Wednesday, April 22, 2009

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Core MySpace Executive Team "Definitely Out." Expect Announcement Soon. Top
An update to my post earlier today that News Corp., under new CEO of Digital Media Jonathan Miller , is looking to replace MySpace CEO and cofounder Chris DeWolfe . We’ve confirmed that things are actually moving much faster than we first understood, and that a decision has already been made to terminate Chris DeWolfe’s employment with MySpace. We’ve also been told that the core MySpace executive team will follow. MySpace has a dozen or so “execs,” but our guess is that it’s the very senior team that will be terminated: cofounders Chris DeWolfe (CEO), Tom Anderson (President) and Aber Whitcomb (CTO). Removing any more of the team would be much more than a morale blow to the company - it would also bring operations to a screaming halt. Our understanding is that a new CEO has already been recruited and is in the final stages of contract negotiations. An announcement could come as soon as this week or next. We’ll be posting a shortlist of who we believe are the likely candidates for the CEO position shortly. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Social Profiling Top
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Yahoo and now Google. What does these have in common? If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a profile on all of them. And those are just the obvious ones, you probably have a bunch of other profiles on a series of other networks too. The situation has become untenable. Imagine if you wanted to update one piece of information on all of them — like I recently had to do with a job change. That’s a lot of work for such a minor tweak. But if you don’t do it across the board, there will be incorrect information about you out there on the web. Information that is always just a search away. Sure, there are calls for profile standards, and even some services that promise to update your information across multiple networks in one fell swoop — but let’s be honest, the only way you’re ever going to get a unified profile, is if one of the aforementioned services gets so big that it becomes the de-facto standard. Facebook is getting closer to that than anyone else with over 250 million users and rising, but Google may have well as have taken a crowbar to its knees today. By adding its own profiles to search results on Google for names, Google has created yet another profile that we need to maintain. While that’s good for Google — Google Profiles have been around for a while, but no one used them — it’s more work for us, and seems to all but ensure that one network will not rule them all. And we can all say that we’re going to drop all networks besides the one we use the most, but we won’t. For most people, the social graph is different on each of them, and there’s some reason to stick around there. If nothing else, it’s more of a pain to remove yourself from a service than it is just not to update your profile anymore. I can’t even begin to imagine how many profiles I have out there that haven’t been updated in a year or more. And even if we did drop all our networks but one, another hot new network would rise up and we’d all sign up for it, renewing the cycle. Just look at Twitter. Everyone is now signing up for it, and while it doesn’t have a robust profile right now, it probably will at some point. And services like Facebook Connect offer the promise of transferring your profile information to other services, but do you think Google is going to use that? I don’t think so. Why would it? It has a competing product it’s trying to push with Google Friend Connect. And it can act as nice at it wants, say the right things in public, and add links to Facebook under your Google Profile result, but do you really think Google wants Facebook winding up as the one profile you maintain? No. And vice versa. And so we remain at a stand still. It’s one of those situations where, while competition may not be a bad thing, it can be a frustrating thing. I wonder how long until we see Yahoo add profiles to its search results? And maybe Microsoft will further its relationship with Facebook to add limited profile information from there to its queries. It’s already a mess, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better — if it ever does. Update : As Google’s Kevin Marks notes in the comments, Google did try to use Facebook data with Friend Connect, before it was blocked almost a year ago. Of course, Friend Connect would basically negate the need for a lot of what Facebook Connect does, so what we have here are competing platforms, and a stand-off — like I said above. [photo: flickr/ andrew mason ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
MiVitals Can't Find Pulse For Online Health Records Top
Online health records is a rapidly growing segment of the health 2.0 world— Google Health, Microsoft’s HealthVault, WebMD, Aetna's SmartSource (via a partnership with Healthline), and Revolution Health (now part of Waterfront Media ), are just a few of the many online platforms that let consumers organize their health records online in a secure portal. In a space where you are competing with prestigious medical institutions and platforms backed by the largest tech companies in the world, there’s not much room for the small, bootstrapped startup. Unfortunately, miVitals, an Australia-based startup that provides an online storage platform for consumer health records, will be shutting its doors in mid-May due to lack of funding. miVitals, which was primarily financed by angel investors, is a free service that let you store medical records, manage accounts for your family, schedule appointments, and share this information with your health care professionals. It seems that in the online medical records sector, partnerships with pharmacies, medical professionals, and institutions are key to making the platform efficient and more consumer-friendly. At some point in everyone’s lives, you realize the difficulty (and inefficiency) of getting your records faxed from a health care provider to an insurance company or another doctor. One of the primary virtues of an online database is that it streamlines the sharing process of medical records, and partnerships are key to making this process work. miVitals was lacking in this area; the startup had only developed partnerships with Australia-based medical companies and institutions despite the site’s aim to be an international resource for consumers across the world. Google Health has partnerships with pharmacies (Google Health recently struck a deal with CVS), insurance companies, hospitals and labs to integrate data from medical professionals with consumer information. HealthVault’s online platform has been integrated with several large medical institutions over the country, including The Mayo Clinic, The Cleveland Clinic, and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. And Microsoft has been able to sign in insurance companies-last year, Microsoft struck a deal with Kaiser to offer HealthVault’s health record site service to Kaiser’s members. With competition coming from Google, Microsoft, WebMD, and more, it can be tough for a smaller competitor to find footing in the space. And the current economic crisis and lack of available funding isn’t helping. Perhaps the death of miVitals a sign that there isn’t room for small startups in the already crowded online medical records market. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Apple Will Hit A Billion Apps At 1:24:06 AM PST On April 23 (As Of Right Now) Top
We all know that Apple is closing in on a billion app downloads in the App Store. Currently, the counter on the main Apple.com claims it’s about 10 million away from the major number. But, Apple apparently already knows when the billion mark is going to be passed, because the billion celebration page is ready to go and can easily be accessed, right now. And we know the exact time Apple is predicting when it will cross the mark — at least, right now (more below): 1:24:06 AM PST on April 23. Simply go to your system settings and set the date and time to anytime after that mark, and reload the main Apple page. You’ll be greeted by big picture on the landing page reading, “Thanks a billion. Over a billion downloads in just nine months. Only on the App Store.” And actually, if you change to a before the mark Apple has set, you can see the counter advance closer and closer towards the billion mark. Of course, this means that the number is at least somewhat tied (update below) to your computer’s clock rather than an actual billion app sales mark being triggered. Not that it’s all that surprising. After all, with so many apps being sold every second, can you really expect Apple to do anything other than estimate? This would be an issue though if said it was giving away a prize to the person who specifically downloaded the billionth app (it’s not). Update : It looks like Apple is constantly tweaking the exact timing based on the following text file , as commenter Robert notes below. As of right now, the rate of Apps being sold appears to be slowing down, pushing the time out a bit. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
News Corp. Exploring MySpace CEO Options (Updated) Top
Update: More information here . MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe has been with the company since its August 2003 launch, seeing it through a 2005 $580 million sale to News Corp. and growing revenue to something approaching a billion dollars a year. 130 million people around the world visit MySpace every month, making it one of the largest sites on the Internet. And now it may be time for him to step down. He and co-founder Tom Anderson are reportedly making an aggregate of $30 million/year under a contract signed in 2007. That contract terminates this October and must be renegotiated soon. But MySpace is under a new boss, Jonathan Miller , who joined News Corp. last month as CEO of Digital Media. MySpace is one of his assets, and he may be inclined to make a change in management. DeWolfe is also dealing with the recent departure of three of his top executives, and more may be on the way. A top headhunting firm is starting to scour for possible replacements. We’ve spoken directly with one person who was contacted by the firm and asked to give recommendations for possible candidates. One source close to News Corp. says that no firm has been officially retained to do a search, but won’t comment further or make any explanation as to why calls are being made. One thing DeWolfe has always had is a close working relationship with News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who has protected him in past conflicts with other News Corp. execs. But that very relationship has been a thorn in the side of his various managers over the years. There are people at News Corp. gunning to knock DeWolfe out of the company. The question is whether Murdoch and Miller will protect him. And, of course, there is always the chance that DeWolfe will simply leave the company. Its high growth days are likely behind it, a new type of manager may be better suited to running the company going forward. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Carol Bartz Still Looking For Wow, Drops F-Word During First Quarter Earnings Call. Top
Yhoo 1 Q09 Earnings Presentation Final View more presentations from guestdddfda4 . After spending a lot of time speaking with Yahoo employees, partners, and customers, new CEO Carol Bartz has come to realize the importance of giving consumers a “Wow experience,” she told investors in the first quarter conference call. But they have yet to experience that from owning the stock. Yahoo reported a 13 percent decline in revenues for the first quarter of 2009 to $1.6 billion, while net income dropped 78 percent to $118 million. Google, in comparison, last week reported a 3 percent decline in first quarter, but was able to manage a 9 percent increase in net income. Update : As a comment points out, Google saw a 3% decrease in revenue from Q42008 to Q12009, but saw a 6% growth year over year for Q1. Yahoo saw losses for both metrics. Diving into the numbers, search advertising revenues on Yahoo sites declined 3 percent to $399 million, while display advertising on Yahoo sites declined 13 percent to $371 million. The biggest decline, however, was from affiliate ad network revenues, which were down 16 percent to $511 million. Page view growth also slowed down to 8 percent from 20 percent growth a year ago and 15 percent growth during the fourth quarter. On the search side, query volume grew but revenue-per-search declined as commercial queries and click-through rates saw weakness. Bartz puts a positive spin on Yahoo’s results and claims that it is actually gaining share of advertising dollars compared to the overall industry: I think our search results, . . . it is like online window shopping, people are grazing around, just not clicking to buy. Marketing budgets have been slashed a heck of a lot more than any declines in these metrics. It is my belief that we must be gaining share. Bartz announced another round of layoffs, which will affect 5 percent of the workforce, or about 675 people (out of 13,500). The cuts will take place within the next two weeks. Bartz also indicated during the conference call that she is focusing on the products and properties which drive the bulk of Yahoo’s traffic and revenues, including the homepage, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Mobile. Her three-pronged strategy is to globalize the platform, build “fantastic products to deeply engage users, and to improve the return from its advertising platforms. Asked about discussions with Microsoft, Bartz had no comment. Later on she did manage to drop the F-word, though (but quickly apologized for the slip). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Amazon Jumps Into The HD Stream As Well. Doesn't Really Make A Splash. Top
With all of the online video services now offering much of the same ( sometimes lousy ) content, the new differentiating factor seems to be high definition quality. Microsoft has been there for a while (with videos over Xbox Live), as has Apple (over the Apple TV), and now Amazon is joining the gang. The new HD option for Amazon Video On Demand is available starting today for some 500 movies and television shows. And the HD content will work with the set-top boxes Amazon streams to including the Roku and TiVo Series 3 devices. In addition, Amazon is launching On Demand on select Panasonic televisions today as well. So Amazon is getting into the same HD streaming market that everyone else is. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any real differentiating factor from the other services. Sure, it’s nice for people who already use Amazon On Demand, but there is no real reason to switch to use it if you are already using one of the other services. Though, it is nice that the service is available on more devices than say, iTunes or Xbox Live. But the prices, for example, are the same as iTunes ($3.99 to $4.99 to rent an HD movie — and $2.99 to buy an HD show). And the content looks to be pretty much the same as well. Amazon, in its press release, is touting the availability of the newly released Frost/Nixon . Well, I just watched it last night, in HD, on my Apple TV. And it’s content that’s the main problem for all of these services. Apple has been expanding its HD offerings, but still only has a few hundred, several months after launching. Xbox Live’s content is the same way. Apple just rolled out the ability to buy (rather than rent) HD movies, and that is so far restricted to just a handful of movies. 500 HD titles is a good number for Amazon to launch with, but it’s a drop in the bucket of the 40,000 On Demand titles it offers. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google Analytics API Now In Public Beta, Desktop Reporting Takes Stats Offline Top
Moments ago, Google released the public beta version of the Google Analytics API after running a private beta program with hundreds of developers for about a year. When Google announced a great deal of updates to Google Analytics last October, the company already said the API was ‘coming soon’, but obviously it took them another 6 months to effectively start rolling out. With the Google Analytics data API, developers can develop client applications that access Google Analytics data and subsequently present it in new, innovative ways. By combining a wide variety of metrics and dimensions, an API-based client application can deliver custom reports, more refined data or new visualizations that in turn provide new ways to analyze the performance of websites and web applications. From the blog post announcing the release: The Analytics API is a Google Data API. This is the same API protocol for Google Calendar, Finance and Webmaster Tools. If you’ve used any of these APIs, the Google Analytics Data Export API will look very familiar to you. For the JavaScript and Java programming languages, we’ve provided client libraries to abstract and simplify the process. We’re also working on supporting more programming languages. In the meantime, for any programming language you want to use you can make requests directly to the API over HTTP and access the data in XML. One of the applications that was built using the API and which is being featured on the launch website is Polaris , one of the products built by Desktop Reporting , which aims to bring Google Analytics to the desktop. The full suite, a full-featured Adobe AIR-powered GA reporting tool called Dopac, is still a couple of weeks away from launching, but Polaris already brings some of the data to the desktop in the form of cross-platform widgets and is definitely worth checking out. There are 8 standard reports available, and the app is completely free if used for only one website (an annual $15 fee is required to extend it to more websites). It’s targeted to marketers, project and account managers who are looking for an intuitive way to check out basic stats for a website they’re tracking from their desktops. Desktop Reporting was pioneered by just one guy, Nicolas Lierman from Belgium. (Disclosure: the startup was one of the presenting finalists at my conference Plugg , held last month in Brussels) Lierman has been working on bringing Google Analytics offline for quite a while (in fact, we covered one of the first iterations of his desktop application back in September 2007), and besides the full reporting suite and the now launched Polaris, he also has two other GA-related products in the pipeline (check his website for more info). Also worth chekcing out is Actual Metrics’ Android application for Google Analytics. It will be interesting to see what other third-party developers come up with now that the API is finally out there. Google already put some examples online in this gallery , but if you have anything cool to announce in the future, you know where to find us. The company also set up a Google Analytics API Notify email group so you can get the key announcements on feature updates, code changes and other service related news that relate to the API that way, and / or you can join the Google Analytics APIs Group . CrunchBase Information Google Analytics Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google Profiles Finally Have A (Big) Purpose: Appearing In Google Search Results Top
After over a year of sitting in relative obscurity, Google Profiles are finally getting their due. Beginning today Google search queries for names will now feature a section dedicated to Google Profile results at the bottom of every page. These profiles allow people to fill out their basic information, like current employer and links to various web presences, without having to maintain a personal website and try to struggle to maintain a high page-rank. This is huge news for several reasons. For one, Google is beginning to encroach on a territory long dominated by LinkedIn . For years, when I’ve wanted to learn about someone’s basic information and web presences (assuming they weren’t in CrunchBase), I’ve generally looked at LinkedIn, where many people have at least filled out their basic background info, a website, and some contact information. Google Profiles may not have LinkedIn’s social graph, but as a web directory they’ll work just fine, and they’ll have the benefit of appearing on the front page of search results every time . It’s also obviously huge news to the countless people who happen to share the same name as a popular athlete, celebrity, or business person. Take former TechCrunch writer Mark Hendrickson for example, who happens to share a name with Mark Hendrickson , a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles who dominates most of the front page of search results for the name. Under the new system, both Marks would be listed as thumbnails toward the bottom of the first page of results. Maybe. Google is allocating four thumbnail spots to these profiles at the bottom of search results - anyone who doesn’t appear in those four spots can be found by clicking a link to show more results. Obviously, nabbing one of these four thumbnail spots is going to very desirable to some people. But true to Google form, the choices for the thumbnails are driven by a mysterious algorithm. Google wouldn’t offer too many details on how the algorithm works, other than that it will heavily favor profiles that are ‘complete’ - in fact, when you fill out your profile it will indicate if Google has deemed it ‘complete’ enough to appear as a thumbnail. But even if you get the OK, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever get one of the four spots. Unfortunately, there are some issues with the way Google profiles are named that may deter some users from taking advantage of them. Google is intent on using the same ‘name space’ as Gmail - that is to say, if my Gmail account was jason @gmail.com, my Google Profile would be found at http://www.google.com/profiles/ Jason . This is primarily to prevent confusion, but it raises privacy concerns for anyone who isn’t too keen on having their Email address publicly available on the internet (you can always opt out, but then you’re forced to create a new account if you want to appear in the listings). Update: You can also choose to substitute a string of numbers for your profile URL instead of your account name, though this obviously wouldn’t be ideal for business cards or other methods of sharing. You can register a new account and get a recently-launched vanity listing , but nearly all of the ‘good’ names have been registered by Gmail users over the years so your profile will likely wind up looking something like jason83472. Despite these frustrations, this is a new feature that I suspect will prove immensely popular - and important. To help promote it, Google is going to start routing any queries for the name ‘me’ (a play on the phrase “Google me..”) to a link to create a new Google profile. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Should Ad Networks Pay Publishers For Stolen Content? The Fair Syndication Consortium Thinks So. Top
As newspapers and other publishers watch their revenues diminish, one common refrain among them is that maybe they should somehow go after Google or Yahoo for aiding and abetting the destruction of their businesses and sometimes the wholesale theft of their content. We’ve seen how the Associated Press wants to handle this: by aggressively going after anyone who even borrows a headline. Today, a consortium of other publishers including Reuters, the Magazine Publishers of America, and Politico are taking a more measured approach, but one which will no doubt still be controversial. They are forming the Fair Syndication Consortium , which is the brainchild of Attributor, the startup which tracks the reuse of text and images across the Web for many of these same publishers. The Fair Syndication Consortium is initially trying to address a legitimate problem on the Web: the proliferation of splogs (spam blogs) and other sites which do nothing more than republish the entire feed of news sites and blogs, often without attribution or links. There are tens of thousands of these sites, perhaps more. Rather than go after these sites one at a time, the Fair Syndication Consortium wants to negotiate directly with the ad networks which serve ads on these sites: DoubleClick, Google’s AdSense, and Yahoo primarily. For any post or page which takes a full copy of a publisher’s work, the Fair Syndication Consortium thinks the ad networks should pay a portion of the ad revenues being generated by those sites. I know a little bit about this because in January I was invited to a meeting at the A.P.’s headquarters with about two dozen other publishers, most of them from the print world, to discuss the formation of the consortium. TechCrunch has not joined at this time. Ironically, neither has the A.P., which has apparently decided to go its own way and fight the encroachments of the Web more aggressively (although, to my knowledge, it still uses Attributor’s technology). But at that meeting, which was organized by Attributor, a couple slides were shown that really brought home the point to everyone in the room. One showed a series of bar graphs estimating how much ad revenues splogs were making simply from the feeds of everyone in the room. (Note that this was just for sites taking extensive copies of articles, not simply quoting). The numbers ranged from $13 million (assuming a $.25 effective CPM) to $51 million (assuming a $1.00 eCPM). Then they put up a slide with a pie chart showing which ad networks were serving ads on all of the abusive sites. It turns out a full 94 percent of the sites in question were serving ads from three ad networks: DoubleClick (45 percent), Google AdSense (24 percent), and Yahoo (24 percent). Go after those three ad networks, and the majority of the problem could be solved. There is certainly precedent for this type of approach. Look at YouTube’s Content ID program, which splits revenues between YouTube and the media companies whose videos are being reused online. Except this proposal would take money that would otherwise be distributed to the splog sites themselves, and give a portion of it to the publisher as an automatic syndication fee without the consent of the site owner. How would the ad networks know that the content in question belongs to the publisher? Attributor would keep track of it all and manage the requests for payment. The consortium is open to any publisher to join, including bloggers. (Attributor runs a free version of its service called FairShare to give publishers a sense of how much of their stuff is being copied without attribution). It is certainly better than sending out thousands of takedown notices, but many issues still need to be worked out. I’ve seen some of the data for TechCrunch, and there is no doubt that Attributor catches a lot of abuse, not fair use. But some of the sites that fall within Attributors net might still fall within fair use. For instance, I can imagine, a short post two or three paragraphs long being copied in its entirety and being surrounded by commentary. (Although, a minimum 125-word-count limit and exclusion of content clearly in quotes is meant to address such a scenario). Also, I am not sure that demanding payment is the way to go. For the most part, a link and attribution is good enough for us. But if the Fair Syndication consortium gets the ad networks on board and they take a conservative approach to asserting copyright, we might take another look. What do you think, should we join? Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Go To Google Similar Images, Hit "Similar," Find Live Search Top
Yesterday, Google unveiled its new Google Similar Images search feature under Google Labs. The product is nice, and works very well . But, Microsoft was doing the same thing with Live Search — over 4 months ago. A lot of commenters pointed it out to us yesterday, and naturally, Microsoft reached out today to let us know the same thing with what might as well have been a big, loud “FIRST!” But it’s true, Microsoft rolled out the feature on December 1 of last year. So how does it stack up? I ran the same test I did yesterday with Google Similar Images, a query for “Apple.” Perhaps that’s a bit unfair to Microsoft since that is a chief rival, but the results were solid. The silver Apple logo similar image search returned silver apples across the board. The colorful Apple similar image search was a little more uneven than Google’s results, but that’s just being kind of picky. The apple fruit similar image search worked well, just as Google’s did. I took the test of Microsoft’s tool a bit farther and did a search for “ Daniel Day-Lewis ,” my favorite actor. I wanted to find a picture of him as Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York in particular. I found one, hit the similar images link, and aside from one odd picture of Penelope Cruz (which I can certainly forgive) and a few of Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood (where he has a similar look), got some good results. So yes, Microsoft, which gets a lot of flack for borrowing features from rivals, appears to have had one of its own borrowed by Google here. Of course others in the search space, such as like.com , have been doing this for a while. “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery and all that,” quipped a Microsoft spokesperson. Indeed. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Windows Live To Add More Social Network Partners (Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm And More) Top
Microsoft’s social networking strategy around Windows Live gets a little more meat on the bone today. In November they announced a new strategy that brings in activity streams , FriendFeed/Plaxo style, into a Windows Live home page. The goal is to give users a view of what their friends are up to on various social networks around the Internet. A list of the current partners is in the image below. Today Microsoft will announce a number of new data partners, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug, TypePad and Yandex. This is, apparently, the first time Facebook feeds can be pulled into a third party service (we talked about this last month ). The full list of new partners is below. Also, Microsoft has made some headway on their Contact Interchange product that pulls in friend data from various social networks (we questioned whether it violated the Facebook terms of use last year). Today Microsoft will announce the addition of MySpace, Hi5 and Tagged to the product, joining Facebook and LinkedIn. This is a two way relationship that allows users to pull their Windows Live contacts into those services as well. The full list of new partners: MSN: Microsoft Network Arto (Freeway): Denmark Bilddagboken.se: Sweden Dada: Italy Dailymotion: France Digg: USA FaceBook: USA Fotolog: France Hevre: Italy Hyves: Netherlands Last.fm: UK Live Journal: Russia MClub (GMedia): China Metroflog: Argentina Overblog: France SmugMug: USA TypePad (SixApart): USA Yandex: Russia zoo.gr: Greece Current Partners: More screenshots: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
SF Mayor Gavin Newsom Tweets His Way Into The Race For California Governor Top
Remember when the hippest way to blaze onto the campaign trail was an appearance on The Daily Show? No more. This morning San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom announced his bid for California Governor via Twitter , instantly sending his new campaign video (embedded below) to his 270,000 followers. No doubt inspired by President Obama’s successful campaign over the last two years, Newsom is looking to social media to help connect with voters. Alongside this morning’s Tweet, Newsom also sent out a message to his 37,000 Facebook fans . I suspect Newsom will be able to strike the same chords with an online campaign as President Obama did - he’s relatively young and a Democrat, with an online presence that’s already quite well established. Now the question is whether his opponents will be able to effectively use the same tools without ringing hollow. Among Newsom’s opponents in the race for the 2010 election is former eBay CEO Meg Whitman , who only has 2,100 supporters on Facebook and a measly 850 Twitter followers . Via Laughing Squid Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Verizon Opens Their Catalog To User Reviews, Probably A Bad Move Top
This ought to be interesting. Apparently never having felt the wrath of a dissatisfied buyer with access to the internet, someone over at Verizon has just decided to enable users to leave public reviews on any phone in their catalog. Users can rate their handsets on a scale of 1-5 for ease of use, display, features, and battery life, then manually add their own pros, cons, and comments. Openness is good. Helping people make educated purchases is good. But this just seems like a bad move. If I’ve learned anything from gallivanting around the internets in search of cell phone knowledge, it’s this: the majority of people taking the time to talk about their phones hate them. Now, that’s not saying that most people hate their phones - just those willing to take 20 minutes to throw down 300 words about a handset on a forum. It’s good ol’ Silent Majority/Loud Minority - though the vast majority of consumers can be neutral or positive on a product, a quick glance around the internet will make it seem like everyone despises it. This tends to be less of a problem on e-commerce resale sites, especially those which see lots of return buyers. Sites like Amazon have built entire communities out of the reviewing process, thus enticing folks to return and leave reviews for all products they buy - not just the ones they hate. People connect with the process and leave reviews both good and bad, and others seem to follow by example. With Verizon, it’s a whole different story. With 2-year contracts as a part of nearly every phone sale, the volume of return sales just isn’t that high. In 10 years, the average soccer mom might buy/trade up through 5-6 phones. That’s 5-6 opportunities to review, across a decade. Are they going to connect with the review process and tell of the good times they’ve had with the handset? Or will the only ones who bother be those looking to unleash their buyers remorse and all of their pent up frustration from spending hours dealing with customer service? Verizon has put up a safety buffer: they’re manually approving reviews, which may take up to 2 days. But what’s the criteria? Are they simply filtering out the messy, profane garbage, or will they nix reviews they feel are being too harsh? The masses (read: angry consumers on social sites) wouldn’t respond too kindly to the latter. What do you think - a good move toward openness, or a good way to doom handset sales? [via PhoneArena ] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
4Chan Takes Over The Time 100 Top
Look closely at Time magazine’s online voting results so far for the Time 100 and you will see at the top someone called moot (aka 21-year-old Christopher Poole ), the founder of 4chan , the notorious online bulletin board where hackers like to hang out. Not only did moot’s followers manage to get his name to the top of the Time 100 reader’s list, they also manipulated the next 20 spots. If you take the first letter of each name, it spells out the cryptic message, “Marblecake, also the game.” (See image below). It turns out the results were hacked with an auto-voting program spread on 4chan. (For details of the hack, read this post ). What does it mean? Marblecake is a sophomoric sexual reference , which is in keeping with the spirit of 4chan, which also claims to be where Rickrolling and Lolcats got their start. As for the Time 100, the people have spoken. At least the people who hang out on 4chan. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
New York Times Sees Intensifying Advertiser Pullback In First Quarter Top
The advertising outlook for newspapers is going from awful to horrendous. The New York Times announced first quarter earnings today, revealing that total advertising revenues for its news media group (which includes the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other regional newspapers) declined 28.4 percent, versus an 18.4 percent decline last quarter . So the rate of decline for is intensifying Internet advertising revenues declined 6.1 percent to $67.6 million, compared to a 3.5 percent decline last quarter. The advertising situation at About.com is more “anemic” than at NYTimes.com, although cost-per-click rates at About.com seem to be holding up. Total advertising revenues were $335 million in the quarter and all revenues, including circulation, were $609 million. The company as a whole posted a net loss of $74.2 million. In other words, the New York Times lost more money across the board than it made from Internet advertising. The newspaper has been trimming staff , cutting costs, and selling assets to meet its financial obligations. CEO Janet Robinson expects advertising revenues to decline in the second quarter at a rate “similar to that of the first.” But from her talks with advertisers she gets the sense that they are “saving dollars in the first half” of the year to possible spend more in the second half, if they can. (In other words, they are holding back and taking a wait-and-see approach, which is smart in this economy). During the conference call, she also noted that the company is exploring new ways to generate online revenues beyond advertising, but cautioned that the new revenue models would have to be additive “without affecting the display advertising business.” She didn’t specify where those alternative revenues would come from, whether from some new micropayment scheme or somewhere else. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Would You Like To Send Your Friends Some Ads? SocialTwist Sure Hopes So. Top
Later today at the ad:tech event in San Francisco, SocialTwist / Tell-a-Friend will be debuting a new type of social ad unit, which it claims is the first ‘word-of-mouth widget for ads’, in private beta. We covered the company’s forray into the content sharing widget space in September 2008, and indicated at the time that the startup was thinking of clever ways to monetize the service by working closely with advertisers. Since then Sunnyvale, CA-based Pramati Technologies , the company behind SocialTwist, claims to have grown its customer list from 0 to 35,000+ advertisers from across the globe, including some heavyweights like P&G, Intel and Greenpeace. It’s been working to translate the service into a multitude of European languages and served up to half a billion word of mouth marketing and advertising widgets in the last 4 months alone. And now the company is introducing advertising widgets - dubbed TAF4 Ads - that come with the ability for visitors to share the ads with their friends by e-mailing them a template e-mail and link to a destination chosen by the advertiser. The widget makes a clickable Tell-a-Friend link appear at the top right of an ad unit, which pops up a box where surfers get to e-mail a template message along with the original ad and a link to the website where the ad originally appeared to their Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail contacts, or alternatively send it out to a specific e-mail address. To see it in action, go to this demo page and click the ‘Tell-a-Friend’ link in the top right ad unit. The rest is fairly straightforward. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t for the life of me imagine this gaining a lot of traction among web users. How many times have you seriously enjoyed an online ad so much you were dying to e-mail the experience to all your friends and relatives? Call me old-fashioned, but I thought word-of-mouth revolved around recommending products and brands, not advertising units that promote them. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Advertising Everywhere: innerActive to Power ICQ's Free Mobile Content Top
Israeli startup innerActive has been chosen by ICQ to power the service’s offering of free mobile content to its worldwide users, now amounting to 42 million. The content—videos, games and applications—will be subsidized using innerActive’s in-content ad injection technology. Over the past year and a half, innerActive has been busy carving out a name for itself as a company aggressively pushing its monetization offering to mobile carriers and portals in Europe. The company’s core technology is the ability to dynamically inject advertising into mobile games, applications and video—content which has strong user engagement, but has yet to live up to its revenue generating potential (at least in the amounts players in the mobile industry hope for). The company has strategically chosen to stay clear of any attempt to monetize the mobile Web and focuses specifically on the monetization of content. innerActive describes its solution as an “Ad-funded AppStore,” a sort of agnostic platform for mobile operators that provides everything from the hosting and delivery of the content, to the campaign management and media planning, to the actual ad serving. The company also works directly with content publishers to create an ad-funded catalog. Co-CEO Offer Yehudai explained to me that it was this end-to-end solution that was key in having ICQ select its solution over alternatives. Under the terms of the deal, both innerActive and ICQ can sell ad space and there’s a flexible rev-share model to support such an arrangement. The content requires a certain amount of prep work in order to be “innerActive ready”. An SDK is available to publishers, allowing them to tag areas inside their content for ad injection (view the video embedded below to see a typical end result—billboards in a game with real, clickable ads). The SDK supports all mobile OS’s and does not require any porting—”hundreds of handsets” are supported. Ads can be configured for click-to-WAP, calling, coupons, polling and the download of content ICQ will make all this free content available to its community from its mobile client, from a soon to be launched ‘ICQ Mobile Portal’, and through the desktop application. The latter will require the entering of a mobile number and then receiving a free SMS with a link to download the content. No client will be required to be installed on the handset. All-in-all this sounds like good news for ICQ’s users. The big question of course is whether offering ad-supported mobile content is a financially viable model. I guess we’ll find out soon enough because if innerActive can deliver CTR’s of up to 15% (as they claim), advertisers will be knocking on their door in droves and users will benefit from a growing selection of free content. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Ages After Yahoo And Google, Microsoft Finally Enables Web-Based IM In Hotmail Top
We’ll say it right off the bat: what the hell took Microsoft so long? Years after Yahoo and Google integrated web IM features into their free webmail services (Yahoo Messenger in Yahoo Mail and Gtalk in Gmail, respectively), Redmond is finally enabling users to log into their Hotmail accounts and converse with their contacts over instant messaging directly without the need to log on to Windows Live Messenger separately, or to even have the program installed altogether. The new feature will be gradually rolled out, starting from today enabling subsets of users in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and USA to send instant messages from the Windows Live Hotmail and People pages. The feature earlier rolled out to some users users in France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the UK. I’ve said this before: easily dismissed by geeks and savvy web users, Hotmail has a gigantic mainstream userbase who are not likely going to switch to an alternative webmail service en masse provided Microsoft keeps up with the times and lets Hotmail evolve the way its users are increasingly demanding it to. But make no mistake about it: Microsoft is ridicously late with adding this functionality to Hotmail. Your thoughts? Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Micro-Consolidation: PlaySpan Buys Spare Change Top
The micro-industry forming around micro-transactions is now going through some micro-consolidation. PlaySpan , which is quickly racking up micro-payments across hundreds of video games and virtual worlds, is acquiring Spare Change Payments , a startup which focuses on micro-transactions for social networking apps. The value of the cash-and-stock deal was not disclosed. PlaySpan raised $16.8 million in a series B funding just last February from Easton Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, and STIC. The startup was famously founded by a 12-year-old , Arjun Mehta, but it is really run by his father, CEO and co-founder Karl Mehta. The company has processed more than $50 million worth of micro-transactions through its PayByCash and Ultimate Game Card products. While its focus so far has been games and virtual worlds, it recently began making its own forays into social networks with a deal to p ower some micropayments on hi5. But Spare Change already has more momentum on social networks. It powers micropayments across 700 social networking apps on Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo, and is on its way to processing $30 million worth of transactions this year. As the social networks and online games collide, and developers seek new ways to make money other than advertising, micropayments will continue to grow. Like any payments business, even micro-transactions are all about scale. The bigger PlaySpan can get before the giants finally wake up and enter the market seriously, the better chance it has to becoming the PayPal of micropayments. Of course, PayPal, Facebook and MySpace all have their own plans to become the PayPal of micropayments. And plenty of other startups, from Zuora to Zong , are vying for the title as well. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Mobile Site Developer MoFuse Rolls Out Premium Service (Discount Code) Top
MoFuse, a service that will take your website and instantly create a mobile version of it, is launching a premium version of its mobile website development service for the enterprise space. MoFuse’s existing platform, which spares websites the development costs of formatting the site by hand, creates customized iPhone versions of sites in addition to the standard versions for basic mobile browsers. MoFuse is offering TechCrunch readers 50% off any premium plan for Website owners who use the promotional code “TechCrunch” when signing up before May 1. MoFuse Premium for Business is a completely separate platform from the site’s original service, which will remain intact and will be known as MoFuse for Blogs. The premium service creates higher quality mobile sites for businesses with more features, including the ability to nest topics in the site with drag and drop technology, search functionality, Google Maps integration, color customization, a local weather app, and more. The pricing for the premium site development starts with the “Basic” plan, which is $39 per month with a 50,000 page view limit for one site; “Small Business,” which is $89 per month, creates 3 sites with a limit of 125,000 page views per site; and “Ultimate,” which is $199 per month, creates up to 10 sites with a limit of 1 million page views per site. Founded in 2007, MoFuse has become popular with publishers—the service has helped nearly 25,000 organizations create mobile websites. Several of our colleague publications in tech news use MoFuse for their mobile sites including GigaOm and ReadWriteWeb. In addition to converting a web site for mobile consumption, Mofuse also allows publishers to monetize their mobile websites via revenue shares with Google AdSense and AdMob. Jag.ag also provides a simple service to help less tech-savvy consumers create their own mobile presence in a few minutes but doesn’t offer some of the same premium features yet. Zinadoo and Wirenode also provide similar services. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Lure In Users With Your Trackle Box Top
Content on the web is constantly changing and while you can track changes in information manually, it’s often a time-consuming process to monitor the things you care about. Trackle, a personalized web and RSS feed tracker we wrote about earlier this year, is launching a “Trackle It” button that can be added to any site to help users track information instantly while surfing the web. Trackle.com’s free web service provides real-time personalized RSS feeds for data such as the latest crime in a user's neighborhood, fluctuating airline ticket prices, how much a user's house value is down this week, updated job listings, sports scores and more. Now with the introduction of the Trackle button, the tracking service wants to let sites provide instant tracking options directly to consumers and hopes to allow users to “Trackle” an item or feed from anywhere on the web. The button allows users to automatically sign up to receive notifications about personalized information, such as price drops, new content, messages about products, etc. via email or SMS directly from the site (instead of tracking the item from Trackle’s website, with the Trackle button, the consumer doesn’t have to be signed up to be a user on Trackle’s site). Trackle’s co-founder Pavan Nigam says that the Trackle button, which is sold to sites on a pay-per-action basis, can be incorporated into a site within an hour, using Trackle’s self serve API. He says that the button helps online marketers reach their audience with customized alerts that give users of a site a reason to return. The Trackle feature can be used to generate statistics about what’s most interesting to users. Currently, Trackle has several sites which are testing the beta version of this feature, including EveryTrail.com, Eurekaspot.com and KLDSoccer.com. Trackle is also offering sites the option of using a Trackle widget, instead of the integration of a Trackle button. The Trackle widget is similar to the button feature and allows users to track any updated information, changes or fluctuations of any item on a site in a widget form. Site owners can choose from over 100 of Trackle's tracking widgets, ranging from "Local Crime" and "Health" to “Weather.” For example, a ski-website might offer the "Trackle weather" widget to allow its readers to track local snow conditions. Widgets are continually updated and are ad-free. Trackle is also trying to integrate social media into its tracking service by launching a Trackle Facebook app. The app, which currently can only track sports scores and events, allows you to create a “tracklet” for a team or type of event to be tracked, and then sends you feeds alerts to you within the application. The alerts also go into your News Feed and your friends can see and comment on your Trackle updates. Trackle says it also plans to develop a MySpace app. As we noted in our original review of Trackle, the breadth and specificity of Trackle's information is what differentiates the site from other RSS and product tracking applications like Google Alerts, Yotify and Notify.me (which also allows sites to embed a “notify” widget to track items). The introduction of the “Trackle” button is a useful idea, but in order for it to be widely adopted by a variety of users, it needs to be more viral. The “Trackle” button needs to be an option on eBay, or Kayak or Craigslist for it to become truly useful, which is an ambitious task. The integration with Facebook is definitely key and Trackle says that the site will also integrate with Twitter and other social media sites in the future. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
IRLConnect puts Twitter and Facebook on a map with live video Top
IRLConnect (as in, ‘in real life connect’) is one of those new social-networks-meets-maps startups, but what sets them apart is some pretty cool integration, a focus on live video and a tantalizing business model based on owning the virtual equivalent of real estate. Today they launch into a public beta after being invite-only since September last year. The site is bringing together mobile devices and multiple social networks, including Twitter and Facebook, into a very visual platform. As well as integrating YouTube video onto their Google map, they’re pulling in partners including pictures from Mobypicture and live video from Bambuser . It will also pull in geotagged content from YouTube and news alerts from media such as CNN and Reuters. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Amazon Wants To Bully Amazee Into Changing Its Name Top
Online retail juggernaut Amazon isn’t too pleased with the name Swiss startup Amazee picked for its social collaboration service, and is now trying to persuade the young company to change it to something else. This has apparently been going on for a couple of months, but now Amazee is stepping up and throwing some good old fighting words out there, claiming ‘peaceful and cooperative efforts to reach an amicable solution’ have led to nothing. Amazon claims consumers could be confused by the similarity of the two names and wrongfully assume there’s some sort of affiliation. Amazee, on the other hand, claims the name is derived from the word ‘amazing’ (sounds plausible) and alleges that there’s no chance for confusion. The startup launched a new project on its own service, and this is an excerpt of the description: Their IP department says: “… the mark AMAZEE is not a natural derivative of "amazing". Amazee is a coined term where the dominant portion of the mark brings to mind Amazon, not "amazing".” Hm. The brand name Amazon is better known than the english word amazing? Well, at least they show great enthusiasm for their company. At this point, it looks like Amazon attorneys representing their Luxembourg subsidiary are demanding the deletion of Amazee in the Swiss trademark register ( after waiting for the opposition period to expire) while their US attorneys have filed an appeal against the registration of Amazee in the US. Amazee, which we likened to a ‘Facebook meets Basecamp for activists’ when it launched, is now calling its users and fans to speak up in favor of the service on the project, and they’re trying to get some publicity out of it in a humorous way: if you join to support the submitted project, you have a shot at winning a 100$ Amazon gift certificate. Personally, I’m pleased to see the young company takes a stance against Amazon, even if they’re clearly now trying to turn the situation into a promotional vehicle. Having taken a good look at Amazee’s size and scope, its logo, the believable explanation of how they came up with the name and particularly its current activities and future plans, I think Amazon is looking ridiculous going after them. (Via BloggingTom - in German) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Live Video From London - TechCrunch Geek'n Rolla Top
Here you’ll find the live video stream from Geek'n Rolla, a day-long conference created by TechCrunch Europe for European early stage tech startups old and new to share real, hard-core knowledge about their experiences. Here is our agenda and speaker line-up . Geek'n Rolla is sponsored by Viadeo one of the largest professional social networks in the world, and supported by UK Trade and Investment , as well as NESTA , the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts. Not only will we be having a great day of content for startups, we are planning the mother of all evening networking parties at one of London’s premier venues, Cafe de Paris , kindly sponsored by Winston & Strawn’s Bootlaw . Doug Richard’s School for Startups is our Strategic Event Partner. Speaker gifts and competition prizes are donated by Park Lane Champagne . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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