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- So You Just Bought Sex.com For $13 Million – Now What?
- Assistly Scores $3 Million More For Fast Growing SaaS Customer Service Product
- GoodGuide Rolls Out New Social Features
- Forrester Forecasts One Third Of U.S. Online Consumers Will Own A Tablet By 2015
- The AdMob Exodus Continues; Sales Exec Leaves Google For Mobile Ad Firm Mojiva
- Prediction No. 4 (Mobile Wallets) Already Coming True
- Avaya Buys Conference Phone Maker Konftel For $15 Million
- USA Today Buys Consumer Electronics Review Network Reviewed.com
- Hacker Defaces Website Of Kenya Police In Tribute Of Mark Zuckerberg
- Dell Acquires SecureWorks To Bolster Information Security Offerings
- Ziff Davis Buys Tech Deals Site LogicBuy; Launches Ad Targeting Platform BuyerBase
- Nintendo: 37 Million Wii Consoles Sold In The U.S. To Date
- Netflix’ Next Destination: On Your Remote Control
- SCVNGR Raises $15 Million At $100MM Valuation
- FitOrbit Gains $3.2 Million To Help You Lose Pounds
- ZapTunes Pivots From One Scam (Free Music Downloads) To The Next
- RSS War! (As Fought On Twitter, Naturally)
- Facebook Considering A Leaseback Deal Worth As Much As $420 Million For New HQ
- Facebook Users Uploaded A Record 750 Million Photos Over New Year’s
- Twitter And Facebook Really Are Killing RSS (At Least For TechCrunch Visitors)
- Chatroulette Gets A New, Weird Revamp
- Quora Fact-Checks Quora On User Milestone
- TechCrunch 2010 In Review (Care Of WordPress)
- WITN: Book Publishing Has A Better Future Than Music and Movies (Thinks One Of Us)
- Paul Buchheit Looks Back At His First Years As An Angel Investor
| So You Just Bought Sex.com For $13 Million – Now What? Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:54 AM PST Sex.com. It’s a domain name with quite a history – heck, it was rocky enough for a book to be written solely about it. I’ll spare you that story and let you discover it on your own, though. TechCrunch had an exclusive interview with the guy who currently owns the valuable domain name – he acquired it for $13 million a couple of months ago. For a variety of reasons, he wishes to keep his identity under wraps, at least for the time being, but he did share some interesting insights into how sex.com fares now that it’s parked. And he’s keen to figure out what to do with it now, too. Now, it would be wrong to state the purchase of the domain name was made without thinking things through, and that there are no plans to commercialize it. In fact, the buyer has long focused on the acquisition and development of other high-value generic domain names, so he has years of experience under his belt for this type of thing. Yet the owner – let’s call him Jeff – has gotten a number of business partnership offers, has some ideas of his own, but soon has to make a solid decision on which road to take to make good on his sizeable investment. For your background: the former owner of Sex.com, Escom LLC, failed to turn it into a viable business and declared bankruptcy in 2010. According to Jeff, Sex.com brings in quite some money even now that it’s still parked. In fact, he claims the placeholder website receives more than 125,000 visitors on a daily basis, from all over the world (but mostly from the United States, India and Germany). The ad-littered parking page was set up as a placeholder while he figured out how best to develop the domain name, but the revenues he’s received from Sex.com already far exceed his expectations – he wouldn’t provide more details, but says the page is on track to return well into seven figures a year. That means that even if Jeff ends up never doing anything with it other than forwarding the domain name to a parked page, he could potentially still make $13 million from it by 2024, earning back his investment. Obviously, that’s not his goal. There are lots of opportunities to develop a domain name like Sex.com in my mind, adult businesses being an obvious choice. However, Jeff says he’s gotten a handful of interesting offers from mainstream media companies, technology companies and even one from the pharmaceutical industry so far. He hasn’t made up his mind on how to proceed with the commercialization of the domain name yet, but Jeff adds that he and his team have a deadline they’re working towards. The reason he doesn’t simply jump into the lucrative online porn industry? Because such an endeavor would close the door on other, more mainstream options, narrow down his exit possibilities – such as selling to a public company – and limit the ability to take the business public in the future, Jeff says. Basically, he’d prefer to build something more mainstream, but still profitable. The idea is to pick the right business model and then grow Sex.com over the course of the next decade, Jeff says, so I’m interested in seeing what he comes up with. If you’d just dropped $13 million for Sex.com, what would you do with it? I asked the same question on Quora, so if you’re a user you can also head over there to discuss possibilities.        
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| Assistly Scores $3 Million More For Fast Growing SaaS Customer Service Product Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:53 AM PST
Investors in this round include Bullpen Capital, Index Ventures and Kenny Van Zant, as well as existing investors True Ventures and Social Leverage. Companies use Assistly to help them deal with customers who may be leaving comments on social networks as well as more traditional customer service paths like email, calls, etc. Part of the reason they’re using it is the way Assistly charges. They have regular per seat charging like everyone else. But they’ve also realized that customer service doesn’t usually just involve dedicated customer service staff. Other people in the organization, from the CEO on down, sometimes want or need to be involved, too. Assistly offers companies an option of paying for total usage instead of seats, so people can jump in occasionally and only be billed for time spent on the platform. The company has hundreds of live paying customers, they say. These customers include Twitter, Vimeo, Discuss, StockTwits, Fitbit, Rdio, Grooveshark, DirecTV and CompuPay.        
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| GoodGuide Rolls Out New Social Features Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:40 AM PST
Groups of friends and colleagues can now follow each other via GoodGuide, share product reviews, and either warn to avoid, or encourage one another to try certain brands or items, there. The “social networking overlay” (as the company’s executives call it) adds the following features to the app and site: Realtime feed of what products people are scanning or looking up on their iPhones, now. Community voting, with an aggregate view of which products the GoodGuide community recommends or avoids. Social context that lets users see which products their Facebook friends recommend or avoid. Influence scores for GoodGuide users, taking into account their number of contributions and how many connections they have with others. A leaderboard of the GoodGuide members with the highest influence scores. Trending topics, covering ingredients, issues, and brands that are of interest to consumers based on site traffic and Good Guide’s science team. The founder and chief sustainability officer of GoodGuide Dara O’Rourke explained most of the app’s users worry about health, environmental and social impacts, but everyone prioritizes differently. Some worry more about fair labor and trade practices, like whether a company compensates their workers fairly all along their supply chain, while others worry more about how biodegradable a product or its packaging might be. In 2010, O’Rourke said, GoodGuide’s users increasingly turned to the app to avoid specific known toxic or disagreeable ingredients. The company’s employees have formed their own group with the new social features, and begun sharing and discussing corporate social responsibility issues, and products’ impact and effectiveness (image above). An earlier version of the app already allowed users to scan bar codes on items they own, and store lists of items corresponding to a room in the house (image below). They rack up automatic “scores” reflecting how their bathroom, or laundry room supplies rank given their stated values. With Good Guide’s new social features, users can compare bathroom to bathroom, pantry to pantry, etc. O’Rourke believes social features can give a huge word-of-mouth boost to brands that are most appreciated by customers and are most honest (or transparent) about what they make and how. He also believes it can inspire people to be competitive, in a good-natured way, about living a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. Social recommendations make brands more memorable than editorial mentions or ads, generally, recent research suggests. This fall, Nielsen Online published research that found 68 per cent of people were more likely to remember an advertisement, brand or company name if they saw one of their friends recommending it or associating themselves with it online. GoodGuide reports its unique visitor count and engagement numbers increased by about 20% each from November to December 2010, thanks to the addition of the social features. Comparing December 2009 to December 2010, Good Guide saw 12% growth in unique visitors.        
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| Forrester Forecasts One Third Of U.S. Online Consumers Will Own A Tablet By 2015 Posted: 04 Jan 2011 07:52 AM PST Last year, Apple created a new category of computing with the iPad. Now, every other PC manufacturer is rushing to revamp or bring out their own tablet computers. New tablets are expected to dominate at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Forrester Research put out a new forecast this morning for the growth of tablet computers. It expects the number of tablets sold in the U.S. to go from 10.3 million last year to 24.1 million in 2011, and growing to 44 million in annual units sold by 2015. At that point, by 2015 it projects that 82 million people in the U.S. will own some sort of tablet, or a full one third of the online population. Apple will still command a “lion’s share” of the market, at least through 2012. I’m sure this forecast will change in six months time (just look at Forrester’s overly-conservative tablet forecast from six months ago), but I do agree that touch computing is with us to stay.        
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| The AdMob Exodus Continues; Sales Exec Leaves Google For Mobile Ad Firm Mojiva Posted: 04 Jan 2011 07:35 AM PST
Nethercutt, the former VP of Sales for AdMob and the first ad exec hired by the startup back in its early days, joined Google as a Team Manager for Mobile Display Advertising following the acquisition. Prior to working for AdMob, Nethercutt helped grow a team of sales, account management, and sales operations staff at YouTube (Prior to its acquisition by YouTube). He also worked in sales and management roles at Yahoo and DoubleClick. Nethercutt will draw on is mobile ad experience in his new position. In his role at Mojiva, Nethercutt will be responsible for driving revenue to expand the company’s footprint in mobile advertising and publishing. Mojiva develops a self service ad platform that allows advertisers and publishers to manage mobile ad campaigns.        
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| Prediction No. 4 (Mobile Wallets) Already Coming True Posted: 04 Jan 2011 07:16 AM PST Okay, that was fast. This weekend I put up my annual prediction post, Seven Technologies That Will Rock 2011. Already, one of them is already looking pretty solid: Prediction No. 4 on the rise of mobile wallets. Let’s revisit that prediction:
Well, it looks like Google (and PayPal) are getting serious about NFC technologies. Today, Businessweek reports:
The article also mentions PayPal’s interest in tapping into NFC-enabled payments on mobile phones. PayPal “may start a commercial NFC service in the second half of 2011.” Google, PayPal, Apple and all the big technology companies want mobile wallets to become a reality. But a lot of things need to happen before it catches on. The chips first need to be embedded in lots of mobile phones (Google, Apple, and Nokia are working on that). But then on the flip side, merchants need to install NFC chip readers at their cash registers, which is an expensive proposition (a few hundred dollars worth of equipment per cash register). Adoption on the merchant front will be slower than the tech companies hope. And then there is the issue of consumer adoption. Just because your Android phone pr new iPhone comes with an NFC chip doesn’t mean you are going to use it, much less link it to your PayPal, iTunes, or Google CheckOut account. How many features are on your phone right now that you never use? Exactly. In order for mobile wallets to become a mainstream technology, Google and Apple and Verizon and AT&T will need to start marketing the feature aggressively, and sign up some big retailers to get people to try it out with some promotions. Mobile wallets tied to local offers could do the trick. Groupon and other daily deal services could start to offer coupons redeemable through an NFC swipe, finally tying the online deal with the offline purchase in an electronic transaction that can be measured and monitored.        
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| Avaya Buys Conference Phone Maker Konftel For $15 Million Posted: 04 Jan 2011 07:15 AM PST  Avaya, a provider of business collaboration software and services, this morning announced it has acquired Konftel, which specializes in audio collaboration technology and is a leading conference telephone manufacturer. Avaya coughed up $15 million in cash for the company, and hopes the acquisition will enable it to broaden its portfolio of desktop to conference room audio collaboration systems.
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| USA Today Buys Consumer Electronics Review Network Reviewed.com Posted: 04 Jan 2011 06:27 AM PST
The Reviewed.com network of sites include www.DigitalCameraInfo.com, www.TelevisionInfo.com, www.CamcorderInfo.com, www.PrinterInfo.com, www.HeadphoneInfo.com and reaches an average of 1,000,000 monthly unique readers. The site promised lab-tested reviews and gives consumers comparison tools to determine the best product for their needs. So what will the USA Today do with Reviewed.com? It’s unclear from the release what the media giant’s plans are for the network. But it’s likely that the USA Today will integrate technology product reviews into its online offerings. Dave Hunke, president and publisher of USA TODAY, stated, “USA TODAY’s acquisition of Reviewed.com is an important step as we develop our integrated consumer media strategy. We believe this combination of our consumer technology coverage and access along with their reviews and audience will be a winning one for our customers.”        
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| Hacker Defaces Website Of Kenya Police In Tribute Of Mark Zuckerberg Posted: 04 Jan 2011 06:20 AM PST A hacker has apparently defaced the website of Kenya’s law enforcement body (kenyapolice.go.ke), according to Nairobi, Kenya-based business reporter Larry Madowo. Sure enough, it appears the hacker did this in tribute of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The clearly unintentional welcoming message on the website homepage (the rest of the site seems to function fine) currently reads:
(Click the image on top for a larger version, just in case things get fixed) Amusingly, the title tag for the page has also been ‘updated’, now reading “I’m CEO, BITCh!” (see here for the backstory on that). Setting a trend for website defacement in 2011? Update: it now reads “OK. Its not that big a deal! :P”.        
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| Dell Acquires SecureWorks To Bolster Information Security Offerings Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:57 AM PST  Dell this morning announced that it is to acquire SecureWorks, a provider of information security services. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. SecureWorks offers a number of 'Security-as-a-Service' solutions and says it currently processes more than 13 billion security events and sees more than 30,000 malware specimens on a daily basis. 
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| Ziff Davis Buys Tech Deals Site LogicBuy; Launches Ad Targeting Platform BuyerBase Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:36 AM PST
With the acquisition of LogicBuy.com, Ziff Davis will provide visitors with contextual deals and coupons related to the products they're researching. The company will also partner with tech manufacturers and retailers to add more deals to LogicBuy’s database. Last year, LogicBuy.com received over ten million visitors looking for deals on laptops, cameras, TVs and software. Ziff Davis operates nine properties including PCMag.com, ExtremeTech, GearLog, GoodCleanTech, DL.tv, AppScout, CrankyGeeks, Smart Device Central and TechSaver.com, which the company says reach over 7 million users per month. Another avenue Ziff Davis is exploring is ad targeting. Today, the company is launching BuyerBase, an ad targeting platform that analyzes real-time, anonymous data from more than 100 tech content and commerce sites, including Ziff Davis' owned-and- BuyerBase will collect millions of anonymous “signals” each month to determine which products buyers are ready to purchase. This data is then applied to target relevant product offers to consumers as they surf the web by running targeted advertising across visited sites (Shah notes that users can easily opt out of targeting as well). Shah tells us that Ziff Davis will also be mining data from its LogicBuy site as well, hoping to connect content with both e-commerce and data. And the company will also create content around deals, integrate deals on product review pages and more. It’s not surprising that Shah has brought targeting and data into the publisher’s future strategy. He told us in June that there was a huge potential in mining purchasing intent on the family of sites. The question is, will it help turnaround the previously floundering company?        
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| Nintendo: 37 Million Wii Consoles Sold In The U.S. To Date Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:20 AM PST Nintendo this morning announced that its DS family of portable video game systems has sold more than 47 million in the United States since the original model launched in November 2004. The company also said that, according to its internal sales figures, the Wii system has gone over the counter more than 34 million times in the United States alone. Of those 34 million, roughly 21 million Wii systems were sold in the last three years, Nintendo says. According to the company, the Wii home console marked its third consecutive calendar year with U.S. sales of more than 7 million. Earlier, the company said it sold 2.7 million Wii and Nintendo DS systems in the United States in November alone. Nintendo is set to release its new Nintendo 3DS hand-held system in the United States in March. The portable system lets players see 3D content without the need for special glasses.        
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| Netflix’ Next Destination: On Your Remote Control Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:12 AM PST Brilliant idea: Netflix and a number of consumer electronics companies have joined in a development effort to put Netflix-branded one-click buttons on remote controls that operate Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray disc players and other devices. This should make streaming Netflix from your TV even more convenient. Netflix this morning announced that, starting this Spring, branded buttons – including some featuring the company’s logo – are planned to be placed on remotes that operate certain new Blu-ray disc players from companies like Best Buy’s in-house Dynex brand, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba and others. Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba will also place the Netflix one-click button on remote controls for select new Internet-connected TVs. Remote controls for the Boxee, Iomega and Roku set-top boxes also will feature the Netflix one-click remote. In a statement, Netflix boasts that here are now more than 250 “Netflix-ready” devices on the market. The company has 16 million members in the United States and Canada.        
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| SCVNGR Raises $15 Million At $100MM Valuation Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:00 AM PST
That’s a lot of money for the still-young startup, and we’re hearing from one source that this most recent round was raised at a valuation of just over $100 million. Impressive. SCVNGR is a location-based service, but it differs from apps like Foursquare and Facebook Places because it puts a much bigger emphasis on gaming (yes, Foursquare has points and badges, but its gaming mechanics really aren’t very fleshed out). SCVNGR revolves around challenges — check into a local burrito joint, and you might get prompted to answer a trivia question, or take a photo wearing the burrito tinfoil on your head. Businesses can customize their challenges to be as ridiculous, or straightforward, as they’d like. SCVNGR caters to local businesses and chains alike, and it’s had brands like American Eagle and Coca Cola running campaigns using the service. CEO Seth Priebatsch says that the company will be using the money to drive SCVNGR’s growth abroad (he says that this was one reason why the company went with Balderton, which is based in Europe). He says that some of the money will also be used to further research game mechanics to see what translates well in the physical world.        
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| FitOrbit Gains $3.2 Million To Help You Lose Pounds Posted: 04 Jan 2011 04:23 AM PST Traditionally, people make all sorts of commitments when a new year kicks off. If one of your New Year resolutions is losing weight or generally getting in better shape, check out FitOrbit, which connects people to professional personal trainers online, which in turn can help them achieve their goals. The company launched in June 2009 with backing from angel investor Ron Conway, John Brown (President of Time Inc's Health franchise), American actor and fitness personality – and FitOrbit founder – Jake Steinfeld as well as a couple of other investors. According to an SEC filing published yesterday, the company has now raised an additional $3.2 million in funding to finance further growth. It’s unclear who invested this time, but the filing lists Steinfeld, Global Fitness Media CEO Nick Desai as company directors. Also listed: Todd Dagres, the founder and General Partner of Spark Capital, so it’s safe to assume his firm led the funding round.        
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| ZapTunes Pivots From One Scam (Free Music Downloads) To The Next Posted: 04 Jan 2011 03:56 AM PST (Yes, I really want to start using the word ‘pivot’ in more headlines in 2011 – it’s one of my New Year resolutions). ZapTunes.com is a gigantic scam. They used to trick people into believing they could sign up for the service – handing over their credit card details in the process – and instantly gain access to an online music catalog of more than 8 million DRM-free songs they could legally download. For $25 a month. Of course, the ‘startup’ was quickly and diligently called out for being a devious fraud, by TorrentFreak for one. Of course, it wasn’t so hard to identify ZapTunes as a huge scam – they were stupid enough to claim they’d signed a licensing deal that enabled it to offer music from The Beatles (this was way before Apple got to that point). Anyway, they announced their shutdown just months after launching, to no one’s surprise but undoubtedly not after taking some gullible people’s money. In their own press release, they stated that “from the very first day of its launch, ZapTunes had been struggling against numerous DMCA complaints and lawsuits that were brought against it by a handful of label companies”. This morning, however, the fraudulent company announced its return, this time billing itself as a social music discovery network. They will stop offering free music downloads, and all existing subscriptions are to be canceled as soon as the new website is launched. Although ZapTunes mentions how it has struggled to “get to a point of profit” to date, the company says it has attracted 25,000 subscribers to its free music download service, which, again, sets those users back $25 per month. I sincerely hope that, too, is a lie, and far fewer people got tricked by these fraudsters. The reason for this post is simple: I want as many people as possible to land on this blog post or the ones I linked to above when doing a search for ZapTunes, in the hopes of making them realize they should stay far, far away from it.        
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| RSS War! (As Fought On Twitter, Naturally) Posted: 04 Jan 2011 01:39 AM PST
This evening I was just minding my own business and doing what I like to do from time to time, look over data. In particular, I was looking over the 2010 TechCrunch data, because we had earlier posted some data given to us by WordPress.com (which hosts TechCrunch) that seemed a bit odd. Namely, Facebook was nowhere to be found as a top referrer to TechCrunch. That’s weird because as we’re all well aware by now, Facebook was the most visited site in the U.S. in 2010. Anyway, looking at our Google Reader data, I noticed that Facebook was actually (unsurprisingly) a huge source of traffic for TechCrunch. But I noticed something else interesting too: Google Reader had taken a big hit in that regard when compared to 2009. In other words, the most popular feed reader seemed to take a big dip among TechCrunch readers. In fighting words, RSS is dead. What followed was a war of words about the state of RSS, the state of TechCrunch, the state of AOL, Rackspace, Twitter, the open web, Quora, and even… Sweden. To be fair, I did kick things off a bit earlier in the day by posting a quick thought about the state of RSS on my blog based on a Dave Winer post earlier in the day. And Winer quickly responded to that. Then started to spiral out of control… (as has happened before). This will not be over quick. You will not enjoy this.  @davewinerDave Winer Professional west coast tech bloggers are for the most part assholes. about 11 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Scoble ought to spend more energy on making Rackspace more famous and/or useful to normal folk or else we might start saying Rackspace is… about 10 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer I asked my mother to open tech crunch in the browser. She said she thought they sold out to Exxon. Therefore Techcrunch is… about 10 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer I asked some NYU students Who is MG Ziegler. They thought he was a silent film star and died in 1970-something. therefore MG is… about 10 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @arringtonMichael Arrington Twitter And Facebook Really Are Killing RSS (At Least For TechCrunch Visitors) http://t.co/fiJi0gB via @techcrunch @davewinerDave Winer @arrington @techcrunch — time for you to get rid of that nasty rss feed and turn your distribution over to ev and suck. I dare you. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @erickschonfeldErick Schonfeld @davewiner Even I don't know who MG Ziegler is. I think you mean Siegler. about 10 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @erickschonfeld — you guys take the hypocrisy cake. We should revoke your rss license. Just kidding of course about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Tech crunch is dead. Tech crunch is dead. It's dead. Aol killed it. Really. Rest in peace. Goodbye. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Everyone knows tech crunch is dead as dead can be. Killed. Dead. Dead. Pushing up the daisies. A former blog. Dead.dead. Sad. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer If you work for tech crunch maybe @Om will hire you. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer but you better hurry cause I don't think @Om can hire all of you. Early bird gets the worm. :-) about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Tech crunch should just get rid of their website, and write all their stuff in tweets and facebook posts. Get ahead of the curve. Pivot! about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @arringtonMichael Arrington @davewiner it's not our fault rss is dead. also, you do realize you're ranting about this on twitter, right? about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @arrington I love twitter and I don't make a dime from rss so the jokes on you dude. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @arringtonMichael Arrington @davewiner ah, you are seriously mistaking me for someone who gives a shit about what you're saying. let me know how it all ends. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @arringtonMichael Arrington @rwwmike i was just minding my own business playing cityville and all hell breaks loose over God knows what. I love Winer's tantrums. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer I just thought since tech crunch was so generous with their opinions I should return the favor. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Suck of these pundits who ship nothing and act like they know it all. Mike get rid of your rss feed. Stop being a fucking coward. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Arrington works for aol. He couldn't get rid of his rss feed if he wanted to. Paper tiger. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @dannysullivanDanny Sullivan @arrington @davewiner RSS powers much of what people read via twitter & facebook. it's far from dead. it just being used in a different way about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @mmccueMike McCue @Scobleizer @Arrington @dannysullivan agreed Danny. For example RSS is used to display bulk of tweeted articles we show on Flipboard. @arringtonMichael Arrington @mmccue yeah but that's not what winer is talking about. he's upset bc RSS is just plumbing, he wants twitter-fame. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @deanberrisDean Michael Berris For some reason, @davewiner sounds a lot like a grumpier @therealdvorak when it comes to things not RSS. ;) about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @deanberris oh you like hypocrites, do you? ;/) about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @mgdellMike Dell @davewiner Why would AOL want to get rid of RSS? about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @mgdellMike Dell about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Everyone here's the point. It would be suicide for any business to bet on twitter and facebook exclusively. You need rss more than I do. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer It's time for tech crunch to pull their weight and do something good for the open web as if their existence depended on it. Cause it does. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer Same for Rackspace and Scoble.I know the Rackspace guys know this. Time for Scoble to get with the program. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @thetombryanTom Bryan Next person who retweets this @davewiner douche is out. @arringtonMichael Arrington @davewiner we have no weight to pull. we're dead, and/or cowering under our aol corporate overlords, remember? about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @arringtonMichael Arrington @davewiner you mean the part where I said I don't give a shit? about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @arrington — if you click on the little arrow next to the tweet you can see what it's in reply to. The ui is a bit confusing, but it works. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @VeronicaLudwigVeronica Ludwig Can't sleep so I've been watching @davewiner try to pick fights w/@arrington @Scobleizer & @techcrunch. I think he's drunk tweeting. @davewinerDave Winer @VeronicaLudwig — that's pretty cynical. You think the only way someone could have something to say is if they're drunk. Tsk. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @gregbanburyGreg Banbury Who is this @davewiner guy and what on earth is his beef? @davewinerDave Winer @gregbanbury — http://scripting.com/ my bio is in the right margin about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @willsmithWill Smith @arringtonMichael Arrington @davewiner it's 3 in the morning your time and you're arguing with someone who doesn't care about something absurd. go to bed. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @arrington — I'm not arguing with you. You said you weren't interested. I respect that. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @campeauxBrandon .@davewiner vs. @arrington. It's like watching my father and his father argue over the origins of almond cultivation. @Scobleizer is Sweden. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @hmkern99Hans Martin Kern Folks, don't forget @davewiner & @Scobleizer are humans. Humans often say stupid things repeatedly – even about RSS. Just like you. @davewinerDave Winer @hmkern99 — you know how rude that is? Reread what you said. You really want to stand by that? about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @alexiaAlexia Tsotsis Today I learned what RSS means. @davewinerDave Winer @alexia –and it's a way of distributing content that doesn't depend on a single companies servers. RSS never crashes. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @parislemonMG Siegler Wow. You write one little article pointing to data about RSS dying and all hell breaks loose. Naturally, on the medium killing it. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @mmccueMike McCue @parislemon gotta love it. the revolution will be tweeted. @davewinerDave Winer @mmccue — hey mike I think it's cool that clipboard builds on rss. Thanks for that. :-) about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @ScobleizerRobert Scoble @deanberrisDean Michael Berris @davewiner LOL :D I just like the passion you have for the open web, except you're like @therealdvorak when it comes to the cloud. :P about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @deanberris @therealdvorak –you know I actually write code? I have opinions, but I ship stuff too. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @zachflauausZach Flauaus I'm expecting Maury Povich to jump into the @DaveWiner / @Scobleizer / @Arrington fight anytime now. #NerdsGoneWild @davewinerDave Winer about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @zachflauausZach Flauaus @davewiner Really? I'm behind the feed, then.  @brookslpowellBrooks Larkin Powell The root of @davewiner's rage. RT @parislemon: Wow. You write one little article pointing to data about RSS dying and all hell breaks loose. @davewinerDave Winer @brookslpowell @parislemon is being a little misleading there. He's writte a few dismissive over the top articles — today alone! :-) about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @joshuakarthikJoshua Karthik Hilarious! :)) RT @davewiner Techcrunch should just get rid of their website, and write all their stuff in tweets and facebook posts. Pivot! about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @joshuakarthik It's the logical extension of what they say they're observing. If rss is supposedly dying then so is the open web about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @arringtonMichael Arrington ok goodnight everyone. Dave, you win. I disagree with everything I said earlier, you convinced me. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @mmccue I'm not surprised. Hey if you want to do some more stuff, I'm pretty active these days. Open formats and protocols/no lock in. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @mmccue Btw I was telling all the twitter client guys to do what you're doing. None of them had the guts to move independent of twitter corp about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply (side note: not sure Winer realizes that McCue is now on Twitter’s Board) @davewinerDave Winer @Bandrew — feed burner was IMHO a very very bad idea about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply (that would be the company that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo co-founded) @davewinerDave Winer Bottom line is I wish these silicon valley "thought leaders" would do some serious thought and then lead us somewhere other than a ditch. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @technosailorAaron Brazell All the bloggers who invented RSS are douchebags. #fact @arringtonMichael Arrington @technosailor I remember when i first invented rss back in the 80s. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply @joshuakarthikJoshua Karthik @davewiner Seigler's article is ridiculous. Why would you click through from Reader to the TC site? For the charming comments? Nonsense. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @joshuakarthikJoshua Karthik @davewiner And I agree with you about Quora and other silos and their threat to the open web. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply @davewinerDave Winer @joshuakarthik — yup that's why this is not a joke. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @houbiBitchfight between @davewiner @scobleizer & @arrington. Unclear if "RSS is dead". "Public chatting on twitter" however, alive & kicking. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @robinwautersRobin Wauters Not sure if RSS is dead, but it does have that distinct corpsy smell. @thetombryanTom Bryan  @ryanchrisRyan Freitas "Open Web" tech in 3 easy steps: 1. Build tech heavy solutions to geek problems 2. Ignore UX needs 3. Scream at anyone who points out flaws about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @alexhorrealexander horré Apparently Winer hasn't understood the "___ is dead" term. @alexhorrealexander horré @robinwauters @Arrington The problem though is personalisation is coming back, and RSS will most likely return with a cape.  @BandrewAndy McLoughlin Is Mr Syndication drunk or something? @ScobleizerRobert Scoble Having conversations about RSS & open Web on Twitter? Hmmm, I lost the script here somewhere. Only have 140 characters, so gotta move on. about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply  @miguelriosMiguel Rios lol, RSS fanboys are raging.  @nickhalsteadNick Halstead The RSS Icon is dead – long live RSS http://retwt.me/1QpAO #rss @nickhalsteadNick Halstead just had to retweet that again given the tech bitch fight over #rss  @skbohra123Shree Kant Bohra about 8 hours ago via webRetweetReply        
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| Facebook Considering A Leaseback Deal Worth As Much As $420 Million For New HQ Posted: 04 Jan 2011 12:13 AM PST Faceook is considering moving its headquarters to the old Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, as we previously reported. Some new details about the transaction have come to light. Facebook is considering a leaseback of the property, which would net the company hundreds of millions of dollars in cash (not that it needs it). The assessed value of the Sun campus is $228.4 million, but tax assessments are typically lower than the market value of the property unless the value of the property dropped significantly since the last assessment. One rumored figure I heard a couple weeks ago for the value of the leaseback was $420 million, although another source claims that number is way too high and even the assessed value is still in question. Translation: negotiations are still in progress. But it is safe to assume the deal will be somewhere in between and could free up hundreds of millions of dollars for Facebook. The way the leaseback would work is that Facebook would sell the property to a REIT or other institutional investment group like a state pension fund. The investment group would then enter into a longterm lease with Facebook as the tenant of the campus. This arrangement would allow Facebook to move to a bigger headquarters while at the same time extracting a big lump of cash. Of course, it still has to buy the property, but the leaseback would produce more cash than Facebook would have to come up with for a down payment on a more traditional commercial mortgage for the same property. Perhaps the $500 million it just got from Goldman Sachs and DST can help finance the real estate deal.        
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| Facebook Users Uploaded A Record 750 Million Photos Over New Year’s Posted: 03 Jan 2011 11:34 PM PST
The stat was just tweeted by Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg (who is also founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister). We’ve reached out to Facebook to ask what the last record was, but I’m guessing it was set over Halloween, which has historically been the biggest day for Facebook Photos. To give some context to that number, in July Facebook said that more than 100 million photos get uploaded every day (that average is higher now, obviously). Here’s another stat: Flickr had its 5 billionth photo uploaded in September 2010 — Facebook would get that in a week or two if photos were uploaded at the rate they were last weekend. That’s a little apples-to-oranges (though Facebook does now offer support for high quality image uploads), but it gives a sense of the scale of Facebook Photos. Image by Brian Solis        
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| Twitter And Facebook Really Are Killing RSS (At Least For TechCrunch Visitors) Posted: 03 Jan 2011 10:52 PM PST
Is Facebook dying? Is RSS reborn? Nah. It would appear that referrer data is just a bit screwy. I ran that data against our own data coming directly from Google Analytics. The view from there is quite a bit different — and interesting. For 2010, according to Google Analytics, here were our top 10 referrers:
As you can see, like the WordPress.com data, Twitter is number one, but the rest are switched around. Facebook pushed Digg to number three. And Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) swapped with Techmeme. Google Reader, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found in the Google Analytics data. Actually, it is — it’s a subset of the google.com traffic (which doesn’t include search traffic, which is far above any of these referrer sites). Drilling down, Google Reader was actually the number 11 overall referrer to TechCrunch in 2010. Further, it was way down from 2009 — nearly 50 percent. In other words, yes, RSS is slowly dying. At least when it comes to the most popular feed reader sending traffic to TechCrunch. So what rose up in Reader’s place? Well, here are the top 10 referrers to TechCrunch from 2009, according to Google Analytics:
Again, Google Reader was a subset of the google.com data. Drilling down, Reader would have been number 6 by itself, just ahead of Hacker News (again, news.ycombinator.com) and just behind Facebook. Of all the properties in the top 10, Reader had by far the most dramatic fall. Twitter an Facebook, meanwhile, saw the biggest rise in 2010. That makes sense since those are the two most often associated with the slow death of RSS. Both shot through the roof when compared to 2009. Twitter nearly doubled as a referrer to TechCrunch and Facebook more than doubled the amount of traffic it was sending. Techmeme, Hacker News, StumbleUpon, and Reddit all had nice bumps in sending us traffic. Digg fell quite a bit, though not nearly as far as Reader. Now, a part of all of these bumps is simply because TechCrunch had more content overall in 2010 when compared to 2009. But that makes the Google Reader drop even more interesting. Sure, people can read TechCrunch through Reader without clicking through, but why the huge drop unless fewer people were actually reading it that way? We’ve reached out to WordPress to see why their data seemed to over-count Reader while massively under-counting Facebook (which was number 20 on WordPress’ list). A couple other interesting data points:
       
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| Chatroulette Gets A New, Weird Revamp Posted: 03 Jan 2011 07:33 PM PST
After following a cryptic tweet from the @Chatroulette Twitter account (“chatroulette is back ! a new face chatroulette.com”) down a rabbit hole, I discovered that you can now change your background on Chatroulette while you chat. In my brief foray, I’ve seen everything from Greek mythology-theme to rainbow hyper-color to sunburst to paisley to the hot pink we’ve got going on above. Unfortunately the video part of the chat doesn’t seem to work for me on my own computer at the moment, and I had to switch computers to get the above screencap. On about my fifth try, I got asked to take a user survey which may or may not have won a me a free iPad. There is also strange, “Go green, date your neighbor” link at the bottom of the site which leads to Singles-roulette.com. I didn’t venture any further. I’ve emailed Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy to see if he has plans for anything more than an interface refresh and Trapper Keeper-inspired graphics in order combat lagging site traffic and will update this post if/when he gets back to me. On a more positive note, I’ve yet to see anything NSFW. Maybe the skins are working after all? Update: It gets curiouser and curiouser. Ternovskiy just emailed to inform me that @Chatroulette is not an official Twitter account, and despite what Google trends is showing, site traffic has been up since October. The Skinsroulette feature, which the company did not intend to announce, was put into effect a couple days ago.
       
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| Quora Fact-Checks Quora On User Milestone Posted: 03 Jan 2011 05:58 PM PST
“Despite the company's reported $86 million valuation, and over 500,000 registered users as of today,” Fast Company wrote, citing a Quora thread that noted that the profile image numbers had passed 500,000. Obviously, that’s a nice milestone, and another Quora thread popped up to celebrate it. The only problem? Quora hasn’t actually hit that milestone yet. How do I know? Quora, of course. Within a half hour of the 500K congratulations post going up on Quora, it was being updated in realtime describing why the numbers Fast Company was citing were wrong. Specifically, investor Matt Cohler cited co-founder Charlie Cheever saying, “The numbers below are incorrect. See Charlie’s comments in the notes on this page.” Cheever had actually noted that back in early November that the methodology people were using to calculate user numbers was no longer correct. This is a similar issue that has occurred with Twitter, Foursquare, and others in the past. Of course, if Fast Company had just been reading TechCrunch in December, they would have known this. Seemingly, the only answer you can’t get on Quora is how many users are actually on Quora. We also went the old school route and reached out to Cheever just to clarify. “That number is wrong. I just sent a note to the author of that piece letting her know that,” he writes. “I also tried to make it more clear on that question that the methodology described there is faulty,” he continues. So all at once you can see both one potential problem and also the actual potential of Quora. There’s so much information flowing through the system, that it’s getting hard for all of it to be monitored even if it has already been fact-checked. But when something is wrong, it gets corrected in minutes before your very eyes. Again, this is reminiscent of Twitter and blogging before that. Information appears to be more like living organisms than static words on a page. So how many users does Quora actually have? Since Quora is no help there, we’ll do the old school way: deduction. If you believe that Quora changed the way they handle those IDs sometime in October, it seems likely that they have something over 200,000 but less than 500,000 users now. If my friend requests (and those of several others I’ve talked to) are any indication over the past few weeks, it has got to be inching up towards the latter.        
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| TechCrunch 2010 In Review (Care Of WordPress) Posted: 03 Jan 2011 05:57 PM PST The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow. Crunchy numbers The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 240,000,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 10,306 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 9,624 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 27,041 posts. The busiest day of the year was August 11th with 1,950,634 views. The most popular post that day was Confirmed: HOPA Dry Erase Girl Is A Hoax, Identity Revealed. Where did they come from?The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, digg.com, Google Reader, news.ycombinator.com, and techmeme.com. Some visitors came searching, mostly for techcrunch, tech crunch, best iphone apps, htc evo, and youtube video downloader. Attractions in 2010These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010. 1 Confirmed: HOPA Dry Erase Girl Is A Hoax, Identity Revealed August 2010 2 YouTube Video Download Tool November 2006 3 Search March 2010 4 The 35 Best iPhone Apps Of The Year (So Far) August 2009 5 Firefox Just Perfected Tabbed Browsing. It’s Like Apple’s Expose Plus Spaces For The Web July 2010        
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| WITN: Book Publishing Has A Better Future Than Music and Movies (Thinks One Of Us) Posted: 03 Jan 2011 05:49 PM PST
But, yeah ok, while the jumping off point might be a stretch, we soon get to the meat of this week’s episode: whether we’re seeing a move from fame for fame’s sake to a more targeted, troll free kind of media. And also whether mobile platforms are going to prove to the saviour of the content industry. Ohh, it’s good to be back. Video below.        
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| Paul Buchheit Looks Back At His First Years As An Angel Investor Posted: 03 Jan 2011 05:43 PM PST
Today, Buchheit has posted a retrospective on his first three years as an angel investor. Between 2006 and 2008 Buchheit invested a total of $1.21 million across 32 companies. He writes that half of those were either acquired or dead, and that between all of the acquisitions he’s netted a 10% gain. Of course, many of the companies that haven’t been acquired, like Weebly and Meraki, are sure to bring him much more down the road, so he’s in good shape. His post is worth reading in its entirety, and it shows that even the smartest investors (Buchheit may be relatively new to the investing game, but he’s certainly one of the smartest) are bound to make missteps. One of the more amusing passages:
Buchheit also describes the improving quality of Y Combinator companies — as a partner at YC he’s obviously biased, but it’s a trend that I’ve observed too (as have many investors and other reporters). And for those of you ready to pull out your pocketbooks, Buchheit closes out his post with two key pieces of advice: 1) Assume you’ll lose your money and 2) Plan on investing in a large number of companies.        
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GoodGuide — the mobile app and website that helps people find products that measure up to their environmental and social values — quietly rolled out new, social networking and product recommendation features this month.
There have been r
The 
When former Time Inc. executive Vivek Shah and private equity firm Great Hill Partners 
Location based game 
For 99 percent of you, the following will be way too insidery. But that’s part of what makes TechCrunch great, posting about fights about basically nothing. It’s sort of like Seinfeld, it’s just about the characters. We’ve gotten too far away from that under our new 
It doesn’t come as a huge surprise, but it’s still staggering to think about: over the New Year’s weekend, Facebook saw 750 million photo uploads from its users. That’s a lot of celebrating, and it sets a new Facebook record.
Earlier today, we ran a “
Earlier today, 
Aaaand… we’re back. Fresh from our Christmas and New Year break and ready to talk about the Most Important Stories Outside of Silicon Valley. Stories like, uh, Kevin Rose’s 
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