Sunday, February 22, 2009

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How To Make Twitter Sound Like Music To Your Ears Top
People generally love sharing things, and Twitter has made broadcasting updates to anyone who cares to care on what you’re doing, wearing, reading, commenting on, eating, using, etc. a breeze; in 140 characters or less, even. It’s only natural to see so many users also share which music they are listening to at any given moment on Twitter, as this has been a fairly popular use of status feeds on other social networking and communication services for years (Facebook, Skype and Windows Live Messenger leap to mind). Here’s a number of ways to use Twitter for just about anything related to music: * Blip.fm - dubbed the “Twitter for Music” when we first reviewed the service, it got its own API in late 2008. Blip.fm enables anyone to start their own music station and broadcast tunes to Twitter and other status sharing services where people can interact with the choice of music. * Twiturm does much of the same - upload music and share it with all your Twitter followers in a heartbeat. Intended for artists who want to share their own music, hence the name (”Twitter Ur Music”). * Twisten.fm - Escape Media Group linked its music discovery service Grooveshark and its URL shortening service TinySong with an application that crawls Twitter for messages about music (and “then you listen to them”). * Twt.fm (anyone see a naming pattern here?) - type in an artist, track, and your twitter username. Twt.fm will then generate a track page for you using your twitter page design and you’ll be able to tweet it to your followers. * Tweetj - include a #tweetj tag in your tweets when you’re listening to music and it’ll be posted to a public playlist. The playlist allows you to discover new music and immediately purchase tracks on Amazon. * A similar service is WiiZZZ (yes, that’s the actual name) - it allows you to listen to entirely random songs that have been posted and shared by Twitter users on any given day. * Play Twitter - allows you to easily play mp3 files directly on Twitter or Identi.ca. MP3 links will automatically become playable right on the page. * Tra.kz - this “URL shortener for all things music” was cooked up by MixMatchMusic and does exactly what you suspect it would do and therefore competes with the above mentioned TinySong and alternatives like Song.ly . * TwittyTunes - Firefox extension that comes with another Firefox extension, Yahoo’s FoxyTunes , and allows you to instantly post your currently playing songs to Twitter with just a click. * LastTweet - enables you to embed a widget with your latest tweets into your Last.fm profile Also worth checking out, even if not directly related to Twitter: Nabbit (”connects your cellphone to your radio”), MuseBin (music news and reviews in 140 characters, like Blippr but music only) and Twones (the “social music feed” ). Did I miss any other apps, tools and websites worth noting? Share them in the comments and I’ll be happy to update the post. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Photos Pulls Away From The Pack Top
If Facebook has one standout application it has to be Photos. Measured on its own, it is the largest photo site on the Web. A full 69 percent of Facebook’s monthly visitors worldwide either look at or upload photos, based on comScore data. And more than 10 billion photos have been uploaded to the site. And it’s been pulling away from its competitors. As can be seen in the comScore chart above, as recently as last September the top three photo sites in the U.S. were running neck-and-neck, with Facebook Photos at 23.9 million unique visitors, followed by Photobucket at 21.3 million uniques, and Flickr at 19.5 million uniques. But by January, the number of monthly U.S. visitors going to Facebook Photos shot up 41 percent to 33.6 million. Meanwhile, Photobucket is up only 7 percent to 22.8 million, while Flickr is up 12 percent to 21.9 million. (Picasa is a distant fourth in the U.S. with 8.1 million). In other words, Facebook increased the gap between its closest competitor (Photobucket in the U.S.) from 2.6 million monthly unique visitors to 10.8 million. On a worldwide basis, the gap between Facebook Photos and Flickr (which is the No. 2 site globally, and looks like it is about to pass Photobucket in the U.S.) went from 41.2 million unique monthly visitors in September to 87 million in December (the most recent data available, see chart below). What accounts for Facebook’s advantage in the photo department? The biggest factor is simply that it is the default photo feature of the largest social network in the world. And of all the viral loops that Facebook benefits from, its Photos app might have the largest viral loop of all built into it. Whenever one of your friends tags a photo with your name, you get an email. This single feature turns a solitary chore—tagging and organizing photos—into a powerful form of communication that connects people through activities they’ve done in the past in an immediate, visual way. I would not be surprised if people click back through to Facebook from those photo notifications at a higher rate than from any other notification, including private messages. But the tagging feature has been part of Facebook Photos for a long time. What happened in September to accelerate growth? That is when a Facebook redesign went into effect which added a Photos tab on everyone’s personal homepage. (The chart above shows U.S. visitors through January. The chart below shows international visitors through December, with 153.3 million unique visitors for Facebook Photos, 66.7 million for Flickr, 45.5 million for Picasa and 42.7 million for Photobucket). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Another Way To Look At Terms Of Service Agreements: Wordle Visualizations Top
This is what you get when you use a slick tool like Wordle (try it!) to run all the words used to make up the Terms of Service agreements of seven notable internet companies: cool visualizations that somewhat capture the essence of their content. Pointless? Very. Cool? Definitely. Here’s how Facebook ’s Terms of Use agreement comes out (at least for now ): Yahoo ( Terms of Service ) Digg ( Terms of Use ) Google ( Terms of Service ) Twitter ( Terms of Service ) MySpace ( Terms of Use ) YouTube ( Terms of Service ) CrunchBase Information Wordle Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Oops: Microsoft Asks Some Laid Off Workers To Send Back Part Of Their Severance Top
Talk about adding insult to injury. Apparently Microsoft has inadvertently overpaid severance to some of its recently laid off employees, and is now asking for some of the money back. It’s unclear how many of the 1,400 employees laid off last month were affected, but we’ve confirmed that it wasn’t a single isolated incident (we’ve contacted Microsoft for a response). We’re also hearing that some employees may have been underpaid as well. While the payroll error must be irritating in and of itself to these laid off workers (severance is a sensitive subject), it appears that Microsoft HR isn’t even bothering to explain how it happened (employees are instructed to call the office, which is closed for the weekend, if they want to know the details). Given that it was Microsoft HR that screwed this up in the first place, you’d think they’d at least include the calculations they made and point out where the error took place. msletter Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook: You Own All Your Data. Period. (But See You at the Next Privacy Uproar.) Top
In case you didn't read him quoted in some 1,700 newspapers last week, NBC's Press:Here has an interview with Chris Kelly, Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer this week. The show, which focuses on technology, airs in the Bay Area on Sunday mornings after Meet the Press, and the young show has already been beating Meet the Press in the ratings. You can also watch a clip on the jump or the entire episode online here right now. (I was one of the guest reporters on the show this week.) Kelly said in no uncertain terms that Facebook does not own your data and content, never did and never will. What's more: Any reproduction of your data has to be subject to the privacy settings you choose as a Facebook user. You can sense his frustration amid a scandal that was essentially cooked up by Consumerist on the Sunday night of a holiday weekend without even calling Facebook to check if their assumptions on the Terms of Use changes were right. But this isn't the first or last time users will be in an uproar over Facebook, despite all of Facebook's best efforts. Why? There's never been a Web site—or media property for that matter—that people trusted with so much personal, emotional and intimate information, whether it's your cell phone number or a video of your child taking his first steps. And with Facebook's business model still uncertain, that trust makes us legitimately nervous. You think all the search data Google has been collecting on us for all these years is scary ? Things you do and upload to Facebook are far, far more personal. For the conspiracy theorists out there, Facebook is going to be the gift that keeps on giving. I asked Kelly—on this, the third major user uproar the company has faced on privacy that caught it completely by surprise—if the issue was a blind spot for the company or if Facebook was doing something so new in organizing the data of human relationships that it was bound to take all the arrows as these issues of privacy continually emerge. Kelly essentially said its the latter; I think it's a mixture of both, although Facebook's privacy sensitivities have clearly come a long way since the News Feed and Beacon debacle days. Give them credit: Each time they learn how to handle the crisis better, and this time they sprung into action quickly and decisively. Either way, this is not the first or last time a user revolt will spark up around privacy and the site. And that's one reason Facebook is inviting users to help them craft the language this time around. You can't blame yourself for violating your rights, right? But as Elizabeth Corcoran of Forbes pointed out on the show, can you really organize a committee of 175 million people? The clip featuring both of these conversations is below, or go here for the entire episode. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Ticketing Startups Launch Multi-Million Dollar Funds To Combat TicketMaster Merger Top
With the proposed $2.5 billion merger between TicketMaster and Live Nation looming large, many venue owners and promoters are up in arms, deeming the deal anti-competitive and monopolistic (they may be right - the deal is being examined for possible anti-trust violations). Now ShowClix , a TicketMaster competitor that launched in early 2007, is launching the Fair Ticketing Fund , setting aside up to $5 million to entice venues and promoters away from the pending Live Nation Entertainment goliath. Other ticket vendors are also beginning to offer similar deals, including TicketBiscuit , which launched a $10 million fund last week. For those who aren’t familiar with the ticketing business, here’s a bit of a primer. TicketMaster has long been contracting venues into exclusive deals, promising some portion of the service fees (also known as convenience or venue fees) the site racks up as an incentive for them to sign on. TicketMaster has become notorious for gouging customers with these fees, and many fear that with the Live Nation deal they’ll only continue to rise higher. Smaller ticket companies like ShowClix don’t typically charge service fees that are nearly as high as TicketMaster’s so they usually can’t promise the same returns to venues. That’s where the their new funds come in: each is promising venues that they’ll use the new funds to compensate for the income they stand to lose from leaving TicketMaster. In effect, they’re giving venues opposed to the new deal a chance to protest it without doing too much damage to their bank accounts. However, while ShowClix and TicketBiscuit may be giving away money for now, this is hardly a charity - any venues looking to take advantage of the Fair Ticketing Fund will be signing on with ShowClix under an exclusive year-long deal (which is fairly common in the industry), and TicketBiscuit will also mandate an exclusive deal. Still, it’s nice to see these smaller entities take on TicketMaster - I’m getting tired of “convenience” fees that cost a third as much as the ticket itself. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA? Top
That leaked U2 album is causing all sorts of trouble. The unreleased album, which is due out on March 3, found its way onto BitTorrent and was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. That, apparently, sent music industry lawyers over at the Recording Industry Association of America into a fit. As a result, word is going around that the RIAA asked social music service Last.fm for data about its user’s listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. And Last.fm, which is owned by CBS, actually handed the data over to the RIAA. According to a tip we received: I heard from an irate friend who works at CBS that last.fm recently provided the RIAA with a giant dump of user data to track down people who are scrobbling unreleased tracks. As word spread numerous employees at last.fm were up in arms because the data collected (a) can be used to identify individuals and (b) will likely be shared with 3rd parties that have relationships with the RIAA. Supposedly, the operations team which handed over the data in the first place weren’t told the true purpose for the transfer or who was getting the data until after the fact, and only when they had to help with some corrupted data. It sounds like it was more of a corporate decision. I’ve contacted both CBS and the RIAA. Most of the Last.fm team is in London, where the weekend has already started. For now Last.fm says: “To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA.” (The RIAA declined to comment). Setting aside what actually happened to the data, and assuming this rumor is true, why would the RIAA target Last.fm? It wasn’t streaming the U2 album, and it is not an illegal download service. But Last.fm has millions of users who are heavy music consumers, and many of them download Last.fm’s Scrobbler software which keeps track of every single song you listen to on your computer, no matter which music player you use. In other words, it captures tracks played from illegal BitTorrent downloads just as easily as from iTunes. Last.fm members knowingly share what they are listening to with the rest of the Last.fm community, and in return receive social recommendations of music they might like. That is the whole point of the service. And Last.fm’s privacy policy does clearly state: . . . your record collection (including your skipping history) may be viewed by all other users of Last.fm (who may include other organisations or representatives of other organisations who have registered as Last.fm users) and that they may easily associate this information with your Last.fm username. But most probably never even considered it a possibility that individually identifiable information about their listening habits (legal, illegal, or otherwise) could be handed over to an organization known for taking consumers to court for file-sharing. What makes this even more egregious is that it appears to be absent any legal precedent (such as a pending lawsuit) for which Last.fm could at least hide behind as an excuse. Incidents like this highlight how the social Web can sometimes bite back if you are not careful. It also raises the issue of who owns all of this data about you and what they can do with it. (The same issue that caused Facebook to backtrack on recent changes to its data policy). Unfortunately, it’s come down to this: you really shouldn’t share any data on the Web you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing in a court of law. (Please contact us at tips [at] techcrunch if you have more information about this). Update : Some more denials from Last.FMers, including one of the co-founders, Richard Jones, in comments , who says this story is “utter nonsense and totally untrue,” and another one from Russ Garrett , a systems architect. Update 2 (2/21/09): There are a lot of angry questions being raised about this post in comments and elsewhere. Lots of demands for retractions and some people questioning the timing of the post late on Friday night. First, on the timing. The reason this story was posted so late was because I had contacted a Last.fm spokesperson in the U.S. earlier in the day who promised me a response, and I decided to wait for it. Several hours passed, with assurances that a statement was being prepared. So I was a little surprised when it was only one sentence: To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA. That statement is hardly a categorical denial. It leaves open all sorts of holes. Was the data collected internally, but never actually handed over? Was it made available to a specific record label or group of record labels, perhaps at the request of the RIAA. Or did the whole thing never happen? I asked for clarification, but again was referred to the single vague statement. After I posted, I again contacted the spokesperson to see if she had any further comment she would like to make. She didn’t. Soon after I posted, however, plenty of unofficial but heartfelt denial came from Last.fm staffers in London, two of which I linked to last night in the update above. The one from Russ Garrett, in particular, raised even more questions. His denial starts out unequivocal, but then he adds a squishy disclaimer: I’d like to issue a full and categorical denial of this. We’ve never had any request for such data by anyone, and if we did we wouldn’t consent to it. Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we’d never personally identify our users to a third party - that goes against everything we stand for. Hmm, so could the RIAA or a record label use the data to identify people? I never suggested that it was Last.fm that was singling out individuals listening to unreleased tracks. The issue is whether the RIAA or any of its member companies are trying to do so and whether or not Last.fm is helping them. As Garrett points out, Last.fm shares aggregate listening data with the labels. Are there any unique identifiers associated with this data that could lead back to an individual, despite any precautions Last.fm might take? (It wouldn’t be unprecedented—remember that leaked AOL search data a few years ago?) I sent Garrett an email about 5 hours ago asking him some of these questions. From the very beginning, I’ve presented this story for what it is: a rumor. Despite my attempts to corroborate it and the subsequent detail I’ve been able to gather, I still don’t have enough information to determine whether it is absolutely true. But I still don’t have enough information to determine that it is absolutely false either. What I do have are a lot of unanswered questions about how exactly Last.fm shares user data with the record industry. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Fotolia Reaches One Million Registered Members And Five Million Images Top
Micro-stock photography is alive and well. Fotolia tells us they have just reached their one millionth registered member and now have 5 million stock images for sale, for as little as 14 cents, and typically a dollar or two. Of those one million registered members, 860,00 are active (defined as having made at least one credit card purchase or uploaded content within the past three months). Fotolia says it is registering new members at a rate of 3,000 per day (86,800 per month) ComScore also shows some health growth, with 2.3 million unique visitors a month (the vast majority of which are obviously not registered members). Competitor iStockphoto , which was purchased by Getty Images for $50 million in 2006, has about twice as many monthly visitors (5.2 million). But on ts Website, iStockphoto says it only has 4 million images. Another interesting stat the company shared with me: the number of uploads is very close to the number of paid downloads. People upload 40,000 images and other content every day, and download 50,000 images a day. That download rate translates to 1.5 million paid downloads a month. Fotolia takes 20 to 50 percent of the sales price. Next up, Fotolia will begin selling stock video (something iStockphoto has been doing for a while). Fotolia already has 20,000 videos uploaded, and plans to roll out the new category generally in March or April. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Forget About Those Leaked Downloads, Listen To U2's Entire New Album on MySpace Music Top
I’m not sure if this was moved up in response to leaked copies of U2’s newest album, No Line On The Horizon spreading across the Internet, but the entire the album will be streamed for free at MySpace Music . The player in U2’s MySpace Music page features a single, but if you click on the top album in the sidebar, you can hear the entire thing. MySpace says that the entire album will be streamed from February 20 to March 3, with links to pre-order it. This is akin to Radiohead offering a free download of their album In Rainbows for a limited time, except without the download. It is good marketing, at it helps the band try to keep control over distribution. Although, that Bittorrent cat is already out of the bag. (The unreleased album leaked out and has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times by fans who just can’t wait for U2’s perfectly planned release schedule. Update : MySpace says the timing of the streamed release was planned all along. Listening to it now. U2 still rocks (or maybe I’m just old). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
TechCrunch Roundtable, Paris, Feb 25: What Next For France 2.0? Top
TechCrunch is hosting a Roundtable and Meetup in Paris on Wednesday next week, Feb 25. “TechCrunchTalk: What Next For France 2.0?” will feature an afternoon of panel discussions and some great evening networking with French startups and the investment community. The event will be live video streamed on TechCrunch. Please grab a ticket here. Read on for details: The TechCrunchTalk event - put on by TechCrunch UK & Europe and TechCrunch France - is aimed at bringing together the Web 2.0 startup and VC community to debate the next phase of the French startup world. It will feature two quick-fire panel discussions with the hottest entrepreneurs and investors selected for their leading views on the market, with topics focused around the following themes: • What are the strengths of the French tech scene? • Where and how can it be improved? • Should French startups concentrate on France, or scale across Europe and the rest of the world? • Is the VC community doing enough for entrepreneurs? • What is the VC community looking for from French entrepreneurs? France is a key nation in Europe but can it build the next Google? French entrepreneurs are renowned for their savvy, smart take on technology - but does France face a brain-drain as French startups seek their fortune in Silicon Valley? To help us explore these questions we'll have on hand: Roundtable Discussion Salman Malik, co-Founder of Firefly Steph Bouchet, ex-Joost Laurent Féral-Pierssens, Silentale.com Olivier Schuepbach, Wellington Partners Colette Ballou Lamotte, Ballou PR (Other panelists will shortly be confirmed) Roundtable Moderator: Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK & Europe Details: TechCrunchTalk France 2.0 will be on on Wednesday, 25 Feb 2009 3pm-6pm, followed by networking over refreshments till 9pm. It will be held at La Cantine, 12 passage Montmartre, Galerie des Panoramas, 151 rue Montmartre, in Paris, the innovation and co-working place owned by Silicon Sentier . Tickets here. . Please contact our event organiser Petra Johansson on petra [at] twistedtree [dot] co [dot] uk for any enquiries about demo tables or sponsor packages. Press enquiries for press passes to rassami . The event will be followed by product pitches from three to five companies (products or startups that actually launch at the event will receive extra consideration, but it is not a requirement). If you have a startup ready to launch then and would like to give a demo, send a brief pitch to TechCrunch UK editor Mike Butcher . Our video streaming partner for the event is Floobs . Floobs Ltd is Helsinki based start-up which is developing Floobs -services for live streaming and a platform for commmunity created LIVE tv-channels. We’ll be holding a series of TechCrunch events in Europe this Spring and Summer, all focused on bringing together and networking the European tech community. If you wish to be on the mailing list for information about all the up-coming events, sign up on our Amiando account here . And there is lots more information here . Warsaw 19th March - Central European event for tech startups & VCs Topic: Re-engineering the Central European tech scene - What’s next? Get Tickets London 21st April Topic: A day-long event for UK & other European startups. More details to follow Sign up for further info Stockholm 27th May - Nordic and the Baltic states event for startups and VCs Topic: Connecting Northern Europe - Where are the strong and weak links? Sign up for further info Berlin 10th June – More details to follow Topic: How does Berlin and Germany become a key node for European Tech? Sign up for further info London 9th July – TechCrunch Summer-Party Topic: Party! Sign up for further info Past TechCrunchTalks: Barcelona 19th February - "Mobile 2.0″ event alongside Mobile World Congress Topic: The future for Mobile 2.0 startups. Archive here Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Why the Smart VCs Are Boarding their Jets Top
I started my career as a finance reporter covering wonky subjects like banks, bonds and agribusiness. I ended up in Silicon Valley covering tech, because it was the late 1990s, and I was doing what finance reporters are supposed to do: Follow the money. I've since realized if you want to cover startups well, it's more complicated than that: You have to distill between the pioneer money and the lemming money. By the time the lemming money is investing, the story has been told, and the pioneers have already picked their bets. There are a few ways to do this. One is to poll the smarter VCs, but frequently they don't want to share their secrets. Another is to look at relative increases in the percentage of capital going to different sectors. For instance, in the mid-2000s, sectors like Web 2.0 and clean tech weren't getting the most venture capital, but they were getting the biggest percentage of increases in funding before Facebook was gracing every magazine cover and John Doerr was weeping over the environment at TED. A third way is to look at how the money shifts in a downturn. When a bubble bursts do formerly hot sectors turn into wastelands? One reason I knew Silicon Valley would rise again after the 2000 crash was that it always does. Another was that the percentage of capital going to Valley companies increased, as VCs pulled closer to home and stopped speculating in more nouveau tech hot beds around the U.S. and overseas markets. But the exact opposite is happening this time around. According to new numbers by Dow Jones VentureSource, venture capital investment fell in the United States last year but rose in China, India and Israel despite increased economic and political turmoil in those regions; despite the human desire to nest in bad times; and despite the fact that so far VCs have struggled to get much in the way of returns from billions poured into India and China. That should tell us something. Sure, more money is still invested in the U.S.: But all three of my litmus tests support the theory that the pioneer money isn't pulling back from overseas speculation in the wake of troubled times for the industry. The smart money is doubling down on emerging markets. Investing in unknown entrepreneurs in emerging markets is scary. But there's a greater fear in venture capital these days: Where is the next new frontier to make big money? We think of a VC's job as investing in high tech—but really, it's about investing in high growth. Doubling or tripling your money is great, but venture capital is at heart a home run business. And most of the sectors where VCs have traditionally gotten the biggest home runs have simply matured: Chips, computers, software, telecom, Internet. Sure, there's still opportunity in the Web, software and even hardware—look at Facebook, Salesforce.com, and NComputing—but these are increasingly one-off and many of the most promising ventures sell before they get to home run levels. There continues to be opportunities in biotech, too, but drug discovery takes a lot of money and a lot of time. Instead of swinging for the fences building the next Genentech, most VCs are content to find a novel drug candidate and license it to big pharma. That's more a base hit than a home run. As for clean tech, the market is huge, but uncertainties around the science, government cooperation and expense of building a new alternative energy industry cast big doubts on just how lucrative returns will be. Compare that to places like India, China and even Central Africa where incomes are rising, populations are growing and nearly everything is a growth industry. Trucking, logistics, coffee shops—and yes, some Internet and tech companies too. Sure, it's fraught with its own risk, whether it's ethical quandaries of whether to bribe public officials, language and cultural barriers, immature capital markets or just the grind of investing halfway around the world. But venture investors are supposed to take risk. They are supposed to be pioneers. If it were easy, there wouldn't be the promise of 10x returns. Venture capital judges itself on a ten-year cycle, and the riches of 1999 are about to fall off the index. The industry as a whole is in danger of performing about at the level of the S&P 500 or below. If it wants to survive, it's time for a reboot: Get back to boutique, the way smart seed funds have done, or figure out global. Only a few firms will thrive in between. Interestingly, the trend is happening at the same time the rank and file in the Valley seems to be coming down with a disturbing case of xenophobia. One of BusinessWeek's most commented stories this week was about H-1B Visa fraud, and frankly, there were a lot of offensive anti-Asian views throughout the thread. Similarly, when I was on KQED's Forum last month talking about layoffs in the Valley, a good many people called in angry that they'd been laid off while foreign-born engineers kept their jobs. I know losing a job is scary, but a lot of the value of Silicon Valley has been built by people from other countries. Put another way: You had your job (and stock options) at companies like Google and PayPal because of foreign-born founders who came to the Valley and were able to thrive. We'd do well as a region to continue to invest in the smartest people from around the world, whether they're coming to us or—gasp— we have to get on a plane and go to them. I believe the Valley will remain the hub of innovation, but for that to be the case, that hub needs to have far longer spokes. Ten years after following the money brought me to Silicon Valley, increasingly following the smart money is taking me halfway around the world. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Popjam takes Twitter - applies LOLs Top
Popjam is a new ’social humour’ site which has launched using the Twitter ‘friend/follow’ model of social networking. In fact - but for the images of LOLcats and videos - it is so similar to Twitter in appearance and operation that it could be mistaken for a pure Twitter clone. But what we have here is a kind of Twitter-meets-Digg-meets-jokes. Unlike niche humor sites like College Humour or eBaumsworld , Popjam is aiming to be more of a ‘platform’ for humour, if that’s conceivable. PopJam users can post images, videos and links in their feed, as well as ‘LOL’ posts so that that users go onto a leader-board. As for the Twitter aspect, the site doesn’t yet integrate with Twitter, though that’s ‘in the plan’. The UK-based site is Angel funded. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
CBS Interactive: "Well Within Our Rights To Stream Hulu Content" Top
We broke the story of Hulu pulling the content plug out of TV.com earlier this week, and two days ago we also reported that content owners forced Boxee to stop streaming Hulu content as well. Now the owners of TV.com, CBS Interactive, have responded with a message that sparked the Wall Street Journal to headline an article on the reaction “CBS Strikes Back at Hulu” . What did CBS Interactive’s statement say? "CBS Interactive is well within its rights to stream Hulu video content on TV.com under its agreement with Hulu. We are evaluating our next steps at this time." Sounds like war talk to me, yet neither side was willing to comment on whether there was still a possibility of Hulu videos appearing on TV.com. The distribution agreement between TV.com and Hulu was made prior to CBS's acquisition TV.com's parent company, CNET. CBS very recently relaunched TV.com recently with a redesign that almost exactly matched the look and feel of Hulu . TV.com is growing at a very fast rate , surpassing Hulu in traffic according to some. To be continued, no doubt. In related news, Comcast and Time Warner Cable are reportedly in talks with major cable television network owners about ways to give cable subscribers (and only them) access to much of the networks’ programming on the web. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Adography Offers A Way To Cash In On Your Amateur Photos Top
Everyone knows there are lots of amateur and hobbyist photographers out there, and collectively they produce a massive amount of material stored on online photo sharing sites and desktops around the globe which might just contain that one image an advertiser was looking to use to communicate a message. Adography is a relatively new service that offers a way to monetize your own amateur photos if you think there are some who might make for great advertisement material. Adography is essentially a marketplace where people can put their amateur photos up for sale, while businesses can put out requests for photos by creating so-called ‘want-ads’. You can find an example of a listing here , which includes the image specifications, asking price, and more. The service is free for people who upload their photos, but we should note the FAQ mentions that Adography is automatically granted an exclusive worldwide license for twelve months for every uploaded picture. It’s obviously not a novel idea, as there are plenty of web services out there with a similar proposition. Even Yahoo’s Flickr was once considering launching its own marketplace dubbed Flickr Stock . The problem with most of these is, evidently, marketing the service and getting the scale needed to attract enough advertisers and photographers to make it compelling enough for both target groups to come back for more. Adography faces the same problems, and personally I think the user experience is a bit below par for the moment. That said, the name has a nice ring to it and no clear leader has emerged yet in this space (meaning non stock photography marketplaces) so who knows if this one will fly. Then again, I’m not so sure the advertisers Adography cites as examples (e.g. Coca-Cola) will be interested in low-resolution amateur images for their official branding campaigns. Seems to me small businesses would be more interested in the service, but how do you reach them? Update: as a commentor notes, iStockPhoto is probably the most familiar name in this space, but it’s not really the best place for true amateur photos. On a sidenote: I love this type of story. Someone has an idea, which lingers in his or her mind until one day this person wakes up and decides to incorporate and try to turn the idea into a business, not even considering anything but bootstrapping to get it started. In this particular case, the founder is documenting this road less traveled by blogging about it , which is a welcome aside for aspiring entrepreneurs who haven’t made the jump yet and want to read someone else’s experiences first. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
YouTube Annotations Get Social, Add A Much-Needed 'Off' Button Top
YouTube has just launched an expansion to its Annotations feature that gives users the ability to invite their friends to help spruce up their videos using text boxes, labels, and interactive buttons. In the past I’ve been somewhat critical of these annotations, primarily because they can be really annoying in the wrong hands. But tonight YouTube has also introduced a oft-requested feature that will turn off all annotations entirely, allowing users to peruse videos in their unadulterated form if they wish to. You can find the option under your account’s ‘Playback Settings’ menu. YouTube originally launched annotations last June, and introduced a new interface in January that made the process more intuitive. Tonight’s new sharing feature presents video uploaders with a link that they can share with friends to invite them to help annotate their video. Anyone who accesses the video through the special link will be able to use the same annotation interface, though the original video owner will retain final control over what appears (they can also reset the link should it become too widespread). For tight circles of friends this will probably be a welcome addition and could lead to some fun interaction, though if the sharable link got posted to a message board or public chat room I can imagine a video getting cluttered up pretty quickly (though you can always delete these later). In any case, it’s nice to see that YouTube isn’t resting on its laurels as it continues to expand its feature set, and is willing to implement user requests like that ‘off’ button. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Quicken Online Can't Believe Mint Is Doing So Well; Sends Threatening Letter Top
Intuit, the company behind the well-known Quicken suite of money management software that includes Quicken Online , can’t believe how well its competitor Mint is doing. In fact, they were so bewildered by Mint’s claims of gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months that they decided to send a threatening letter demanding an explanation for this apparently inconceivable feat. We’ve obtained copies of both Intuit’s letter and Mint’s reply, which we’ve embedded below. From Intuit’s letter: “While we do not wish to suggest that Mint.com is engaging in false advertising, the substantial difference in claimed user numbers over a short period time [from 600,000 to 800,000] is of some concern. As a result, we’re requesting that you provide us with the Substantiation and evidence that you rely upon to support the above reference claims… before February 6, 2009.” Note that the letter says that Intuit doesn’t “wish to suggest that Mint is engaging in false advertising”, despite the fact that that was the entire purpose of the letter. Nice. Aside from Mint’s remarkable growth rate, Intuit’s concerns focus on the startup’s definition of “users”. Mint’s reply states that the company considers anyone who has filled in an Email address, Zip code, and password to be a “user”, regardless of whether they’ve ever actually linked their bank account to their Mint user name. This figure obviously overstates the number of people who actually use Mint on a day-to-day basis, but it’s also a fairly standard way to define “users” for most web services. As an outside check, Comscore counts 416,000 monthly unique visitors worldwide, and growing rapidly (see chart below). That said, Mint’s definition of “user” raised some concerns for me - I suspected that after entering their Email information and getting counted as a new member, many of them would jump ship when they realized they’d need to enter their bank account information. But CEO Aaron Patzer says that as of today around 680,000 of 934,000 registered users (over 70%) have linked at least one bank account to Mint, with most of them linking between 5-6 of their financial accounts. Frankly this number is far higher than I was expecting, and indicates that most people visit Mint with the full intention of entering their account information. Patzer also notes that while those users who haven’t linked their bank accounts to Mint will have access to less functionality, they still receive regular offers from Mint’s partners. Could Mint have been more transparent with its user numbers? Probably, but their methodology for measuring user stats is par for the course here - certainly nothing worthy of Quicken’s demanding letter. The bottom line here is that Mint is growing so quickly (it will soon pass one million users—no doubt spurred by the bad economy and tax season), that its competitors literally can’t believe it. And for any startup, that’s not such a bad thing. Update : Intuit spokesman Scott Gulbransen has offered the following response to this story: We’d like to apologize to Mint.com if our letter came across as anything but a simple request to understand how they count their users. Businesses do this all the time and we appreciate their reply. We are so pleased with the rapid growth of Quicken Online, we were just curious about how we’re doing. And now that we have a common yardstick by which to measure, we know we’re doing great based on an apples-to-apples comparison. Quicken Online now has more than 650,000 users and has been adding on average approximately 45,000 new users a week since Jan. 2009. So now you know…customers are choosing Quicken Online more than ever before. Thanks, Scott Here are the two letters: mintpdf1 - Free Legal Forms mintpdf2 - Free Legal Forms Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Gets Into The Widget Business With New Comments Box Top
Facebook has just launched its first widget for Facebook Connect, its recently- introduced platform that allows users to authenticate themselves using their Facebook logins. Dubbed ‘Comments Box’, the new widget allows site owners to integrate a comments section into their webpage. But unlike normal commenting systems, comments left in Comments Box will be relayed back to the users’ Facebook profiles, where the conversation can continue (users can also choose to receive notifications through Facebook whenever someone responds to their comments on other websites). Until now only developers have been able to take advantage of Facebook Connect. This new widget represents the first time anyone, using a small snippet of code, can include some of the functionality afforded by the new platform. They’ll still need to create an account (as demonstrated in the video below), but compared to the effort required to fully implement Facebook Connect, this should be much easier. Also important to note is the fact that Comment Box retains the Facebook ’style’, which for the first time will begin creeping beyond the borders of the social network. It’s also the first substantial widget created by Facebook, and the first in what will likely be a suite of similar widgets that could begin to encroach on the likes of JS-Kit , IntenseDebate (recently acquired by Automattic) and Disqus (some of which have already enabled Facebook Connect into their commenting widgets). At this point it’s unclear how much blog owners with other commenting systems already installed will benefit from the new widget. According to Facebook’s blog post, “via [Facebook] APIs, you can access related comments made on Facebook as well to bring the conversation together”, which could help drive more comments. But in the end all of this content is going to be going to Facebook, which established blog owners and publishers are not going to like. It’s also bringing Facebook one step closer to becoming the universal standard for social content across the web - an idea that may alarm advocates for open standards like OpenID . How To: Create a Comments Box with Facebook Connect in 5 Minutes from Pete Bratach on Vimeo . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The Top 21 Twitter Clients (According To TwitStat) Top
Some readers took issue with our list of Top 21 Twitter Applications (According To Compete) , wherein we tried to gauge which Twitter Web apps were gaining the most benefit in the form of trickle -down traffic from Twitter. Most Twitter apps don’t even register on the majority of site measurement services. We chose Compete because at least they had stats on a good many of them. We figured even if the absolute numbers are wrong, at least we’d get an interesting ranking. What Compete does not measure very well is Twitter traffic from desktop and mobile clients. One service that tries to measure that is Twitstat . So take your pick, clients versus Web apps. Which is the stronger list (meaning which list has the most companies likely to amount to something)? Below are the top 21 Twitter clients from its bigger list of 99, ranked by percentage of users who opt for that method of Tweeting. The Web ranks No. 1 with 32 percent (presumably that is Twitter.com itself), followed by Tweetdeck and Twhirl (there, are you happy Loic?), with 16 percent and 7 percent, respectively. Twitstat also counts services such as Ping.fm (no. 12) and FreindFeed (no. 14) as Twitter clients, although they do a lot more than just support Twitter. But then again, the majority of activity on those services is Twitter, so you could argue it either way. Rank Client % of users Tweets/user 1 (1) web 31.99 % 3.93 2 (2) TweetDeck 16.07 % 5.14 3 (4) twhirl 6.85 % 3.73 4 (3) twitterfeed 6.09 % 2.81 5 (5) Tweetie 3.66 % 2.38 6 (13) TwitterBerry 3.50 % 2.20 7 (8) txt 2.89 % 1.63 8 (6) twitterrific 2.59 % 1.79 9 (11) TwitterFox 2.51 % 2.79 10 (10) TwitPic 1.98 % 1.42 11 (7) mobile web 1.90 % 2.04 12 (12) Ping.fm 1.68 % 1.27 13 (9) TwitterFon 1.68 % 5.45 14 (14) FriendFeed 1.68 % 3.59 15 (15) Power Twitter 1.52 % 2.55 16 (16) Brightkite 1.14 % 2.07 17 (22) HootSuite 0.53 % 2.00 18 (26) twitthat 0.46 % 1.17 19 (30) DestroyTwitter 0.46 % 2.83 20 (24) Twittelator 0.38 % 3.80 21 (21) m.slandr.net 0.38 % 2.60 Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The Top 21 Twitter Applications (According to Compete) Top
We’ve accumulated a list of the twenty most popular Twitter applications, based on monthly unique visitor data from Compete . Twitpic , an app that lets users share photos on Twitter, took the top spot with 1,236,828 unique visitors in January. Tweetdeck , which came in second with 285,864 monthly visits, is a Twitter app that streamlines notifications and tweets. Third place went to Digsby (with 233,472 monthly visitors), an application that centralizes e-mail, IM and social networking accounts into one desktop program. With 149,812 visits, the fourth most popular app, Twitterfeed , offers to automatically tweet posts published on a user’s blog using RSS. A Twitter user ranking site, Twitterholic , is the fifth most popular application, with 147,164 people visiting monthly. Interestingly, two of the top twenty apps - Digsby and Hellotxt , an application that allows users to update their status across social networks - are not exclusively focused on Twitter. We recently wrote a detailed post on why we cover Twitter-related news so often , and we think the fact that there are so many applications developed as an offshoot of the microblogging system is another testament to the fact that Twitter is not just another startup. This is our attempt to figure out which ones are gaining the most traction. While we think this is a pretty comprehensive list based on the chosen proxy for popularity, it’s but a first pass at a list we hope will become more authoritative over time. Keep in mind that this methodology is only one measurement of engagement; many people use Twitter iPhone apps and other clients without ever visiting these services’ websites. Derivative site traffic is only a proxy for usage but the most easily measurable one. We also ran these sites though Quantcast and Google Trends, but chose to measure by Compete because it had the most comprehensive set of data, especially for the smaller sites. So the absolute numbers are unquestionably higher for some of these Twitter apps. If you know additional Twitter apps that should be listed here, or if you have better ideas on how to compile this list, please leave a message in the comments. It should also be noted that there is a plethora of Twitter application databases out there. Here are a few that we looked at particularly closely: Twitter Fan Wiki , Twitdom , Twapps , Twitstat , and TwitTown . Update: As many people are pointing out in the comments, Twhirl is not included in this list. That’s because the list is based on Compete data, and Compete measures Twhirl at under 13,000 visitors per month. As we said above, this is just the first pass at creating a list and we certainly realize Compete traffic is not a perfect way to gauge the popularity of applications. Update 2: So it looks like we owe a “mea culpa” on Twhirl, since we looked up the wrong address on Compete originally (it’s at .org not .com). Twhirl.org actually has 143,000 visitors, putting it at the #6 spot. Update 3 : By popular demand, here is a list of the Top 21 Twitter Clients (According To TwitStat) . Twitter Applications Monthly unique visits (Compete) 1. Twitpic 1,236,828 2. Tweetdeck 285,864 3. Digsby 233,472 4. Twittercounter 212,200 5. Twitterfeed 149,812 6. Twitterholic 147,164 7. Twhirl 143,333 8. Twitturly 88,793 9. Twtpoll 74,154 10. Retweetist 60,051 11. Tweepler 51,304 12. Hellotxt 45,754 13. Twitdom 45,411 14. Tweetscan 44,463 15. Tweetburner 41,754 16. Tweetvisor 31,621 17. Twittervision 30,708 18. Twitterfall 29,592 19. Monitter 25,433 20. Twibs 17,168 21. Twistori 16,229 22. Twitbin 14,986 Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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