different issues for different models. For us right now, we launched in Chinese. We are not easily accessible if you’re in China, very hard to access us and we haven’t figure out what our plans would be at. So, we’re still thinking here all the issues. It’s complicated. Mr. ARRINGTON: Just a couple more questions. I’ve and others have stated that Facebook is clearly on a tear(ph). I mean, you probably don’t have all of the internet users at some point. Last year, you had 1/5. Now, you have 2/5 or more. But one thing is- it’s not clear to me that you’ve monetized well your profit in the business. But if you found what I called the Google moment when Google paired excellent search with amazing, an amazing monetization model to become one of the largest companies in the world. For Facebook to do the same, it seems to me you have to have this some monetization magic. Have you found that yet? Is it a process of tweaking what you have now or you’re still experimenting? How do you bring in the billions or 20 billion in revenue? Ms. SANDBERG: Yeah. So, I think this was the year that we changed from being experimental ad platform to really being able to go big and we are going big in lots of ways. What Facebook does and I think we do uniquely well which is part of why I’m so excited about the Facebook opportunity when I was offered it two years ago is we’re a place where users express themselves and we’re a place where people share. And when you think about building brands(ph), not just giving someone something they search but before they search. When they’re talking about who they are and affiliating and, you know, finding things typical demand generation, which is still 90% of global ad spenders(ph). I think we're best property anywhere, with any media to do that because friends want you to affiliate. They want you to say, you know, I am, you know, a Starbucks drinker. I like Starbucks latte and they want you to tell your friends about it. Mr. ARRINGTON: You still don’t get free Starbucks as a board member? Ms. SANDBERG: I get no free Starbucks. Mr. ARRINGTON: Ridiculous. Ms. SANDBERG: No. Mr. ARRINGTON: Sorry, but go ahead. Ms. SANDBERG: But if I wanted to tell everyone I love Starbucks as a board member or not, I will do it on Facebook. And even if I wasn’t trying to do that, if I was just expressing who I am, that’s part of it. And Facebook is a discovery place. You watch your news feed, you’re not going around to look for things even though sometimes you are but your news feed is coming to you. You said, these are the people I want to connect with and they are sharing with me. And that’s a really unique opportunity for brands. You know, the meetings I had at Davos last year were very much- we're interested, we see, you know, 150 million users we’d like to experiment. The meetings I’m having this year at Davos are very different. They’re saying, we’ve experimented with you, we’ve done some great (unintelligible) in the last year. We’re ready to go big because we really want that kind of very authentic two-way dialogue with our users and we’re excited to help brands do that and help people interact to them in ways that they’re excited about. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, you like your model? You like your revenue model and now it’s a process of scaling it and convincing one more and more brands to jump on towards (unintelligible). Ms. SANDBERG: (unintelligible). Because I think that advertising is a great business when done the right way. Advertising that’s interrupted, advertising that’s pushed at you, that’s annoying is not a great model. Advertising which lets you express who you are and then engage in an authentic way is so important. I was just meeting with someone who runs a very important agency and he said what he will use is that right brands of the future are going to be shaped by consumers. What he’s telling his clients is you don’t get to control your brand anymore. You’ve got to work with consumers because they’re going to build your brands. If we are- wait a minute for the noise. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah, yeah. Keep (unintelligible). Ms. SANDBERG: As I scream, you know, all at Davos. If we are working, if we are going to change the world to take real people and put them into Davos so their voice can be heard. And if we’re going to change the world so that brands have to help and work with people to build their companies and their brands, we think that’s a much better place. And now, we’re starting to do it at scale and I think it’s going to make for better companies, I think it’s going to make for people having better consumer experiences, and I think it makes for great experiences online. So I’m really excited about it. Mr. ARRINGTON: Who are your competitors? Ms. SANDBERG: Who are our competitors? A competitive question is always an important one. It’s important for companies to get, right? I think if you draw your focus too narrowly(ph) our competitors, you can get very much blind-sighted by something wrong in company or others are doing. I think you want to think about your competitive case broadly. Well, understanding that you’re working with others to have partnerships. So I think we are competing for how you communicate. We want – when you want to communicate, for Facebook to be the easiest, the most efficient, the most ubiquitous way for you to communicate. I guess that’s a pretty broad communication. Yeah, broad set of competitors, but we’d like to integrate with a lot of this to really make sure that we make it easy to communicate. Mr. ARRINGTON: So you’re not going to answer that question at all? Ms. SANDBERG: It’s not an answer? Mr. ARRINGTON: No. Ms. SANDBERG: But I talked for a while. Mr. ARRINGTON: It is an awesome answer, yeah. Ms. SANDBERG: If I didn’t say anything, is that good? Yeah. No, I’m not going to answer that question. But no one ever answers that question. I’ve seen everyone interviewed here. I’ve never seen anyone answer that question. Mr. ARRINGTON: No. I thought – you know, I thought maybe you would. But… Ms. SANDBERG: Try next year. Our traditional annual Davos conversation, you can ask me again who our competitors are. Mr. ARRINGTON: Two more questions. Ms. SANDBERG: We will say TechCrunch. TechCrunch will be so big… Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s right. Ms. SANDBERG: So they are our competitor. Mr. ARRINGTON: The TechCrunch threat. Ms. SANDBERG: The TechCrunch threat to Facebook. Mr. ARRINGTON: But we’ve already integrated Facebook Connect, so we’ve been board by you, right? So we’re a part of… Ms. SANDBERG: So it’s become a partnership. Mr. ARRINGTON: What is your biggest regret in the last two years? What would you go back and do differently as an executive? Ms. SANDBERG: It’s a good question. Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s a tough question I throw you without warning, but… Ms. SANDBERG: No. It’s a good question. It’s a fair question. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah, anything you would have done differently. Ms. SANDBERG: I think I would still like to see us move faster. I think we move fast. Mr. ARRINGTON: You mean, in terms of product generation? Ms. SANDBERG: Yeah, in terms of product generation. I mean, Mark says this all the time, right? The risk of any spaces that we don’t move as that they move too slowly, not too quickly. I think we are moving quickly and I think we’re quicker than anyone. I think we still like to be faster. I would have love to have gotten last year from the experimental part of our brand business to where we are now, which is scaling. I’m excited we’re here now, but would have loved to accomplish that more quickly. Mr. ARRINGTON: What are you most proud of? Ms. SANDBERG: I’m most proud… Mr. ARRINGTON: What have you done in the last two years, when you look back and go, that was awesome? Ms. SANDBERG: I’m most proud of how Facebook changes lives. I’m most proud of the following example, which hit me because it’s a friend of mine. Her friends, they wanted to adopt a baby and they had a birth mother… Mr. ARRINGTON: Can you adopt babies on Facebook now? Ms. SANDBERG: Let me, let me. Mr. ARRINGTON: I’m sorry. Ms. SANDBERG: Wait, wait, wait. And they had arranged through an agency with the birth mother and at the last minute, the birth mother changed her mind and wants to keep the baby, which is of course, prerogative in the choice. But for this couple, it was very sad. And they actually wrote on Facebook, they created a page where they really were expressing themselves like, this is so disappointing. We had a nursery, we really want to be parents. We just hope someone else just ask for adoption. And separately, there’s a woman who was looking for a place to give a family to adopt her baby, and she went to the usual process and found it too formal, didn’t find anyone she liked. Found this page, she saw this couple’s desire to have a children and more importantly, saw the community around this couple, saw the friends and the family who are saying we know it’s going to happen for you, we know you’re going to be able to be happy parents and we’re going to be there for you through the experience. And she said that’s where I want my child. I want my child… Mr. ARRINGTON: And they actually… Ms. SANDBERG: It’s gone through. The couple has a baby. And what that says to me is that we create community where there wasn’t any, we show people in this very important way the power of what human connection is. We have this page I’m very proud of. I think it’s peace.facebook.com, which you should look at. We’re choosing real-time. Every 24 hours, if personal connections are made between historically conflict groups, so it does Palestinian area and Israel, it does Pakistan and India, it does Muslim and Christian, for example. And you get on there and you know, it’ll say in the last 24 hours, 13,000 connections have been made from Israel to Palestine, 13,000. 13,000 individual people who have connected. You know, if someone else said here it’s really hard to shoot at people you know, it’s just easier to shoot at people you don’t know. And so I don’t claim for a second that we’re going to like create (unintelligible). I’m not that naïve or silly. I think making things more personal makes a huge difference. It’s why, you know, my friend’s friend now has a baby, because they wanted that community. It’s why people are directly connecting in areas of the world where they weren’t before and I’m really proud of that, really proud to just be one of the many people working at this company that’s making that possible. It’s an honor. Mr. ARRINGTON: All right, we'll end with that. Thanks very much. I appreciate your time. Ms. SANDBERG: Thank you. I’ll see you next year.
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| Nokia, Pearson Set Up Digital Education Joint Venture In China Posted: 01 Feb 2010 03:28 AM PST
Mobiledu is a mobile service that essentially provides English-language learning materials and other educational content, from a variety of content providers, directly to mobile phones. Customers can access the content through an application preloaded on new Nokia handsets, or by visiting the service’s mobile website and most other WAP portals in China. According to Nokia, Mobiledu has attracted 20 million subscribers in China so far, with 1.5 million people actively using the service each month. According to the press release and by mouth of John Fallon, Chief Executive of Pearson’s International Education business, China is the world’s largest mobile phone market and the country with the largest number of people learning English. UK-based Pearson owns the world’s largest education publishing business as well as the Financial Times and Penguin books. In april 2009, it acquired Wall Street English for $145 million in cash, giving it a leading position in China’s English-language teaching market. The new joint venture company aims to deliver a wide range of services to meet the demand for digital education in China. It will begin operations immediately and will be managed by Angela Long, formerly head of Mobiledu at Nokia.
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| Social Shopping Site ThisNext Confirms Funding, Acquires Stylehive Posted: 01 Feb 2010 01:22 AM PST
ThisNext set up an entirely new parent company, Curatemedia, which will be the corporate brand that will operate both ThisNext and Stylehive henceforth. ThisNext says its latest round comes from Clearstone Venture Partners and Anthem Venture Partners, which as far as we can tell were all prior investors in the company, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. According to the CrunchBase profile for ThisNext, entrepreneur and angel investor (and TechCrunch50 partner) Jason Calacanis was an early backer of the company and serves on its board. According to the startup, the capital will be used to develop additional shopping tools, facilitate commerce functionality and to fuel the growth of Curatemedia into new verticals and categories. Stylehive, its first acquisition, is a fashion and beauty community and claims over 600,000 registered users. Stylehive made an acquisition of its own back in 2007, scooping up fashion social media startup Stylediary for an undisclosed amount. In related social shopping business news, Time Inc. last week acquired StyleFeeder for “well into eight figures.”
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| Interview With Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina: “The Nation With The Best Brain Power Wins” Posted: 31 Jan 2010 11:41 PM PST
On Friday, I caught up with Carly Fiorina by phone for 30 minutes while she was in between stump speeches in her campaign for U.S. Senate for the state of California. We covered a lot of ground, including the new competition in the Republican primary from Tom Campbell who recently bowed out of the governor’s race, the need to cut spending, grow the economy, rethink government contracting, China, H1B visas, the burdens of Sarbanes-Oxley on small companies, and how technology can help women in the workforce. “In this day and age where it’s all about brain power,” says Fiorina, “the nation with the best brain power wins.” The last time we interviewed her, she was John McCain’s “Victory Chairman” (a prematurely presumptuous title). Even though she is behind in the polls right now, she is very confident she can win the primary and ultimately knock Democrat Barbara Boxer out of the Senate. She talks a lot about cutting government spending. One good idea she proposes: “Let’s put every agency budget up on the internet for everybody to see. People would be outraged at how their money is being spent.” Fiorina also thinks the Sarbanes-Oxley financial rules for publicly traded companies need to be revisited: “I think Sarbanes-Oxley is an example of the dangers of a rush to legislation in an emotional moment. . . . I absolutely believe that new businesses, smaller businesses shouldn’t have to comply with the full scope of Sarbanes-Oxley, and I think there’s no question that Sarbanes-Oxley has had a chilling effect on companies’ decisions to list here as opposed to perhaps listing on other exchanges around the world You can listen to the entire interview or read the transcript below: Transcript courtesy of PhoneTag Mr. ERICK SCHONFELD (Co-editor, TechCrunch): OK, great. Erick Schonfeld with TechCrunch and I’m speaking with Carly Fiorina, who is running for Senate in the State of California. And as many of our readers know, she was also the CEO of Hewlett-Packard for a long time. Carly, welcome to TechCrunch. Ms. CARLY FIORINA (Former CEO, Hewlett-Packard): Thank you, Erick. It’s great to be with you. Mr. SCHONFELD: So, let’s just talk a little bit about what’s been happening in the race just the past few days. A new entrant has come in, Tom Campbell, who was running for governor, decided not to run for governor, and now he’s running against you for the Republican primary in the Senate. How is that shaking things up? Ms. FIORINA: Well, it certainly doesn’t change our strategy. We’re going to continue to talk to the voters of California about the issues they care about most, which are jobs and out of control federal spending, and stay focused on Barbara Boxer’s record. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m the strongest candidate who can win both the primary and the general. Tom Campbell certainly has high name ID because he’s run for so many offices so many times. And I think, you know, Republican primary voters will be interested to learn some of his positions like, for example, the fact that he believes the way to close the California budget deficit is to raise the gasoline tax by 32 cents a gallon. Mr. SCHONFELD: And the way that you believe to close the budget deficit is what? Ms. FIORINA: Cut spending. You know, government bureaucrats and professional career politicians always believe that the way to close a budget deficit is to tax more. And they come up with these terribly difficult choices like, if we don’t tax people more, we have to cut teachers or cut firemen. The truth is the one thing they will never consider is actually cutting spending. And there’s plenty of spending to be cut. I think it’s what voters are angry about because businesses and families cut their spending all the time in tough times. Mr. SCHONFELD: Mm hmm. Mr. SCHONFELD: OK. Let’s deal with those one at a time. How do you propose to do both of those things maybe in a way that the career politicians haven’t thought about or it’s in their DNA to do? Ms. FIORINA: Well, let’s start with cutting spending. Let me just give you a very common sense argument. If you have a line of business – I know this as a CEO – or if you have a teenager – I know this as a parent – who have a spending problem, what do you do? You quit giving them money. So, the first thing we need to do is stop raising taxes, whatever they are. And that’s why I signed the taxpayer protection pledge the day I announced my candidacy. We have to have the discipline to say “No” and “No” seems to be a word that professional politicians don’t use very often. No, you don’t get any more of our money. Secondly, you have to begin to look deeply at how the money is currently being spent. Again, what I know from the real world, a world that maybe professional politicians have forgotten, in the real world, if there’s a billion dollars worth of spending that no one is accountable for, no one scrutinizes, that no one is responsible for ensuring that every dollar is spent wisely and well, then there’s hundreds of millions of dollars of waste. And so, we have to have the courage, the political courage and the will to say, we’re going to look at every dollar. And we’re going to determine whether that dollar is being spent wisely and well, and in fact, there’s half a trillion dollars worth of well-documented waste and abuse in the federal budget right now that no one is going after. In a way, I guess, I would say, a freeze that starts next year on a very tiny portion of the budget, which President Obama announced the other night, simply isn’t a serious effort. We ought to declare that federal spending and federal budgets need to be reduced, not we’re just going to freeze them in place after a historic increase was instituted in 2009. Mr. SCHONFELD: Right. Well, let me throw out an idea at you. You know, one of the issues of spending is just the way the government contracts are given out and the whole process that’s around that. We recently ran an op-ed by a business school professor who suggested that just in the State of California, a lot of the IT projects could be done in a fraction of the cost if it was opened up to, you know, web entrepreneurs as opposed to some of the more traditional contractors that do government IT. And that same idea could be applied to the federal government as well. I was wondering, what do you think about this? You know, for instance, the State of California, I think, has a payment processing system that they put out the contract for $50 million and we had founders and CEOs in comments saying that, I’d do that for five million. Ms. FIORINA: Yeah. Well, it’s a great idea. And it’s an example of the fact that we need to use technology much more broadly and more smartly in the federal government, and I do think that there are many politicians who really don’t understand technology. They don’t understand its power. And so, we’re trapped by these bureaucratic rules that have been in existence for a really long time. And we’re not taking advantage of the innovation that has come out of America. I embrace that idea. I also embrace the idea of, you know, let’s start with something really basic. Let’s put every agency budget up on the internet for everybody to see. People would be outraged at how their money is being spent. Of course, we ought to be using technology aggressively to both hold government more accountable and to make government more efficient. Mr. SCHONFELD: Alright. Isn’t that being proposed or already being done, all these transparency initiatives that are going on in federal government or by the U.S. CIO currently? Ms. FIORINA: Well, you know, not really. I mean, you may remember, there was a kerfuffle over the healthcare bill. Mr. SCHONFELD: Mm hmm. Ms. FIORINA: And folks said very reasonably, gee, people would really like to know what’s in that bill. And there was a discussion. Oh, you know, it’s going to take three weeks to upload it, which is ridiculous. Nobody understood the technology clearly. Of course, people ought to see that healthcare bill. You know, we permit comments by special interest groups by putting proposed regulation or legislation up on the internet or – see, why shouldn’t we do that with legislation? Mr. SCHONFELD: Right. Mr. SCHONFELD: Right. Let me go through a few issues that I think are near and dear to the hearts of our readers. One that has been on the news lately is China and, with Google’s recent reevaluation of their, whether they’re going to continue operations in China or not, it sure raises a whole host of issues about whether companies, especially technology companies should continue to operate under the off auspices of that government when they’re perhaps helping with their censorship or even in some cases, like the case with Yahoo! a few years back where information they provided the government ended up with dissidents going to jail. So, what’s your position on how technology companies should engage or not engage with China and what should the government’s position be in supporting that? Ms. FIORINA: Well, I want to separate two issues. One is the issue of censorship. But the other issue which is equally troubling is China’s ongoing and aggressive pirating of technology companies IP. They – and by the way, aggressive hacking of all kinds of databases in this country. Both are serious issues. China, of course, as a signatory of the WPO has an obligation to protect a company’s intellectual property. And in many real cases, it has not stepped up to that obligation. The Google case raises not only the issues of censorship but it also laid this – it highlighted the fact that China is relatively routinely engaging in hacking and the pirating of intellectual property. I believe that technology companies and the federal government have to be extremely aggressive with China about highlighting both sets of abuses and beginning serious conversations with China about how to end those abuses. But I would also say that realistically, China will respond much more effectively to a commercial discussion than they will to a human rights discussion. So, while Secretary Clinton is morally justified in pointing out the human rights violations, I think it will be more effective for the U.S. government and technology companies to engage in the commercial conversation about China’s continued flaunting of their obligations to protect intellectual property and the aggressive posture on our part to begin to prosecute and highlight their pirating of intellectual property. Mr. SCHONFELD: Right. But once you – apparently, right, Google has been in China for years and you would think that they’ve been having those discussions and they came to a conclusion that those discussions were going nowhere and they had no other choice but to exit. So, I guess the question is talk gets you so far, but if the Chinese government doesn’t reciprocate on a commercial basis, then what do you do? Ms. FIORINA: Yeah. See, I’m – well, I guess what I’m suggesting is that I am not sure that we are having a – I’m not sure that – let me rephrase that. I have seen no evidence that the administration or the federal government is engaged in concert with technology companies in having a commercial conversation about the pirating of intellectual property. And Hillary Clinton’s position that she took recently on this issue really focused on the human rights aspects of it only. And that is a conversation that’s unlikely to be effective with the Chinese government because they are not influenced by our view on human rights. They’re influenced by their assessment of their commercial self-interest. Mr. SCHONFELD: All right. Let’s move on to another topic altogether, Sarbanes-Oxley. Did it go too far? Ms. FIORINA: Erick, I’m really sorry. We’re going through a bad cell spot here and I can’t hear your (unintelligible). Mr. SCHONFELD: I want to talk about Sarbanes-Oxley and whether it went too far and whether it is acting as a dampener on – especially on small growth companies, their willingness to go public these days. Or is that behind us and everyone sort of understands the new rules and it’s just the new kind of cost of doing business? Ms. FIORINA: You know, I think Sarbanes-Oxley is an example of the dangers of a rush to legislation in an emotional moment. You know, as I recall, Sarbanes-Oxley passed 99 to 1 or something, and that would certainly qualify as the emotional moment. I actually think that for very large companies, Sarbanes-Oxley did some important things. It focused boards on understanding a company’s processes. Mr. SCHONFELD: Mm hmm. Ms. FIORINA: And I think there’s merit in that. But, one rule just doesn’t fit all, and in this rush, Sarbanes-Oxley to your point has been a applied broadly to every single public company. You know, Hewlett-Packard can afford to have their legal and accounting bills quadruple, which is basically what happened, to try and comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. But smaller companies can’t and so I absolutely believe that new businesses, smaller businesses shouldn’t have to comply with the full scope of Sarbanes-Oxley, and I think there’s no question that Sarbanes-Oxley has had a chilling effect on companies’ decisions to list here as opposed to perhaps listing on other exchanges around the world. So I think it’s got to be revisited. Is it a complete evil? No. But was it too broad, too intrusive for every single circumstance and every single company? Yes. Mr. SCHONFELD: OK. What about – let’s move to immigration policy and the whole idea of H1B Visas and the quotas on their – many in Silicon Valley would like to see the H1B Visa quotas increased because they recruit a lot from countries like India and others where they get a lot of talent, as you know. And then there’s this whole idea also, it’s been floated, of a founder’s visa that will be a separate visa for people from other countries who come here to start companies, which would be a separate pool apart from the H1B Visa. What do you think about these ideas? Ms. FIORINA: Well, I think it is always good to attract hardworking people from other countries to come here to build their dreams. I mean, this is, after all, a country that has benefited enormously from being the place people want to come. And, of course, we should make it – we should be welcoming and make it easier for tech entrepreneurs or for legal immigrants of any kind to come to this country temporarily on a visa or permanently as legal immigrants. It’s to our advantage. And the reality is that even if we completely fixed our education system, which is, of course, a huge priority and we’re falling further and further behind in basic skills like Math and Science and Engineering, even if we fixed that situation, we still will benefit from and need people with the ambition and the skills to contribute to our key industries. Mr. SCHONFELD: Right. So, two more questions and I know you’ve got to go. But, one is just sort of the whole standoff in Congress between the Democrats and the Republicans. You know, one thing I think that did resonate with a lot of people from the State of the Union was when Obama said that people want things done, right? And that gridlock – he even said that the gridlock really isn’t popular on either side. But, yeah, that seems to be what’s happening, in the Senate particularly – especially with the numbers so close. So, even if you have all these great ideas, how are you going to resist the pressure, if you get elected, not to sort of toe the party line when there are things that can actually be done? Or what do you propose to do to end the gridlock and get legislation passed? Ms. FIORINA: Well, first, if I am fortunate enough to be elected to the U.S. Senate, it won’t be a party that will have elected me. It will be the people of California. And the people of California expect me to get something done on their behalf. So, I think it starts with remembering who sent you to the job. Secondly, one of the absolute very first things I will do is sit down with Senator Diane Feinstein and talk about those areas where we can find common ground and where we can get something done for the people of California. And there are – I am well-aware because I know her well – places where we have common ground. For example, Senator Feinstein believes as I do that the terror trials ought to move out of New York. I think it is one of the things that Barbara Boxer is most notorious for. Barbara Boxer is an ideologue. Her voting record is one of someone who is ideologically driven and purely partisan and it’s why she hasn’t gotten anything done on behalf of the people of California. I’m not a career politician, I’m not an ideologue although I have core beliefs that are very important and that I hold strongly, and I’m being sent to Washington to get something done on behalf of the people of California not on behalf of a particular party or a particular partisan point of view. Mr. SCHONFELD: Mm hmm. OK, then finally, a question about your use of social media in this campaign. I just took a quick look at your Facebook page and your Twitter account. Seems like you have a lot more followers on Twitter, 234,000, versus Facebook, which is something around 3,000 or so fans. Are you focusing more on Twitter? Where are you getting the better – most bank for your buck? Ms. FIORINA: Well, you know, I think those numbers may be more a reflection of how people are using the technology increasingly. We’ve seen really a pretty phenomenal growth, and our connection with people through these social networking sites and certainly Twitter has been hugely successful for us. So, I don’t think it’s a question of us focusing on one more than the other. I think it’s a question of how people tend to be attracted to sort of the short kinds of conversations that they see on Twitter. So that may be – I guess what I’m saying not very well is I think it’s more about the users and the voters than it is about us and our campaign. We want to reach out and use as many different mediums as possible and use technology aggressively and differently in some cases than it has been used in the past to try and reach as many people as possible. Mr. SCHONFELD: Right. I put out a question 10 minutes before we started that I was going to be talking to you and asked if anyone has any questions for you. One woman on Twitter wants to know – she said, “Ask her why she thinks young women should be involved with technology.” Ms. FIORINA: Well, what a great question. You know, I believe that technology is the great leveler. Technology permits anybody to play. And in some ways, I think technology – it’s not only a great tool for democratization, but it’s a great tool for eliminating prejudice and advancing meritocracies. So, I think women should be attracted to it for that reason. I also think that – and this applies to many other folks besides women, but I think technology now is a great community organizing building tool. You can find lots of people like you through technology, and women in particular like communities. And so, you know this, but stay-at-home moms, for example, are one of the more aggressive users of technology because of the communities that they find and form using technology. Mr. SCHONFELD: Right. Which brings me to a question my wife asked. She wants to know what’s your opinion on what the government can or should do to make it easier for women with children to have more flexible options in terms of going back to work. And her point was really that – you have a job and then you have a child and then you go back to your job after a year or two and then you have these choices that are like, OK, I can work and not be with my kid and basically, I’m just paying the nanny for the child care, you know, or if I stay out of the work force for a year, then my job is gone and there is this untapped talent pool of women who are very talented and could really help the economy, but it’s just not worth it for them. Ms. FIORINA: Yeah. Well, in fact, it’s such a great question because technology enables any job to be done anywhere at anytime and enables anybody to contribute. So, for example, technology, I believe, should be embraced aggressively by companies to permit flex time, to permit job sharing. When I was at Hewlett-Packard, we pushed forward a whole bunch of pretty pioneering flex time and job sharing programs because technology let us do it. So it’s totally possible to contribute meaningfully to a group meeting while a mom is on the soccer field watching her kid play. And in this day and age where it’s all about brain power, the nation with the best brain power wins, which is why education is so important. The company with the most innovative and best brain power wins, so why not use technology to bring all this additional brain power to bare and do it in a way that works for women who have children. It’s all possible with technology. You know… Mr. SCHONFELD: Does the government have a role in making – in creating incentives for companies to adopt that kind of policy? Ms. FIORINA: Well, I certainly think that government has a role in making sure that broadband is deployed aggressively and ubiquitously. I don’t think government should get into the business of legislating how companies deal with this issue because I think regulation and legislation always move so much more slowly than technology, that you create more problems with that approach than you solve. But if government can help motivate the broadband – the aggressive deployment of broadband so that technology is available and companies focus on their enlightened self-interest, which is to tap as much talent as possible, I think there’s a nexus there that can bring a lot of women into the work force in a productive and fun way. Mr. SCHONFELD: OK. All right, well, this has been a great discussion. Is there anything we haven’t had a chance to touch upon that you’d like to share? Ms. FIORINA: Well, you know, Erick, I hope that there’ll be many other opportunities to chat but unfortunately, I’m like two minutes away from a speech I have to give. So… Mr. SCHONFELD: OK. OK, well, always a pleasure talking to you and thank you so much for taking the time. Ms. FIORINA: Not at all. My pleasure as well, Erick. Thank you. Mr. SCHONFELD: OK, bye. Ms. FIORINA: Bye-bye.
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| Does Foursquare Have A Douchebag Problem? Posted: 31 Jan 2010 09:42 PM PST
A popular part of the gaming element of the service is gaining badges, virtual tokens that show you’ve done a certain task on the service. Most of these are clever, like the Photogenic badge when you check-in to three different places with photobooths. But some are a bit more risqué, like the Douchebag badge. As Foursquare keeps growing, will there be pressure to get rid of these? Increasingly, this issue is being brought up on Foursquare’s Get Satisfaction page. As one user wrote yesterday in the forum:
Another user follows that up with:
A week ago, another thread was started raising the same issue:
That actually ties in very well with what Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley told Bits today while talking about the Bravo deal:
While the Douchebag badge may have been fine for the “nerd-only” crowd, they’re clearly starting to move beyond that, and some users are getting upset about it. And while you might not see why this is much of an issue, coincidentally, I ran into this issue last night. I have my Foursquare account set up to auto-tweet out when I unlock new badges. Last night, I happened to be at a bar tagged as a “douchebag” bar, so when I checked-in, I unlocked the badge and it automatically tweeted out to all my followers. For the record, I think the Douchebag badge is hilarious, and could care less that it tweeted out. But I certainly can see how that could be an issue for some people. To a lesser extent, the same is true with the Crunked badge (4 or more stops in one night, implying you’re drunk — which is probably true) and others. Also, what happens when a venue doesn’t like that they’ve been tagged as a “douchebag” place? This brings up an interesting dilemma for Foursquare: do they abandon some of the fun, quirky things that made the service what it is, in an attempt to go mainstream?
[thanks malachi]
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| Amazon Caves To Macmillan’s eBook Pricing Demands Posted: 31 Jan 2010 02:52 PM PST
Macmillan is trying to price their e-books at $15, while Amazon prices e-books at $9.99. Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent said that unless Amazon sets the price of new e-books to $15, the publisher will not distribute new books to Amazon when they are released. On Friday, Amazon basically banned titles, both paper and digital, published by Macmillan by refusing to directly sell them. And Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing. Amazon is now giving into Macmillan’s demands because of the publisher’s monopoly over its titles. In a passive aggressive manner, Amazon says that readers will decide whether it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for e-books. And that other publishers will compete by offering their books and lower prices. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last week that publishers were unhappy with Amazon’s pricing mode, foreshadowing this disagreement with Macmillan. Jobs revealed that publishers are withholding their titles from Amazon because of Amazon’s pricing model. Jobs also said that prices for books on Apple’s new tablet device, the iPad, will be the same as Amazon’s pricing. Here is Amazon’s announcement:
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| Davos Interviews: Brightcove CEO Talks Video, Provides Tech Support Posted: 31 Jan 2010 02:40 PM PST I sat down with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week to talk about his business. Brightcove isn’t the sexiest startup out there. They’re a video platform – giving websites the tools they need to host and stream video, for a fee ranging from $100/month to “six figures per year” for the largest customers. For the most part users never see the Brightcove brand. And Allaire is just fine with that. He just wants happy customers. The company launched in 2005, has raised just over $90 million in venture capital, and is approaching profitability, he says. Allaire says he wants to build a public company, and is happy being based in Boston.
You can see the full interview above. And don’t miss the outtake at the end of the video where Allaire gives some free tech support to a customer. Time Inc. reporter Barbara Kiviat was having some issues uploading a video. The transcript of the interview is pasted below. MICHAEL ARRINGTON : Jeremy Allaire is the founder and CEO of Brightcove. You’re the founder, the sole founder, right? JEREMY ALLAIRE: I am the founder and CEO, yeah. ARRINGTON: You’ve been around since ‘04, ‘05? When did you found… ALLAIRE: 2005, yeah. ARRINGTON: And you help companies get their video up on the internet. ALLAIRE: That’s right, yeah. ARRINGTON: We’ve known you forever. ALLAIRE: Yeah. ARRINGTON: And so we’ve been following you from the earliest days of TechCrunch, but every once in a while it’s always good to check in and just hear what’s going on with your business. So what’s going on with your business? How much money have you raised to date? How many customers do you have? What’s the revenue? ALLAIRE: Yeah, absolutely. So well, we’ve raised about 90 million in capital over the last five years. ARRINGTON: How much of that is left? ARRINGTON: Are you profitable now? ALLAIRE: We started generating cash in 2009. ARRINGTON: OK. ALLAIRE: And we still have a very, very healthy balance sheet, so we’re in a very good place on that front. ARRINGTON: Yeah. What’s your cash position right now? ALLAIRE: We're not gonna tell you what the cash position is, but it’s quite substantial around this until the last… ARRINGTON: Sometimes start-ups will say how much money they have left in the bank though. I mean… ALLAIRE: Yeah. ARRINGTON: It's not crazy to do that. ALLAIRE: No. We have a lot of cash that’s letting us invest and look at acquisitions, things like that, but… ARRINGTON: So your customers are paying you… ALLAIRE: Yeah. ARRINGTON: To basically host their video, give them the tools for the player, all the tools for that. ALLAIRE: Yeah. ARRINGTON: Ad advertising. ALLAIRE: Yeah, all the – everything that you need in an online video, basically. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: From publishing and content management, advertising, analytics, social media integration, making a great experience. ARRINGTON: And how do you charge? – do you charge for bandwidth, do you charge for the set up, do you… ALLAIRE: Sure. ARRINGTON: What’s your relation with the… ALLAIRE: It’s a software subscription model. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: And we have – actually, the last couple months ago, we launched the Brightcove Express. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: Which is a $99 product. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: And it’s doing extremely well. So there’s – it appears to be a really sizable market of smaller projects and small, medium businesses that also want to do this. We have a lot of customers. ARRINGTON: What do they get for the $99? ALLAIRE: They get basically the full tool set that, you know, maybe three years ago, people would have spent $30,000 on, so it’s – we’re really trying to, you know, in some ways, commoditize the market. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: And that’s going well, but they get the full tool set and they get a certain amount of capacity so they can have like a library of videos of a certain size. If they need more, they can move up to $199 and $499. ALLAIRE: And then included capacity for delivering that to people. And then you know, it goes up to people who spend, you know, more than seven figures a year with us. ARRINGTON: OK. And so Time magazine – we’re sitting here with the Time writer, Barbara. They’re one of your customers. ALLAIRE: Time Inc. Yeah. ARRINGTON: Time Inc., they do all of their video through you. ALLAIRE: Yes. So a lot of magazine companies work with us. Time Inc., People , and Time and InStyle and major brands – producing more and more video and have an integrated experience on their site and that’s… ARRINGTON: And how do you charge them? Is that a six, seven-figure deal a year? ALLAIRE: Most medium to large media companies are six-figure per year licenses. ARRINGTON: And what do they get for that? Just because they’ll pay, you charge them more or do you… ALLAIRE: No, no. Pricing is a lot like – you know, the pricing on the service is like Omniture or Double Click where it’s really based on the scale of traffic usage. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: So there’s an annual fee, which is sort of the features you get and there’s a capacity that people pay for. So you know, someone who is doing, you know, hundreds of millions of video views needs more capacity and is getting more value out of our services as well. So we have the pricing that moves up for that. ARRINGTON: Are you going to get out of Boston at some point? Because not many startups are left there, right? You are one of the only ones. ALLAIRE: Well, we’re trying to build a great company in Boston, actually. ARRINGTON: You like Boston? ALLAIRE: I do, yeah. It’s actually proven to be a very good place for us to recruit and – I mean, we have offices all over… ARRINGTON: Have you finished that whatever thing they’re building? ALLAIRE: The Big Dig. Yeah, totally. ARRINGTON: I mean, that’s done now? ALLAIRE: It’s done. Life is good. ARRINGTON: And so traffic is a little easier now. ALLAIRE: That’s kind of the key. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: Yeah. ARRINGTON: And there’s a good month or two here, the weather is reasonable, right? ARRINGTON: I guess people work harder if they don’t have anything to do outside. ALLAIRE: That’s pretty good. ARRINGTON: So what happens to your company? Are you going to go public at some point or possibly… ALLAIRE: We’re definitely focused on being global, independent, and that’s the path we're on. ARRINGTON: What happened to Maven? Yahoo! bought them and then just… ALLAIRE: It’s gone. Yeah. ARRINGTON: What was that all about? They paid about a hundred something. ALLAIRE: Yeah. 160, 170 million. ARRINGTON: And then – and then Maven was a competitor, right? ALLAIRE: Yeah, yeah. ARRINGTON: And they just shut it down. ALLAIRE: Yeah. Well, I think… ARRINGTON: Did you get any of their customers? ALLAIRE: Most of them, yes. ARRINGTON: And then what about Ooyala? They're like an upstart, they do things -how do they do things that are different from you? They charge only for bandwidth. Is that right? ALLAIRE: No. I think they’re pricing is a little bit different. They try and charge for both software and bandwidth, kind of mix those together. I think, you know, they're – I think they have good products. They’re definitely a good business in this market. ARRINGTON: Yeah. ALLAIRE: You know, they’ve grown over the last year. ARRINGTON: But you’re going to crush them. ALLAIRE: I think we’re doing a very good job remaining the top company in this market. ARRINGTON: And then who else… didn't Juice say they were going to get into this business? ALLAIRE: There’s a lot of failed companies that have tried to morph into technology services businesses, not with much success at all. So I don’t see a lot of them, but yeah. ARRINGTON: Anything else you want to tell me that’s, you know, news worthy coming up. You’re done raising money for now… ALLAIRE: Yeah. ARRINGTON: You bought anyone, you’re buying someone… ALLAIRE: Well, I’ll tell you. The online video ecosystem, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening. And as we look at what we do as a very horizontal platform, we’re always looking to say and see, you know, what are the natural things that will be part of it, so we’re definitely looking at opportunities to expand into new products and possibly do acquisitions as well. ARRINGTON: Jeremy, thanks very much. ALLAIRE: Thank you, Michael.
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| Verizon’s New VZ Navigator 5 Lets You Send Your Location To Facebook Posted: 31 Jan 2010 02:38 PM PST
Back in October, Google changed the mobile navigation space when it launched Google Maps Navigation for Android. While the product itself is solid it also has one killer feature: it’s free. This has forced the makers of other non-free navigation tools to scramble to convince users their products are still worth paying for. Verizon is the latest to do so with its VZ Navigator 5, launching tomorrow. So what would make it worth paying for? Verizon has a few new features in this latest update, but one of the ones they are touting the most is social media integration. Specifically, you can now update your Facebook status by way of VZ Navigator. This in and of itself isn’t that interesting, but you can also send out your location to Facebook with this feature, apparently. While Facebook has yet to launch any major location functionality itself, a few third parties including Yahoo’s Fire Eagle and Nokia have leveraged the network for their location-based products. But VZ Navigator’s Facebook integration might be the most meaningful yet, as we could actually see people who use the service sending their location to their friends on Facebook. In other words, customers could start using this integration to make Facebook more like the popular location services such as Foursquare. Of course, unlike the popular location services, VZ Navigator isn’t free. Using it will cost you $9.99 a month or $2.99 for 24-hours of usage. But with that price you also get other features, namely turn-by-turn navigation. With this new version, Verizon has also added new “enhanced” points of interest that show up on their maps with details about the place. There is also now crowd-sourced traffic information that Verizon claims will make traffic reports more timely and accurate. Overall, the look and feel of the application has been updated as well. Another nice feature is that if you need roadside assistance, you can send your location and number with the click of a button. VZ Navigator 5 will be available tomorrow for the BlackBerry Curve 8530, the LG enV Touch, the HTC Touch Pro2, and the Samsung Omnia. The plan it to roll it out to other smartphones on Verizon’s network in the coming weeks, we’re told. Verizon builds VZ Navigator in association with TeleCommunication Systems.
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| TC50 People’s Choice Winner YourVersion Comes To The iPhone Posted: 31 Jan 2010 02:01 PM PST
The app is pretty straightforward. First, you enter some topics that you’re interested in. Every time you launch the app, you’ll be presented with a list of these topics. Clicking on one will bring you to a list of recent blog posts, tweets, and other content that contains those topic keywords. You can also filter through this content by source, allowing you to see only content from Twitter, news sites, and so on. If you’ve already set up an account on the YourVersion website, you can sync that with the app (any items you bookmark or share from the app will be reflected on the site as well). Of course, there are plenty of other applications out there that let you search for news stories by keyword. YourVersion tries to go a step further than basic keyword matching by adding some intelligence to its story recommendations. In the current version, the app will track all of its users’ attention data, which includes the stories they’ve click on, shared, given thumbs up/down to, and a handful of other metrics. YourVersion then uses this data to generate a weekly Email digest, which includes the week’s top stories from each of your YourVersion topics (it will omit any stories that you’ve already read). This is only the first step, though. In the next month or so, the site plans to roll out a feature to both its website and the iPhone application that will use this attention data to enhance the “Discover page” (the section of the app that presents you with recent stories), so that you don’t have to wait til the end of the week to get smarter recommendations. YourVersion still has a lot of work to do — in its current form, there isn’t much to differentiate it from the countless feed readers and news apps already out there. The app needs to implement more robust algorithms that can provide story recommendations that are both more timely and accurate than its competitors’.
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| Google Labs Adds Search Icon To ‘Compose Mail’ Window In Gmail Posted: 31 Jan 2010 10:12 AM PST
Orli Yakuel noticed that Google has quietly added a new icon in the ‘Compose Mail’ window of its free webmail service Gmail, enabling users to run search queries from within the interface and insert results and URLs straight into drafted e-mails or open chat conversations. This is an expansion of a Google Labs feature, simply dubbed ‘Google Search’, that was introduced back in April 2009 as an optional setting in Gmail. The first iteration of the labs feature added a ‘Web Search’ box next to the main column (left side on the screenshot) that provides much of the same functionality, only you needed to remember to go to the side column to run a search. Now, enabling the feature also adds an icon to the top toolbar in the ‘Compose Mail’ window, where you can also customize colors and fonts for your message, add links and emoticons and more. It’s unclear when the icon was added, but we can’t retrieve any mention about this on the Gmail blog and today marks the first time we’ve seen it. The icon opens up a search box at the bottom of your screen and lets you run a search like you would using the regular Google search interface. A small arrow opens up a limited menu where you can paste results, paste URL and send by e-mail (which is kind of redundant in this case, since you’re already in a new e-mail). If you have a chat conversation open in Gmail, you’ll also get an extra option to send search results to your contact. Obviously, this isn’t a ground-breaking feature, but if you’re a Gmail user you might want to (re-)enable the Labs feature in Settings. Guaranteed to save you quite some time.
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The Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (aka 
Wireless technologies developer 
Indie film lovers, rejoice: 
Facebook continues to limit the number of friends any individual can have to 5,000. Last year Sandberg said that users would eventually be able to have any number of connections on Facebook. She said “I'm not going to give you a specific date, but I will reinforce the message that this is coming..we're not providing that functionality and we think that's important so we are working on this and we're working on it currently. We look forward to your having 80,000 friends… 100,000 friends.”
Social e-commerce company 
With 
Brightcove competes with newer upstarts like 
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