Wednesday, April 29, 2009

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Four Months Later, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly Confirms Bid For California Attorney General Top
As we first reported way back in December, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly today officially launched his campaign for the office of Attorney General of California. You can find his campaign homepage here and, of course, he’s also vying for fans on his Facebook page (complete with custom Facebook application). At this point Kelly has announced his intention to form an “exploratory committee”, and plans to remain at Facebook for the immediate future. Should he continue in the race (which there doesn’t seem to be much doubt of) he would take a leave of absence, when he’d likely be replaced with Facebook’s new Public Policy Director Timothy D. Sparapani, who Facebook hired last month in anticipation of Kelly’s departure. During his time at Facebook, Kelly has dealt with a variety of privacy issues tied to the social network, including negotiations with Attorneys General troughout the US, the Beacon fiasco , constant phishing and spam attacks, and the community’s revolt over Facebook’s new Terms of Service . While it’s widely considered to be the ’safer’ of the major social networks, Facebook hasn’t always come out of these unscathed, so it will be interesting to see how voters perceive Kelly’s Facebook experience. Before joining Facebook four years ago, Kelly had previously clerked for federal Judge Barry Moskowitz of the United States District Court in San Diego, was a practicing lawyer, and later served as a policy advisor during the Clinton administration (you can read his full bio here ). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
FriendFeed Beta Becomes Regular FriendFeed. Hope You Like Real-time. Top
Earlier this month, FriendFeed opened the beta testing area of its site to test a major redesign and a big new feature: Real-time updates. Today, it has removed the beta label from the new features, and pushed them live to the regular site. Initially, there was quite a bit of concern from beta testers that the real-time updates were simply too much information being thrown at you, too quickly. But over the past several weeks, that talk has quieted quite a bit, and users seem to be acclimated to the live updating functionality. Of course, there have been some who also chose to use the regular, more static FriendFeed site still, so it will be interesting to see how those users react now. This roll-out is potentially important for other social sites as well. The biggest is of course Facebook, which has stated its desire to make the site’s news feed streams update in real-time. Given the initial backlash FriendFeed saw against real-time, one can only imagine how bad it would have been received on Facebook. Especially considering that site has over 200 million users sending updates. And it’s likely that fact that is delaying the roll-out of the real-time data flow on Facebook, I’m hearing. That functionality was first talked about during the preview event for the most recent redesign back in early March. But with its recently unveiled new stream APIs, Facebook is allowing other services to access some of its data flow in real-time, and to build apps that handle it, even if it can’t do that, yet. And the real-time updates aren’t the only new feature of FriendFeed. Aside from the aforementioned redesign that makes the site have a cleaner look, there is improved search functionality — including the ability to easily search for users. There is also a way to save searches that you do often on the site and have them easily accessible. There is also a new feature that it’s calling “ FriendFeed by Email .” Basically, this allows users to interact with the service through an email account. This includes sending updates and images, and to send messages to specific groups. You can also get custom updates emailed back, including comments on the items you have posted to the service. Replying to these will place a comment underneath on FriendFeed. The new version of FriendFeed also includes the ability to direct message people, just as you can on Twitter, and this too will work through email. Learn a bit more about the real-time update aspect in the video below. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
'Flight Control' Sales Stats Offer Fascinating Look At Inner Workings Of The iPhone App Store Top
Firemint , the company behind the best selling iPhone game ‘ Flight Control ‘, has put together a fascinating report outlining the sales trends the company has seen over the last month, from March 24 to April 25. The application has dominated the App Store over the last few weeks, reaching the #1 paid spot in over a dozen countries (though it’s currently fallen to #7 in the US). Since launching on March 6 the application has been downloaded over 700,000 times. It’s unclear how much money the application has actually made - it’s currently marked as ‘on sale’ for a limited time, but even at its current 99 cent price point the app’s developers will have made $485,000 dollars after Apple’s 30% cut. For those of you who haven’t played it, Flight Control is a highly addictive game that involves directing tiny aircraft to their landing pads. The game strikes the perfect balance between accessibility (you can figure out how to play it in about two minutes) and offering a significant challenge. It may not be the sort of game you’d want to sit and play for hours at a time, but it’s a perfect diversion for the doctor’s waiting room or a bus ride. Firemint has gone to great lengths to record its data, but it isn’t quite comprehensive - apparently the studio forgot to download its reports from Apple on a couple of days, and there’s no way to get them now. Still, this is probably the most detailed set of data to be released by a top developer to date. Among the revealing insights: The United States accounted for the vast majority of sales, with 57%. Second in line was the UK with 17%, followed by Germany and Canada, with 4% each. Each Top App List is country-specific (your downloads in the USA don’t help you reach the chart in the Austrailian version of the store). At the high end of the spectrum, Flight Control was able to reach the top spot in the United States with 9586 daily downloads, while it took 3061 to hit the top spot in the UK store. Reaching the peak position in Finland took only 23 downloads in a single day. In the US, Flight Control saw a downward trend in sales over time as it maintained the #1 spot in the App Store. This isn’t particularly surprising given the finite number of iPhone owners who check the App Store on a regular basis, but it gives an idea as to why the top apps lists have such a high churn rate. Firemint speculates that Flight Control was able to maintain its top spot even as sales declined because the App Store uses a moving average rather than the number of sales in a single day to rank apps. Sales were impacted by outside events, including Easter (when there was an increase in sales) and media coverage. The data makes a few things clear. For one, adding localization support should probably be placed on the back burner for applications that would require a large time investment to add new languages. Over 80% of Flight Control downloads came from English-speaking countries. It’s also clear that, at least in the case of Flight Control, there isn’t sustained growth once an application hits #1 on the App Store. Instead, the application quickly peaked and has gradually lost steam over time, though it remains popular. Be sure to look through the full report for more details, including a day-by-day breakdown of download stats. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Workday Raises $75 Million For Human Resources Software Top
Workday, a financial and human resources SaaS provider, has secured $75 million in Series E funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) (which contributed $45 million) with existing investors Greylock Partners and Workday CEO and co-founder Dave Duffield also participating. Duffield founded PeopleSoft, which he sold to Oracle in January 2005 for $10.3 billion. The company has raised a total of $150 million in funding. Workday, which currently has over 80 customers, plans to use the funds to extend its product portfolio and support the company's expansion. Workday’s software, Workday Human Capital Management and Workday Financial Management, helps companies manage human resources and finances in a single system. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Nahum Sharfman, Founder Of Shopping.com, Perishes In Plane Crash Top
We received devastating news that Nahum Sharfman, founder of Shopping.com, and his wife, Nava, died in a plane crash in Greece. According to The Marker (the article is in Hebrew, here’s the translated version ), Sharfman, who was a well-known entrepreneur in the Israeli tech space, perished in a plane crash on the Greek island of Korfo. The story has also been broken on Twitter. Initial reports attribute the cause of the crash to human error combined with severe weather conditions. A successful entrepreneur, Sharfman founded Shopping.com which he brought to a successful IPO in 2004. Shopping.com was later acquired by eBay for $650 million. Earlier, Sharfman co-founded Commtouch and also brought the security technology company to an IPO in 2000. Prior to starting his own ventures, Sharfman spent 11 years working for National Semiconductor. He received a Ph.D. in High Energy Nuclear Physics from Carnegie Mellon University and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Physics from the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. Sharfman was also chairman of social content sharing site enips. Our thoughts and prayers are with Nahum and Nava Sharfman’s family and friends at this time. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
High Payouts From Microsoft PubCenter May Be Too Good To Be True Top
Last week, Microsoft officially opened up PubCenter to the masses, allowing anyone to sign up for the ad program. We’ve written about how Microsoft’s PubCenter, a self-serve third-party ad publishers platform through AdCenter, was doing well with private beta testers over the past year, with PubCenter paying significantly more than competitors Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher (one particular site owner says he is receiving from four times more in revenue from Microsoft than Google AdSense). We are now hearing and reading on PubCenter forums that since the program opened up to the public last week, revenue has plummeted and many publishers are switching back to AdSense due to the sudden drop in payouts. One publisher, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that Microsoft has cut his payout by 80 to 90 percent and that many of the publishers on PubCenter are leaving to go back to AdSense. According to our source, this new revshare went into place on either the 18th or the 19th of April. Here’s a direct quote from the publisher: “Realistically, Microsoft’s payout has been too high from the beginning, but this drop puts it well below the scope of being remotely competitive and instead files it under ‘worthless.’” On the private forums, many publishers are outraged by the sudden drop in revenue. We’ve lifted some of the comments from several different publishers who are using PubCenter: “My earnings have gone down by about 50 % over the last few days. I typically do about 8500 a month with PubCenter-I was doing around 7500 with AdSense prior, so I welcomed a new player. Unfortunately, unless this trend changes it will be back to AdSense for me. The most annoying part is knowing that nothing on my site or traffic has changed but instead that someone decided to adjust the revshare numbers.” “I’m not seeing any drop with the other [ad] networks recently…it’s just the way it was last month…but here it’s a very steep drop in the last 3 days or so . . . . I am not sure if some updates have been rolled out. This is definitely something to be concerned about since the numbers we are seeing over the past days bring serious concerns.” “April 20th is the lowest eCPM I have seen since starting this program, much lower than my other programs.” “I haven’t seen eCPM this low since I started. The past 3 days have been extremely concerning. As far as my impressions go, I have been usually at the high end of my average. My average CTR has improved…not sure why eCPM has declined so sharply.” Google is in the driver’s seat when it comes to serving ads on third-party publisher sites. The company has more advertisers chasing all those impressions, which tends to drive bidding way up. So even though Google only shares a small amount with publishers, they can outpay competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft. That means Microsoft may have to actually take a loss revenue sharing just to get in the game. Their total revenue per click may actually be lower than what Google pays out in a revenue share, meaning to win publishers Microsoft may have to share more than 100% of revenue. That gets expensive fast. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Spock And Intelius? Uh Oh. Top
People search engine Spock is about to be sold, say multiple sources. Spock was a hot startup back when it launched in 2007 , but after an initial spike in traffic, the company has gone sideways and faded into obscurity. People search, it seems, will be dominated by the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook, who are both now being smart about search engine optimization. Now they’ve burned through much of the cash they raised, which includes an announced $7 million round plus additional undisclosed funding. And they’ve been trying to sell themselves for some time - we’ve confirmed with a couple of buyers who looked at it and passed. Meanwhile, Spock has started charging users to access their data. But one company may have bitten and are close to buying the company. Sources are saying that the infamous Intelius (founded by the equally infamous Naveen Jain ), a people search engine that charges users to access data, may be buying Spocksoon. If these rumors are accurate, God help Spock. Not only is Intelius embroiled in all kinds of legal and ethical disputes, but they also have a shaky history when it comes to acquisitions. See this article , for example, about a 2005 acquisition of addresses.com, which ended up in litigation. Our coverage of Intelius is here and here . Selling to Intelius is just one step less painful than shutting down the company outright, so things must be worse at Spock than we’ve heard. Note that we’ve only been able to absolutely confirm that the two companies have had recent meetings about an acquisition, we’re still looking for a sale confirmation. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Searching For The Swine Flu Top
One way to possibly track the spread of the swine flu is to look at where spikes in search activity around related terms is occurring. Google already does this with its Google Flu Trends , and has now extended that analysis on an experimental basis to Mexico with a site it just put up called Experimental Flu Trends For Mexico . These maps represent Google’s estimates of actual flu outbreaks based on correlations between search activity and how many of those people are really sick. This could prove to be an early warning system. Last week, Google detected spikes in flu-related searches in Mexico City, for instance. The darker the region, the more flu search activity is being detected (see map below). Both Google Flu Trends and the experimental site for Mexico filter out searches that are not consistent with people looking for information about the disease. A broader analysis on the term “swine flu” can be found on Google Insights for Search, which shows the rise in that search term’s popularity over the past few weeks, along with the states where the most search activity is happening. (See map above). This method is less likely to be predictive of the actual spread of the disease because it just measures raw searches.. Nevertheless, the top ten states where people are searching for the term are: 1. Texas 2. Vermont 3. Kansas 4. New Mexico 5. New York 6. Ohio 7. Arizona 8. Illinois 9. Louisiana 10. Colorado If you click on each state, you can see the top ten cities where searches for “Swine flu” are occurring. For instance, in Texas, San Antonio is showing the most searches. In New York, surprisingly enough, it is not New York City, but Binghamton. These rankings are indexed, however, so it could just be a measure of the relative panic in each city. Compare this to the map showing where people are discussing swine flu on Facebook , where California registers strongest after Texas and Kansas barely at all. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Harvard Posts The Wolfram Alpha Preview Video — Without A Single Shot Of The Service Top
There’s a lot of buzz swirling about Wolfram Alpha , the new computational search engine — perhaps too much . But regardless, people want to see the service in action to decide for themselves. And some of those people tuned into the preview webcast put on by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society yesterday. Unfortunately, if you listened in live, it was audio-only. But Harvard followed up by posting a video of the event to YouTube later in the day — a video without a single shot of the service! So if you’re interested in watching 1 hour and 45 minutes of footage of creator Stephen Wolfram walking you through something just off screen that you can’t see, we’ve embedded it below for your viewing “pleasure.” But hey, the video is available in HD and at least the camera turns off of Wolfram for the Q&A session, to liven up the action a bit. Still, if you’re really interested in learning about the service, you may want to listen in. The rest of you may be more interested in the hands on report ReadWriteWeb did recently. Or maybe you’ll enjoy the leaked screenshot of the service — at least that’s something. Unfortunately, we can’t all be Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who got a personal demo of the service recently. Wolfram Alpha is set to launch in a few weeks. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Phishing Attack Underway At Facebook. Don't Sign In To Fbaction.net Top
We’ve received multiple tips of a new phishing attack that has broken out on Facebook. If you get an email message that looks to be from Facebook with the subject, “Hello,” and featuring the text below, don’t bother clicking on the link included. Doing so takes you to a site called fbaction.net that mimics the look of the main Facebook login page, hoping to get you to sign in. Naturally, if you do that, the site will have access to your account and can send out more of these messages to your friends. The message body will apparently read something like this (with YOURFRIEND being replaced by the name of a friend of yours): YOURFRIEND sent you a message. Subject: Hello “Visit http://www.facebook.com/l/4253f;http://fbaction.net/” We’ve contacted Facebook about the situation to see what it is doing to remedy this. In the meantime, be on the lookout for any link related to fbaction.net. Update : And it looks like “fbaction.net” is now the #2 hot trending search topic for all of Google Trends . This thing is apparently spreading quick. Update 2 : Here’s the what Facebook just told me about the attack: We are aware of this phishing domain and have already begun to take action. Specifically, we have passed the domain on to Markmonitor who pushes the domain to the browsers for blacklisting. They will also actively try to disable the site at the server/domain level for people who don't have updated browsers. Our user operations team has blocked the domain from being shared on Facebook and is removing the content retroactively from any messages. They will also be resetting passwords of senders to remove access from an attacker. We're also reaching out to the ISPs to get information and will attempt to build a civil and/or criminal case against the owners. Sure enough, as some commenters have noted below, it looks like Facebook is now blocking outgoing links to that domain, and some browsers, like IE8, have flagged it as malicious. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
AOL Posts 23 Percent Decline In Revenues During 1st Quarter As It Prepares For Spin-Off Top
Time Warner announced first quarter earnings today, giving us a peak at how AOL is doing. It’ seen better days. Revenues were down 23 percent to $867 million. Of that advertising revenues made up about half ($443 million), but were down a gut-wrenching 20 percent. Yahoo, in comparison, saw a 12 percent decline in advertising revenues during the quarter, and Google saw 6 percent growth in total revenues on an annual basis. Even Microsoft did better on the online advertising front, suffering a smaller 16 percent drop in the quarter. Also revealed in the 10Q filing with the SEC is Time Warner’s intention to separate the old dial-up access business and spin off the rest of AOL: Although the Company's Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner's stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company's review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL's businesses. New AOL CEO Tim Armstrong gets a pass this quarter because he was just hired away from Google in March. But he has to stop the bleeding before a spin-off or sale is possible. Meanwhile, on the product front, AOL is pushing forward with tweaks to its homepage that more fully integrate blogs, Twitter, and social networks. And AOL is positioning AIM and Socialthing as a single sign-on alternative to Facebook connect and Google Friend Connect. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Hey Google, Free The Orphans Top
Once again, Google is facing antitrust scrutiny , this time over its proposed settlement with the Authors Guild that would clear the way for it to scan out-of-print books. Most sane people seem to agree that scanning these books and making them available in digital form is a good idea, and the settlement even provides for a token payment of up to $60 per book to go to copyright holders. The objections, and there are many of them , seem to revolve around the right Google negotiated for itself around orphan books—books still under copyright whose copyright owners cannot be found or who simply fail to register in the Book Rights Registry set up under the settlement . If authors and other copyright holders fail to register by the deadline, which has now been extended for another four months, under the settlement Google will not be liable for any copyright infringement claims stemming from orphan works. The concern is that this will give Google monopoly rights over all orphan works, which is what it appears to do. In letter to the judge overseeing the settlement, the Internet Archive asked to be added as party to the settlement because it too scans hundreds of thousands of library books, but it won’t be protected from “potential copyright liability.” The judge denied the Internet Archive’s request, but its arguments (embedded in the letter below) spell out the main objection: The Archive’s text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books. There is also the issue of monopoly pricing. If Google is the only entity with blanket protection, it could start charging more for access to these works, or those works which prove valuable. Any single work is probably not that valuable, but taken all together they are very valuable, especially to Google which benefits by simply being able to add the text of all these books into search results and then make money off the associated search ads. So Google is now in the position where it negotiated a favorable settlement on its behalf, but competitors are playing the monopoly card and saying that settlement would give Google an unfair advantage in book search and retrieval. And they kind of have a point. So what is the answer? Google should amend some of the terms of the settlement to make it non-exclusive and the Author’s Guild should extend the same terms to any other company or organization that wants to digitize orphan books. In other words, Google needs to free the orphans. Don’t make this just a deal between authors and Google. Make it a deal between authors and any existing or future book digitizer. Copyright holders should also have the option to place their works under Creative Commons licenses. If Google wants to stop being treated like a monopolist , it needs to stop acting like one. Internet Archive Intervention: Google Book Search Publish at Scribd or explore others: Technology Business & Law intervention settlement Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
MSN Picks WetPaint To Add A Fresh Coat To Its Entertainment Pages Top
MSN had a bit of a problem. It had the popular entertainment area of its service, where movies, musical acts, and other things in pop culture have pages filled with content for fans. But the problem was that paying people to populate these sites with content was expensive. And since it’s the fans that want to see it, why not let them help out to build the site? That’s why MSN is now partnering with WetPaint , the simple website building platform, to power new entertainment sites. Two dozen such sites are set to be launched over the next few months. These sites will specifically be powered by WetPaint Injected , its service which allows any site owner to place user generated content onto their sites. That’s exactly what MSN plans to do, as it will still house the sites, but will simply populate pages based on the content that fans create. Though none are yet live, you can get a taste for how this might work with the WetPaint-powered page Showtime has for its show, The Tudors . It features a large community updating the site regularly, giving other fans pictures, video clips and commentary. And what’s really nice about these WetPaint Injected-powered site is that they play nicely with search engines, WetPaint CEO Ben Elowitz tells me. With a lot of other widget add-ons that usually power fan pages hosted elsewhere, the search engine crawlers have trouble parsing the site, but WetPaint is SEO-friendly, and that has led to large increases in traffic from searchable terms that fans include on pages. Elowitz notes that it’s nice to see MSN taking a lead in making its sites more socially friendly, when other large portals are strugling with that. And as a number of big names in entertainment and brands start to move to use fan pages on Facebook, he also notes that WetPaint-powered fan pages perform well when compared to Facebook fan pages. Generally, the WetPaint variety see 100 times the usage from fans when it comes to contributions and comments, he says. Elowitz wouldn’t go into the specifics of the arangement with MSN, but notes that usually its outside business deals involve revenue sharing and/or some sort of fee for their service. It seems to be a smart play by MSN. Why pay someone to do work that fans will do for free? Not only that, but fans tell other fans about the contributions their making, and it’s like built-in buzz for the community you’re targeting. And when you serve everyone who comes to these sites ads, you have a nice little, basically free, revenue stream right there. WetPaint also has a smaller side project it’s working on in light of the recent shut down of Geocities . GARP , or Geocities Asset Recovery Plan, will allow stranded Geocities users to transfer their sites over to Wetpain using their migration kit. WetPaint is even offering to buy domains for the first thousand sites that migrate. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Conductor Raises $10 Million For SEO Management And Optimization Technology Top
Conductor , a New York-based provider of SEO measurement and optimization solutions, has raised a Series B round of funding to the tune of $10 million, led by Matrix Partners and joined by FirstMark Capital, who led the startup’s Series A financing. Conductor markets technology which aims to empower online marketers and interactive agencies to gather reliable data on their SEO efforts, make better decisions on capturing natural search market share and accurately measure ROI for their employers or clients. Conductor, which was co-founded by Seth Besmertnik and Jeremy Duboys back in 2005, is playing an interesting field where there’s undoubtedly still quite some room for growth, but it’s up against some stiff competition from other companies (we recently covered funding rounds for Marin Software and Kenshoo , although these focus more on the SEM i.e. paid search part of the business). The extra funding should give Conductor some more runway to make its services stand out of the crop, and with an experienced management team, which includes former executives from ContextWeb, Apple, Yahoo! and DoubleClick, we consider the company to be a serious contestant in the space. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
P2P Lending Marketplace Prosper Gets Off The Bench, Debuts Open Market Initiative Top
Prosper , the people-to-people lending service that launched way back in May 2006, has found itself on a rocky road so far. Last October, Prosper suspended new lending in order to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission to create a secondary marketplace for the loans on its site (the SEC wanted to evaluate whether the company should register as a securities broker, as evidenced later when it formally issued its cease-and-desist letter ). But now Prosper is back despite the fact that the SEC hasn’t yet approved its operations, and while they have respected the requested silence up during the six-month hiatus, they haven’t exactly stalled development of the service. The company relaunched its lending services yesterday for the State of California (borrowing can be done throughout the U.S.), and is hoping to take the whole thing nationwide soon. There are new features, too. Prosper announced its Open Market initiative, which will allow other financial institutions (e.g. auto lenders, small business lenders and community development lenders) to place their already funded loans the Prosper website for auction. The company will vet lenders and require three payments to have already been made on any loan up for sale. Prosper has raised $40 million in capital to date from Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital, among others. It’s up against well-funded competitors such as Zopa and Lending Club . CrunchBase Information Prosper Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
IMShopping Is A Human Powered Product Search Engine For Twitter Top
IMshopping has launched a human-powered shopping search site and Twitter shopping service designed to help consumers find niche products on the web. It’s sort of like a shopping 411 service, which human guides on call respond to product questions and provide personalized recommendations for users about what product best suits their needs. IMShopping tries to simulate the experience of going into a store, speaking with a sales person and being guided to the item that works best for you. IMShopping also closed a $4.7 million Series A round of funding from SK Telecom Ventures. IMSHopping hopes to fill the gap pf personalized, detail-oriented service that e-commerce sites don’t have, since these sites are focused less on answering technical questions about a product and more on price and reviews. Twitter users can directly ask questions by messaging @imshopping . The shopping guides in the community and trained experts offer detailed responses within minutes. Shoppers can use these responses to instantly make purchases or save to their own folders before making a product decision. Shoppers who are asking questions on IMShopping’s site can search IMshopping's database for product questions that have been already answered, or pose their own shopping questions (the site currently has an archive of 20,000 questions). As the shopping guides craft their response, they review a detailed analysis of the product, including specifications, reviews from third-party sites, blog buzz and price. This response is then delivered to the shopper and also archived anonymously for review by future shoppers. All public questions and responses are searchable via Twitter or can be viewed by following @imshopping. Consumers can also ask direct questions via Twitter that are not made public. The guide will give you an answer of where to find your desired item and also provide you with links to sites where the item can be purchased. You can also rate the response you received from the guide-the guides are paid based on the quality and etail of their responses. The site is really designed to get answers on where to get hard to find or obscure items-like what electronic toy is best for a hyperactive two year old. If you already have a specific item in mind, the site may be useless to you. As a business model, IMShopping collects revenue when consumer buy products that are recommended through the site. The problem is that when a consumer finally gets the right product for their needs, what is there to stop them from then searching for the produt on Google. The company is staying quiet on future business plans we are told that over time the company will roll out programs for general consumers to earn value from assisting on searches and getting rated for the quality of their answers. Human search hasn’t done well in the past; take a look at ChaCha’s former business model. It’s hard to understand how human guides could do better than Google or Yahoo unless the guides are experts in electronics, clothes etc. IMShopping is hoping to add the human touch to the online shopping experience but increasingly retail sites employ staff to conduct live chats with potential customers. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
IAC Buys UrbanSpoon Based On Good Recommendations Top
UrbanSpoon , a restaurant recommendation service , started out with a simple plan. It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry , Adam Doppelt and Patrick O'Donnell who set out to see if they could build a company in today’s world without needing any traditional outside investments. Today, they can safely say they succeeded — big time. IAC, the Internet giant, has just bought the completely self-funded company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but I hear that it’s definitely worth something in the millions of dollars range. And it had to be, because UrbanSpoon was perfectly happy continuing to grow its business on its own, as it was already fairly profitable, Lowry tells me. But IAC, came in with “an offer we couldn’t refuse,” according to Lowry. He would only elaborate that, “we’re very happy with the deal.” UrbanSpoon first popped up on IAC’s map when it began pulling in Citysearch reviews to serve up to customers. IAC was impressed with the local audiences UrbanSpoon was able to attract, Lowry says. The two sides had been talking informally on and off starting in the second half of last year. Coincidentally, this was right around the time when the iPhone 3G and Apple’s App Store launched. I mention those because they were really the catalysts that catapulted UrbanSpoon into the spotlight. Actually, UrbanSpoon was one of the first iPhone 3G-specific apps I ever looked at because I thought it made interesting use of the device’s GPS chip. When you start up the app, it locates you via GPS, then you shake the phone and it comes up with a random restaurant near you. You can tailor these searches to be more or less random, but it’s so simple and turns indecision into a form of entertainment and discovery. Others clearly agreed as UrbanSpoon was a mainstay in top downloads area of the App Store, and Apple even thought enough of it to use in one of its commercials. Lowry and the rest of the team will stay intact with the move to IAC, and will keep UrbanSpoon based in Seattle. They still have plenty of things in the pipeline, including updates to the iPhone app, but given IAC’s wide range of properties from the aforementioned Citysearch, to Ask.com, to Match.com to Evite, there are a lot of potential new things that UrbanSpoon can delve into now. CrunchBase Information UrbanSpoon Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Kickstarter Launches Another Social Fundraising Platform Top
Andy Baio , blogger on Waxy.org and co-founder of Upcoming ( acquired by Yahoo back in October 2005), yesterday evening announced the release of Kickstarter . This is an online platform that enables just about anyone to raise funding from interested individuals. Basically, Kickstarter took what Sellaband is all about and applied it to a wider variety of projects, i.e. not only to discover and fund upcoming bands but anyone who does something creative (think designers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, etc.). At launch, the service is restricted to people who are invited to the service, but you can sign up here to be notified when that changes. Baio, who sits on the startup’s board and advised the company for the past 10 months, explains: The model is simple: a project creator sets a fundraising goal, deadline, and an optional set of rewards for backers. If the goal’s reached by the deadline, then everyone’s charged via Amazon Payments and the backers get their goodies. If the goal’s not reached, nobody’s charged. It’s all or nothing. People who start projects on the platform to get funded by others retain 100% ownership over everything, but need to find a way to give people an incentive to pledge (this can be anything, preferably related to the actual project of course). Kickstarter also doubles as a publishing platform where project creators can keep anyone or only their backers how the project is doing with text, pictures and videos. When they reach their deadline with the desired funding, project creators receive 100% of the funds they raised, minus the fees that Amazon charges to process credit card transactions. Kickstarter doesn’t take a cut yet, but will likely start charging fees at some point, otherwise there wouldn’t be much a business model. I very much like the name, concept and design of Kickstarter, but of course this is nothing new and only time will tell if the startup can make enough noise to stand out of the crop. Similar services include FirstGiving , PledgeBank and Mob Incentive . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Analysis: How Far Do Projects Launched At Startup Weekends Travel? (Not Very Far) Top
Over the years, we’ve covered a number of startups, or rather projects, that were born out of the so-called Startup Weekends . Basically, these are regional community events where developers, designers and business people come together on a given weekend, decide to pursue the creation of one or more fresh web application(s) or service(s) and subsequently cook them up in a very brief period of time (usually 54 hours). Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde from TechStars, the concept quickly caught on and has since been held in many U.S. cities as well as many other countries across the globe. But what happens to all these projects after they’ve launched? Do any of them actually take off or do most die a silent death? Are they usually left for what they were after the weekend or does development on the services and applications continue? Those are the questions German bloggers Alexander Graf and Florian Hermsdorf set out to answer, and they’ve come up with a pretty eye-opening analysis based on their quick-and-dirty research. Alexander and Florian took a look at all the projects that were launched at startup weekends, most in the U.S., and kept track of the ones that are still active, idle, explicitly closed or downright offline. The ‘idle’ status came in three degrees, depending on if there have been no notable new developments on the project for the last 3, 6 or more months. The stats will be updated every 3 months. The results so far: only 12 out of the 116 startups (approximately 10 percent) launched after Startup Weekends held from July 2007 to April 2009 can still be considered active, and 35 out of the bunch (approx. 30 percent) are currently offline. Most of the projects carry the ‘idle’ status, which means there have been no visible changes to the service for a certain period of time. This does not necessarily mean that Startup Weekends as a concept fails, because I imagine some if not most of the people involved already have a regular job or their own startup and jump in it for the connections they make at the event or simply for the thrill of making something that works in a short period of time. That said, dreamers who thought this would ultimately prove one of the better ways to launch successful startups are now presented with proof that building companies generally takes much more than a fun weekend of work among peers, particularly in this economic climate. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
AOL Homepage Looks Different, Real Different. The "A" Is For Agnostic. Top
While AOL was officially launching its Socialthing for Websites initiative this morning, it was also quietly making some changes to the design of its homepage. There are some new themes, Twitter integration, a prominent RSS tab up top, and all the information and news modules are now collapsible. There are also a few new AOL content featured along teh left-hand column, such as Paw Nation and PoliticsDaily (see our review ). But if you haven’t been to AOL.com lately (you are not alone), you may not completely recognize it. For one thing, there is a lifestreaming box on the right that lets you log into various social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and MySpcace. You can see all of the status updates from your friends on other social networks and respond to them from within AOL. AIM and Bebo are also options in that box, but for Bebo you have to click an arrow to even see it (and AOL owns Bebo). You can also check your e-mail from Yahoo and Gmail, as well as AOL. These changes began last year and reflect a growing agnosticism at AOL, which wants to make it easy for you to bring your social network with you to the site. If you don’t like the look of AOL’s homepage, you can pick a new background theme. Ah, there. That’s better already. And the RSS reader has been moved up prominently as a tab so you can switch away from AOL’s pre-programmed page and program it yourself with your own news and blog feeds. On the main tab, each information and news box can be collapsed, but unfortunately they cannot be moved around. But the rigidity that was once there is beginning to ease, and that is a good thing. AOL realizes it is no longer the center of the universe, and is adapting. In a sense, all of these minor tweaks add up to an embrace of other gravitational forces on the Web. AOL is presenting them in a way that is palatable to everyday Americans. Forget Oprah. Seeing Twitter on AOL’s homepage is the biggest proof that it is going mainstream. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
TellMe Rolls Out Better Speech Recognition And An Almost-Sexy New Voice Called Zira Top
TellMe , which Microsoft bought two years ago, is rolling out an upgrade to its call center automation software which should improve its speech recognition rates. It is also adding Global Crossing as partner for reselling its VoiP carrier service, along with AT&T and Verizon. TellMe handles 2.5 billion calls a year for customers such as American Airlines and ETrade. Even a one percent improvement in automated call completion rates translates into millions of dollars a year for large call centers. TellMe will be deploying a new text-to-speech engine with an almost-sexy female voice called Zira. She only sounds slightly robotic. Here is a clip you can download: zira_businesslisting Another set of technologies can break up sentences into their constituent parts so that if the software doesn’t understand something it can ask for only the piece of missing information instead of repeating the entire question. For instance, if you say you want to fly from New york to San Francisco on Wednesday, and it got everything but the day, it would only ask you what day you want to fly instead of making you repeat your entire itinerary. TellMe is adding a few other technology improvements under the hood as well, such as statistical models for predicting the next word you are going to say to narrow down the possibilities and acoustic modeling that adapts to your accent or speech pattern. Finally, consumers will begin to see some of this speech-to-text technology in Windows Mobile 6.5. It will be able to read text messages in that Zira voice, and it will also make voice commands an input method for mobile phones running the WinMo operating system, which should be out some time in the fall. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
In Anticipation Of Snow Leopard And A New iPhone, WWDC Sells Out In Record Time Top
Apple announced today that its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has already sold out. That’s pretty incredible considering two things. First, tickets went on sale only a month ago, and are anything but cheap — even the early-bird special was well over $1,000. (And remember, this is a recession, and plenty of other conferences are struggling to move tickets.) And second, last year’s event was the first one ever to sell out — and that only happened a couple weeks before the actual show. Clearly, anticipation is high for this year’s event for a number of reasons. The first is that developers and presumably the audience at the keynote (which we’ll be at, so that means all of you will get to follow along as well) will get a major glimpse at OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard.” The new OS is currently being tested by developers, but most of the expected user interface changes have yet to be unveiled. WWDC may be the first time anyone gets a real look at those. But even bigger than Snow Leopard, is the possibility that Apple may use the event to unveil a new version of the iPhone. There have been no shortage of rumors about this, but some kind of new hardware now appears pretty likely. Will it offer faster data speeds? Will it have video recording capabilities? Will it have better battery life? An OLED screen? People want to know. Last year at WWDC, Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G, and dropped the bomb that it would only cost $199 after subsidy. One other thing that is undoubtedly causing a lot of interest in this year’s WWDC, is the question of whether CEO Steve Jobs will make an appearance. Publically, Apple is saying that Jobs remains on track to make a return at the end of June, but could he really pass up an opportunity to unveil the above two products? I’ve contacted Apple to see who is slated to be the keynote speaker this year, and will update if I hear back. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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