Wednesday, April 1, 2009

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Is Twitter Turning Into MySpace? Top
Editor’s note : The following guest post was written by Mrinal Desai, who was an early employee of LinkedIn before he co-founded CrossLoop , a startup funded by El Dorado and Venrock. You can follow him on Twitter . I try and test many social services and since 2003, there are only three that represent me—LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. MySpace was a service that I tried but it did not appeal to me personally for one reason—I wanted to connect with real people and I did not "see" them on MySpace. I started using Twitter in early 2007, and it gave me something I cherish in the offline world – the ability to connect to real people who share my values and learn from them. It also has given me access to people I might never have otherwise been able to speak to. Through Twitter I have had conversations with the likes of Steve Case and Craig Newmark . I learn about new services and tools, read news when it happens and "my dumb questions' give me instant gratification when people smarter than me actually answer them. Against all the initial skepticism of the people around me at home and at the office, I thoroughly enjoyed Twitter and also noticed that it was 'stealing' me away from Facebook and other services like Google Reader. Yet now I am beginning to question if Twitter is turning into MySpace. Here are five parallels just off the top of my head: • There is a competition for followers similar to collecting "friends" on MySpace • Anonymity is normal on both Twitter and Myspace, unlike Facebook • Fake profiles are proliferating • Real celebrity profiles are also proliferating, but they are often maintained by someone else for marketing, l eading to spam • Finally, the one most evident visually—services like Twitback, Twitterbacks and Twitterimage help you customize your profiles. You can compare Britney Spear's profiles on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook respectively (see screenshot below) Recently The New York Times uncovered ghost writers like Annie Colbert who tweets for Guy Kawasaki , Lauren Kozak who tweets sometimes for Britney Spears and Chris Romero for 50Cent. Furthermore fake accounts are surfacing. Twitter recently suspended (then reinstated, and then suspended again) an account that seemingly belonged to the actor Christopher Walken , to the dismay of Erick and his 90,000 other followers. But it was created and maintained by an impersonator. Then, on the other hand ,you have Tina Fey , who has publicly acknowledged it's not her on Twitter yet her fake account currently has over 216,000 followers. Finally, there are many questionable accounts like Oprah's, which has 9,390 followers without a single tweet – probably because she is working hard on her Facebook Fan Page , which now has over 420,000 fans. And finally, if you are still really curious to learn whether Russia is really visible from Alaska, you can @reply Sarah Palin here , here or here . (Just don't expect to actually reach the real deal). All of these fake profiles remind me of Julia Angwin's recent piece in The Wall Street Journal , “Putting Your Best Faces Forward”. She notes that MySpace grew out of the 'Fakester Revolution' from the Friendster that denied anonymity. MySpace became the Promised Land for those who wanted to stay anonymous—it was so by design (pun intended). MySpace was about collecting friends – users like Forbidden and Tila Tequila amassed hundreds of thousands of them MySpace did what it did as a competitive advantage against Friendster. Twitter does not necessarily want to go in that direction by choice – after all, it is suspending fake accounts and is removing the Auto-Follow feature favored by self-promoters. As Evan Williams freely admits , a lot of the different types of activity we are seeing on Twitter is not necessarily by design—it is driven by unexpected uses. Maybe the bling bling on the profiles, the fake accounts or ghost writers are unexpected, but sometimes it is important to also recognize that users do not always know what they want. I agree with Michae l that staying true to your vision and pushing the envelope is what makes you a winner. MySpace effectively exploited Friendster's technical problems, but so far no one has been able to do the same whenever Twitter sputters. And I don't think they will. The Achilles' heel for Twitter is not technology - it is the experience (with the site itself and with other users). Does Twitter want to be more like MySpace, which is cleaning up to be more like Facebook, which wants to be like Twitter? Where shall these three meet—in thunder, lightning or rain? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
chi.mp Lets You Own And Keep Your Web Identity All In One Place Top
Are you a chump for putting all your data on social networking and media sites and not having any real control over it? chi.mp thinks so. chi.mp is a service for owning and managing your online identity, and is now open to the public. Previously in private beta, chi.mp ( which stands for Content Hub & Identity Management Platform), allows people to bring together their presence on from all over the web in one place. Chi.mp basically gives users (for free) their own domain and Web site and gives them full ownership over the content, letting them create a “social hub.” chi.mp is kind of like having your own FriendFeed. It offers users a free “.mp” domain name, allowing users to get a free web site that includes Open ID, social network profiles, an activity stream, a blog, photo albums and other tools to import content and contacts from Twitter, Flickr, Gmail or Yahoo, and any site with RSS or Atom feeds. chi.mp also includes a contact management system called the 'Ultimate Black Book', a tiered privacy tool called 'Personas' and the ability to publish and push content to other sites and social networks, such as Facebook. The 'Personas' feature on chi.mp lets owners create multiple versions of themselves for different audiences. This feature is useful when wanting to differentiate your identity for your work place, for instance, from your online identity for friends. And its comforting to have full ownership over your profile and information about you on the web. Ownership over users content can be a complicated issue, according to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. ch.imp is also somewhat similar to .Tel’s service of aggregating personal information via a domain name. But .Tel doesn’t provide a free service to mashup, import and organize your online information like chi.mp. Of course there are plenty of other social network and web information aggregators like Nomee (a desktop app) and FriendFeed (a web application) but chi.mp’s key difference is the user’s ownership over the domain and the content. Is that enough to get people to use it, though? The nice thing about FriendFeed, for instance, is that other people actually go there. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Disney Online Buys Kaboose Assets For $18.4 Million, Barclays Private Equity Limited Acquires Its UK Operations Top
Disney Online , the online publishing business unit of Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG), announced this morning that it has acquired a number of assets from Toronto, Canada-based firm Kaboose , in a deal worth CAD 23.3 million (approximately $18.4M). The acquisition encompasses Kaboose.com and other properties including Babyzone.com, AmazingMoms.com, Funschool.com and Zeeks.com. The assets of Kaboose, which was founded about 10 years ago, will be integrated into Disney Online's line-up of websites. This network boasts, according to the press release citing comScore Media Metrix figures for February 2009, more than 27.6 million unique visitors per month, making it the No. 1 Community-Family & Parenting Web destination. Kaboose says it received nearly five million unique visitors in February 2009. This is not the only announcement coming from Kaboose today. In a separate agreement, the company’s UK business, being Bounty Group Limited, is being sold off to a company controlled by funds managed by Barclays Private Equity Limited. The purchase price payable to Kaboose under the terms of the Bounty Transaction is approximately $97 million in cash less third-party debt outstanding on closing which is expected to be approximately $18 million. From the press release: Following the completion of these two transactions, Kaboose intends on distributing the resulting net proceeds to its shareholders. The Company expects that such net proceeds will result in approximately $0.65 per share being distributed to shareholders in the months following completion of the transactions, which distributions represent approximately a 70% premium to the thirty-day average closing price of Kaboose’s stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Jason DeZwirek, Chairman and CEO of Kaboose, is not hiding the fact that the company was under pressure: “2008 was a difficult year for many businesses and shareholders, and Kaboose was no exception. With the fundamental shift in the sentiment of the capital markets in general and in the media and advertising sectors in particular, and having been approached by several large international media companies and global private equity institutions interested in our business, we felt compelled to re-examine our long-term plan. With the advice of our financial advisors, the Company’s Board of Directors determined that Kaboose could divest its assets and realize significantly greater value than we could deliver as an independent public media company in the foreseeable future.” The closing of the two transaction is conditional on obtaining Kaboose shareholder approval and other customary conditions. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Nomee Is An All-In-One Social Networking Aggregator And RSS Feed Top
Startup Nomee aggregates social networks and websites into a free Adobe Air powered desktop application that helps you manage these networks and sites into a single interface. The nomee personal all-in-one dashboard aggregates all your favorite social networking sites (you can manage profiles from up to 100 networks including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Digg ) and RSS feeds, giving you one place to organize your online relationships, share your information, follow newsmakers, and even publish your own news. Nomee is designed to simplify social networking by organizing all of your online relationships in a single location, making it easy to focus on who you want to connect with, when you want to connect. With the help of Adobe Air, Nomee also brings news updates to users in a pretty simple interface. In addition, Nomee lets you customize the information you want to share, pointing your contacts to the web sites you want them to see. It also alerts your contacts when you post updates or new content, including providing custom updates to different friends and business associates. Nomee also allows you to follow your favorite celebrities, sports teams and other interest areas through downloading its exclusive nomee newsmaker cards. You can become your own nomee newsmaker by collecting links on your nomee card and posting it for download from your blog or website, so your fans can track you. Managing all of your social networks, celebrity obsessions and RSS feeds in one place is not a new idea. FriendFeed aggregates all of this information into a website. But the adoption of Adobe Air into the application gives it a different twist. Nomee, which can be run on a PC or a Mac, isn’t your conventional website, its actually a rich internet application separate from your browser. Here’s a screenshot: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Yahoo Launches Slick Desktop AIR App For Monitoring Twitter Top
Yahoo has launched an Adobe AIR-powered desktop application called Sideline yesterday, once again validating the power of Twitter for real-time search . After taking it for a spin, I have to say it looks and feels really nice, but other than that there’s no real incentive for me to keep using it on a regular basis. So what does it do? Sideline is a straight-forward Twitter monitoring tool, giving you the opportunity to stay on top of the latest trends on the microsharing service and/or keywords you feed into the application. It has an auto-refresh feature (which you can tweak to have the search results reload between 1 minute and 1 hour), a notification system that alerts you of new keyword mentions in an overlay that appears whatever you’re doing and the ability to only look for favorited tweets containing the keywords you’re tracking. So far, nothing special, but what’s nice about Sideline is that it enables you to create so-called Search Groups which pull together multiple keywords for tracking purposes. This basically allows anyone to create e.g. a TechCrunch group and track different keywords and phrases like ‘techcrunch’, ‘crunchgear’, ‘michael arrington’, etc. Also really nice is the advanced search function, which lets you filter results down extensively, for instance by person, hashtag, ‘asking a question’, by negative or positive connotation (determined with smilies), and so on. Update: this is actually a layer over Twitter’s advanced search functionality , as a commentor points out. It’s slick and useful, but nothing major any way you look at it, especially since it’s not a functional client that lets you actually send direct or public Twitter messages. I wonder how many people will effectively keep using it after trying it out, but I doubt it will be many. The desktop application comes from Yahoo’s User Interface (YUI) group, who explained in detail what inspired them to build it and how they did it. Sideline was developed with the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) and HTML/JS/CSS. The code is open source under the terms of the BSD license and hosted on GitHub . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Palm Reveals New 'Post' Smartphone, Still Working On Pre Top
In an unprecedented move, Palm has revealed its heretofore ultra-secret WebOS-based smartphone - the Palm Post - at CTIA 2009. While the mobile world has been patiently waiting for the Pre since it was first teased back in January , Palm has apparently been hard at work on the (clandestine) Post as well. According to Palm’s press release : We’ve put an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources into the development and production of our new flagship device - the Palm Post . Rather than rush our highly anticipated Palm Pre to the market, we thought it was in the best interest of both our customers and our company to perform extended R&D on our new hardware and software. Not only does this ensure that consumers will receive the highest quality mobile device possible, but by moving our top engineers to a new facility - The Orchid - we’ve been able to do what no other company has been able to achieve until now…we’ve preemptively included all of the features and technologies that our customers (and Sprint) will want come 2011 in the Post! In other words, thanks to the DHARMA Intiative , we no longer have to wait for months of testing and feedback, but instead can rely on the needs and desires consumers will develop in the not to distant future. This enables us to provide the best, most comprehensive smartphones available anywhere on planet Earth. The Post’s most spectacular features include: 3.5G / 4G / 5G octo-band radios WiFi / WiMax connectivity 21 MP digital camera with 1080p video recording 4.1″ AMOLED / E-ink “reader” dual-mode display Bluetooth 4.0 Wireless USB charging/syncing 128GB flash memory Hydrogen-cell battery: 2 weeks talk-time / 2 months standby HD pico projector w/ 5.1 channel surround T10 predictive thought text auto-correction That’s right folks. You heard it here first. Palm, by utilizing nontraditional means, has developed and will soon release a mobile device - the Post - with features that you didn’t and couldn’t even know that you wanted! The Post is expected to be available online and in Sprint brick-and-mortar stores by April 10 for the fantastically low price of $49.99 w/2yr contract. In other related news, Palm still plans to release its pending Pre smartphone by April 30 in an effort to beat out iPhone 3.0 / other new Android devices to the market…if anyone still cares in light of this incredible announcement. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Guest Post: Hack an AfterParty - An Exercise in Entrepreneurship Top
This guest post is written by Larry Chiang , a co-founder of Duck9 who also regularly blogs for for BusinessWeek . In this post, he discusses some of the pros of organizing events as a means to increase your own exposure and make connections. My party mentor, Susan Roane, the author of ‘ How to Work a Room ‘, once told me, “Larry, there are two types of people in this world: hosts and guests”. She argues that hosting gets you more influence and adds value at a party. I believe her. I took it a couple steps further because partying and social engineering intrigue me. I see how people in positions of power use parties to further grow their influence. In this post, I boil down my knowledge and reveal how hosting and producing events can boost your visibility, increase your deal flow and help you sway people. Multiple Party Agenda Fulfillment. Getting a bunch of groups together to agree on ONE single deal is very hard because everyone has different agendas. This is a technique where you listen so well that you can extrapolate what they want to say and what they are afraid to say. We do this to better guestimate their agenda. I know Congressmen who do this so well that they know everyone’s agenda better than they do. Win-wins and ‘best alternative to a negotiated agreement”are what is taught in business school. In the real world, this approach is cloudy and messy. Learning this technique is essential to producing a party or getting a deal done. Take Two Down The Aisle. Venue locations and the people that manage them can be smarmy. By smarmie, I mean they want to monetize you in any way possible. They don’t have enough Friday and Saturday nights in a year and will change your deal the last minute to squeeze you for more money. Solve this by booking TWO venues for the same time. By taking two venues down the aisle you’re buying a real insurance policy against a deal changing. Your cost is losing the deposit. For example, when I hosted the TechCrunch after party , I chose the Four Seasons.  My back-up location was the Three Seasons in downtown Palo Alto. (You can find more countermeasures in my post, “ The Art of Changing the Deal “) Back on topic, “taking two down the aisle”, I do this with mortgage bankers where I bring TWO down the wire, right to the closing. Yes, your FICO score remains barely affected. The maneuver is outlined here . Party Karma is Real. Actively love those that love you at the party. Reciprocate the givers. Avoid karmic black holes. Character compass your guests like a seasoned front desk manager at the Four Seasons in Austin. Character compassing is the skill in determining which direction their soul is pointed. Failing to take this into account can result in a poor experience for your guests. Building party karma gets you real ROI. Set Aside Your Need to Make Money. “Money delayed is not missed money,” said MC Hammer ( Hip Hop Schools Silicon Valley should be required reading for MBAs). Delayed money gratification is a common trait among rich people I know. Cut and Paste a Theme Parties without themes are like companies that don’t solve problems. Having a theme unifies the experience and gives direction to an event. The best theme is a time-tested one. I cut and pasted the party theme, “Launch Party 2.0″ by changing one word from a hit party in December, “Holiday Party 2.0″. Get a Celebrity Co-Host. If you want to attract prominent co-hosts, you have to know their agenda better than they do. If you are not an expert character compasser, then at least yearn to want to know what their agenda is. There’s a secret method to doing this: You listen (and read the material they’ve written). Also, listen to what they tell you to read because it affected them. Promotion is the Dirtiest Work A Hollywood agent once told me, “They don’t pay big bucks to act, they pay you to promote”. It was eye opening when I realized that promotion of products or services (or a party) is the hardest work. If you can have your party promote something else, you will curry favor. Flirt with Illegitimacy Consider being the “Unofficial, Unauthorized Party” and embrace your illegitimacy. I am the writer and primary promoter for the scandalous sequel to “ What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School “. Yeah, it is a sequel to a book I did not write. By writing the sequel, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School”, it in effect turns Harvard into a friend. You can use the same technique when it comes to parties. Don’t be afraid to be the unofficial party, or the after-party. Simultaneous Close In business, there are often catch-22s. I can’t get funding until have a working website. I can’t get financing for my film until I have a tier one actor. Producing a party is no different. To battle the chicken or the egg, catch-22 syndrome, I say get a simultaneous close by combining any two or three (or all) of the above seven previous tips. I was able to be the official Web 2.0 Expo After Party by combining all eight. Now I’m going to offer a chance to win a sponsorship to the Official Web 2.0 AfterParty on Wednesday April 1st. The theme is “Launch Party 2.0. Don’t be Asse9 on April Fools”. Enter by posting in the comments what and how your start-up can benefit from winning a sponsorship. Deadline is 11:11am, 04-01-09. No this isn’t an April Fools joke. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Google Adsense Says Goodbye To Video Units Feature Top
Google AdSense is eliminating its video units feature, which allows publishers to show YouTube content and video ads on their pages. Google says that by the end of April, the feature will be fully eliminated for existing AdSense clients and that new clients of the revenue sharing ad program will no longer be given the option to place video ads on their pages through the program. Publishers can still display video content on their pages by pulling embed codes directly from YouTube. Unsurprisingly, Google says it eliminated the video ads because of poor performance. It is difficult to figure out a sustainable ad model for video, which is why pre-rolls remain more common. But the problem with video ads may not be the ad unit itself but but the underlying content. Brand advertisers don’t want their names associated with random words spoken in videos. You simply cannot efficiently and consistently target ads based on three words in a video. For instance, if someone is watching a clip of “Snakes on a Plane,” it’s probably not the best place to put a travel ad. And search marketers can find better places to put contextual ads. It seems this latest announcement is part of a growing trend of Google axing programs in AdSense. Google recently pulled the plug on its Google Radio Ads and was looking to sell off its Google Radio Automation software business. That news came less than a month after Google decided to bail on selling print ads. We hate to say we told you so but we saw the writing on the wall about adding video ads to AdSense awhile ago. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Guest Post: Working With Michael Arrington On A Personal Project Top
This is a guest post written by Carol Kravitz , a former fashion executive and the founder and CEO of Kravitz & Associates, an upscale and exclusive matchmaking service. Kravitz is working on a personal project with Michael Arrington and is enlisting TechCrunch readers for their help: Finding that special someone is serious business (I know, I make a great living by finding lost souls and matching them with that special someone). But I’m not here to pitch my business today - we only take private referrals and frankly if it wasn’t for this terrific opportunity to help out TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, I wouldn’t have agreed to expose my business to this much publicity. But the sheer volume of TechCrunch readers out there means there is a stastically relevant chance that one of you will know someone who might be willing to help. To be blunt, we’re looking for your help in finding a wife, or at least a serious girlfriend, for Michael. Or even just a dinner date. Michael hasn’t had a long term girlfriend in years. About six months after he started TechCrunch in 2005 his then serious girlfriend of four years dumped him hard. Apparently blogging for 20 hours a day doesn’t allow for much personal interaction with a significant other. Even today, a restraining order prohibits Michael from visiting parts of Los Angeles. At this point, things are getting desperate. He just turned 39 years old. He dates little, preferring to stay at home with his dog Laguna playing video games. When he isn’t working, that is. I understand I don’t have much to work with here. A sedentary 39 year old single man who made questionable career choices and now blogs for a living just doesn’t look good on paper. Nor is it good for the body. On a recent vacation, Michael said he “went for a jog on the beach” and “thought he was having a heart attack within 50 yards.” As far as I can tell his diet consists almost entirely of burritos from Chipotle. But we’re working on getting him into fighting shape. He’s joined a gym, which was a huge step, although he has yet to go (I get reports from the yet-unused personal trainer we hired, with his permission). He’s on a strict diet. We’re sure to get him in shape soon. Here’s where you come in. Know someone who’d be interested in a date with Michael? We want to hear from you. Want to date him yourself? Excellent. We’ve got a form for you to fill out , feel free to add your own information or that of someone you know. TechCrunch has millions of monthly readers. Most are bald, middle aged tech geek guys that aren’t a good match. But we’re hoping that at least a few of you have a single sister, or friend. And here’s a special incentive to help out: If you help Michael find “the one,” we guarantee to profile your startup here on TechCrunch. Looks aren’t nearly as important as who you are, and the form reflects that. Upload a minimum of five pictures and take some time to describe yourself, your hopes, your dreams, and what you’re looking for in a relationship, in 30 characters or less. We’ll choose the top 25 or so entrants and Michael will have a dinner date with each one of you. Each date will be video streamed live, thanks to our premium sponsor Ustream . Thanks as well to our other sponsors below, who’ll be paying my fee, the finders fee, for the dates and, if all goes well, the wedding. Please note that you’ll be required to wear a hat or a tshirt, at your choice, clearly showing one of the sponsor logos during the date. Premium Sponsor: Thank You To the Our Other “Find Mike A Wife” Sponsors: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Hands-on with the latest build of the Android "Cupcake" firmware at CTIA 2009 Top
We’re in good ol’ Sin City, fresh out of a pre- CTIA 2009 meeting with HTC. While most of the hardware they brought to the party were things we’d seen at Mobile World Congress last month, they had one thing on the software end that was just out of the oven: the latest build of the Android “Cupcake” release. The firmware build number we were playing with was 1.5/CRA79. We didn’t spot any major new features in this build - but we did see a good number of things we’d heard about previously get their first implementations. Oddly, we also noticed at least one thing missing since last time. Orientation animation: While the currently publicly available Android build already supports orientation detection and switching, it’s a bit of a hack to get it to work. When we saw a Cupcake build at MWC, it had it enabled by default - but it was a bit slow. They’ve optimized it a good amount since, but have added an orientation switch animation to make any delays less obvious. It now zooms out and then visibly “Wobbles” - see demonstration in the video above. Emoticon key: When we did our initial run through of the Cupcake build back in January , we noticed that certain text emoticons suddenly had graphical replacements. Which ones had replacements, however, was impossible to determine. In this latest build, emoticons have a key of their own on the virtual keyboard. Press it briefly, and it inputs a standard smiley. Hold it, and it brings up the entire array. It replaces the enter/carriage return key. Slide-out drawer background: This change seems a bit odd to us. On the G1 and all previous Android builds, the slide out drawer (where applications are kept) had a semi-translucent grey background. In this build of Cupcake, this has been changed to an opaque checkered background. It sort of looks like carbon fiber. “Add to Home Screen” changes: “Add to Home Screen” is a pop-up window that appears when you hold your finger on the desktop. It’s essentially the same as it was on the G1, with a few trivial changes: All labels now have graphical icons, and the “Application” shortcut list has been placed within “Shortcuts” rather than being immediately available from the initial list. As we mentioned, one thing is missing from builds prior; at MWC, we noticed that YouTube was getting some love from Google with a Live Shortcut of its own. This is now gone. On-screen Keyboard Auto-correct/Suggestions: We knew it was coming, but it was curiously absent in the build we played with last. When Android thinks you may have made a mistake, it highlights the word it thinks you meant in orange above the input box - but unlike the iPhone, it also offers other not-as-common options as alternative suggestions. There are two Auto-correct options: Basic and Advanced. We’re not sure what the difference is. Other notes: This is the first time we noticed any implementation of the input method framework. You can now select custom keyboards, though the default Android keyboard was the only one installed on this handset. You can add words to the Auto-correction dictionary by holding them, or by manually inputting them in settings. [PSGallery=1kbwasftvn] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitter To Kill Off The Auto-Follow Top
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone sent out an Email earlier this afternoon to a number of users who had previously enabled ‘autofollowing’, stating that the company is planning to shut the feature down. ‘Autofollowing’ allows users to automatically reciprocate whenever another Twitter user follows them. The feature has never been widely available to the public (at least not through Twitter’s site), and was only enabled by sending a request to Twitter support. While Stone ackowledges that the autofollow feature does have some uses (such as for applications built on the Twitter API or simply to be polite), generally speaking most of these autofollows are disingenuous. Many of the more popular Twitter users who have autofollow enabled are now following tweets from thousands of people at a time, the vast majority of which they clearly aren’t paying attention to. This is probably a good move on Twitter’s part, as I’ve always found the practice to be pretty spammy. Of course, there are still a number of third party services that help users accomplish the same thing. What remains to be seen is if Twitter will try to disable these third party services, or if it simply doesn’t want to be officially condoning the practice. Below is the letter in its entirety: Hi There, I’m contacting you because you have a Twitter account for which we enabled something called “autofollow.” This is not a public feature, it’s something we did for a limited set of accounts such that they automatically follow any account that follows them. We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes this activity disingenuous. However, we understand that there may be exceptions such as applications built using our API or the ability to exchange direct messages. There are also some who think it’s simply polite to follow back other accounts. While we’re going to stop supporting autofollow, we’d like to find a way to support the other goals folks are really trying to accomplish. Please feel free to reply to this email and let us know how we can do this better together. Thanks, Biz Stone, Co-founder Twitter, Inc. Thanks to Kent Nichols for the tip. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Stealing Music: Is It Wrong Or Isn't It? Top
Music used to be so simple. You listened to it on the radio for free, but you didn’t get to say what would be played, and there were lots of commercials. If you went to a concert, you paid. And if you bought a record, tape or CD, you paid. People copied CDs to cassette tapes and passed them on to friends. That was just about as far as P2P music piracy got. Stealing music was when you shoplifted a CD or cassette from the record store, and it was pretty clearly understood that it was “wrong.” Maybe that’s why so many people who are older than say 30 think that downloading music is ethically wrong. They remember that music is something that you pay for. They still download the music, of course. But they know they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing. But if you’ve discovered and come to love music in the last decade, I don’t see how you can be expected to know when listening to recorded music is ok, and when it’s wrong. Let’s put the law aside for a moment - this post is about doing the right thing . We’ve been hammered with messaging from the government and the music labels that downloading or listening to music on the Internet is stealing, unless you pay for it. We see the video clips before movies at the cinema saying its wrong. We read about lawsuits against twelve year olds for downloading music from BitTorrent. Our government is even willing to threaten other sovereign nations over music piracy. But over the last few years the line has blurred to the point where there really isn’t any line any more. We can listen to free, on demand streaming music at MySpace Music and lots of other sites. It’s ok to do it at MySpace, but it’s wrong to do it at Project Playlist, just because the right contracts aren’t in place? Just a couple of years ago anyone listening to free streaming music anywhere on the Internet was violating copyright and subject to being labeled unethical. Today, its no problem. And you don’t even have to listen to audio ads. But downloading music, that’s still wrong, right? Nope. If you live in China, you can download music legally from Google for free. No problem. Above I said I wanted to put the law aside for a moment. Now I’ll come back to it. Because the law, and particularly the U.S. government’s willingness to perpetuate the absurdity of copyright law as it applies to recorded music, is all that the labels have left. No one in their right mind could formulate an argument that downloading music on the Internet is “wrong” at this point. All the labels have left is the law. Eventually the reality of the Internet will force the laws to change, too. One way or another the music labels will eventually surrender , and recorded music will be free . Until it is, I refuse to feel guilty for downloading and sharing music. Every time I listen to a song, or share it with a friend, I’m doing the labels a favor. One that eventually I should be paid for . Until that day comes, don’t even think about trying to tell me that I’m doing something ethically wrong when it’s considered quite legal, with the labels’ blessing, in China. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
NextStart Gives South Carolina A Startup Incubator Top
NextStart is the latest Y Combinator -esque startup incubator to emerge to support young entrepreneurs and their ideas. The Greenville, South Carolina-based organization is offering a summer immersion entrepreneur development program to attract promising entrepreneurs to the Carolina region. The program works similarly to other incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars in providing seed money, VC connections, and mentoring to company founders to develop their ideas, incorporate their companies, and then help find funding for their startups. NextStart will give startups $5,000 to $10,000 in return for “founders stock” of 5 to 10 percent. The twelve week program will run during the summer in Greenville and will give entrepreneurs office space, internet access and other professional services. Startup teams will be immersed in a business planning program, FastTrac by the Kauffman Foundation, to develop a solid business plan and will also work with the Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Clemson University. NextStart joins a constantly growing number of programs trying to appeal to young entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta), and Capital Factory (Austin). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Facebook Sure Does Have Trouble Keeping Execs Top
Facebook will soon have its third chief financial officer in less than two years, the company announced today via a leak to the Wall Street Journal. Gideon Yu , the man who came back from Dubai empty handed , is out . The hunt for his successor is starting now. Facebook says this is about getting a CFO with public company experience ( “We have retained Spencer Stuart to lead our search for a new CFO and will be looking for someone with public company experience.” ). Which is complete nonsense (and poorly thought out nonsense at that), because Yu, after a short stint at YouTube and an even shorter stint at Sequoia Capital, was the treasurer and SVP Finance at Yahoo. Which is very much a public company. So why is he leaving? We have to speculate for now, but perhaps he’s not convinced the company can get another round of financing at the valuation the board wants to see. Or it could be any of a thousand other things. But it most certainly isn’t because he doesn’t have public company experience. Less than two years ago Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said of Yu “I consider it kind of a coup that we were able to recruit him here…He’s just excellent.” I wonder why he didn’t add “I just hope for his sake that Facebook isn’t too successful, because if we IPO at some point, he’s out.” Yu is just the most recent Facebook exec to leave the company. Here’s a list of at more than ten that have left since 2007 (not included on the list is Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, who is expected to leave this year to run for Attorney General in California): Gideon Yu, VP and CFO – left 3/31/09 Net Jacobsson, director of business development –left, March '09 Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer – left in Feb '08 Adam D'Angelo, co-founder and CTO left in May '08 Matt Cohler, VP of product development and #5 employee – left in June '08 Katie Geminder, Director of Product, left sometime after Jun '07 Jeff Hammerbacher – left in July '08 Ben Ling, head of developer platform – left in Aug '08 Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook cofounder– left in Oct '08 Rudy Gadre, VP and General Counsel, January 2006 – April 2008 Mike Sheridan, CFO, left in June 2007 Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
More Layoffs Hit hi5 Top
We’ve confirmed that hi5, the third largest social network in the world, is laying off employees today. hi5’s VP of Marketing, Mike Trigg, wouldn’t say how many employees were being let go but we’ve received multiple independent tips that the social network laid off 50% of its staff. Previous to this round of layoffs, hi5 employed around 100 people. Trigg said the layoffs were due to a “realignment of the company” and that it was also a cost-cutting measure. Obviously, revenues were not keeping up with costs. The social network recently went through a previous round of layoffs last October, letting go 10 to 15% of its staff due to another “restructuring.” hi5 gets about 63 million monthly unique visits worldwide but only 3.7 million of those are from the U.S., according to ComScore’s February stats. The site boasts close to 80 million registered users but apparently many of these users are just not in markets that advertisers find particularly appealing. Hi5 is the third largest social network in the world. Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide with 275.6 million unique visitors, with MySpace is coming in second with 125.8 million unique visitors. Orkut is No. 4 with 51.7 million. We’ve added the layoffs to the TechCrunch layoff tracker. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Networks In Motion To Launch First GPS App For BlackBerry App World Top
In news that seems to indicate that Blackberry’s App World is indeed launching tomorrow, we’ve learned that Networks In Motion (NIM) will be releasing a GPS application for the BlackBerry on Wednesday, which would make it the first (or at least, tied for first) GPS app available on the new storefront. NIM has built a number of applications and services for its partners, including Verizon Navigator, but this is the first time it has sold an application carrying its label to end-users. The new GPS application takes advantage of technology built by TrafficGuage, which NIM acquired earlier this month. TrafficGuage’s technology will be used to offer users real-time traffic updates on the application. Other features in the app include the ability to locate nearby points of interest (like gas stations) and multiple viewing angles. NIM has not yet released exact pricing, but the application will be available on a subscription basis. Depending on the application’s pricing and how well it works, NIM’s app could do very well on the BlackBerry application storefront. And while BlackBerry will have GPS for its app store’s launch, it’s worth noting that Apple’s App Store appears to have actually banned turn-by-turn GPS applications (even if developers can get them working) until the iPhone’s 3.0 software is released this summer. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Confirmed: Facebook Loses CFO Gideon Yu Top
Facebook is losing its CFO Gideon Yu. The Wall Street Journal broke the news earlier today, and speculated that the reason could be that Facebook might want to make an early bid for an IPO and wants a CFO with public company experience (which is complete nonsense). Yu was previously the CFO of YouTube. At Facebook, he was key to raising money from Microsoft at the famous $15 billion valuation, but as the economy soured he was not able to find as many takers at that same price, despite Facebook’s voracious need for capital to keep up with its growth. A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed Yu’s departure to us, providing the following statement. Facebook confirms that CFO Gideon Yu will be leaving the company. Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company. We are grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish. Despite the poor economic climate, we are pleased that our financial performance is strong and we are well positioned for the next stage of our growth. We have retained Spencer Stuart to lead our search for a new CFO and will be looking for someone with public company experience. High-level departures are becoming more common at Facebook as it strives to match its managerial talent to its ever-changing needs. Part of Yu’s job was to find capital to keep Facebook’s server farms growing. He was certainly in constant discussions with various investors, even going to Dubai last year looking for deep wallets. But he came home empty-handed. An early IPO may not necessarily be the best thing for Facebook right now. Its revenues are rumored to be growing faster than many people think, driven by a huge inventory of advertising spots. Even if those ads are sold for pennies apiece, those pennies add up. One insider claims that revenues are on track to exceed $400 million this year. But Facebook would do better to wait until it starts generating substantial profits before testing the IPO waters. Going out too soon may just be a sign that it can’t find funding in the private markets. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Mozilla Weave Now Lets You Sync Your Mobile Browser Too Top
Today, Mozilla Labs released the 0.3 version of Weave , its project that syncs multiple browsers in the cloud. Weave lets users sync their bookmarks, tabs, passwords, and histories in the cloud across Firefox browsers on different computers. With today’s release, you can also sync with Fennec, Firefox’s mobile browser , which unfortunately right now only works on one kind of phone: a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Yeah, I don’t have one of those either. But the idea of syncing your browsers is a powerful one for anyone who uses more than one computing device on a regular basis. Originally launched in December, 2007 , Weave is now faster and more reliable. In other words, now it actually works (or so I’m told). The one thing Weave doesn’t sync is all of your add-ons. But that is planned for a future release. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Jimmy Wales Deadpools Wikia Search Top
It is going to take more than just an open search platform to take on Google. Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced today that he is shutting down Wikia Search , the company’s experiment in creating better search results through crowdsourcing. Wikia Search attempted to port the Wikipedia model over to search by allowing anybody to modify results by including new links or moving natural results up the page. The initial launch last year was awful , but the experience improved over time . Still, it never really attracted anything more than a trickle of searchers. We are placing it in the deadpool . Then Wikia Search got Googled when the search juggernaut launched its own Search Wiki feature , which lets you do pretty much the same thing on Google itself (move results up the page, block results, add comments—except it only affects your search results, not everyone’s). And so it goes. You cannot compete in search if your idea can be easily copied by Google. But if Wikia Search had never existed, Google might never have felt pressure to add wiki features to its interface. In that regard, Wikia Search did have an impact beyond its own site. Wales says that Wikia will focus its resources on its main Wikia service for building wikis, as well as Wikianswers , a Q&A service which launched earlier this year and also faces stiff competition, but not from Google. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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