Monday, February 23, 2009

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GumGum Adds B5Media, DailyFill To Its Image-Licensing Network Top
Image-licensing network GumGum is growing by leaps and bounds. Measured as an advertising network, it is now a Quantcast Top 100 site , reaching 13.7 million people in the U.S. and 23.5 million worldwide. More than 1,000 Web publishers are licensing images through GumGum, which allows them to pay based on how many people see the image or use them for free with embedded advertising. Today, GumGum is adding blog network B5Media and gossip site DailyFill to its customer list. They join Glam Media , MTV, and Gawker. Sites that rely on celebrity pics particularly like GumGum’s model. Sites contract directly with photo agencies, and GumGum keeps track of who is using what images and how many times they are viewed. That is what those Quantcast numbers are counting, thus GumGum acts like an ad network for images. Typical CPMs (cost per thousand views) are $0.15 - $1.00 per image for sites that opt to pay instead of accepting ads in their images. This kind of licensing model makes much more sense on the Web, where small sites want the same quality images as large sites but don’t have the resources to pay the same rates. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Microsoft Research: A Look At The Intriguing Social Desktop Prototype Top
Late last week, Microsoft Research shared a couple of things about Social Desktop , a prototype of which they are debuting at TechFest 2009 in a couple of days (along with dozens of other things). From the looks of it, this will be a much talked about product even if it stays in proof-of-concept phase for now. And if they decide to open it up even just a little, this could be a major breakthrough in tearing down the virtual wall between the desktop and the web, a trend we’ve been noticing for years. The service would essentially be capable of providing you with a secure unique ID for all the files and folders on your desktop, enabling users to share, comment on, tag and search files like photos and videos via a dedicated web page powered by .NET. Think of this as social URLs that link to files which could easily be pushed to third-party services like Twitter or Digg but also Microsoft’s own Windows Live Messenger without the need for you to copy, move or upload anything. Furthermore, social interaction around the files would be visible from inside the Windows desktop OS, blurring the line between the desktop and the web even more. You can have a URL drill into a subportion of a document or a PowerPoint deck, or data can come from a Web service or a database. Social Desktop is a local service that maps the user's local data into a .NET service bus service, enabling local data to be accessible through firewalls. Social Desktop also provides a Web-service view over the same data, with inherent RSS event streams for any container. New data sources can be mapped into the URL hierarchy, enabling a distributed view to be built. There are simple sharing paradigms that enable URLs to be shared temporarily or permanently. Social Desktop runs on Silverlight and leverages both the Windows OS and Windows Azure , the software giant’s very own cloud services platform which Microsoft announced in October 2008. TechFlash reviewed the service as well last week, and asked the project leads how Social Desktop differs from Live Mesh. The response came from Lili Cheng, who manages Microsoft Research’s Creative Systems Group: “In the Mesh model, you can almost imagine your PC being pushed to the cloud,” she explained. “In this, you can almost imagine the Web being embedded inside your desktop.” I don’t know about you, but to me this all sounds very promising and I’m curious if using Social Desktop would change my file sharing habits. Even with the plethora of free, simple and fast online backup and sharing services around, there’s still a trust barrier not easily overcome by startups who need to market their services extensively on an inherently low budget to reach any kind of scale. Besides, Social Desktop even relieves you from the not-so-cumbersome task of moving a file to the cloud in order to store or share it, so that makes for one hell of a substantial benefit compared to other services where you’d be required to register and do a series of actions before that happens. Unfortunately, a Microsoft spokesperson told NetworkWorld that Social Desktop at this point is merely a research prototype which will not be a feature in Windows 7, nor will it be available for public use. But I still want to get my hands on Windows 7 Beta (it makes use of the new operating system’s file-preview functions) right now even if just to test this application once (and if) they release it. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Bebo Zeroes In On Lifestreaming For The Masses; Gets Massive Bump From AIM Profiles Top
In the first of several major product changes that will sweep through AOL in the coming months, the company is adding more lifestreaming capabilities to its Bebo social network today, including activity stream updates from rival social networks Facebook and MySpace. It is also introducing a visual timeline called a “Lifestory” that puts uploaded photos, events, and (soon) videos into a scrollable, chronological series of postage stamp icons at the top of members’ profile pages. Eventually, people will be able to subscribe to other Lifestories, including those from brands and bands, and embed them in their own profile pages or elsewhere. The timeline will also become the centerpiece of a Bebo iPhone app coming out soon. The new features should all help to reinvigorate a site that has been in the doldrums lately. But Bebo’s biggest boost will come later this week when AOL migrates all of its AIM Profiles members over to Bebo on Wednesday and Thursday. This single move will more than double Bebo’s presence in the U.S., where AIM Profiles is even bigger than Bebo. According to comScore, Bebo’s unique U.S. visitors have been in decline the past few months to 5 million in January, whereas AIM Profiles has seen an upswing to 8.5 million. (See chart below). Worldwide, Bebo has 22.6 million monthly visitors. At the center of AOL’s new product strategy is its “Lifestream Platform.” Think of it as FriendFeed for the masses, with personal AIM updates mixed in. Already, Bebo members are able to keep up with their friends’ activities on other sites, such as Flickr, Twitter and Delicious. Now Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are being supported as well. Whenever any of your friends do something on these services, their activity stream shows up on your Bebo page. Once you link an account to Bebo, it automatically keeps track of all of your new friends on that service as well. (The technology is based on AOL’s acquisition of Socialthing! last summer). If you are an AIM member, all of your AIM buddies now seamlessly appear on Bebo. And through Bebo’s recently launched Social Inbox , you can get all of your lifestream updates, instant messages, and email in one massive feed. But is this a capitulation to the two big social networks out there? No, says David Liu, the senior vice president and general manager of AOL’s People Networks: We are not trying to connect everybody to everybody—that is Facebook—just to the content and people important to them. Bebo is just the beginning. He plans on rolling out the Lifestream platform across revamped versions of AOL’s IM clients (AIM and ICQ), mobile apps, and even other Websites later this year. Regardless of any second thoughts that AOL may have had after buying Bebo, it is a central part of its strategy today. AOL has a huge and active group of millions of IM users that it has been wanting to turn into a social network for years. Now it has a place for them to create profiles and interact, but more importantly it can take the central communication model of social networks—the lifestream—and pour it back into its IM clients. It is an ambitious undertaking. But will AOL’s take on lifestreaming be compelling enough to keep existing members from leaving? And more importantly, will it be compelling enough to attract new members from eleswhere on the Web? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
After MySpace And Facebook, Oodle To Power Brand New AOL Classifieds Top
Classifieds aggregation service provider Oodle is on a roll and definitely one of the startups worth following closely this year. After signing up two social networking juggernauts - both MySpace and Facebook - the company is now apparently also behind the just launched AOL Classifieds platform, per blog post by Greg Sterling . The news comes right after a significant financing round announced earlier this month, when 3 VC firms invested $5.6 million in the company, bringing the total in funding raised to a healthy $21.6 million . Meanwhile, its traffic continues to surge (see Crunchbase profile for some upward-pointing visitor number graphs). I would be very surprised if Oodle ends 2009 without being acquired for a price that puts a big smile on the faces of their investors. For context, from the release: AOL Classifieds is expected to serve as a platform for sellers to promote their listings by leveraging the reach of Oodle’s network of more than 250 partner sites. Buyers can expect to find deals with access to more than 40 million listings aggregated from more than 80,000 different sites. In addition, AOL Classifieds links consumers directly to classifieds listings on other properties within the AOL network, including AOL Autos, AOL Jobs, AOL Personals, and AOL Real Estate. AOL Classifieds is the latest addition to the AOL Local Network, which is an online local network with a monthly reach of 54 million unduplicated unique visitors. In addition to the launch of AOL Classifieds in the U.S., a site for Canada is also available beginning today. An AOL Classifieds site for the UK will be launching later this week. (Via Techmeme ) Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Kyte Launches Turn-Key iPhone App Platform Top
Given the incredible popularity of the iPhone, many entertainers (and the studios backing them) are eager to establish a presence on Apple’s App Store, but don’t necessarily want to invest in the resources needed to independently develop their own iPhone applications. Today Kyte has launched its iPhone Apps Framework - a turn-key solution that allows Kyte partners to create applications that can include video, live chat, and monetization options with a minimal amount of development costs. Alongside the launch of the new platform, Kyte is announcing five artists from IGA records who have already released their iPhone applications, including the following free apps [all iTunes links]: The All American Rejects , Keri Hilson , Lady Gaga , The Pussycat Dolls , and Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em . Besides Twitter feeds, RSS, and chat, Kyte also offers a listing of each artist’s most recent videos taken using Kyte.tv ’s mobile phone video apps. And, perhaps most importantly for the artists, each app features a list of links to songs in the music section of Apple’s iTunes store. Kyte isn’t the first company to launch a platform for branded iPhone applications. Other options include Infomedia’s Mobile Syndication Solutions , through which MC Hammer built his app . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Skimlinks Gets $1m To Give Publishers Control Of Affilate Ads Top
Funny how a recession concentrates the mind. In just over a year UK startup Skimbit has made the full journey from Web 2.0 era “decision-making tool” with a vague business model about affiliate advertising, to re-engineer as an affiliate aggregator for publishers. Re-launching as Skimlinks , it now aggregates 11 affiliate networks for clients like The Daily Mail newspaper in London. The move means it has now attracted first round investment led by Sussex Place Ventures with participation from UK government body NESTA (yes, in the UK there are public funds for startups), The Accelerator Group , and Angels Duncan Jennings ( eConversions ) and Alex Hoye ( Latitude Group ). The amount was undisclosed but is understood to be in the vicinity of just over $1 million (£700,000). Competitors like the older Dianomi and Chicago-based Science Revenue appear to have more clients, but given they are North America focused, Skimlinks has an opportunity to break out more in the UK and Europe. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Put This On Your T-Shirt: Spreadshirt Scores €10 Million Top
German custom apparel company Spreadshirt has secured €10 million in funding from Kennet Partners and returning investor Accel Partners , which led an undisclosed round of Series A funding for the company back in 2006. Spreadshirt, which competes internationally with companies like CafePress and Zazzle , was founded in 2002 by graduate student Lukasz Gadowski (currently still acting as Chairman of the company) and has become one of the most significant players in the field of personalization and online ordering of custom goods and clothing over the years. The company also lets private individuals and commercial organizations set up their own online merchandising outlets as resellers of the Spreadshirt service. Spreadshirt says the financing will be used to develop its online platform and its push into the North American market, where its two main competitors, venture-backed CafePress (Foster City, CA) and Zazzle (Redwood City, CA) are based. According to a January company blog post , 1 million t-shirts were sold in 2008 via Spreadshirt. They’re also open about the missed growth estimates put forward at the end of 2007: growth was at 40% for the year instead of the aimed-for 50-80%. As a result, the company was recently forced to do a round of lay-offs and reorganize some of its departments. (Source: Deutsche Startups ) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
More Consolidation In Europe: GoAdv To Acquire LeGuide.com For €50 Million Top
After Meetic buying the European operations of Match.com last week, here’s another sign the online media landscape in Europe is changing in the face of a dire economy: pan-European online media company GoAdv will later today announce that it has proposed to acquire LeGuide.com , an 11-year old network of shopping portals operational in 14 European countries, for €50 million (about €64.5 million), and retain all of its staff and offices. GoAdv currently holds 395,648 shares in LeGuide.com, which is approximately 11.8% of the share capital and 10.8% of the voting rights. The company states that it informed the LeGuide group on 18 December last year that it had crossed the 5% and 10% thresholds in the capital and voting rights earlier that month. The move would instantly make GoAdv a significant player in the continent’s online and social shopping field, now that it holds cards in terms of content, online marketing and shopping with offices in Ireland (Dublin), France, Germany and Italy. In case you don’t remember, GoAdv acquired Excite Europe in October 2007 and went on to raise €11 million by issuing convertible bonds in the Summer of 2008, prompting TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher to predict that they’d go on a buying spree. Turns out he was right. GoAdv, founded in 2004, says it counted 17.6 million unique monthly users across its network - which includes Excite properties as well as the BetterDeals site network - in November 2008, while LeGuide.com welcomed 14.8 million unique monthly users in December 2008 if you add traffic for DooYoo , a shopping and review site the LeGuide group acquired last year. With this acquisition, which still needs to be approved, GoAdv is betting hard on the estimated growth of e-commerce and social shopping in Europe for the years to come. Finnish startup Fruugo is currently readying the launch of a ‘new breed’ of social shopping service in Europe, so we’ll be curious to see if it will be able to compete with GoAdv. Update - in case you’re interested in the financials: GoAdv will offer shareholders in LeGuide.com the opportunity to exchange their shares in a voluntary mixed public offer according to the following parity: 5 GoAdv shares along with a €45 cash adjustment for every 6 shares contributed in LeGuide.com, i.e. an offer of €15.19 for each LeGuide.com share, based on the 3 month weighted average price of a GoAdv share. The terms of the voluntary mixed public offer would express a 9.2% premium in relation to the 1 month weighted average price and 28.8% in relation to the 3 month weighted average price of a LeGuide.com share. Taking 12 December 20083 as a reference, the terms of the offer express a 44.7% premium in relation to the 1 month weighted average price and 33.2% in relation to the 3 month weighted average price. If all the shares in Leguide.com (watered stock) were contributed to the voluntary mixed public offer, this would represent a capital increase of 2,532,390 new GoAdv shares. A shareholder in GoAdv would then be diluted by 28.2%. Update 2: it’s been brought to our attention that the takeover bid is considered hostile by LeGuide.com, who has stated that it sees little synergies in a combination of both companies for now. To be continued. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Letter to Obama: What the Car Industry Needs Is A Steve Jobs Top
Editor’s Note : There are not a lot of fans of the $20 billion bailout of the auto industry outside of Detroit. But if the government is going to get involved, Spark Capital’s Todd Dagres believes it should insist on new leadership. In an open letter to President Barack Obama, Dagres argues that the car industry needs no less than a Steve Jobs to save it. In fact, he suggests that Jobs himself would be the best person to fill that role if his health allows him to do so. If not, there are other capable leaders in Silicon Valley that might bring much-needed change to the auto industry. But a product=specific approach is worth considering, even one which results in American car companies no longer building any cars , but just designing them. After all, Apple doesn’t manufacture its own computers. The letter is below. Barack Obama President of the United States Dear President Obama: I am writing you with a suggestion on how to deal with the US auto industry crisis. The recession and the meltdown of financial markets are the catalysts, but the root of the problem is the manner in which these colossal auto companies have been managed. It's time to face the truth: The people running the US auto companies are officious bumblers, the products stink, and the unions are a parasitic drain on the business. And yet the Government seems content to throw billions of dollars at the problem. How can we bail out the same people that presided over the destruction of the industry? It is painfully clear that they are incapable of producing products that can compete successfully with German and Japanese rivals. As you well know, if GM and Chrysler fail, the US auto industry will suffer a fatal blow – along with our entire economy. We must find a way to not only save the industry, but also make it competitive in the global marketplace. Cars are part of our national fiber, based on an industry that includes a massive ecosystem of vehicles and parts that stretch across our people and economy. However, bailing out the US car makers and investing tax payers’ money in inferior products is no solution. We must strive for a level of competitiveness in the auto industry similar to that which we have attained in the Information Technology industry. Our country's leadership in the auto industry lies in developing future cars that are more like computers with wheels than mechanical sleighs addicted to dinosaur juice. The future of the automotive industry will be defined by electronics and software. The good news is that there is no country with more talent and capability in this arena than the United States. Now the suggestion: Draft Steve Jobs (his health willing) to run a combined GM and Chrysler. After all, who has done a better job developing and marketing products consumers want to buy? Who has been more successful keeping the US ahead of other nations in competitive, technology-based markets? Mr. Jobs has also done right by his shareholders. GM and Chrysler have far too many product lines, most of which are uncompetitive. To compete in the global auto industry, they must develop Macs, iPods and iPhones with wheels. Rather than pouring billions of dollars into these failed companies, why not replace the current management with people capable of changing the way cars are designed, manufactured, powered and sold? I believe Mr. Jobs is the best choice to lead this effort. As has been widely reported, Mr. Jobs has some health issues and it is possible that he may not be able to dedicate the time and effort required to put the US auto industry back on firm footing. Only Mr. Jobs knows if he is up to the task. If anyone can convince him to take this on, I suspect it’s you. Should Mr. Job's be unable to take on the position, in my opinion, great technology leaders including John Chambers at Cisco Systems or Craig Barrett at Intel would also be worthy of your consideration. Both are great Americans and capable of leading the charge. It is time for us to put tax payer money behind an executive capable of transforming the automotive industry. I respectfully submit that neither the current leadership behind these companies nor government officials are the answer. We need entrepreneurs, consumer product savants and creative managers capable of effecting change. We need great leaders who can transform cars into computers rather than horse-less carriages. You were elected to the Presidency based on a mandate for change. Making the necessary moves to transform the US auto industry would be a great way to walk the walk. This challenge is a once in a lifetime opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of jobs, hundreds of billions in future GDP, and prevent further deterioration of our nation's manufacturing sector. This is the time for great Americans to be called upon to serve. I can think of no better leader than Steve Jobs to support America in this time of national crisis. President Obama, I urge you to seriously consider recruiting Mr. Jobs to manage the revitalization of the US auto industry that is so desperately needed. Thank you for your consideration of this suggestion. Respectfully yours, Todd Dagres, Founder and General Partner, Spark Capital Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Thummit Scopes Out Twitter To Rate The Oscars In Real Time Top
Thummit , a startup that evaluates Twitter messages to determine what subject they’re relevant to and if the sentiment is positive or negative, is running a special site for tonight’s Oscars ceremony. The site is currently monitoring tweets regarding dozens of actors and films, allowing users to quickly determine at a glance who is faring the best. It’s tough to tell exactly how well the sentiment recognition engine is working, as all the tweets appear to be shown in a single list without any indication as to whether they were deemed to be positive or negative. But there are definitely some clear trends - for example, Philip Seymour Hoffman has a lowly 10% approval rating, as it seems that many people really don’t like his hat . For more of the Oscars on the web, check out Betfair , which has real time odds for the winners in each category. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Friedman Misses the Point and Economic Reality of Silicon Valley Top
Thomas Friedman is a very smart man and a very good writer. He's certainly sold more books than I ever will. But in reading his latest column arguing $20 billion in bailout money should go to VCs not auto companies, one thing was crystal clear: This man doesn't live in Silicon Valley. Has he even ever visited? I totally agree we shouldn't be bailing out "loser" companies and industries. Car companies should be going bankrupt, and their stockholders and bondholders should lose their money for betting on an industry that clearly wasn't adapting and was spending like drunken trust fund kids. (Trust me, they're worse than sailors.) Yes, the inevitable job losses will be hard to absorb. But these companies will fail eventually, so you're really just stalling when it comes to the pain, and inevitably dragging out the recession longer—especially in areas like the rust belt that were hurting before the recession hit. My above views are precisely why I live in Silicon Valley: A place that not only lacks an artificial reverence for an old stodgy company, it actually celebrates when a younger, nimble startup takes it down. How, could Friedman get why the Valley continually creates strong multi-billion dollar companies and then turn around and propose a government subsidy for us? Investments in agencies like DARPA are one thing, but government subsidies are crutches for non-performing industries. And hit by the recession or no, Silicon Valley doesn't want or need that crutch. Before we get into the economics of his argument, let's start with the facts. Friedman writes, "Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners — university endowments and pension funds — are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way.” Um, venture capital firms are not short on cash. Far from it. The precise problem with the venture industry is too much cash in fact, especially given increasingly paltry returns. Yes, investors in VC firms are pulling back and some are even reportedly defaulting on capital calls. But this is after a bubbly run-up where a boutique industry exploded. In the last fifteen years, the amount of money pouring into venture capital has more than doubled. Look at returns: The industry is having a hard enough time investing $30 billion a year. Another $20 billion from the government? Are you kidding? What's more, there was never a shakeout in venture firms after the year 2000 crash—it's only now working its way through the system. So the firms that may be finding themselves short of cash? Those are our own version of the "loser" firms – to borrow Friedman's phrase—that should be shaken out of the venture economy. Not only do the top 20 venture firms have plenty of money, the top 100 firms could find a way to raise more capital if they needed to. But odds are they don't, because funds work in multi-year cycles, and not everyone is forced to fundraise in 2009. In short: The core assumption to Friedman’s argument just isn't reality. And call me crazy, but if you are throwing my tax dollars after an industry, shouldn't the so-called "need" be based on– oh, I don't know– an economic reality? Point two: Venture capitalists don't want a bailout. As stated above, they don't need the money, and startup rule number one is you don't give away equity for something you don't need. Friedman proposes VCs would give the government 20% of the proceeds from an IPO or acquisition and keep 80% for themselves. [UPDATE: Apologies, watching Oscars and accidentally swapped the percentages! 80% for taxpayers, 20% for VCs. More of a sucker's bet.] He ignores carve outs for employees and founders in this equation, which cuts down the VC take further. Given how rare it is to have a bona fide Google-style home run these days as many of the core tech markets that have been the golden geese of venture capital mature—why on earth would a venture capitalist give up 20% of the next Facebook over a silly little thing like needing more capital? As a Facebook (and more recently Twitter ) well knows, no matter what the market is doing a scorching-hot startup can always find money. Bailouts are by nature adverse selection: The only people that would take the government up on this deal are companies who are the GM-versions of startups and venture firms. Friedman further says in the column that "Bailing out the losers is not how we got rich as a country, and it is not how we'll get out of this crisis." Agreed. But what country got rich by bailing out winners? Is that even a concept that makes sense? I can't imagine a greater a waste of shareholder money than giving it to people who don’t need it and aren’t asking for it. At least when it comes to the car companies, we'd be (temporarily) saving jobs. Most shocking to me, Friedman invoked one of the most repeated Valley mantras to prove his point when he wrote, "Some of our best companies, such as Intel, were started in recessions, when necessity makes innovators even more inventive and risk-takers even more daring." Mr. Friedman: Read the second half of your own sentence again. The reason recession-born companies are so inventive and daring is because founders are forced to work within constraints, precisely because it is harder to raise capital. Nothing kills a great idea like too much cash. Unless it's a flood of too much taxpayer cash, because then we all lose. I think all taxpayers should be grateful that President Barack Obama spends more time in the Valley than Thomas Friedman. I know I am. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Hot News: The AP Is Living In The Last Century Top
A case between the Associated Press and All Headline News is moving forward based on a 90-year-old legal doctrine which may no longer be applicable in the Internet age. A federal judge ruled that the AP can sue AHN for stealing its “hot news.” The AP’s beef against AHN appears to have more merit than when it tried to go after bloggers for merely linking to its stories without changing the headlines. AHN itself sells news feeds and headlines to other Websites, newspapers, and digital signage companies. The AP alleges that AHN simply copies the AP’s headlines and news without permission and without paying a syndication fee, and then resells those headlines and news stories as part of its own feeds with all AP accreditation stripped out. If that is what happened, it does sound like pure theft. But rather than simply sue AHN for copyright infringement, the AP is also invoking the “hot news” doctrine, which treat news scoops as a form of property. Hot news is defined as time-sensitive news that is gathered at a cost, which a competitor then reproduces, free-riding on the original news-gathering organization’s efforts. The Prior Art blog has a good discussion of the legal history (sentence bolded for emphasis): The “hot news” doctrine that The Associated Press now wants to enforce is actually a product of a much earlier AP litigation. “Hot news” originates in a lawsuit that AP brought 90 years ago against a competing news service, International News Service (INS), which was owned by Hearst and later became part of United Press International (UPI). “In 1918, INS was unable to provide its clients with news stories from the war zones because, having been accused of violating wartime censorship restrictions, it was barred from use of the British and French mail and cables,” writes the AP in its brief against AHN. INS solved that problem by grabbing early editions printed in AP newspapers and sending them to its own clients. INS even bribed employees of the AP and AP member newspapers to get AP’s news before it was published. Ultimately, the Second Circuit found that AP had a property right, separate from copyright, in the news that it sold, “arising from the labor and expense involved in its gathering and disseminating that news.” This right could only be used against competitors and only lasted as long as the news had commercial value . The case then went to the Supreme Court, which voted 5-3 in favor of the AP’s “quasi property” and upheld the 2nd Circuit decision. Let me repeat that bolded part: “This right could only be used against competitors and only lasted as long as the news had commercial value.” Basically, the judge says the AP can try to prove AHN stole it’s “hot news”. But what constitutes “hot news” in an age of instant communications? And how long does it last. In 1918, “hot news” traveled by mail and telegraph. It could last hours or even days. Today, a true scoop lasts for about a minute. The AP would have to show instances of articles where not only the AP broke the news, but was the only outlet to get the original story—something rarer and rarer when anyone can publish news over the Internet. It also raises some troubling questions. Is the AP going to start suing bloggers or news aggregators who take an AP headline and excerpt and rebroadcast it to the world, even with a proper link and attribution? And what happens when the AP is scooped by bloggers, which happens every day. Should bloggers sue the AP? Will people who break news on Twitter claim scoop status, and sue all the bloggers and news outlets who pile on afterward? It could get pretty messy. Hot news is a concept best left in the twentieth century. Lawsuits like this one just brings home the point that the AP is more concerned with defending its antiquated business model than with moving forward and adapting to the realities of today’s information flows. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
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 * Update: LastFMLoveTweet is a mashup that automatically pushes a tweet from you carrying a track’s artist and name that you’ve indicated as a tune you loved on Last.fm * Update: Tweekly.fm will get your weekly artist data from Last.FM and send a tweet to your profile listing your top 3 listened artists for the week plus their respective play counts. * Update: this site tracks the top music being listened to on Twitter 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. Update: it’s not Twitter-specific, but you can use Favtape to put together your own playlists / online mixtapes and share them on Twitter. 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. Update 3 (2/22/09): Garrett got back to me. He responds: The data we make available to labels is aggregate data about their artists - it’s a slightly more detailed version of what you see on the site. We release no data linking users and plays to any third parties. The only data we provide to labels (in addition to the data publicly available on their artist pages) are historical graphs of listeners and plays. There’s no way to link these to individual users. If a label was trying to work out who’s been listening to their leaked track, the closest they can get would be to look at the publicly-available listeners on the music pages. I would doubt that would be enough evidence to convict someone, and users can opt out of being displayed there in their settings. 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 : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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