The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Digital Secretary Service YouMail Hits 1 Million Users, 300 Million Handled Calls
- CrunchGear Reviews the Olympus E-PL1, a Micro 4/3 Camera
- Google Ads Will Now Follow You Across The Web
- TC50 Demopit Winner CrowdZone Launches Mobile Social Network For Sports Fans
- Voice Messaging Startup Bubble Motion Nabs Former Yelp And Elance Exec As Marketing Chief
- Zynga Rolls Out Pre-Paid Game Cards At Major Retailers
- The New Bing Box, A Foursquare Map App, And Other Search Goodies
- Publishers In A Tizzy Over New iPad Revenue Possibilities
- AdMob Registers 50% Market Share For iPhone OS Based On Smartphone Traffic
- Yes, YouTube Is Down (But You Can Still Watch Videos)
- Thumbs Down On This Ad, Yahoo
- The iPad Is Coming! The iPad Is Coming! Apple Takes Over Our Job Board.
- Yes, You Can Build a Web Company in India. Here’s How.
- Great Moments In PR, Part 349
- Dear AT&T, I Want Your 3G MicroCell! For Free.
- ClickTurn: Build Rich Media Ads In Half An Hour
- Longtime Facebook Engineer Yishan Wong Departs
- If Cuil Was Cool, Cuiler Is Cooler, And Cuilest Is The Coolest
- Twision: Twitter Television Is Here! Well, In Spain Anyway.
- Schwing! Ad.ly Wants To Sell One TechCrunch Tweet For $7k
- Calm Down. Facebook Doesn’t Cause Syphilis.
- Dirt Cheap And No Features To Speak Of – Will The Kobo Sell By The Million?
- Wix Raises $10 Million For Flash Website And Widget Builder
- Google Bookmarks Adds Lists So You Can Share Even More Links
- AOL Launches Charitable Organization Patch.org To Fund Hyperlocal News Sites
| Digital Secretary Service YouMail Hits 1 Million Users, 300 Million Handled Calls Posted: 25 Mar 2010 08:59 AM PDT
YouMail, which operates only in the United States, says it has not only surpassed the 1 million registered users mark but has also handled over 300 million calls since its inception in 2007. YouMail offers free applications for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry platforms, as well as a paid application for Palm’s webOS platform. Alex Quilici, YouMail's CEO, says most of its now 1 million strong user base are service professionals who can't afford to miss critical voice calls and opt to use the service as a virtual assistant to greet callers by name or personal message, route important calls as text or email messages, and take dictation from callers. YouMail' has partnerships in place with regional wireless and VoIP carriers such as IMMIX Wireless, Cellular One, Blue Wireless, iSmart Mobile and others. These carriers typically set YouMail as their standard voice mail service or directly offer it as a featured option to their customers. The service is available to post-paid mobile users in the US on all major carriers, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile. YouMail can also be used to unify a user's mobile voicemail with their voice messages from VoIP service providers such as Google Voice, MagicJack, OOMA, and Vonage. YouMail provides its service for free and ad-supported, and also offers a set of premium services, which includes voice-to-text transcription. The company is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, and backed by $6.4 million from Vantage Point Venture Partners and Tech Coast Angels. YouMail faces competition with Google Voice, although there are some notable differences (for instance, YouMail boasts an API for third-party developers, integration with Facebook, offers personalized greetings for callers, etc.).
     
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| CrunchGear Reviews the Olympus E-PL1, a Micro 4/3 Camera Posted: 25 Mar 2010 08:15 AM PDT  This is the year of Micro Four Thirds. While Nikon and Canon still haven't dipped their toes in this pool, I think it's time for the average camera user to look at these things seriously and the power and elegance captured in the E-PL1 - and the affordability captured in its $599 price tag. Click through for a full review and test shots.
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| Google Ads Will Now Follow You Across The Web Posted: 25 Mar 2010 07:47 AM PDT
Advertisers are beginning to realize that ads on the Web have their own lifecycle. People who eventually click on an ad don’t always click on it the first time they see it. Just like on TV or in print, they need to be bombarded by the same message before they take an action. The more times people see an ad on the Web, the more likely they are to eventually click on it. As annoying as this may be to most consumers, this is how advertisers view the world. Google also sees the world through this lens, and today it fully launched what it calls ad “retargeting.” If someone sees an ad on one site, Google can now show the same ad or a follow-up ad to just that person when they visit another site which shows Google ads. Since there are millions of sites in the Google Content Network, chances are Google will see them again. The program has been in beta since March, but it is now being rolled out to all AdWords customers. The term “remarketing” has multiple definitions, but Google uses it describe a way for AdWords advertisers to run campaigns throughout the Google Content Network, which the company claims reaches about 80% of Internet users around the globe. The idea is that while visitors of a certain advertiser’s website may have shown interest for a product or service, leads don’t always convert to sales and Google aims to make it easier for AdWords clients to try and win over the potential customer at a later stage. Retargeting can be applied to either text or display ads, and during the trial period was used for everything from boosting brand awareness to driving clicks and sales. For example, a hotel site could retarget offers for Caribbean hotels to people who visited their Caribbean hotels section after they leave their site. Maybe if you are reminded that there is a special deal for a week-long stay in St. Barts when you are on a blog or news site, you will finally click on that ad and book the trip. That’s the hope behind retargeting. It will work for a small percentage of people who need that extra nudge. For everybody else it will just seem creepy. If this does creep you out, you can go to this page to see what Google thinks your interests are based on a cookie, and you can also opt out entirely if you’re spooked about Google’s latest ‘interest-based advertising’ initiatives.      
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| TC50 Demopit Winner CrowdZone Launches Mobile Social Network For Sports Fans Posted: 25 Mar 2010 07:30 AM PDT
CrowdZone’s app allows users to “join” a crown or start a crowd around a sports event. While the app is location-based, you can also participate from your coach and can use the app’s functionality even if you aren’t at a particular event. Within a crowd in the app, you can check-in to a game, similar to a check-in on popular mobile social network Foursquare. Once you’ve checked in, you can see other people who are using the app and where they are located in the crowd. You can share comments and pictures with your crowds and participate in “fan activities,” such as cheers or the wave. And as you participate in the application, you earn activity points and badges, with the aim of achieving the “Crowd MVP” status at an event. Although partnerships with sports teams and stadiums aren’t necessary for the app’s functionality, CrowdZone already has one professional sports team that is on board with its offering. The NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes will be promoting CrowdZone’s app to their fans through television and radio ads as well as on their Web site, Facebook and Twitter fan channels. Chyngle and CrowdZone’s co-founder Todd Sullivan says that revenue hasn’t been turned on yet, but the startup is looking to monetize the app in a variety of ways. Sullivan says that teams could possibly leverage a CrowdZone network to identify and message influential fans. Sullivan adds that CrowdZone also provides a channel for teams to engage in commerce with their fans around virtual and real-world goods. CrowdZone's real-time analytics, generated from crowd behavioral and location data could provide teams with valuable insight. One of the biggest challenges CrowdZone will face is actually getting users to download and use the app. But if the startup continues to get endorsements and publicity from professional sports teams, the app could gain popularity as a niche mobile social network for die hard sports fans.      
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| Voice Messaging Startup Bubble Motion Nabs Former Yelp And Elance Exec As Marketing Chief Posted: 25 Mar 2010 06:00 AM PDT
Most recently, Porteus was CMO for Elance, a service that allows for companies and individuals to hire and pay independent professionals and contractors online. Previously, he was VP of marketing for Yelp. Porteus has also served as general manager of Imagine Radio, an internet radio company that was acquired by MTV, and also worked in a marketing role at eBay. It’s likely Porteus will be focusing his efforts on marketing Bubbly, Bubble Motion’s recently launched Twitter-like voice messaging service for mobile phones. With Bubbly, you can record and broadcast messages from any mobile device. When a users records audio messages and updates, followers can listen in whenever they want. To start voice-blogging, you enter a short code onto your phone, and start recording your messages. To follow another voice-blogger, users dial the phone number for whomever they want to follow. Whenever there's a new audio update, followers are notified via SMS with instructions on how to listen. Since its launch last month, Bubbly has already attracted over 500,000 users in India alone, and plans to expand to other regions in Asia within the year. Bubble Motion, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has raised a total of $35 million in funding since the company's launch in 2003.      
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| Zynga Rolls Out Pre-Paid Game Cards At Major Retailers Posted: 25 Mar 2010 05:39 AM PDT
Zynga has been rumored to be developing its pre paid game cards after Playdom rolled out game cards at stores, including Walgreens and UK retailers, last fall. The game cards are designed to make it easy for consumers who don't have access to credit cards or bank accounts to buy in-game items. The $10 or $25 cards can also be purchased as gifts and can be redeemed for in-game currency to get items like tractors, energy packs and furniture. Game cards will be able to be redeemed through the games on Facebook, as well as on FarmVille.com, MafiaWars.com and YoVille.com. This should help Zynga create another revenue channel and further its presence in the mainstream market, though the game developer is already incredibly popular, especially on Facebook. Currently, Zynga’s games are being played by 67 million users around the world every day, with 235 million monthly active users. And the company’s revenue is growing like gangbusters; Zynga was PayPal’s second largest merchant in 2009. And the company just raised $180 million last December at a rumored $2 billion valuation.      
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| The New Bing Box, A Foursquare Map App, And Other Search Goodies Posted: 25 Mar 2010 05:30 AM PDT
Today, Bing is announcing more refinements to its search engine. The most noticeable one is what Bing director Stefan Weitz unofficially calls the “Bing Box.” For popular search categories such as celebrities, cities, companies, musicians, movies, places, and sports, the top result will be the Bing Box, which will pull in an image and a link to the official site, along with some relevant data. For pop music star Lady Gaga, it might be concert dates and realtime Tweets. For “Miami Beach,” it might be a thumbnail of a map, the current weather, flight deals, and a list of neighborhoods. The Bing Box is similar to Google’s Universal Search Onebox that pulls in images and results from different vertical search categories and places it at the top of the search results page. But the Bing Box packages the data in a slightly different manner. “That center search pane with a bunch of links is going to change,” predicts Weitz. Bing wants to compete against Google with a better presentation of information and design of the user experience. In addition to the Bing Box, it is tweaking the guided search along the left-hand column. It is getting rid of the drill-down search categories which currently appear in the prime top-left location. Nobody was clicking on them. Instead, different types of filters and related searches will appear there. Weitz notes that related searches on Bing get a 16 percent click-through rate, and search history gets a 3 percent click-through rate. So those two are staying. Underneath the search bar will be a new set of tabs appropriate to the search term. For a rock band, the tabs may include events, news, videos, and images. While a search for a place will bring up tabs for maps, events, news and the weather. On Bing Maps, a new Foursquare app will show places where people have left comments and tips. The app will allow user to see Foursquare check-ins, badges, and mayorships within a Bing Map. In addition, anyone will be able to see tips from any foursquare customer and zoom to the location for visualization. Bing is also adding more eye-catching graphical elements to its autosuggest. So stock charts and weather icons will begin to appear in the drop-down list of suggestions once you start typing your search query. Weitz says that a whopping 30 percent of searches on Bing are already launched from the autosuggest feature. Separately, a comparison feature will start to be rolled out as well for sports teams, presenting side-by-side stats in search results.
Finally, Bing is creating a dedicated page for all automobile searches, much like it already does for events and recipes. The guided search on the left includes a breakdown by different trims, competitors, and model year. While the new tabs on top will include images, videos, and specs. Bing is building out more of these so-called domain task pages for different topics. Later this year, videogame searches will get their own special treatment, with shortcuts to find cheats, walkthroughs, and reviews. “There isn't another technology that is eight years old that you would be satisfied with,” says Weitz, referring to how little the search experience has changed since Google hit the scene and offered up its spare blue links. As the Web moves away from being mostly just text to images, video, and rich pools of data, he thinks there are better ways to present that information in a way that reduces the work and effort required of the user.      
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| Publishers In A Tizzy Over New iPad Revenue Possibilities Posted: 25 Mar 2010 05:21 AM PDT  If there's one thing putting a spring in the step of publishers this summer and giving them just a little more impetus to initiate summer hours and "get away from the hustle and bustle of the city" by having their driver take them to their house on the Hamptons, it's the iPad. Is there anything this thing can't do? Absolutely not, because publishers are flocking to it in droves in an effort to save their falling circulation numbers. To wit, the nut of this story is that the Wall Street Journal will cost $17.99 a month on the iPad, considerable savings over the $2 cover price. This subscription will presumably include all of the graphics and layouts that make the Journal famous as well as ads - lots of expensive, sweet ads. For example, "Unilever, Toyota Motor , Fidelity Investments" is paying Time magazine $200,000 for eight display ads in the iPages of Time magazine. That's for eight issues, mind you, which breaks down to $25,000 an issue. $25,000 was probably the haircut budget for the ad staff at Time Inc. How can they buy a Ski-doo for their next Vail trip with that kind of money?
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| AdMob Registers 50% Market Share For iPhone OS Based On Smartphone Traffic Posted: 25 Mar 2010 05:19 AM PDT
According to AdMob, smartphones accounted for 48 percent of its worldwide traffic last month, up from 35 percent in February 2009. Dominant still is iPhone OS, which has increased its share of smartphone requests on the AdMob network from 33 percent in February 2009 to 50 percent in February 2010. Android, however, is the fastest-growing these days. Symbian is the big loser: while it accounted for 43% of AdMob’s smartphone requests in February 2009, it only reached a 18% share last month. AdMob also says Mobile Internet devices experienced the strongest growth compared to feature phones and smartphones, increasing to account for 17 percent of traffic in its network in February 2010. The iPod touch is the top mobile Internet device and is said to be responsible for a vast majority of this traffic; other devices include the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi. For your reference: AdMob considers a smartphone to run an identifiable OS, a feature phone to be a mobile phone that does not fit into the smartphone category, and a mobile Internet device to be a handheld device that connects to the mobile Web but is not a phone. Other highlights from the February 2010 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report (PDF): - Symbian’s share of smartphone requests fell from 43 percent in February 2009 to 18 percent in February 2010. (Via press release)      
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| Yes, YouTube Is Down (But You Can Still Watch Videos) Posted: 25 Mar 2010 04:49 AM PDT
Seriously, what is the world coming to? Update: and it’s back – downtime was almost 2 full hours. Fortunately, videos still play on sites where they are embedded, and when you head directly to dedicated video URLs you should be able to watch them without a hitch (example). In the meantime, there’s so much chatter about it on Twitter that the words ‘Service Unavailable’ actually graduated to a Trending topic. We’re awaiting a response from Google about the extended homepage downtime.      
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| Posted: 25 Mar 2010 02:51 AM PDT
I’m no expert on advertising, but this ad being run by Yahoo on Pandora just doesn’t feel right to me. Partly because I don’t want to search for more songs from an artist that I just said I don’t like. But mostly because it’s subliminally connecting a big thumbs down with the Yahoo name and logo. But hey, they’re keeping Pandora chugging, and that’s a good thing.      
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| The iPad Is Coming! The iPad Is Coming! Apple Takes Over Our Job Board. Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:00 PM PDT
This shouldn’t really come as a huge surprise to those who follow Apple. The much-hyped iPad device is set to launch on April 3, and with it will undoubtedly be an onslaught of new apps. In fact, it appears that the wait times for app reviews has been slipping substantially in recent days as developers are rushing to submit their iPad apps before the March 27 deadline (to be considered for an initial launch app) — and it stands to reason that Apple is giving priority to iPad apps to get reviewed initially. It would seem that Apple is bracing itself to take the App Store to the next level with this new device. So what kinds of positions is Apple filling? Interestingly, most are editorial-based, meaning Apple is looking for people who can help distinguish the good apps for the bad ones, for promotion. For example, the Editorial Programmer, Apps should be someone who, “is responsible for the discovery, selection, and promotion of apps”. Other positions revolve around promoting the business behind the App Store. Something else interesting is that Apple is looking for people who can help with the “promotion of apps on the desktop as well device App Stores.” This suggests that Apple may in fact be thinking of an App Store idea for the Mac itself. The company recently launched a new Mac Developer Program similar to the one it offers for the iPhone (and now iPad). Three of the positions listed are also specifically related to game apps. Games have been the largest portion of the App Store for much of its existence, but were recently overtaken by books. But seeing as Apple is now doing its own book promotion via iBooks, games look to reign supreme again — especially with the larger screen iPad. And clearly Apple knows this.      
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| Yes, You Can Build a Web Company in India. Here’s How. Posted: 24 Mar 2010 09:39 PM PDT
A few companies have done well and a few more are coming up, slowly but surely. But there are hardly any true breakout hits. RedBus is pretty close. It’s essentially an Expedia for bus tickets in India. It sells about 3,500 bus seats per day, is the fourth most-trafficked Web site in India and has at least tripled its revenues year-over-year. The company sells seats for roughly half the bus operators in India, and that's saying something: This is an insanely fragmented market that had next to zero centralization just a few years ago. All of this has been built in three years on about $1 million in venture funding. (The company raised another $1.3 million in 2008, but it's still in the bank. Investors include Helion, Inventus and Seedfund.) I can vouch for the company being cheap. Having spent my morning in the plush eight-acre Infosys headquarters, the offices of RedBus were a marked contrast. They are split among two buildings located in one of those very chaotic Indian neighborhoods where vendors are shouting, cows are wandering and smell of open sewers is not too far off. It feels far from the sanitized, steel-and-glass rows of multinationals. None of this is intended as an insult– co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama is proud of his cheapness. (Sama is pictured above, sorry it’s so blurry. My camera was having issues.) We met in a no-frills, un-airconditioned conference room. He didn't turn on the air conditioning for famed Silicon Valley Indian entrepreneur Kanwal Rekhi, when he visited last month either—and Rekhi is an investor in RedBus. Despite the sweat trickling down my forehead, arms, legs and back throughout the interview, I didn't want to leave. What Sama and his two founders have pulled off in a short period of time with little funding in India is impressive. Background for Americans: There are two kinds of buses in India—those that make stops and have ticket-takers on board and that go to one destination only and sell pre-paid tickets only. There are some 3,000 operators of the latter category and, before RedBus, there was no way to contact them directly. To get a bus ticket, you went to an agent. That agent only had inventory from a few bus lines. To book the ticket, he or she would call one person who was in charge of booking every seat on that particular route. There was a long wait time, and frequently the routes the agents knew about were sold out – meaning you had to change your travel plans, or find another agent who had different sources. Meanwhile there was no standardization on pricing and commissions. The agent simply wrote the cost on a piece of paper and if you wanted to ride, you paid it. Now, RedBus has a central database that gets seats from half of India’s bus operators. It has done so well that it powers the bus ticket applications for most of India’s more general travel sites like MakeMyTrip.com. It also sells an OpenTable-like software-as-a-service product to help bus companies manage their own inventory and better integrate their inventory with RedBus. In terms of seats, it sells less than 1% of the 750,000 rides taken daily, but with several channels and few other easy options, there’s a ton of room to grow a big company. Sama didn't set out to build a company. I know that's a cliché with startups these days, but it's a rarity in Bangalore where the glamor of being a Web entrepreneur runs high and plenty of TechCrunch-reading kids save up money, quit for a year, try to start a company, and go back to a multinational if it doesn't hit quickly. When RedBus's mentor first suggested the company raise $1 million, Sama gasped. He hadn't even thought in those amounts. His only immediate thought was: "If I had $1 million, I'd put it in the bank and make interest.” That mentor was Sanjay Anandaram formerly of Neta, Wipro and other ventures known between the Silicon Valley and Indian entrepreneur communities. Sama met Anandaram through TIE's JumpStartUp program. Despite the reach, influence and press of TIE—the uber-Indian networking organization started in the Valley— Sama is the first entrepreneur I've met in India who gives it this much credit for his company's survival. Specifically, he cites Anandaram's advice. When RedBus was trying to sell software to the bus lines, it was Anandaram who said: Don't keep trying to sell the same thing, ask what they need and build that. The bus lines needed to sell seats. So RedBus built a site, and bought the inventory itself from the bus lines to list on the site. Once it proved it could move seats, the operators were happy to pay the company a percentage of seats sold. Once the company could prove results, it was Anandaram who warned them to undersell expectations: Tell an operator you can sell one seat for them a month, even if you think you can sell fifty. If you sell two, you'll be a hero, not a disappointment. RedBus has carried that over to fundraising, admittedly forgoing higher valuations because it didn't want to oversell and under-deliver. That's harder than it sounds for an entrepreneur, who is usually the single most bullish person on his company. And it is absolutely shocking in India's startup culture. I had a blog network tell me on my last morning in India – with a straight face – that it would be doing double the revenues of Gawker in a few years. I like to give entrepreneurs the benefit of the doubt, but I also know the media business. Forgive the generalization, but Indians just love to over-sell. It's deep in their trader heritage. "You have to sacrifice your ego," Sama says. But, especially for a startup in India, the most important piece of advice Sama and his co-founders got from Anandaram might have been this: You are not an Internet company. Because the Internet isn't more widespread in India, there has to be a core mindset that the Net is an important channel, but just a channel. Just under 50% of RedBus's business comes from the Net, much of the rest is via mobile phones. And the company invested early in two expensive ways of skirting that Web limitation. The first was building its own network of bike couriers to deliver tickets and take payments, ala the hugely successful Chinese online travel company, CTrip. The second was investing in seven different call centers throughout India, not one central call center. Says Sama, if you don't localize a call center to local slang, languages, and customs the customer service won't work. Seriously? An Indian in Bangalore arguing a centralized, remote call center can't give good customer service? That has about as much globalization-irony as China’s BYD refusing to outsource any of its manufacturing. For Anandaram's part he noted the founders' willingness to listen and learn from someone who’d been there. He says the biggest mistakes he sees Indian startups making are not seeking advice, being too obsessed with retaining control and not valuing sales, marketing and partnerships. The RedBus story squares with something I've been noticing more in my travels to emerging markets—frequently when entrepreneurs complain about a lack of angel investing or venture capital, what they are really lacking isn't just the money, it's the mentorship. This came up in my recent conversation with Pierre Omidyar, whose philanthropic effort, the Omidyar Network, seeks to fund both non-profit and for profit entrepreneurs specifically those in the poorest areas of the world. Omidyar Networks has money it can gives these entrepreneurs, thanks to eBay and the dot com boom—lots of money. But what the organization is increasingly finding so lacking is that horrible buzz word "human capital." In Omidyar's own experience, eBay never touched the $3 million it raised from Benchmark in 1996. But the mentorship he got was well worth giving up 25% of the company. "That's what is so hard to find around the world," Omidyar says. "We're increasingly looking at whether $500,000 worth of human capital could help more than $500,000." I know that the idea the VCs bring more than money is ridiculed by most entrepreneurs today, but those are usually entrepreneurs operating in a scene that has had an explosion of startups—both failed and successful ones—in the last fifteen years. Even the shiest, most awkward or most unconnected entrepreneurs in the Valley can find a mentor with little effort. Sometimes we take for granted that that's not the case in much of the rest of the world. Lucky for RedBus’s founders, they were an exception.      
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| Posted: 24 Mar 2010 08:12 PM PDT
This one was a nice welcome email to our newest hire, Evelyn Rusli. It’s a normal pitch email from a normal PR firm. The funny part is the chain below the pitch, where the sender forgot to delete the internal discussion about how to pitch us. They went with the “typical techcrunch email format” with a twist: “go with more of the social network aspect.” I often wonder if PR firms even test the products they shill. I’m pretty sure most of the time they don’t. Thank you, PR Flack #1, for this brief moment of levity in an otherwise hectic day:
Our other posts on this fascinating profession:
     
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| Dear AT&T, I Want Your 3G MicroCell! For Free. Posted: 24 Mar 2010 06:40 PM PDT
Today, you announced the nationwide rollout plans for your new 3G MicroCell product. That’s great. It sounds like a great solution for those customers who have poor reception in their home or work environments. I know many of those customers. In fact, just about everyone I know in San Francisco and New York City who has AT&T service is one of the customers. In fact, I’m one of those customers. So yes, I want this device. But seeing as I’ve been paying you about $100-a-month for several years now, I think it’s only fair that you pay for it. It would be one thing if my service was only poor a few times a year. Hell, maybe I’d even be okay if it were bad a few times a month. But every single day I have some kind of AT&T issue. And many of the aforementioned people I know do too. So rather than making us pay the $150 for this device, why not just send one to every customer living in areas that you yourselves admit has service “below our standards“? Yes, I know that’s an expensive proposition. But think of what a PR win that would be after months of being dragged through the mud. And is $150 really that much to eat in the long run? Again, we’re paying you nearly that much every single month. And while you may admit that the service isn’t where it should be, I have yet to see a refund check in the mail. Other services, like Netflix, proactively apologize and give refunds when their service fails. You do nothing except promise that things will get better. We’ve been hearing that promise for years now. It hasn’t gotten better. The only reason I don’t switch carriers is because of the amazing gift you were given: the iPhone. I understand that demand for that device is the reason your network is so terrible. But that’s your problem, not mine. Following your great performance at SXSW this year (after last year’s disaster), I wondered aloud why you couldn’t do the same thing here that you did there? I understand there are a few reasons (the biggest of which seems to be that it would be more difficult — which to me, seems mainly to mean that it would cost more money), but this seems like a perfect temporary solution. And I’m hardly the only one who thinks so. So think about it, will you? You have an amazing opportunity to do the right thing here. Oh, and P.S. I forgot to mention maybe the biggest benefit to you too — because you’re offloading traffic from your large macro-cells to these micro-cells using broadband we already pay for, you’re going to be freeing up a lot of bandwidth, allowing the overall network to improve. See, it’s a win-win. It just needs to be a free option in the areas where you are currently failing.      
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| ClickTurn: Build Rich Media Ads In Half An Hour Posted: 24 Mar 2010 05:15 PM PDT
The momentum in online advertising is shifting away from traditional static text ads and towards rich media ads that are highly customized and interactive. Unfortunately, they generally take a lot more effort to create, which puts them out of reach for some companies. Enter Widgetbox’s ClickTurn ad-builder. ClickTurn gives publishers a relatively fast and easy way to create dynamic ads with multiple tabs that include content from YouTube, Twitter and Facebook streams. Think of it as a mini site-within-a site where advertisers can showcase their best content and social media feeds. ClickTurn has delivered over 100 million impressions so far, collecting a $1.50 CPM. Not too shabby, when you consider that ClickTurn launched in December and has 12 clients under contract (including CBS, IDG, Linkedin). For publishers, why bother? Publishers want advertisers, advertisers want eyeballs, rich media ads attract more eyeballs. For comparison, the traditional display ad will see a 0.13% click-through rate and a 2% engagement rate (i.e. when a cursor floats over the ad), according to Widgetbox CEO, Will Price. Meanwhile, ClickTurn’s ads enjoy a 0.8% click-through rate with a 20-25% engagement rate. There are other companies in this space like EyeWonder, Point Roll and Eyeblaster. Price says the rich ad process typically requires a flash developer and 4-6 weeks on average— making it a costly and labor intensive endeavor. Price says that anyone that can navigate Facebook can create an ad with ClickTurn’s template in half an hour. Using ClickTurn’s form, a user can pick custom backgrounds, select a size, add animation and create tabs with social media streams or other information/multimedia. There’s also an option to add a companion mobile ad (publishers can include an input field at the foot of their ad for user cell phone numbers). When a user enters his number, the ad sends a link via text message that will open a complementary mobile ad that uses HTML5 to present a more dynamic experience. The rich media ad industry is still relatively small. Of the web’s $7.4 billion display ad market, just $1 billion is rich media. But it’s rapidly expanding as advertisers demand a more customized feel and higher audience engagement. And it’s about more than just clicks. The real value of a rich media ad is hidden in the treasure trove of user data. While a typical display ad can tell you the number of impressions, a service like ClickTurn can tell you how a user is interacting with your ad and which tabs/services are most popular (i.e. if users prefer your Facebook or YouTube stream). It’s a window into your consumer, their online habits and a way to gauge the success of your social media strategy.
     
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| Longtime Facebook Engineer Yishan Wong Departs Posted: 24 Mar 2010 04:53 PM PDT
People come and go all the time of course, but Wong’s departure is noteworthy because he has managed quite some important engineering projects at Facebook over the past few years. Wong joined Facebook in late 2005 as a software engineer after a prior 4.5 year stint as senior engineering director at PayPal. As he once wrote on his personal website, the engineering department back then was only 30 people strong (there are several hundreds now), and Wong worked his way up to Director of Engineering until voluntarily scaling back a bit last year. Wong played an instrumental role in Facebook’s (frequently lauded) internationalization efforts – he came up with the idea for crowd-sourcing translations and is credited as an inventor on multiple patents related to those initiatives. As Director of Engineering, he also oversaw the Ads and Payments teams, where the self-serve ads system that makes Facebook so much money today was built – though the ill-fated Beacon project was also developed on his watch. Furthermore, the Platform team and what one would now refer to as the Applications team (photos, events, groups, notes, inbox, chat, etc.) also reported to Wong for some time, and he spent a lot of his time assisting in the recruitment of people (he’s the original author of Facebook Puzzles, for example) and mentoring new managers who joined the company over the years. Most recently, he was involved on mobile-related developments at Facebook, including the Location efforts that are currently in the works. So why is Wong leaving and what’s next? From what we can gather, this particular departure involves not an ounce of drama (regretful, we know) and although he’s been with the company for quite some time he’ll be mostly missed over there for the stuff he’s done in the past and his personality. Today is his last day at the office, and we hear he’ll be working on a project of his own for the foreseeable future. (Picture via Dave McClure)      
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| If Cuil Was Cool, Cuiler Is Cooler, And Cuilest Is The Coolest Posted: 24 Mar 2010 03:56 PM PDT
The search engine Duck Duck Go has obtained the domains Cuiler.com and Cuilest.com to give itself a cooler front end. Smart move. After all, it put it on my radar, and after trying out the engine, it seems very, very solid. It’s a simple engine that doesn’t clutter its pages with unnecessary results. It offers tailored results for regular search as well as information, and shopping results. And, for the adventurous types, there’s an “I’m feeling ducky” button. And, unlike Google, the service says it keeps no information from its searches. Perhaps even more interesting, DuckDuckGo is the work of one man, Gabriel Weinberg, a former co-founder of NamesDatabase (which sold to Classmates.com in 2006). As he notes on the Cuiler and Cuilest sites, “Search with less garbage and cuils.”
     
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| Twision: Twitter Television Is Here! Well, In Spain Anyway. Posted: 24 Mar 2010 03:20 PM PDT
As Twitter’s new VP of Communications tweeted out recently, Twision is a Spanish show that debuted on the channel Veo7 last week. While it doesn’t exactly have a prime time slot (it’s on at midnight), it’s an hour-long program that lets viewers send in tweets live that two hosts then interact with. The Spanish site Terra has a bit more (translated). As you can see from this site hosted by Veo7, the show takes place in a studio with two guys on laptops and a huge screen behind them to showcase tweets. The anchors also show videos and other content as shared on Twitter to talk about. The site features a stream of tweets coming in next to the video player. Below, find an episode embedded for your viewing pleasure (if you speak Spanish).
     
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| Schwing! Ad.ly Wants To Sell One TechCrunch Tweet For $7k Posted: 24 Mar 2010 02:17 PM PDT
But we went ahead and signed up for Ad.ly last year to see what kind of ads might be proposed to us. The price we asked for? $10 million per tweet. Hey, everyone has their price. Until today there were no takers. Then, this:
Are we going to do it? Hell yes we’re going to do it. Purely for research purposes, mind you. We want to see if the advertiser actually pays up. The $7k will be donated to the Golden Gate Lab Rescue.      
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| Calm Down. Facebook Doesn’t Cause Syphilis. Posted: 24 Mar 2010 01:18 PM PDT
For one, the articles in question say that the number of Syphilis infections in the English town of Teesside has grown to a whopping thirty cases in 2009 (up from a mere ten cases the previous year). Sure, that’s a big jump percentage-wise, but the small sample size and the complete lack of details about any of these studies makes the conclusion that Facebook can somehow be linked to Syphilis extremely dubious. All of the articles quote the same person: Professor Peter Kelly, director of Public Health for NHS Tees, and none of the quotes seem to contain any concrete evidence. Here’s a sample quote taken from The Sun that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence (yes, I know it’s a tabloid, but it has more quotes than the other articles):
This sounds more like an observation based on a small number of cases rather than an established trend, and it doesn’t say anything about causation. I’m hardly the first to notice this — Dr. Petra Boynton of the UK has written a detailed blog post outlining the lack of evidence cited in the report, and Dr. Ben Goldacre is trying to gather more details from the NHS (which has gone silent, according to his Twitter posts). The Guardian has pointed out the weakness of the claims as well. We reached out to Facebook for their stance. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes gave us this statement:
     
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| Dirt Cheap And No Features To Speak Of – Will The Kobo Sell By The Million? Posted: 24 Mar 2010 12:58 PM PDT
The Kobo e-reader is the spark that set this post off; at $150, this 6″-screen, 0.1″-thin, half-pound device is among the very cheapest e-readers out there, yet Kobo also runs its own bookstore, which has the usual classics and bestsellers — probably 90% of what gets sold for e-readers. It’s going to be sold at Borders, and with its modest price tag might make for more of a temptation to browsing customers. But as long as consumers are being bombarded with promises of Android, touchscreens, cool dual-screen form factors, the Kobo is going to look mighty shabby in comparison. And by the time Kobo gets some press and is widely available, we’ll probably be hearing about all the cool stuff that’s going to happen next year. What’s a cheap, functional e-reader to do?      
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| Wix Raises $10 Million For Flash Website And Widget Builder Posted: 24 Mar 2010 12:05 PM PDT
Founded in 2006, Wix provides a simple mechanism for anyone to create Flash-based websites and widgets without losing SEO juice. Users can customize their Wix websites with a drag and drop editing tool and pretty templates, making the site user-friendly for users who may not be tech savvy. The funding will be used for further product development. The site makes its money from a freemium model where users pay for extra customization and design features. And Wix is partnering with other design and image sites to include compelling features for website building. For example, Wix has partnered with stock image site Fotolia to give users access to the site’s 5 million images. Wix is growing and currently has 3.5 million free users with 400,000 new users joining per month. The site faces competition from Weebly Sprout, Yola, and others. Here’s an example of a website created using Wix.
     
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| Google Bookmarks Adds Lists So You Can Share Even More Links Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:28 AM PDT
Google is trying in so many ways to catch up on the sharing front. It wants you to share more links through Google properties such as Gmail, Google Reader, Google News, and Google Buzz. Today, it is adding a new sharing feature to Google Bookmarks. You can now organize bookmarks into lists and share those lists. For instance, I created this list of stories about Google’s new approach to China (or is it a retreat?). It is a public list. People can follow the list, in case I add more links, or copy the list to their own bookmarks. The list is shareable via email or as a link. The list’s creator can move items up and down the list or create new sections. It is a pretty basic way to group links together, but seems like it could come in handy. To be honest, I almost completely forgot about Google Bookmarks. In fact, the last time I used it before today was in 2005. But it is integrated into the Google Toolbar and actually gets a lot of usage.
     
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| AOL Launches Charitable Organization Patch.org To Fund Hyperlocal News Sites Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:21 AM PDT
Patch.org will use funding to support and sustain sites that are modeled on Patch’s model. For each of the sites launched through Patch.org, a professional local journalist will produce original objective news and information about the area and curate user-contributed events, announcements, photos and video. Any profits derived from Patch.org-funded sites will be returned to the communities they serve. The foundation will operate in conjunction with Patch's Give 5 program, which donates advertising space and employee volunteer time to charitable organizations in local communities. According to a recent 10-K filing, Patch was bought by AOL for $7.0 million in cash. AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong, had previously invested $4.5 million in Patch back in his Google days via his private investment firm Polar Capital. We know that Armstrong is not only bullish on niche content but is also looking for AOL to become a content powerhouse. The company has even developed its own CMS, Seed, which is a content machine that aims to redefine journalism. And AOL just bought internet video company StudioNow, which was integrated into Seed, to boost its video content on editorial sites. AOL also recently set up a $10 million fund to invest in local startups.      
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Voice mail 
At last fall’s TechCrunch50 event, 
Sequoia-backed voice messaging company 
Massively popular game 
The Wikipedia site doesn’t often go down, but yesterday 
From time to time, Apple posts about new positions on our 
We keep saying the PR industry needs serious therapy (a few of our articles are listed at the end of this post). Here’s another example of the near constant entertainment we get from PR professionals. We’re out of pithy titles. From now on we’ll just number them.
Dear AT&T, Yes, it’s me. Again. But today, rather than just 
Remember 
A year ago, there was a lot of 
I admit it – we’ve been skeptical of this whole 
This morning, numerous British newspapers and tabloids (followed by a wave of bloggers) 
If you follow e-readers, you might have seen the post I wrote not long ago detailing and judging 
Startup 
We recently learned that AOL is | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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