The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Atomico Ventures Raises $165m Fund For European Startups
- Social Recruiting: Localbacon Relaunches As Jibe, Raises $875K Seed Round (Invites)
- Rummble Adds Check-ins Via Hashtag, Integrates Foursquare, Gowalla
- Pick Up The Realtime Pulse Of Your Website With Chartbeat’s New Beta
- Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers: Is It the King of Ereaders?
- Palm Keeps Pushing, Announces Pixi Plus And Pre Plus For AT&T “In The Coming Months”
- WebMediaBrands Acquires Social Media Blog RotorBlog
- Avaak Raises $10 Million For Video Monitoring Systems
- Chinese Online Game Developer The9 Invests $20M In Red 5 Studios
- UK Gov Shifts To Open Data, Broadband – But We Could Use Some Detail
- ChaCha Launches ChaCha.me For Social FAQs. Businesses And Celebrities Welcome.
- Help Us Google, You’re Our Only Broadband Hope. (The Government Has No Spine.)
- TRUSTe Places Privacy Seal Of Approval On Virtual Currency Platform gWallet
- NSFW: Jimmy Wales Wants Me Dead (The Neutrality Of This Article Is Disputed)
| Atomico Ventures Raises $165m Fund For European Startups Posted: 22 Mar 2010 09:11 AM PDT  Good news for startups in Europe. Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, through their Atomico Ventures vehicle, have raised a new $165m fund for investing in "disruptive" early-stage European tech companies, reports the FT. The London-based VC firm, founded in 2006 by the duo, will focus on early-stage software and internet companies that have the potential to be "transformative" says Zennström. Startups in the UK and wider Europe have been having a hard time attracting early funding in the current economic climate. And in fact it appears that Atomico itself has been affected by the downturn, having originally hoped to have raised the higher figure of $266m, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year.
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| Social Recruiting: Localbacon Relaunches As Jibe, Raises $875K Seed Round (Invites) Posted: 22 Mar 2010 09:05 AM PDT
At last year’s TechCrunch50, one of the more intriguing launch startups was localbacon—a job board targeted at recent college graduates which charged 99 cents to apply for a job. The idea was to get the most qualified applicants who were more really serious about the job. The founders of localbacon took what they learned from operating their site and are now relaunching with a much better idea centered more around social recruiting. In many ways, Jibe is using Facebook Connect to create a LinkedIn for the Facebook set. The new site is called Jibe, and it ties into Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to help people find jobs through their social networks. Jibe is open today in private beta. The first 200 people to enter the code “Techcrunch” will receive an invite. Jibe also relocated to Dogpatch Labs in New York City, and closed an $875,000 seed round led by Polaris Venture Partners (which runs Dogpatch Labs). Other investors include Lerer Media Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Jason Calacanis (who is our partner in TechCrunch50), and Josh and Jared Kushner.
On Jibe, job seekers sign in with Facebook Connect. It pulls in their work and education history from their Facebook profile to pre-populate their Jibe profile. They can link their account to LinkedIn and Twitter as well (the service is targeting the 24-and-under crowd, who tend not to have LinkedIn accounts). Then for every job posting, they can see if they are connected to anyone at that company. Jibe allows members to message those people directly to ask for a recommendation or job advice. Jibe still charges applicants to apply for jobs, but is now using a credit system. Applicants earn credits by linking their Jibe account to their various social networks, broadcasting their job search, sending private messages through the system, or updating their work history profile. They can also buy 500 credits for $5. Each job listing is ranked based on how many times it’s been viewed, saved, or applied for. The jobs that rank higher turn up at the top of job searches. Employers can post jobs for free, but pay $15 to unlock an applicant’s profile. By unlocking the profile employers get to see the applicant’s name, who else they are connected to in the company, and they can send them a direct message. Candidates whose profile gets unlocked the most appear on a leaderboard Jibe turns Facebook’s social graph into an internal recruiting graph for each candidate, showing the HR person or hiring manager who else in the company is connected to the candidate. Anyone who refers more than 10 friends for jobs will get their profile highlighted to their employer. Companies can also turn fans on their Facebook page into “job ambassadors.” A corresponding Facebook app will allow employers to put their job listings in their fan pages, where people can apply directly. Jibe is also making this recruiting graph available to college career centers in the hopes that they will use it as a tool to help students apply for jobs. The current job boards are broken and dying. Injecting social elements into the job search makes much more sense. The best jobs always come through people you know.      
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| Rummble Adds Check-ins Via Hashtag, Integrates Foursquare, Gowalla Posted: 22 Mar 2010 09:04 AM PDT  Social mobile location startup Rummble has added the ability for members to 'check-in' and recommend places via Twitter, rather than having to use the company's Android or iPhone app or browser-based version. It does this through a bit of nifty but fairly crude sentiment analysis, turning any tweet with the hashtag #rummble into something the service will understand. So, for example "Hanging out in Joes Cafe, 9th Ave, NYC. Great coffee and free wifi. 7/10 #rummble" would be interpreted as a check-in to Joes Cafe, giving it a Rummble of 7/10 noting the "great coffee and free wifi" Obviously, the more information you can cram into 140 characters using trigger words such as "hanging out" or "just arrived", along with the bare facts, the more accurate Rummble's sentiment analysis will be. And, as noted, you'll need to remember to include that #rummble hash tag. It's been a busy time for the startup. At last week's South by Southwest Interactive, the company unveiled an improved Rummble friends list for their iPhone and Android apps which lets users see not only the updates of their Rummble friends but also people they're following on Twitter and other location-based services such as Brightkite, Gowalla and Foursquare.
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| Pick Up The Realtime Pulse Of Your Website With Chartbeat’s New Beta Posted: 22 Mar 2010 07:28 AM PDT
When betaworks launched chartbeat nearly a year ago, the idea was to create a realtime Google Analytics for Websites. Chartbeat is a dashboard which shows you how many people are on your site right now, where they are coming from, and how engaged they are. Watching realtime stats is even more addictive than Google Analytics because you can put something up on your Website and immediately see the reaction. Today, Chartbeat is releasing an entirely new version in beta. The bland design of the old dashboard is being replaced with much more colorful, easy-to-read charts and graphs which pulsate as the activity on your Website changes. (You can see the new and old versions in the two screenshots at the bottom of this post). Up in the top left is a speed dial showing how many people are on your site this minute, broken down by new and returning visitors. Below that are some engagement dials, which indicate how many visitors are reading, writing comments, or sitting idle on the page. Other widgets show load times, the most popular pages, sources of traffic, geographic distribution of visitors, and Twitter conversations. Along the right side you get a snapshot of where different individual visitors are coming from and what pages they are landing on in a continuously updating stream. Much of this data was available before, but the new version does a much better job of presenting it in a readable manner. The biggest change, however, is that each analytics box on the main page can be clicked on for a deeper view of that particular data (by page, traffic source, engagement, and so on). And as with the original version, chartbeat allows you to replay the past day, week, or month to show you how traffic patterns change on your site. The top stories pulsate green or red, depending on whether they are gaining more readers or losing them. It literally lets you replay and watch the activity on your site. For news sites or blogs, chartbeat is especially appealing because it lets you see which stories are hot right now. If you are not already featuring a story that is trending, chartbeat provides the data to help you put it in front of more readers before its too late to do anything about it. Chartbeat offers a free 30-day trial, and costs $10 a month after that. Below is a video, showing the new look and features:
     
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| Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers: Is It the King of Ereaders? Posted: 22 Mar 2010 07:05 AM PDT  There's no doubt about it: the iPad is the elephant in the ereader room but there's one thing I'm certain: it won't kill off the ebook readers. Amazon just took another length in the Kindle's already strong position on the ereader battlefield with the announcement of Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers. This app picks up where the standard desktop Kindle program drops off. Just like nearly every other desktop application, the original PC and Mac Kindle app isn't optimized for finger navigation with small buttons and drop down menus. Plus, it's not pretty and almost utilitarian in design. The upcoming tablet program, however, takes styling cues from Apple's iBooks and looks finger friendly enough. This is huge. No longer can the iPad claim dominance on the color ebook world. The upcoming Kindle tablet program will be able to run on presumably any PC tablet and still sync to the other Kindle apps, mobile or otherwise. Knock "color ebook reader" off of the iPad's list of Pros. The tablet race just got a bit more interesting.
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| Palm Keeps Pushing, Announces Pixi Plus And Pre Plus For AT&T “In The Coming Months” Posted: 22 Mar 2010 06:33 AM PDT
Palm may be down, but they’re not out just yet. Following the launch of the Pre and Pixi on Sprint last year and their respective Plus editions on Verizon back in January, Palm has just announced that they’ll soon be launching the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on AT&T. While its never bad news to get your handsets onto a new carrier, just how good this news is for Palm depends almost entirely on how AT&T handles it. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>      
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| WebMediaBrands Acquires Social Media Blog RotorBlog Posted: 22 Mar 2010 06:07 AM PDT
WebMediaBrands, which is perhaps best known as the owner of Media Bistro, has been undergoing a major transition. WebMediaBrands just bought the Social Times, the company behind AllFacebook.com. And the company has divested the majority of its properties, including its recent sale of Internet.com for $18 million. The company has acquired a number of online publications to boost its editorial platform. WebMediaBrand’s other news sites include LearnNetwork, Graphics.com, Ads of the World, Brands of the World, Freelance Connect, Semantic Web, StockLogos.com, and others. RotorBlog was founded by Latvian blogger Maris Dagis and according to its site, only employs two other editors.      
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| Avaak Raises $10 Million For Video Monitoring Systems Posted: 22 Mar 2010 05:48 AM PDT
Avaak recently launched its Vue system, which allows users to use a webcam to monitor their homes or businesses via the Internet and access a live video feed through a mobile device. The system features a network of small, battery-powered cameras that can be placed anywhere. The Vue’s personal video system is $299 and is sold on Avaak’s site and on Amazon. The new funding will be used to further distribute the Vue system into retail outlets and for product development.      
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| Chinese Online Game Developer The9 Invests $20M In Red 5 Studios Posted: 22 Mar 2010 04:03 AM PDT
With the move, the Chinese online gaming company says it is beginning to shape its global strategy. For Red 5, the additional capital means more means and potential users for the game(s) that they’re currently developing and extra resources to effectively turn the company into a multi-game studio. The9 Limited is a relatively unknown, publicly listed online game company located in Shanghai, China, whose business is primarily focused on developing and operating games for the Web. The9 directly, or through affiliates, operates licensed MMORPGs and casual games including Soul of The Ultimate Nation, EA SPORTS FIFA Online 2 and Atlantica, as well as its proprietary games World of Fighter and Jiu Zhou Zhan Ji, in mainland China (with more in development). The company has also obtained exclusive licenses to operate other games in mainland China, including Audition 2 and Kingdom Heroes 2 Online. Red 5 Studios is an online game developer located in California, formed in 2006 by former executives and developers from Blizzard Entertainment. The pitch from its corporate website is quite intriguing:
Will be interesting to see what this investment and alliance will lead to for both companies.      
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| UK Gov Shifts To Open Data, Broadband – But We Could Use Some Detail Posted: 22 Mar 2010 02:36 AM PDT  The British Governement, faced with an upcoming general election in which policy toward the internet, digital inclusion of the masses and how government IT interfaces with the private sector will all come into play, has rolled out the big guns in the shape of the Prime Minister and a clutch of ministers and advisers today. In a speech in London, billed as "Building Britain's Digital Future", Gordon Brown ranged over a wide range of topics. Here are the highlights: 
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| ChaCha Launches ChaCha.me For Social FAQs. Businesses And Celebrities Welcome. Posted: 21 Mar 2010 11:31 PM PDT
We wrote about Formspring in January, and Tumblr launched Ask Me a few days later. Now comes ChaCha.me, a new product from ChaCha, where people and businesses can ask and answer questions. ChaCha.me has good integration with Facebook and Twitter right off the bat, and they’ll allow question asking and answering through their mobile apps and SMS (something ChaCha does well already). But ChaCha is also partnering with celebrities to get them to use the service right away. ChaCha thinks the product is a perfect way for celebrities to talk to fans. They’re starting things off with 2010 Grammy winner David Guetta – his page will launch later on Monday but users are already lining up the questions. If you’re willing to step things down a few notches you can see my ChaCha page here, and I’ve already answered a few of the questions. Lots more features are coming in the next couple of weeks, says ChaCha. Among the changes – 15 million or so listed U.S. businesses in ChaCha will have the Q&A feature added to their profiles and will be able to answer questions from users. ChaCha thinks celebrities and businesses will feel safe using ChaCha.me because they only have to answer the questions they like and they can stay in control of the discussion. And ChaCha users will be able to integrate the Q&A feature directly into their Facebook pages as well. ChaCha already lets users ask their friends questions on Facebook. The new feature turns that around and lets friends ask you questions, too.      
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| Help Us Google, You’re Our Only Broadband Hope. (The Government Has No Spine.) Posted: 21 Mar 2010 07:24 PM PDT
As Harvard Law professor Yochai Benkler lays out in an excellent op-ed today in the New York Times, this new broadband plan may sound great, but it won’t go nearly far enough. The reason is that there is simply nowhere near enough competition in almost all of the markets in this country. In fact, under the new plan, some 85% of homes covered would have no choice when it comes to a provider. So while it’s great that just about everyone will potentially have broadband access in 2020, plenty likely won’t be able to afford it. And even those lucky enough to have a choice, are probably only going to be able to choose between two options — and again, both of those are likely to be very expensive. The U.S. has the highest broadband prices among advanced nations, while countries like Japan and France get faster (and better) services, for a fraction of the price many of us pay. Again, it’s all about competition. So why do we put up with it? Because the U.S. government has no backbone and ruins its own ideas (such as the National Broadband Plan) because they give into corporate lobbyists. As Benkler points out in his piece, Time Warner is quite pleased that it can set higher prices due to a lack of competition. Meanwhile, Comcast is raking in just about a billion dollars in profit each quarter thanks in large part to their pricing bullshit. Is it expensive to lay down the necessary fiber for these super-fast networks? Of course. But there are plenty of ways that competitors could help the big players offset those costs if the government would simply make them open the pipes. But the big players don’t want that — they’re perfectly happy to pay the large upfront costs to ensure that they can reap the much larger rewards on the other end thanks to this lack of competition. We may have but one hope. While plenty are wary of how big Google is becoming, the Internet giant has so-far proved to be on the right side with regard to universal Internet access. They were instrumental in making sure the wireless spectrum would be (at least somewhat) open, and now they’re pushing the wired broadband movement in the right direction too with their insanely fast fiber push. While the FCC’s 100 Squared plan would put 100 megabit-per-second broadband in people’s homes by 2020, Google wants to put 1 gigabit-per-second connections in people’s homes much sooner. Yes, Google is talking on a much smaller scale (500,000 homes vs. 100 million), but, if the initial response is any indication, Google may become a much, much bigger player in this space than they envision right now.
We’ve written a couple of stories about cities doing some wacky things to get Google’s attention so that they might bring the broadband to their cities (here’s Topeka, Kansas and Baltimore, Maryland, for example). But there are dozens of other cities also foaming at the mouth for access. Some examples:
Those are just a few of the ones we’ve been tipped about. The reaction around the country to Google’s idea should make it very clear that the people of this country are demanding better access. And yet, the government won’t take the necessary steps to open the market up, and let it bloom because the lobbyists from the companies that stand to lose the most are actually the ones in control. If Google, one of the largest companies in this country, only believes they can afford to hook up 50,000 to 500,000 homes with their plan, how is any other company expected to compete with the incumbent players? They won’t. Not unless the government grows some balls and backs real openness. [photo: 20th Century Fox]      
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| TRUSTe Places Privacy Seal Of Approval On Virtual Currency Platform gWallet Posted: 21 Mar 2010 06:05 PM PDT
Following the Scamville controversy in the virtual offers space, the startups which provide these offers on games have been working to rid their platforms of misleading offers. In fact, Offerpal CEO George Garrick promised to take a leadership position in cleaning up scammy ads. Competitor Gwallet has also promised to never offer these type of ads, and is now partnering with TRUSTe to certify gWallet’s privacy practices. TRUSTe will also monitor offers submitted by gWallet's advertisers to ensure they aren’t misleading. For example, previously fake quizzes would be tied to long term mobile subscriptions, malware-laden toolbar downloads and and other scams. And Gwallet is betting on TRUSTe to keep these offers at bay. gWallet, which recently raised $10 million in funding, was founded by serial entrepreneur Gurbaksh Chahal. gWallet works directly with brands directly as opposed to adopting an affiliate leads model and uses branded video campaigns to engage with consumers. Disney, Best Buy, K-Mart, Nestle, Coke, and The History Channel are all using gWallet's video campaigns on social networks, which are powered by Tube Mogul. gWallet also announced an early-stage venture fund to invest in social gaming companies and promote innovation within the social gaming ecosystem. gWallet faces competition from Offerpal and SuperRewards.      
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| NSFW: Jimmy Wales Wants Me Dead (The Neutrality Of This Article Is Disputed) Posted: 21 Mar 2010 09:00 AM PDT
Some weeks though, it’s even easier than that. Someone will say something so breathtakingly wrong – so tracheotomy-cravingly moronic – that I don’t need to explain anything. Simply quoting their words back at them is sufficient to make the point. Step forward, Jimmy Wales. Speaking this week at the Guardian’s Guardian Changing Media Summit, Wales – the founder of Wikipedia – uttered the following statement when asked about the future of newspapers… “I don't see the added value [of opinion columnists] and question whether a newspaper should be paying large sums of money for them anymore… The best of the political bloggers are easily the equal of the opinion columnists at the New York Times.” Those words could stand alone as a monument to Wales’ wrongness – a warning for future generations on why we must never heed the advice of a man who calls himself ‘Jimbo’. But the very fact that Wales was invited to opine about the future of news at a major conference despite having no identifiable qualifications to do so compels me to elaborate. If people take his opinion on newspapers seriously enough to ask him to speak on the subject then there’s a terrifying possibility that they’ll take him seriously enough to act on his advice. And who could blame them? Newspaper owners are terrified – destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked – and desperately seeking any advice on how to cauterize their bottom line. The cause of their madness is, of course, the Internet and so it’s logical – after a fashion – that they should turn to Wales for answers. After all, he’s The Man From The Internet: surely he has all the answers? Yeeeeah. Not so much. For the benefit of those poor befuddled newspapermen, let’s take a few minutes – and a thousand words or so – to break down all the reasons why you shouldn’t listen to Jimmy Wales when he tells you how to run a newspaper. For a start, let’s consider what Wales actually does for a living. Or rather what he doesn’t do. He doesn’t own, operate or edit a newspaper. He doesn’t employ any journalists, has never sold an advertisement and he doesn’t have a single customer who pays to read the content he relies on volunteers to produce. For those reasons, his lack of understanding of the “added value” that high profile personalities bring to newspapers is understandable – forgivable even. Or at least it would be were it not for the fact that Wikipedia uses Wales’ own high profile personality to encourage its users to donate money in order to ensure its survival. “A message from Jimmy Wales” reads the banner at the top of Wikipedia entries during the site’s regular donation drives. These banners link to a personal appeal for support, written by Jimbo and complete with an above-the-fold photo of his face. Jimmy Wales is the first encyclopedia editor since Alain T. Britannica to build a cult of personality around the gig. Why? Because he knows that personality creates familiarity, which in turn creates loyalty, which in turn creates value. Except, apparently, when it comes to newspapers. Which takes us to the real nub of Jimmy Wales’ wrongness. No one would argue that the newspaper industry – in print form – is screwed. Speaking at the same Guardian conference, media commentator and Murdoch fanboy Michael Wolff summed the situation up nicely when he said "Every big-city newspaper in the U.S. is either in bankruptcy or will be in bankruptcy in the foreseeable future – that's 12 months. The newspaper industry in the U.S. is over”. The future of news is online, but that future brings with it the total commoditisation of facts and the death of straight reporting as a way to drive reader loyalty. Newspapers aren’t just competing with other newspapers, but also with Twitter and Facebook and blogs and thousands of other channels through which facts can be disseminated. If one paper puts its news behind a pay wall, the chances are that same news will be available elsewhere for free. Even with high quality investigative reporting, if the story is big enough then someone will simply rewrite it – perfectly legally – and post it on a blog, where it will then be reblogged and retweeted and aggregated. (The aggregators themselves encourage this: Gabe Rivera told me recently that the best way for a blogger to get content on Techmeme is to paraphrase something that previously appeared behind a pay-wall). The battle to force people to pay for general news, then, is lost. Likewise, thanks to micro-aggregators like Techmeme and macro-aggregators like Google News, the fight to maintain reader loyalty through news reporting is finished too. Sure, some people may still cling to the BBC or the New York Times out of habit, but the trend towards decentralisation – with readers choosing their news source on a story-by-story basis – is inexorable. There remains, however, one reason to remain loyal to a single newspaper – or at least to visit that newspaper’s online edition every day. And that’s for its editorial voice: the unique tone with which a publication interprets the basic facts of a news story and helps us form an opinion on it. Which, of course, is where columnists come in. Columnists – and other opinion-driven journalists – are the heart and soul of a news organisation: they’re what makes us tune in to Fox News (Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly) or MSNBC (Keith Olbermann). They’re why we buy the Wall Street Journal (Peggy Noonan) or The New York Times (Maureen Dowd). Newspapers know this of course, which is why when Murdoch desperately (and misguidedly) wanted to protect hard-copy sales of his flagship UK tabloid, The Sun, he removed his big name columnists from the web and confined them to print. Wales may claim that the best political bloggers are better than their mainstream rivals but he’s wrong about that too. For a start, professional columnists carry with them the weight of their entire publication. Maureen Dowd’s opinion pieces are so powerful because they are packed with insight and fact, much of which stems from the access she enjoys as an internationally recognised columnist. The vast majority of independent political bloggers can only dream of that kind of access and are instead forced to rely on second-hand reporting for the basis of their writing. But even if a political blogger does manage to deliver the goods, it’s only a matter of time before they’re snapped up by the mainstream media. I don’t care what crap they spout while they’re struggling to make it, every political blogger in the world would kill their own puppy to write for a nationally – or internationally – recognised publication. The first thing Nate Silver did when FiveThirtyEight went stellar? Take a gig at the New Republic. This symbiosis – columnistists clamouring to write for newspapers, and newspapers needing great columnists to define their voice – is where the real key to the survival of newspapers lies. Rival papers, and bloggers and Twitterers may summarise and rewrite your news scoops, depriving you of readers, but they can’t do the same with your columnists. Personality is simply not reproducible – there’s only one Maureen Dowd and there will only ever be one Glenn Beck (inshallah) so if readers want to hear what they have to say, they have to go to the source. Moreover, while news ages rapidly, opinion doesn’t. A story published online by the New York Times is dated the moment it appears and people begin tweeting out the key facts, but a well-crafted opinion column has an infinite shelf life. For all of these reasons, only the most imbecilicly terrified newspaper editor would heed Jimmy Wales’ advice and fire their most valuable assets. For all the others, there’s actually a compelling argument to do precisely the opposite. It’s comment and opinion, not news, that really adds value to newspapers in the Internet age – and as such the really smart editors will get rid of all their costly reporters and use the money instead to fill their pages with nothing but highly paid opinion columnists. Only then can newspapers be assured of their survival. I know it sounds scary, newspaper owners, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one. After all, I’m The Man From The Internet and I have all the answers.      
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I like recent products that let users created personal FAQs one step at a time based on questions from others. You put up a box that invites people to ask you anything. People then ask questions. You answer the ones you want to and publish them. In no time you’ve got an interesting profile of your personality, likes and dislikes.
For the future of innovation in the United States, few things seem as important access to broadband Internet connections. The FCC seems to realize this, which is why they’ve set up the 
Virtual currency platform 
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