Saturday, March 12, 2011

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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(Founder Stories) Stack Exchange CEO: “Nobody Wants To Find Yahoo Answers In Their Search Results”

Posted: 12 Mar 2011 07:10 AM PST

There sure are a lot of Q&A sites on the Internet, but not all Q&A sites are the same. In the Founder Stories video above, Stack Exchange CEO Joel Spolsky talks about the origins of Q&A sites and his competition. Stack Exchange operates Stack Overflow and other peer-reviewed knowledge sites. Spolsky minces no words in his contempt for the Big Daddy of Q&A sites, Yahoo Answers.

“Yahoo Answers is Teenage chat,” says Spolsky. “Nobody wants to find Yahoo Answers in their search results. It is one-sentence gibberish.” Stack Overflow, in contrast, goes deep. Stack Overflow users gain reputation by giving the best answers, and answers are peer-reviewed. It doesn’t cover every topic under the sun, either, just programming.

Stack Overflow is often compared to Quora, another geeky Q&A site that attracts tons of smart people. With Stack Exchange, Spolsky is broadening to other topics and communities such as cooking and photography, but he will only go where his audience takes him.

Given its roots with programmers, that means that new Stack Exchange verticals may not be as mainstream as those of competing sites, but that’s okay with Spolsky. The Stack Exchange sites are still growing 40 percent to 50 percent per month.

(Watch Part I and Part II of this interview and other episodes of Founder Stories, which is now available on iTunes)

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StackExchange
Joel Spolsky
Chris Dixon
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http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/20/quora-vs-stackexchange/

DIY Music Management Platform Nimbit Raises $1.25 million

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 08:47 PM PST

Nimbit, a direct-to-fan marketing, sales and distribution platform for musicians, announced today that it has closed a $1.25 million series A investment round. The round was led by Common Angels and Hub Angels and, according to VP of Marketing Carl Jacobson, will be used to ramp up the company’s hiring efforts.

Nimbit adds to the cumulative $3.5 million of seed funding it raised during three prior seed rounds beginning in May of 2006. The seed rounds were also led by Common Angels and Hub Angels, with LaunchCapital and Rose Tech Ventures contributing.

Founded in 2002, the Massachusetts-based Nimbit is a one-stop shop for musicians looking to manage their own direct-to-fan marketing and commercial music efforts. And though Jacobson said that Nimbit may have been “a little early to the party”, there has been quite a bit of buzz in the last few years concerning shifts in music marketing and distribution — like the success of Radiohead’s releasing “In Rainbows” direct to fans via their website, for example — and it now seems that the market may be ready to adopt the direct-to-fan model.

Certainly, the Web has changed the complexion of the music industry, having made it easier for bands and musicians to distribute their music and gain an audience. Yet, while YouTube and MySpace provide channels for free digital music distribution, and Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts offer platforms for marketing efforts, these networks are broad in terms of scope and limited in terms of the tools and solutions they provide to small business and musical entrepreneurs.

Starting a band is as intrinsically entrepreneurial as it is creative, yet most bands tend to hire managers and marketers to handle the business-side of operations, because they can’t or won’t deal with that side of the game. Nimbit removes the time-consuming (and total buzz-killing) commercial aspects of musical enterprise by providing musicians with the tools to market their music directly to fans by email, SMS, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as browse marketing analytics and receive realtime sales reports. Musicians can add a custom store to their site to sell MP3s, CDs, and merchandise, or create a customized dashboard to manage catalogs and fan lists.

Quite a few musicians that I know dislike the business side of music and, as seems true of many creative-types, they end up either refusing to participate or do so grudgingly, which makes me think that Nimbit’s services could be very useful to the troubadours and crooners among us — whether they deal in death metal, dub step, or heady acoustic stylings. Plus, the Web is killing (or has killed) traditional music labels, so why not just automate and digitally outsource the process? I know I will.

Jacobson told me that Nimbit understands that, above all, musicians should be focusing on making music, so Nimbit will be putting its Series A funding towards building additional customer support and optimizing fan engagement tools. To do so, they will be aggressively expanding their team and are currently looking for a web apps developer, so you web apps experts out there, check ‘em out.

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Nimbit
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Zynga Enables Donations To Tsunami Relief Through In-Game Purchases

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 08:41 PM PST

Social gaming giant Zynga has joined the Internet’s efforts at donating to Japanese Tsunami relief tonight, by enabling in-game donations through virtual good buying in Zynga games like FrontierVille, FarmVille and CityVille as of 7pm PST. 100% of the virtual goods purchase prices will be donated to Tsunami relief.

Zynga will be specifically partnering with Save the Children to raise money for its Japan Earthquake Tsunami Children Emergency Fund. Altruistic players can contribute by buying designated virtual goods like a sweet potato crop in CityVille, a Kobe cow in FrontierVille, radishes in FarmVille and a royal flush for Zynga Poker.

Zynga representative Dani Dudeck informs me that the campaign was created in under 24 hours and is the largest charitable campaign in company history. It is also the first CityVille Zynga.org campaign.

Players who want to donate in the non-Ville game Words With Friends can use the Save the Children button inside the game. Players in all games within Facebook can also send funds using the Zbar, or the bar that sits on top of the game. Facebook will also be donating its traditional 30% cut on the Facebook Credits used to contribute to the relief.

Judging by a rare tweet by Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Zynga ambitiously wants to raise 2 million through the efforts. Those interested but not currently playing can also donate outside of the games here.

mark pincus@markpinc
mark pincus
@Zynga partners w Save the Children Japan Earthquake #Tsunami Emergency Fund. hope we raise $2m

about 11 hours ago via txtRetweetReply

Meet The Guy Who Bought The First iPad 2 At The SXSW Apple Pop-Up Store

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 08:34 PM PST

Because the iPad 2 launch had the fortitude to coincide with SXSW, Apple did well by the thousands of fanboys and fanladies that have descended upon the city and built a pop up shop at 6th and Congress.

We braved the line today and got the chance to speak to the lucky man who bought the very first iPad 2 sold in Austin, Texas. Austin native and conference attendee “Sweet” John Muehlbauer (an event planner at Revolving Events) got to the store at 5:30 am and endured a 10 1/2 wait to get his hands on the sweet sweet tablet.

While the line was wrapped around the block when we got there, Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan reports that there was still a plentiful supply of iPad 2s this evening, with an estimated wait time of 15 minutes.

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Apple
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Watch Muehlbauer walk us through his new purchase, above. Highlights: “Walking in the store with all the excitement of the Apple people was like Christmas and Saint Patricks Day and Halloween rolled into one” and “It seems exactly the same way but does seem a little faster than the first one.”

The store will be open for the next two weeks.

Flickr Confirms Taking Down Egyptian Blogger’s Photos, Cites Community Guidelines Violation

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 07:32 PM PST

Last weekend Egyptian protestors broke into Amn al Dowla, the Cairo headquarters for the Egyptian security agency, and removed a “treasure trove” of video disks, hard disks and CDs with government documents from the Mubarak era.

Egyptian blogger Hossam Arabawy came into possession of a CD from the raid and has been uploading a set of Secret Service officer pics to Flickr for the past week. Arabawy posted on his on blog that Flickr removed the photos yesterday, citing copyright infringement. Arabawy’s post led to NPR’s Andy Carvin asking Flickr for a response to the accusations of censorship.

Flickr responded both to Carvin and to me, citing user complaints as impetus for the takedowns:

“The images in question were removed because they were not that member’s work. As stated by the Community Guidelines, ‘Flickr accounts are intended for members to share original photos and video that they themselves have created.’

Flickr isn't a place for members to just host images but a place where members share original photos and video; and the Flickr community is built around that. For this reason, when we discover images that violate this provision, we may remove such images from the account and, in some instances, delete the account altogether.

While we regret that this action has upset the user, he must understand that this is not a decision we ever take lightly but only as necessary to ensure that Flickr remains a great place to creatively post and share original photos and videos with friends, family and the world.”

When asked whether the user complaints were specifically about the Community Guidelines, a Flickr representative responded, “After receiving complaints from other users about the set, we conducted a review and discovered that it was in violation of our Community Guidelines.  We then acted accordingly.”

Indeed, the photos in question were not taken by Arabawy. We could go on all night like this but the main point is Flickr has (a valid) excuse.

Update: Prominent member of the Flickr community Thomas Hawke writes that disingenuously chalking it up to Guidelines issues is a “giant cop out” on Flickr’s part as, “Flickr knows that Flickr is *full* of photos that are "not a member's work." Read his take here.

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Flickr
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A Group Messaging Roundup To Help You Stay In Touch At SXSW

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 06:18 PM PST

By now you’ve doubtless heard of the many group messaging startups looking to help multiple people keep in touch with each other — there’s been endless buzz about how these will likely be some of the breakout stars of SXSW. However, most of these companies do far more than just send texts to multiple people: some of them offer location sharing, conference calls, and other features.  Here is a roundup of some of the major services and their feature sets to help you choose which one is best for you, just in time for SXSW.

Groupme

Groupme is a group texting and conference calling service that originated at the 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, and has already received $11.5M in funding. Users can chat with or call multiple people at a time, by setting up a unique phone number that is shared with the members of the group. By texting or calling the number, groups of up to 25 people can share conversations. Users can also share photos with the group online, or through Android or iPhone Apps. Currently, Groupme users send about 1,000,000 text messages and make a few thousand conference calls each day.

It is possible to create short-term groups that expire after a certain amount of time if the group is created online, with the iPhone App, or with Google Voice. In the case that users change their minds and decide they'd rather have a long-term group, Groupme will send the creator a notice one hour before the group is set to expire, and the user can extend the time limit if necessary. However, Groupme says that they haven't experienced heavy usage of their short-term groups.

Groupme can operate on any cell phone capable of sending and receiving text messages, and the service is free, though the text messaging rates of a user's cell phone carrier do apply. Users can use #commands to manage the group and the members in it. (For example, #mute will stop messages from the group, and sending #help prompts a message that reminds you of other basic commands). There are no restrictions on the number of groups that a user can be a part of.

In preparation for SXSW, Groupme revamped their apps for iPhone and Android, providing users with the option of sending their messages through Push Notifications instead of SMS, saving them the costs of sending text messages (this also sends Groupme the cost of routing the messages). For these users with Android or iPhone apps, all of their group chats appear within the app itself rather than their SMS apps. Members of a group can also find each other's locations on a map — a new feature for Groupme that Beluga and Fast Society already have. Users can also check into Foursquare locations directly from the Groupme app. Their more recent update, 2.1 More thing, further improves their iPhone and Android apps, allowing users to advertise their groups on Facebook or Twitter, where friends can request to join. And if one creates an SXSW group, special locations will show up on the map view.

Fast Society

Fast Society was founded in August of 2009, and has so far raised $275K in seed funding.

Their catchphrase is "built to party," and the service is different from Groupme in that it is focused mainly on short-term teams that last from 3 hours up to 3 days. The idea is to allow groups of up to friends plan and connect with each other for a fun night out. Although Fast Society used to keep the teams small (up to 6 people), in their updated version, users can create 5 teams of up to 25 people in each team, and can also make permanent teams won't disperse after a given time limit.

Teams on Fast Society can be created online or with an iPhone app, but every US cell phone that is enabled with texting can use the service through SMS (although carrier rates will apply). Members can text, call, and share their locations on a map.

Fast Society has also made some major updates in time for SXSW. In the new version of Fast Society, the app is capable of in-app messaging (similar to Groupme's earlier update) that cuts the cost of using SMS. Also like Groupme's 2.1 release, users can make now a public invite on their Facebook or Twitter, and accept or decline requests to join the group. Other features the new version allows include photo sharing, and an improved location sharing function that lets members in a team show their friends where they are and where they plan to go. "Shout Out" is unique to Fast Society, and is essentially a way of sending voice messages to the team, while "Rally" is a quick way of inviting everyone in an existing team to join a new team for a new event.

Also, Fast Society provides members with a way of looking back in time on their past endeavors with "past team view." This allows users to capture the experiences they've shared with their friends and "relive" them if they so choose.

Although they now have permanent groups, Fast Society concentrates on encouraging short-term teams that are put together for a specific outing or "night out," and targets teens and young adults more than the general population.

Beluga

Beluga has focused mainly on their iPhone and Android apps from the start, rather than building up from SMS, like Groupme did. Beluga was recently acquired by Facebook, and now has the might of the social network behemoth behind them (assuming it doesn’t get shut down).

Beluga's apps uses Push Notifications as a main means of communication, with SMS as a fallback, and users can enable or disable the alerts they get from the apps.

Since being acquired by Facebook, Beluga has updated their app in time for SXSW, and has rolled out a sign-on process that goes through Facebook. Users can also silence specific pods (or all of them) for one hour or until 8 am. The app also has an updated, more Facebook-esque navigation system that has tabs for Pods, People, and News along the top of the app for Android, and along the bottom for iPhones.

Yobongo

Yobongo is an altogether different type of "group messaging" service. Whereas the others provide a way to stay in touch with friends you already have, Yobongo hopes to spark new friendships between people in the area.

When a user starts using the Yobongo app, they're automatically launched into a conversation with ten other people in the same geographical area. By keeping the groups small and filled with people already in close proximity, Yobongo hopes to start friendships between people who wouldn't have met each other otherwise. Users are encouraged to use their real names, enhancing the "real person" aspect of the app (as opposed to some stranger that hides behind a computer screen).

Over time, the app automatically starts putting people into the same group, giving them the opportunity to develop connections and friends.

Yobongo is a fairly new service, having just launched for the public last week, just in time for SXSW, and have reportedly had far more downloads than they'd anticipated. However, they are still working on improving their service; multitasking on the iPhone is still an issue — when a user exits the application, they are disconnected from the service and may be reassigned to a new group once they turn the app back on.

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Yobongo
GroupMe
Fast Society
Beluga
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LinkedIn Posts $243M In 2010 Revenue, $15.4 Million In Net Income

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 06:06 PM PST

Professional social network LinkedIn, which originally submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC in January, has just posted an amendment to its filing that includes 2010 revenue numbers (previously the filing only included 2010 revenue until September). As we wrote earlier, the maximum proposed total offering price is $175 million but this is just a placeholder amount.

From 2009 to 2010, net revenue increased $123.0 million, or 102%, to $243 million. Net income increased $19.4 million, or 487%, to $15.4 million. The company took a $3.9 million loss in 2009 terms of net income, with 2010 as the first profitable year for the network.

According to the filing, 42 percent of 2010 revenue came hiring solutions ($101.8 million), 33 percent came from marketing ($79.3 million); and 25 percent came from premium subscriptions ($61.9 million).

It’s a positive sign that revenue sources continue to increase and the company is now making a profit. It should be interesting to see how much the offering will be when LinkedIn goes public later this year.

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LinkedIn
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CrunchBoard Jobs: TechCrunch Is Hiring!

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 05:34 PM PST

Would you like to come work with us at TechCrunch? We have positions open and are currently looking for qualified applicants. Maybe you could be our next Executive Assistant, our new CrunchBase Manager, or our new Conference Program Chair who would help us out with our events. The positions we have available right now are:

Product and Engineering:

Web Developer – Ruby on Rails
– San Francisco, CA
CrunchBase Manager
– San Francisco, CA

Sales & Operations:

Ad Operations Manager
– San Francisco, CA
Sales Marketing Manager
– San Francisco, CA

Conferences & Events:

Conference Program Chair
– San Francisco, CA

Executive Support:

Executive Assistant
– San Francisco, CA

You can also use CrunchBoard to search for other companies that may be hiring. Some other jobs available right now include:

Manager, International Digital Sales and Marketing
- Sony Music Entertainment – New York City, NY

Java Software Engineer
- LinkedIn – Mountain View, CA

Product Manager
- Facebook – Palo Alto, CA

New Facebook Valuation Record As Shares Surge 5% To $31.50

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 03:59 PM PST

A little over $8 million changed hands in this week’s SecondMarket Facebook shares auction. And the price surged $1.50 per share, or about 5%, over last week’s record price of $30/share. 257,422 shares were bought and sold.

That values Facebook, with roughly 2.5 billion shares outstanding, at $78.75 billion. Or, 17 Twitters and change.

The confidential (lol) email and part of the attached report is below, and we’ll soon be updating our Facebook valuation chart.

To Facebook market participants:

This week's SecondMarket auction successfully cleared 257,422 shares at a per share price of $31.50. Read more details in the attached auction results report.

Next week's auction will require a minimum sale and minimum purchase of 10,000 shares. If you are bidding for fewer than 100,000 shares, you are required to open a brokerage account with SecondMarket. Please email accounts@SecondMarket.com to receive a Brokerage Account Opening Form and return the completed form by Monday, March 7, 2011 at 5:00 PM EST.

Please email your completed Seller or Buyer Information Forms to fb@SecondMarket.com by Wednesday, March 16 at noon EST. To verify receipt of your order, you must receive a confirmation email from fb@SecondMarket.com. If you do not receive a confirmation email, your order has not been received by SecondMarket and may be excluded from the auction. Responses are typically sent within one hour.

Next Week's Auction Timeline:

- Friday, March 11 at 7:00 PM EST – SecondMarket will begin accepting Seller Information Forms, Buyer Information Forms and Brokerage Account Opening Forms

- Monday, March 14 at 5:00 PM EST – Brokerage Account Opening Form due, if bidding for fewer than 100,000 shares

- Wednesday, March 16 at 12:00 PM EST – Seller and Buyer Information Forms due

- Wednesday, March 16 at 5:00 PM EST – Participants informed of auction results

- Wednesday, March 16 at 8:00 PM EST – Transaction documentation distributed to buyers and sellers

- Thursday, March 17 at 5:00 PM EST – Wire of 100% of gross purchase price to escrow account due, if allocated fewer than 100,000 shares

- Friday, March 18 at 4:00 PM EST – Completed transaction documentation due from buyers and sellers

- Friday, March 18 at 7:00 PM EST – Notice sent to Facebook, Inc.

By reading this email, the recipient acknowledges and agrees that all of the information contained herein is confidential and that the recipient will keep this information confidential. The recipient further agrees that it will not copy, reproduce, or distribute this email in whole or in part.

Please contact us at fb@SecondMarket.com or 212.668.3919 if you have any questions.

Please note that the information in this email does not constitute an offer to sell to, nor a solicitation of an offer to buy from, nor shall any securities be offered or sold to, any person in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Regards,

Terrence

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Facebook
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Vacation Home Rental Service HomeAway Files For $230 Million IPO

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 03:42 PM PST

Vacation home rental service HomeAway has just submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC, indicating that it will file for a public offering in the next few months. The maximum proposed total offering price is $230 million but this could be just a placeholder amount.

HomeAway has raised close to a half a billion dollars in venture funding, and in its most recent investment round was valued at $1.4 billion. HomeAway, which has been eying an IPO, currently offers home rentals through 31 websites in 11 languages and provided listings for vacation rentals located in over 145 countries. In 2010, its sites averaged over 9.5 million unique monthly visitors.

According to the filing, HomeAway saw $167.9 million in 2010 revenue, which is up 39.6% from 2009. In 2010, 37.9% of the company’s revenue came from outside the United States, including 36.6% from Europe and 1.3% from Latin America. In 2010, rental listings contributed 91.1% of HomeAway’s revenue. Net Income for 2010 came in at $16.9 million, up from $7.6 million in 2009. And the company says there is plenty of room for growth—the vacation rental market is valued at $85 billion in 2010 in the United States and Europe.

With the new capital, HomeAway says that it will expand further, via organic growth and acquisitions in select market. Already, the company has had an aggressive acquisition strategy , most recently buying vacation rental management software company Instant Software.

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HomeAway
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Marissa Mayer: 40% Of Google Maps Usage Is Mobile (And There Are 150 Million Mobile Users)

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 02:09 PM PST

Today at a SXSW talk, Google VP Marissa Mayer took the stage to talk about location — mobile location, in particular. The theme isn’t a surprise since Mayer recently shifted her role from leading Google’s search team to heading their local efforts. Her talk was mostly an overview/demo of Google’s recent product launches, but it did include some new stats.

  • Mayer revealed that 40% of Google Maps usage is mobile. And Christmas and New Years day had mobile usage of Maps surpass the desktop — which is a first for Google products. Google Maps now has 150 million mobile users. To put that in context, Maps for mobile had 100 million users in August of last year.
  • Next, the local team showed off the current version of Google Maps, which uses vectors to render maps. Because these vectors take up 1/100 of the size of the old tile system, they can be cached, and can include 3D representations of buildings.
  • Next up: Google Maps Navigation, the GPS feature included on Android phones. Users drive 12 billion miles a year with Google Maps Navigation. Navigation recently launched a feature that automatically routes people around traffic — which is saving users a total of 2 years per day in time that would have been spent in traffic.
  • In, November Google launched Google Hotpot. There are now 3 million ratings in Google Hotpot which have been submitted by users
  • Mayer then shifted to talk about what we’ll see in the future. She specifically mentioned Layar — ”a digital layer on top of reality”. But she says we can go further than that. “Contextual discovery is taking your location and a little context” — if you had a photo of a bird, how would you convey that bird to a search engine, other than typing something like “bird with a white head and black body”? In the future, you’ll be able to use something like Google Goggles to just upload that snapshot as your query.
  • Mayer also discussed how Maps could get smarter, using context to help you become more efficient. For example, if you had a flight to catch, Maps could look at your schedule to see when your flight was, then analyze traffic information and weather to help you figure out exactly when you should leave.

    • Q&A

  • Asked about whether it’s fair for Yelp and TripAdvisor to be included as part of Google’s local results, Mayer pointed out that they send a lot of traffic to these sites. “Would you let them use your review in their databases?” Mayer: Yes.
  • Favorite non-Google products? Depends if you’re talking technology… If it’s anything then it’s my watch, which I got as an intern in Switzerland. It’s an Omega.. they don’t make it any more. As a UI/Design person I was thinking about exactly how I wanted the numbers laid out, etc.
  • Are local offers associated with Latitude check-ins a test? Yes, it’s just a test. Released check-ins in Latitude about a month, wanted to incent users to check-in.
  • With Google moving onto phone should we expect Google to move more into physical world? A: I’d argue that Android and a lot of other things we talked about today are trying to tie Google into the physical world.
  • What is Google doing indoors? There are challenges that have to do with strength of signal, accuracy of GPS. We do see value in helping people get around inside a corporate campus etc. Some things need to change in tech to do that well.
  • Are there plans for a better Maps for iPhone? We’d like there to be… We like being the default provider but we’d like to get some of these updates out to a broader audience. That’s still a debate/question we’re considering
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Marissa Mayer
Google
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(Founder Stories) Stack Exchange’s Joel Spolsky On How SEO Makes The Internet Worse

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 01:59 PM PST

Content farms and SEO are the bane of the Internet. Google is fighting it, but somehow spam results keep slipping through. In this second installment of our Founder Stories interview with Stack Exchange CEO Joel Spolsky, he talks about how SEO spam sites make the Internet worse.

For instance, Stack Overflow is the premier site on the Internet for programmers to ask and answer questions about code. But Spolsky charges that SEO spam sites just rip the questions and answers straight off the site, wrap them with some black-hat SEO magic and Google ads, and rank higher than the original page on Stack Overflow. “They took our content, put Google ads on it, and made it worse because not in situ,” says Spolsky. “They used SEO techniques to rank higher.”

This is exactly how quality content gets displaced. There are even pages about “How to ask a question on the Internet.”

Spolsky fights this by going deep with each knowledge community Stack Exchange launches. In the video segment below, he explains why “you have to go deep.” He also talks about Stack Overflow’s new Careers 2.0 product, and how simply answering questions on Stack Overflow helped one “guy wasting time on World of Warcraft” become the No. 1 user on Stack Overflow, He parlayed that reputation into a job at the company.

(Watch Part I of this interview and other episodes of Founder Stories, which is now available on iTunes)

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StackExchange
Joel Spolsky
Chris Dixon
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JDate Slaps Zoosk, OkCupid, And 2RedBeans With Patent Lawsuit Over Secret Admiring

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 01:54 PM PST

It appears that Jewish dating site JDate has filed a patent lawsuit against dating sites 2RedBeans, Zoosk, and OKCupid. According to the complaint, JDate alleges that all three companies are infringing the same patent, which states that Sparks Network (JDate’s parent company) has invented a method or apparatus for automating the process of confidentially determining whether people feel mutual attraction or have mutual interests. That’s right, JDate has a patent on detecting secret crushes.

The suit calls out OkCupid’s QuickMatch (which shows when two individuals mutually admire each other); Zoosk’s Scientific Matching Service, and 2RedBean’s Secret Admire function as infringing JDate-owned patent # 5,950,200, titled “Method and Apparatus for Detection Of Reciprocal Interests or Feelings And Subsequent Notification.”

This is an aggressive action considering that secret admiration is part of the foundation for any online dating site. And it seems a little odd that JDate only sent this notice now, after both Zoosk and OKCupid have been using this technology for some time. A claim against 2RedBeans makes more sense as the site only launched this year.

Spark Networks wants the three companies to pay damages to JDate for the infringement. OKCupid, which was recently acquired by IAC’s Match.com for $50 million, confirmed that they received the complaint but declined to comment further.

Zoosk refused to comment at all, and 2RedBeans, a dating site for Chinese-Americans, also confirmed the lawsuit issued this statement: JDate vs 2RedBeans is David vs. Goliath. Our Secret Admirer feature is very different than what JDate has claimed in its method or apparatus for automating the process of confidentially determining whether people feel mutual attraction or have mutual interests.

Photo Credit: Flickr/Cali4Beach

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JDate
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Twitter Drops The Ecosystem Hammer: Don’t Try To Compete With Us On Clients, Focus On Data And Verticals

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 12:54 PM PST

For much of the past year, the Twitter ecosystem has been in a state of flux. Ever since Twitter bought Tweetie and turned it into their own native iPhone app, third-party developers have been wondering where this would leave them. Further moves by Twitter into Android, iPad, Mac, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and other spaces have only compounded some of this fear. So Twitter has taken some time today in their developer forum to talk a bit about the state of the ecosystem and give some guidance. It’s blunt, but necessarily so.

Specifically, Platform lead Ryan Sarver has a fairly lengthy outline of Twitter’s line of thinking with regard to third-party clients and services. And while there’s a little bit of dancing around the topic at first, it quickly gets very clear: third-parties shouldn’t be creating straight-up Twitter clients any further.

Sarver notes that Twitter views a “consistent user experience” as very important to them. And it’s something they’re going to hold third-party developers to a very high standard to maintain. But they don’t want them to mimic Twitter’s own experience with their native apps in order to do this. They’ve updated the API Terms of Service to reflect all of this.

“Developers have told us that they'd like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter.  More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.  The answer is no,” Sarver writes very matter-of-factly.

“If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users' privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service.  We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained,” he continues.

Sarver notes that according to Twitter’s own data, some 90 percent of active Twitter users now use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis to access the service.

“We need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way.  This is already happening organically – the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking,” he writes.

The biggest third-party client in the space is TweetDeck, which was in the process of being acquired by UberMedia when Twitter suspended their apps a few weeks ago for TOS violations. I’ve reached out to Twitter to see where TweetDeck and UberMedia stand now with the new rules but my hunch is that TweetDeck is it’s currently constituted will be okay — it has too many users to be taken away. But if I were a third-party developer, I probably wouldn’t invest time in creating a new TweetDeck-like app.

So where should third-party developers look towards in terms of developing for the ecosystem? Sarver highlights the following areas:

  • Publisher tools.  Companies such as SocialFlow help publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time.
  • Curation.  Mass Relevance and Sulia provide services for large media brands to select, display, and stream the most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or event.
  • Realtime data signals.  Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of enhancing their own core products.  Klout is an example of a company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to generate reputation scores for individuals.  Similarly, Gnip syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third parties who want to use our real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge funds to ranking scores).
  • Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights.  Companies such as HootSuite, CoTweet, Radian6, Seesmic, and Crimson Hexagon help brands, enterprises, and media companies tap into the zeitgeist about their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers using Twitter as a medium for interaction.
  • Value-added content and vertical experiences.  Emerging services like Formspring, Foursquare, Instagram, and Quora have built into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to their followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user acquisition, and traffic.

Sarver highlights Twitter’s “diverse ecosystem” of more than 750,000 registered apps. But that ecosystem definitely just got altered quite a bit today. Remember, this is business, not personal.

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Chris Sacca Tweets Out A Fake #SXSW Beta Invite, Follower Swarm Ensues

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 11:40 AM PST

Chris Sacca@sacca
Chris Sacca
Reply to me ASAP if you want an invite to the Hoodlez social messaging app beta in time for #SXSW!

about 23 hours ago via Twitter for iPhoneRetweetReply

Last night many of us returned from grabbing drinks with friends here in Austin, opened our computers, and, because of a 9.0 earthquake in Northern Japan, became witness to some of the most horrific imagery we have watched live in our lifetime. To be honest with you it’s sort of difficult to focus on startup launches, the iPad 2 and the swaggy ephemera of the #SXSW tech bubble when images of burning houses and flooded roadways are fresh in our mind.

But still, when I saw people replying to Twitter investor Chris Sacca’s early morning tweet about Hoodlez, a “social messaging app” I quickly dm’d him (yes I fell for it), irrationally seeking any inside info about a service that if it had been real would probably have been the 30th such app that’s come across my radar in the past few weeks.

Yes, Hoodlez does not exist, but that didn’t matter to the 50 or so people seeking invites (I stopped counting after about an hour).

Sacca explained his motivations, “I thought wouldn’t it be funny if I made up a name and and didn’t think it through. But now that I think about it is about the froth and the hype. I would have had gotten fewer clicks if had linked to a site instead of offering invites to the beta.”

As a complimentary experiment in Twitter influence (Sacca has almost 1.3 million followers), Sacca then tweeted out instructions on how to donate to the Red Cross Effort to help Tsunami victims.

Chris Sacca@sacca
Chris Sacca
The best way to help Japan: text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross and reply to me to let me know you did it! #SXSW

about 22 hours ago via webRetweetReply

And while it did not have nearly the same reaction as the previous one (invites to betas are free after all), the tweet also generated healthy response, with about 30 people donating and 41 retweets at last count. While the whole thing started out as a prank, $250 dollars to charity ain’t bad for something that took 140 characters of effort. Maybe we should all stop checking in for Starbucks coupons and take a second to think about what it really means to social message?

Thanks: Geoff Clapp for coining “Follower Storm.”

Update: Inspired by Sacca’s tweet Dru Wynings has actually built a Hoodlez.com, where you can, yes, donate to the Red Cross Tsunami efforts.


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Path Fully Embraces Facebook And Busts Out Lenses For Pictures And Video — Including Premium Ones

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 11:04 AM PST

Don’t sleep on the mini mobile photo sharing battle that is going to take place at SXSW this year — the companies involved aren’t. Following updates to PicPlz and Instagram, Path has just rolled out a significant update to their iPhone app. It brings four key things: Facebook sharing, lenses, an activity stream, and a new friend suggestion tool.

Of these, the connection with Facebook is clearly the biggest. Up until now, Path has been a closed network in the sense that moments could only be shared with your Path friends. Unlike most social networks, which start out with sharing options to Twitter and Facebook (and even heavily encourage sharing to them to leverage their graphs), Path had been going it alone. But today that changes. Following the option to find friends via Facebook Connect which was added this past December, Path now allows you to publish moments to your Facebook Wall, the next logical step.

But as with most things Path, there’s a twist. There are two ways to share your photos and videos to Facebook: first, you can set it up and let Path determine which of your Facebook friends should see the moments. In other words, they figure out which of your Facebook friends you’re connected to on Path and set your privacy settings for that content on Facebook accordingly. Second, you can share with all of your Facebook friends — the more traditional approach.

This is a much-requested and welcomed new addition for Path for the moments that are less personal, and you’d like to share more broadly. And again, it makes sense. This extends the reach of Path by leveraging the largest social network on the planet, which Path co-founder Dave Morin happened to work at for several years. “I’ve been calling it ‘harmony’ with Facebook,” Morin says of the new options.

The other big update in Path 1.5 are the lenses. This brings Path up to speed with rivals like Instagram and PicPlz. But again, there’s a twist here. Actually two of them. First, these lenses work on both pictures and videos. There are a few other apps out there that do this for video, but none have hugely taken off — this should be a really fun feature for Path. Second, Path is introducing both free and premium lenses. Yes, the money-making adventures begin now.

To begin with, Path will offer four lenses for free: Pro, Ansel, Instant, and Diana. And three for $0.99: Old Time, The Grid, and 8-Bit. Morin says it’s more of an experiment at this point and less of an actual business model. “But, we see a long term revenue opportunity in premium expression through virtual goods like this,” he says. “Just like people buy different kinds of clothes to express themselves,” he continues.

He also notes that they’ll be continually rolling out new lenses, which they are developing in-house.

Previously with Path, if you wanted to see who commented or left emoticons on your moments, you had to scroll through your feed. But a new activity stream aggregates that information to make it easier to see. “You have a feed of who’s stopping by and paying attention to you,” Morin notes.

Finally, Path is launching a new social graph booster called “FriendRank”. Essentially, it’s a friend recommendation service that looks at your Facebook connections and serves up new friends to share your moments with. The feature guesses who your top five friends are.

Path 1.5 should be going live in the App Store this afternoon. Find it here.

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The Four Big Steps To Cutting The Cord

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 11:02 AM PST

Do it! Cut the cord and free yourself from the tyranny of the cable mafia. The movement is slowly gaining traction but the whole task is daunting. What do you do next? Where does your TV content come from? What are the options? So many questions you need answered before you take the scissors to the coax line.

What follows are the basic steps along with the best alternative services. Follow these steps and the transition from cable to Internet streaming will be painless as possible. Still, before you proceed, you must know that there is a break-in period. Cutting cable might be hard for some. Some will go crawling back to their cable provider. But press forward and take it a day at a time. You’re going to be a better person without it.

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Keen On… Jane McGonigal: Is Gaming the Opium of the People? (TCTV)

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 10:42 AM PST

Is gaming like religion – a way of taking our minds off reality and indulging in unrealizable fantasies?

Not according to Jane McGonigal, one of electronic gaming's most articulate evangelists. According to McGonigal, gaming is real rather than a fantasy and it not only makes us better people but also improves the world. Indeed, McGonigal even suggests that we might need a 21st century political party which builds its message around the promise of gaming.

Could the Gaming Party be any worse than the Republicans or Democrats?

To see why reality is broken, watch yesterday's interview with McGonigal.

McGonigal on gaming as the opium of the people

McGonigal on the politics of gaming

Hopskoch, A Photo Challenge App That Changes Every Day

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 10:20 AM PST

In mobile, the big debate is apps versus mobile websites and so far it looks like apps are winning. The mobile web is still too hard to navigate for many people. Apps are self-contained and are generally better experiences. But slowly these two worlds are coming together. What if an app changed from one day to the next every time you visited it just like a website.

A good example of something moving in this direction is a simple photo game that launched on the iPhone (iTunes) today called Hopskoch. The same game is on Android. You load the app and are presented with a photo mission: take a picture of someone who looks like Conan O’Brien, or take a picture of your favorite superhero. You snap the photo, upload it and get points. Every day is a different mission, and as you gain points you unlock new features in the game. Over time you will also be able to unlock different games, including trivia and location challenges. Players will also be able to create their own challenges.

The games can be played across platforms so people with iPhones will be able to play against people with Android phones. The New York City based startup behind the app, Sifr, has created its own mobile app development platform that makes it easy to do that. “Using HTML5 as a language to develop our apps, we’ve managed to create native clients on different mobile platforms with relative ease and in short stead.” says CEO Sunil Madhu.

Sifr develops its apps using HTML5/CSS3/JS frameworks and then uses PhoneGap to produce native apps. It makes development across platforms a lot faster, and makes it easier to pour new content into each app.

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Arianna Huffington: SEO Is Just A Tool, Not A Way To Produce Great Journalism [TCTV]

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 10:04 AM PST

Yesterday afternoon, our new editorial overlord, Arianna Huffington, stopped by the TechCrunch office for a meeting.

Before she had a chance to leave, I dragged her into the TCTV studio to grill her about the future of content at Aol and whether SEO is fundamentally incompatible with producing great journalism.

Ambush interviews: sorry, Arianna — it’s the TechCrunch way.


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Huffington Post
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TechCrunch Giveaway: An iPad 2 #TechCrunch

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 09:55 AM PST

Today’s the big day. We know you want one. It seems like everyone wants one. MG Siegler wrote a review on it and Greg Kumparak went to the unveiling of it. So without further ado, for today’s giveaway we are giving away an iPad 2.

If you want a chance at winning it, just follow the steps below to enter.

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Leave us a comment below

The contest starts now and ends tomorrow, March 12th at 7:30pm PST.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this weekend with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible, as long as you can receive delivered packages.

Good luck :)

Search Your Cloud From Your Browser: Greplin Adds a Chrome Extension

Posted: 11 Mar 2011 09:29 AM PST

It’s been an active 2011 for Greplin. In February, we covered the social search service’s public launch and, mere days later, wrote about its closing a $4 million venture round backed by Sequoia.

Since then, Greplin has been rapidly expanding the social applications it can search and index, adding Yammer, Highrise, and Google Contacts last month to its already healthy set of networks and services. On top of these, you can authorize it to search Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Evernote, Basecamp, and Gmail. With a single search query, sha-bang!, Greplin can search nearly your entire personal cloud for that address, contact, or invitation you just can’t seem to find.

What’s more, today Greplin is announcing the addition of a Chrome extension to its search presence, so that you can search your social data directly from your browser without having to go to Greplin’s website to login. Check out the extension here and Greplin’s widget in the image to the right.

Greplin employs the new Chrome Omnibox API so you can get auto-completed results, regardless of what site you are on. For those unfamiliar with Omnibox, it’s another word for Chrome’s search bar, which allows you to type URLs and regular old keyword searches into one unified place, rather than having to go to Google.com. Omnibox’s API, then, lets extension developers to make the tool even more powerful by adding their own keyword command, so that user can type a query prefixed by the keyword, enabling the extension to suggest potential completions and react to the user’s input.

The company also announced the addition of Aaron Sarazan (formerly at Spark Plug Games), who will be working on creating a native mobile app. Co-founder Robby Walker told me that Greplin is currently looking to beef up its staff, so all expert engineers looking to get involved with a hot young startup attempting to provide us with the “other side of search” should heed the call.

Walker said that Greplin will continue to add to its list of searchable social apps, with Basecamp and Salesforce among the services currently being offered in private beta. (And Box.net and Google Voice coming next.) And a Firefox add-on. TC readers can preview all of the above by emailing support@greplin.com.

Greplin, phone call for you. It’s Google on Line 1.

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