Monday, April 13, 2009

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TribeHQ Is The "Micro-Jobbing" Platform For All Things Job Related Top
With the popularity of Twitter and the proliferation of symbiotic applications designed to feed off the Twitter phenomenon, it’s becoming increasingly uncommon to see startups taking a stab at creating a totally new “micro-blogging” platform. That’s why it’s always fascinating to see how people are trying to reinvent the Twitter wheel. TribeHQ has launched its own twitter-like platform, but with a twist. TribeHQ is a “micro-jobbing”platform: a micro-blogging social network that enables members from the same occupation (or “tribe”) to converse with each other and with employers about potential job opportunities. Unlike Twitter, which uses ungainly hash tags (#hashtags) as a convention to indicate what a particular Tweet is about, TribeHQ uses job-matching algorithms to align members seeking a new job with opportunities that match their career goals. Employers can post jobs and profiles of their companies. Tribe members can then have real-time conversations with employers (but only using 140 characters or less) and are automatically matched with jobs available to members of their tribe. TribeHQ integrates with Facebook Connect to import contacts. TribeHQ’s real-time conversations with employers is forward thinking when it comes to Track, because it combines real-time updates with filtering and mining of content. When you sign onto the site, you can join a tribe, a.k.a job profession. For example, I joined the “Journalists/ Reporters/Correspondents Tribe.” Unfortunately, there were no other members of my tribe on the site. And there were no job postings for my tribe. In fact, there were only three job postings, in sales, recruiting and web development. If the site is going to gain a following for recruitment purposes, it needs to post more job opportunities. TribeHQ’s idea of offering a niche platform for micro-blogging job postings and connecting people in the same industries is definitely worth a try. But the website has a few hurdles to jump before it can become viral. With the massive popularity of Twitter, that has become the go-to platform for pretty much anything to do with micro-blogging. It’s going to take some significant marketing efforts to convert job seekers and employers to add a new platform. This is why so many startups are focused on creating applications based off of Twitter’s API. TwitterJobSearch is a good example of this. TwitterJobSearch uses semantic search to figure out the content of a tweet and gives you job postings based on job type and job title etc. TribeHQ is also trying to add the element of professional social networking into the mix, which LinkedIn has already mastered. But TribeHQ has a good idea. With enough followers and job listings, it could really take off. Maybe it should think of tapping into Twitter. What is TribeHQ http://www.TribeHQ.com from TribeHQ on Vimeo Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Jim Breyer Joins Dell Board Of Directors, Fast Becoming Most Powerful Man In Silicon Valley Top
Jim Breyer , a partner at Accel Partners, joined the board of directors of Dell today. That’s interesting in itself, but the man also sits on the board of Facebook, Walmart and Marvel, as well as a number of younger startups. On a daily basis Breyer sees a flow of non public information (retail sales at Walmart, Facebook’s monetization plans, Marvel’s thoughts on the promise and peril of digital distribution, Dell’s plans to stay relevant) that would be the envy of anyone. I’ve long had a warm place in my heart for Breyer, who managed to defuse the absurd legal situation that arose last year when we put on an Iron Man screening. Marvel tried to shut it down for a variety of reasons. Breyer, realizing the ridiculousness of the situation, called back the attack dogs and the screening went forward . I’ve had a man crush on him ever since. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
SB Nation Scores A Link Deal With The NHL Top
Sports-blog network SB Nation is now officially sanctioned by the NHL. Posts from its 29 hockey blogs now appear as linked headlines on the homepage of NHL.com . CEO Jim Bankoff, a former AOL executive, tells me that he is in discussions with other major sports leagues for similar link deals. You’d think that investor Ted Leonsis, the former AOL vice chairman who owns the Washington Capitals, helped make some introductions at the NHL. But Bankoff says that wasn’t the case. We’ll see if the other leagues bite. If they don’t do it already, the official sites of the various sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB should definitely consider adding sports blogs to the mix of information they make available on their sites. I am not sure how many true sports fans trust the sanitized news you typically find on those sites, but they are a good starting point. Adding some blog coverage might make fans feel the leagues are at least open to more points of view. It shouldn’t be limited to one blog network either, but I can see the appeal of handing those links over to SB Nation and letting them deal with quality control. SB Nation pulls together what amounts to local sports coverage under a single advertising umbrella (although professional teams have fans everywhere). The wider it can distribute links in places where sports fans might gather online, the more readers it should be able to expose to its various blogs. Last year, SB Nation raised $5 million from Accel Partners, Allen & Company, and Leonsis. Bankoff says SB Nation is up to 5 million unique visitors a month across its network of about 200 blogs, based on internal metrics, and he says that is growing at a rate of 20 percent per month. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
A billion iPhone apps, mostly to talk about the weather? Top
As Apple’s App Store continues its countdown to 1 billion apps downloaded, Compete has released the results of a rather humorous study of iPhone users. Apparently, for all the bells and whistles the combination of the iPhone and the App Store offers, the most popular thing to do is look up the weather, as MediaPost highlights today. Of those iPhone users surveyed, 39 percent stated that a weather application was one of their three most-used apps on their device. This was far ahead of any of the number two cited app, Facebook, which 25 percent of those surveyed named. By far the most popular category in the App Store when it comes to actual downloads is games, but in this survey, that category only managed third place with 20 percent. Compare that to numbers from ComScore last week which reported that a crazy 32 percent of all iPhone and iPod touches have a version of the game Tap Tap Revenge installed. If these survey results are to be believed, a lot of people may have popular games such as TTR installed, but at the end of the day, they still go back to using the old trusty weather apps most often. And while that would show that it was smart of Apple to include a weather app in its default package of native apps that ship with the iPhone, it doesn’t seem to speak well for the hugely hyped App Store that the default weather app is what people still want to use the most. (Though, to be fair, a full 13 percent of that 39 percent, said they used The Weather Channel app, which is from the App Store.) But should we really put any weight into these numbers from Compete ? After all, the firm has proven time and time again to do a pretty mediocre job when it comes to measuring web site statistics. It’s not clear how many iPhone users were actually surveyed in the report (which isn’t out yet), so it may or may not be a good sample for such data. But one weird part of the data — at least as it’s broken down by MediaPost — is that while weather apps are all bunched together into a category, it seems to break out the Facebook app as separate from social networking apps as a whole. I mentioned Facebook was at 25% in the survey, both other apps, such as MySpace, also appeared, but oddly weren’t grouped together like weather apps and games were. Data in February from analytics company Pinch Media suggested that that average shelf life of an iPhone app is less than 30 days . With that in mind, it makes some sense that people return to the old, trusted weather apps, which, while boring, are useful to people on a day-to-day basis. But what about the texting and email apps? Certainly, those have to be used more (though perhaps they weren’t included, as Apple is highly restrictive when it comes to those being allowed in the App Store). And what about the various Twitter apps? Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Venture Capital Fundraising Is Down Nearly 40 Percent In First Quarter of 2009 Top
The first quarter of 2009 wasn’t just a dry one for venture-backed exits , very little money went into the coffers of VC funds as well. According to data released today by the National Venture Capital Association , only 40 funds raised new money during the quarter, down from 71 the year before (1Q08) and 47 the previous quarter (4Q08). Out of the 40 funds, only three were brand new. In dollar terms, the total raised was $4.3 billion, down 39 percent from the year before (1Q08), but up 23 percent from the fourth quarter when it dipped to a low of $3.5 billion. At least the sequential comparisons are up. The largest capital raising was for August Capital’s $650 million fund . Bain Capital raised a $475 million fund, and Charles River Ventures raised a new $320 million fund . Here are the stats (Source Thomson Reuters/ NCVA): Number of U.S. Venture Funds Raising New Capital 1Q09: 40 4Q08: 47 3Q08: 62 2Q08: 78 1Q08: 71 4Q07: 85 3Q07: 77 2Q07: 85 1Q07: 81 Dollar Amount of New Funds Raised By U.S. Venture Capital Firms (in billions) 1Q09: $4.3B 4Q08: $3.5B 3Q08: $8.4B 2Q08: $9.3B 1Q08: $7.2B 1Q09: $4.3B 4Q07: $11.9B 3Q07: $8.6B 2Q07: $8.7B 1Q07: $6.5B (Photo by MrVJTod ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
PragueCrunch Round-Up: Checking In With The Czechs Top
So I was in Prague for the weekend together with CrunchGear’s John Biggs , in an effort to learn more about the Czech tech scene first hand. The organizer of the event, dubbed PragueCrunch , was Jack DeNeut from Nelso , an American who has been living there for the past 16 years and is extremely well connected with the local community. When we weren’t enjoying the great weather on the terrace , the awesome local beer or cuisine, we engaged in a lot of conversations with Czech entrepreneurs and learned a lot, so a big thank you to Jack for hosting the event. Also big kudos to all sponsors for making it possible! For pictures, check out the tag PragueCrunch on Flickr . Hare are some of the most interesting people and companies I met at the event: Learn10 , which is essentially a social platform for learning the basics of foreign languages quickly and smoothly. I liked what the company is doing so much that I’ll share more information about what it is and where it’s going in a separate post later. I ran into Rich Helsen, Prague-based frontend developer for Silicon Valley startup iWidgets , which recently raised $4.1 million in funding , and recorded a short interview with the man. Another interesting conversation I had at the event was with Roman and Michal, the two Czechs behind local real estate portal Zeality.cz , a freshly launched web service that basically approaches the real estate listings market with a very map-centric, personalized experience. Video interview: I was amazed with the growth of and concept behind Geewa , a social multiplayer gaming platform which Leena covered not too long ago . I expect we’ll be hearing more from this company in the future, despite the fact they’re up against a lot of competition in a congested space. Then there’s meebee , a startup which aims to launch a new web service (currently in private “beeta”) that is supposed to ‘make meetings easier’. From the website: “meebee uses the devices and apps you already use: your email accounts and your calendars, and helps you organize meetings with your friends. Best of all meebee will contact you about meetings, in the way you prefer i.e. vie email, or on your iPhone, or via SMS, even on Facebook.” Check out the video demo on the website for more information. Some of you may know from my earlier coverage on TechCrunch and some of my own tweets that I’m a big fan of 360 Cities , a global community of panoramic photographers who share the best 360 degrees shots with each other (and you) on the web. Founder and CEO Jeffrey Martin was at the event too, and besides taking this awesome shot he got in front of my Flip camera to answer some of my questions: Other stuff coming to the web all the way from the Czech Republic and worth checking out: HashPage , a web-based dynamic mashup builder Kerio , a company specialized in Internet messaging and firewall products Wirenode , an easy-to-use mobile website creation application Mineus , IT services and software development CIANT (International Centre for Art and New Technologies) It was also nice chatting with PragueBob , an American expat who’s been living in the city for quite some time. The man amassed over 42,000 followers on Twitter just by being himself, so naturally I asked how that came to be: Finally, it was good to meet representatives from Ataxo , a 200-employee strong interactive marketing agency that’s quickly expanding in Central and Eastern Europe, and the main sponsor of the event, Dial Telecom , which provides voice, data and Internet services in the entire Czech Republic. Hope I get invited to the next one! Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Twitter Worm Woes Continue, Fourth Round Of Attacks By Mikeyy (Updated) Top
I was away for the weekend attending PragueCrunch (more on that later), so I missed most of the conversation about Mikeyy, the Twitter worm that’s been plaguing the micro-sharing service for the last couple of days. And just as I was reading up on it, it seems like a fourth attack is being carried out as I’m writing this. That means that Twitter has not yet fully fixed the issue that arose during the weekend, and the messages Mikeyy is posting reflect that: How TO remove new Mikeyy worm! RT!! http://bit.ly/yCL1s This worm is getting out of hand Twitter. - Mikeyy Twitter, your community is going to be mad at you… - Mikeyy Update: at 3:40 am PST, Twitter posted a message saying that they believe the situation is now under control, and that they’ll continue to monitor Mikeyy. Users are being advised to refrain from using the web version and use third-party apps instead, as well as to be careful when clicking links. Other steps that should be taken are changing your bio, URL and change / reset your hex color. I would also recommend to take further precautions, like disabling Javascript in your browser, clear your cache and cookies and maybe even change your password, even if Twitter has previously informed users that no passwords, phone numbers or other sensitive information were compromised as part of this renewed attack. You can keep track of Twitter’s Status blog and @spam account for updates. I can only imagine how much damage this is doing to the startup’s reputation, and how the community will react to this new round of attacks when word gets out en masse. Granted, having unwanted messages posted to your account is more of an annoyance than a genuine security risk, but this is clearly severely impacting the way people look at and use the service now, particularly those who use Twitter for commercial reasons. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
You Will Be Using FriendFeed In The Future — But It May Be Called Facebook Top
Last week, we wrote that FriendFeed was in danger of becoming “ the coolest app that no one uses .” The thought was that while FriendFeed is doing some great things both in terms of its technology and feature-wise, it has failed to capture the growth of the hot micro-messaging service, Twitter. But I think that misses the real key comparison. If you look at it, FriendFeed is actually a lot closer to Facebook these days. You know, that service that 200 million plus people use. They’re doing a lot of similar things — only FriendFeed is doing them better. Go ahead, take a look at the newly launched beta version of FriendFeed side-by-side with the recently redesigned Facebook. Sure, both also look a lot like Twitter, but look deeper, beyond the appearance and into the functionality. Both of the services’ main pages offer a stream of information, including information piped in from other services. Both have filters on the sidebar (though FriendFeed recently moved its from the left side — where Facebook’s are — to the right side). Both offer the ability to comment and “like” elements within the stream. And both offer the ability to hide information within the stream. Now, use both services. Immediately, you’ll see what Facebook is trying to do: Show you an up-to-date look at what your friends are doing both on Facebook and around the web. But it’s not actually live — it’s static. You need to refresh the feed to get more information. FriendFeed, on the other hand, is updating in real-time. At first, there was some backlash against this real-time updating on FriendFeed, with users complaining that there was too much information coming in, too quickly . But that talk has quieted down quite a bit in the week since its launch. And the real-time aspect has so far proven to be a boon for activity on the site . I’m looking at my FriendFeed stream right now compared to my Facebook stream — my FriendFeed stream has a lot more activity on it, despite Facebook having over 200 million users and FriendFeed likely having something south of a million users. At a glance, FriendFeed feels alive, while Facebook feels, well, static. Facebook plans to turn on real-time updates as well. But when it does, it could well be looking at another major backlash from users. If we saw a backlash against real-time on FriendFeed — which not only has much fewer users, but also has a user base that is considered to be full of “power” web users — just imagine what the backlash will be like on Facebook. It will be ugly. And that’s why filters are so important. These allow you to show only certain updates from certain people on your stream. But again, FriendFeed has done a better job on them than Facebook has. Facebook has made it fairly easy to edit who is in what filter, but it’s still not obvious as to how to do that from a friend’s actual profile page. On FriendFeed, it’s obvious. More importantly, FriendFeed has always made it easy to filter the stream not just by user, but by type of feed element. Facebook recently added this functionality, but it is much less tailored. For example, I can hide YouTube videos, but it will hide all YouTube videos. On FriendFeed, you can hide just YouTube videos from a certain user (but still get other updates from that user). And it’s easy to change those settings as any time. On Facebook, I have no idea how to do that. And with these weaker filters (and a user base who isn’t accustomed to using them), when Facebook implements its real-time stream, a lot of information is going to go by without being noticed. That’s because while FriendFeed smartly brings elements back up to the top of the stream when a friend comments on or “likes” them, Facebook keeps them moving right on down the stream. This means that we’re not likely to see an 800+ comment stream below items like we saw the other day on FriendFeed during a live recording of the Gillmor Gang (yes, it was talking about FriendFeed, but still). Obviously, Facebook is a lot more than just a stream of information — it’s the largest social network, with rich profiles, a robust application community, among many other things. But it’s also clear that Facebook wants to be the center of sharing information on the web. And right now, both Twitter and yes, FriendFeed are kicking its ass at that, in terms of execution. Let’s jump back to Twitter for a second. A lot of people are caught up with the whole Facebook/Twitter comparison — and that probably includes those high up at Facebook (which failed in a bid to buy Twitter at the end of last year). It’s obvious that Facebook’s recent emphasis on status updates comes directly as a result in the surge in popularity of Twitter. It’s also clear that the large icons in the stream come from Twitter as well — something which I think is actually a mistake for Facebook, because the icons are far too large and make information intake even more difficult. But I think it’s FriendFeed that Facebook should be more closely following, given what it wants to do with its service. That’s especially true when even more information starts coming into the site by way of Facebook Connect. Twitter has exploded in popularity because it’s so simple — but it’s far too simple for everything that Facebook want to do. But FriendFeed seems to be morphing into exactly what Facebook wants to be. So the question I have now, is whether or not Facebook will copy these better features from FriendFeed? I think it will. After all, it had no problem borrowing the “like” feature, the importing of third-party stream elements, or the commenting functionality. (Sure, FriendFeed didn’t invent all of these, but they’ve been implemented on Facebook in nearly the exact same way they’ve been used on FriendFeed.) And if Facebook is able to follow that lead, 200 million plus users will essentially be using FriendFeed — just under the moniker of Facebook. Unlike a lot of people out there, I believe Facebook is on the right track with its recent moves to centralize sharing on the web. But the redesign, in many ways, is half-baked. It needs to be executed better — it needs to be like FriendFeed. CrunchBase Information FriendFeed Facebook Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
MySpace To Launch Featured Apps Directory Next Week Top
MySpace has announced that it is planning to launch a new “Editor’s Pick” category in its application directory next week, allowing members to quickly sift through the platform’s best apps. MySpace had previously shown a handful of featured apps as users browsed its Apps Directory, but these rotated and there was no way to browse through them. Now, users will be able to access a stable list of the best apps as determined by a team of MySpace employees who work with the applications on a daily basis (all apps will be chosen by merit, not through paid sponsorships). MySpace is beginning to accept submissions from developers today, which can be sent in by following these instructions: If you’d like to be considered for this category, please send an email to developerrelations(at)myspace dot com. Include “Editor’s Pick Category” in the subject line, and provide a reason why you feel your application should be in the spotlight and why your application stands above the rest. Be sure to include the a 200 character description and an 128×128 icon image. Since social networks began to offer support for third party applications (a trend that began with the launch Facebook Platform in May 2007), one of the biggest issues facing users has been weeding out the best applications from the countless spammy and useless apps available. Last summer Facebook announced that it was going to launch a Verified Apps program that would offer approved applications extra exposure and benefits not afforded to standard apps. We’re still waiting. In November Facebook announced that it would charge a $375 fee for developers to apply - a fee that we likened to a protection racket . To make matters worse, Facebook is running behind on the program (which was supposed to launch ‘early this year’), and developers are getting antsy . At this point it’s unclear how similar MySpace’s Editor’s Picks will be to Facebook’s Verified Apps program - the MySpace program is certainly less structured that Facebook’s, and I suspect it won’t be nearly as comprehensive. But it’s still something that lets members know that the applications they’re using can be trusted. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Ad Network Collective Media Secures $20 million In Series B Funding Top
Online ad network Collective Media has secured $20 million in Series B funding led by Accel Partners and iNovia Capital. Collective Media offers publishers an ad network management platform to create their own branded, vertical ad networks. The company raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding, led by Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital, in October 2007. Launched in 2005, the company provides technology products that let publishers use advance audience targeting, manage ad networks, and access analytics. Collective Media says it will utilize the new funds to grow its network, develop new technology, expand internationally and explore acquisitions. Last year, Collective purchased contextual ad targeting company Personifi for an undisclosed amount (though there were reports that they paid “eight figures” for the Personifi). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Welcome To TechCrunch, MG Siegler Top
Tomorrow TechCrunch welcomes MG Siegler as a full time writer and our newest hire (pictured to the right of Marshall Kirkpatrick , a former TechCrunch writer). He joins us from VentureBeat , where he created quite a following for himself by writing interesting, timely posts on the current technology trends. In fact, in just two years of solid blogging he’s become one of the top twenty most productive tech bloggers. Obviously, we are pleased as punch to add him to our team. MG is a hard worker, and writes both quickly and well (a rare combination). Combine that with a certain level of competitiveness and you’ve got a winner. He’s also very much a part of the startup and technology community here in Silicon Valley. He maintains a personal blog at ParisLemon , where frankly I think some of his best articles have been posted. He’ll continue to write on ParisLemon, but I’ve asked him to bring more of that personal style and opinions into his TechCrunch writing as well. I think you’ll like what you see. MG joins Erick Schonfeld , Sarah Lacy , Jason Kincaid , Robin Wauters and Leena Rao (and myself) as the team writing most of the content you see here on TechCrunch. Look for his first posts soon. You can read VentureBeat’s sendoff here , and get MG’s take on his new job here . Welcome, MG! Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Some Of Our Favorite Easter Eggs Top
Just as children love hunting for Easter eggs, we love finding virtual Easter eggs in software and Web apps—those intentional hidden messages, features or jokes built into the software that users in the know may stumble upon at some point during their experience with the application. We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite software Easter eggs of all-time (in no given order) in light of today’s holiday. Of course, there are many more Easter eggs out there. Tell us us your favorites in the comments! 1. Atari: The first ever software Easter egg is speculated to have occurred in 1979 in an Atari game. Apparently, programmer identities were kept behind locked doors in the easly days of software development, with companies not wanting staff to gain more celebrity status than their brands. Warren Robinett, a programmer for Atari sneaked his name into the Atari 2600 game Adventure. Here’s the YouTube video showing the egg: 2. Google’s Picasa Teddy Bears: Image editing software Picasa has an entertaining teddy bear Easter egg. If you open Picasa and press Ctrl-Shift-Y, a teddy bear will pop up. 3. The Book of Mozilla: If you type “about:mozilla” in the address bar of any version of Firefox, you will be led to a page with a quote from the “Book of Mozilla” about the birth of Firefox. 4. Google Earth Flight Simulator: If you open Google Earth, version 4.2, and press Ctrl-Alt-A (”Command” “Option” “A” on a Mac), Google inserted a flight simulator that lets you simulate being in the cockpit of a F16 fighter jet ot a lightweight SR22 propeller plane. 5. The Dark Castle on the iPhone/iPod Touch: According to this report, a teenager in the UK managed to discover this egg, the classic Mac game "Dark Castle", in its entirety, available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Activating this game is a bit complicated but, here are the directions. 6. Google’s Mobile App: Google unveiled a surprise Easter egg for its Mobile App for the iPhone earlier this year. If you click on the settings tab, scroll to the bottom and keep swiping upwards until a secret option dubbed 'Bells and Whistles' appears (this also works in the foreign language versions of the app). The hidden menu lets you change the theme color of the app and its default sounds to chicken or monkey noises. 7. Microsoft’s Volcano: Microsoft inserted a volcano Easter egg in all Windows Operating Systems prior to XP. If you go to control panel display, click on the screen savers tab, select “3D Text,” then click on settings and in the graphics text box type “volcano.” The screen saver then shows names of all the volcanoes in the U.S. 8. Google’s holiday Easter eggs: Last holiday season, Google put Easter Eggs next to the sponsored link search results for terms like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa Gifts, Christmas Sweaters, Hanukkah Sweaters, etc. 9. Mac OS X “Here's to the Crazy Ones”: If you open Finder and go to Applications, look for TextEdit. If you enlarge the icon in CoverFlow, you'll see a letter from John Appleseed quoting the text from Apple's "Think Different" advertising campaign. 10. Goldeneye Breakdance: This egg was recently discovered. Apparently when playing Goldeneye 007, if the user tilts the cartridge during gameplay, this causes the characters to breakdance. It’s pretty funny-see the YouTube video of the dance below: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Does Google Really Control The News? Top
Once again, Google is the favorite bogeyman responsible for the rapid deterioration in the health of the news industry. This time it is Nick Carr doing the finger-pointing , describing Google as the most powerful middleman in news: When a middleman controls a market, the supplier has no real choice but to work with the middleman - even if the middleman makes it impossible for the supplier to make money. So how powerful is Google when it comes to parceling out traffic to news sites? If you are talking about Google News , the answer is that it is not quite as powerful as you might think. In the U.S., Google News is overshadowed by both Yahoo News and even the sites controlled by the New York Times (which includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com, HeraldTribune.com, and several other newspaper sites). According to comScore, Google News attracted 16.2 million unique visitors in the U.S. in February, compared to 42.3 million for Yahoo News and 46.2 million for the sites operated by New York Times Digital. So Google News is not the middleman here. Let’s just put that notion to rest. Yahoo News is three times as large, and Yahoo sends even more traffic to newspaper sites from other parts of Yahoo through its online newspaper consortium . The bigger question is whether Google as a search engine is controlling access to news sites. That really seems to be Carr’s main concern, although it is not clear because he uses a Google News search as his main example. Nevertheless, Google’s main search engine is certainly a major source of traffic to information sites of all stripes. At TechCrunch, for instance, it is the single largest source of traffic, accounting for about a third of the total. I have no idea whether this is representative of other news sites, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Google search is a very important middleman indeed. Does that make Google like Wal-Mart, as Carr suggests, a middleman of such might that it squeezes everybody else’s margins? Does that give it “monopoly control over content distribution,” as Scott Karp tries to argue? Not exactly. Information economics work slightly differently than retail economics. Let me stick with the TechCrunch example. One third is a lot, but it is not a monopoly. Google sends us all of that traffic because many of our posts rank highly for the topics they cover. We don’t pay them for that traffic. We are not buying keywords. Yes, Google makes money from other ads shown besides any searches where TechCrunch posts shows up as results. But the money Google makes from those ads does not detract from our revenues. Quite the opposite. Those searches send a considerable amount of traffic to our site, where we have our own ads. The more people who see those ads, the more we can charge for them. It’s all good. Google does not control the news, it exposes it. The retail/distributor analogy is all wrong. Information is not the same as a flat-screen TV or a blender. It does not become less valuable the more available it is because all news is not the same. Information dissemination is not a zero-sum game. Carr and Karp would have you believe otherwise. Karp writes: The more content there is on the web, the less money every content creator makes, and the more money Google makes by taking a piece of that transaction. Again, that is not how it works. Google doesn’t force suppliers of information to charge less for it as Wal-Mart does with suppliers of packaged goods. The money Google makes from its search ads is not necessarily money that would have otherwise gone to a “news” or content site. If Google didn’t exist, those ad dollars might have gone to an e-commerce site or a travel site or a real estate site or any number of other places. News sites have no claim to those search advertising dollars. It is incumbent upon each of us to attract an audience by having something original or interesting to say. When news sites do that, other sites link to them, and then they rank more highly in Google search results, which sends new readers their way. And then once those readers do find a news source they trust, you know what? Some of them actually keep coming back on their own volition without Google telling them what to do. That is called direct traffic. Or they come through other sites. Google isn’t the only one who benefits from all those links. If you want to be known as an authoritative source of news, it is no longer good enough to simply proclaim yourself to be one. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Warning: Twitter Hit By StalkDaily Worm (Updated) Top
A bad week for Twitter just got even worse. The service has apparently been infected by a worm originating from the owners of the website StalkDaily ( Note: Do not visit this website, as it may cause your computer to become infected ). At this point details are scant, but it appears that visiting the Twitter profile page of an infected user can lead your profile to become infected as well (some reports say that the worm modifies your ‘About Me’ section to include a link to the worm). Infected users begin to repeatedly spam tweets directing users to the StalkDaily website. The attack appears to have originated early this morning, when a handful of blog posts popped up detailing the worm. However, it is only now hitting critical mass, with hundreds of related Tweets appearing on Twitter Search in the last few minutes alone. Twitter’s official Spam watching account updated this morning stating that the company was aware of the issue but that it had been mostly resolved, and just issued another update stating that it was aware of the worm’s resurgence this afternoon. To stay on the safe side, it would probably be wise to stick with a third party Twitter client and avoiding viewing profile pages until the company confirms that the issue is resolved. Some early comments are indicating this is an XSS attack on Twitter. Others note that the attack may have started after one of Twitter’s many third party applications took the login credentials entered by Twitter users and hijacking their accounts. Update 9 PM PST : Twitter has posted the following update to its status page stating that the issue has been fixed: Update on StalkDaily.com Worm 36 minutes ago Earlier today we were informed of a malicious site that was spreading links to StalkDaily.com on Twitter without user consent via a cross-site scripting vulnerability. We've taken steps to remove the offending updates, and to close the holes that allowed this "worm" to spread. No passwords, phone numbers, or other sensitive information were compromised as part of this attack. Update: Apparently StalkDaily has updated their website to say that it has nothing to do with the attacks. Regardless, do not visit the site for the time being. For everyone wondering, I did NOT promote and/or was involved with the spamming ON Twitter. All bad things you are hearing about this site is not true. Please reconsider as I am not the person who did this…StalkDaily is a website that follows the same functions as Twitter, except more advanced How? Well, instead of just adding an "update status", people can add pictures and videos. Then you can stalk them, so when they upload a video or picture, or comment someone, you'll know! Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Apple Offers Another Fleeting Glimpse At The App Store's All-Time Leaders Top
Yesterday Apple announced that it was closing in on its whopping 1 Billionth application download from the App Store, which now features over 25,000 apps built by thousands of developers. In honor of the milestone, Apple has also posted an updated version of the store’s most popular apps ever (iTunes link) - something they’ve done only once before , at the end of 2008. The list includes such popular mainstays as Facebook , Koi Pond , and Shazam , allowing the millions of new iPhone owners to discover favorites of months gone by. It’s a shame this list will probably be shortlived. This isn’t an accident. One attribute that has helped the App Store reach its upcoming billion download milestone so quickly is the fact that its featured App Lists are constantly churning - even the most popular applications probably won’t be on the top lists a few weeks down the line. This ensures that users who pop into the store will always have some new, quality apps to try out, boosting downloads and giving new applications a chance to shine. But it can also be frustrating for new iPhone owners, who visit the store unsure of what they should download. This isn’t to say they’ll leave empty handed - there’s always a variety of great apps being showcased on the App Store. But the classics that everyone else already has, like Tap Tap Revenge, Ocarina, and Shazam often aren’t featured on the App Store’s homescreen any more, so new users might miss out on them. Apple has made progress since I wrote about this issue last August , now allowing users to browse through apps by category, each of which features its own top lists. But the need for a more readily available all-time leaderboard still remains. To give an idea of how popular these applications have been, ComScore recently reported that 32% of all iPhones and iPod Touches have a version of Tap Tap Revenge installed, making it the platform’s most popular game ever with around 6.5 million installs of TTR and 3 million installs of its sequel. But a new user wouldn’t know it from the App Store’s homepage - they’d have to drill down to the Games section, where TTR2 is currently ranked as the 7th most popular free game. iBowl , a Wii-like bowling game, is on 25% of all iPhones according to the same ComScore report, and isn’t featured on the Games section at all. There have been many other tweaks suggested for the still-nascent App Store, including a section for higher-priced premium apps and a new method for calculating popularity that measures how much money an app has gained, not just the number of times it has been downloaded (the current system tends to strongly favor cheaper apps). Apple has done an incredible job building this platform and masterminding its massive popularity. Now it just needs to give users a better way to find the cream of the crop, not just the latest fad. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Live from the PragueCrunch II Meet-up Top
Prague Crunch in Prague Welcome to PragueCrunch II, Prague’s foremost party held in Prague every year around the time TechCrunch writers feel like going to Prague to drink great beer and talk start-ups, tech, and gadgets. We’ll be streaming live through Qik and posting images throughout the day. If you’re still vacillating and you’re in Prague, come on down! We’ll be at Hergetova Cihelna from 2pm until late in the evening. Confounded as to whether to come at like 11pm? Check my Twitter Updates to see if we’re still at the event or if we’ve moved on. Otherwise, expect to see Robin and I there all night. Special thanks to the venue and all the great sponsors. Click through for live video feeds throughout the evening. Special thanks to these fine folks: Gold Sponsor: Dial Telecom - Dial Telecom provides services for both the wholesale and the retail sectors. Our wholesale sector specializes in providing cable ducts, dark fibre and backbone capacity to international and national carriers, ISPs, and ASPs. Dial Telecom also provides IP-based services to regional ISPs over its own fibre network. The company has an exceptionally well-developed Ethernet over fibre network and DWDM connections to most major regional capitals. Dial Telecom is connected to the world's largest Internet exchanges (most notably to DE-CIX and KleyerEx in Frankfurt am Main, AMS-IX in Amsterdam, LINX in London and ECIX in Düsseldorf). Naturally, it is also connected to Czech NIX.CZ and Slovak SIX.SK . The Dial Telecom company is part of the well-established international Dial Telecom Group (Dial Telecom CZ, Dial Telecom SK, eTel SK and Telecom Austria Czech Republic (Volný, a.s.). The group actively contributes to the consolidation of the fixed telecommunications market. The most significant acquisitions in the last year have been eTel Slovakia and Telekom Austria Czech Republic (Volný brand). Adamantium Sponsors: Ataxo With more than 5.000 clients and 200 employees, Ataxo is the biggest Internet marketing agency in the Czech Republic and a leading Search Engine Marketing provider in Central Europe. Ataxo has offices in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. We provide expert Search Engine Optimization and manage several thousand Pay-per-Click Campaigns for our clients from these countries as well as outsource Pay-per-Click Campaigns for clients from other parts of the world. Binary Age Yet another web-based site builder from the author of open-source tools FirePython, FireRainbow, XRefresh and DryDrop. There is tough competition in this space, but Darwin is going to attract developers by bringing Firebug’s CSS prototyping experience into the HashPage editor. Geewa Play original multiplayer casual games on Geewa.com for free! Up to 18,700 players online at the same time. More than 5,000 games to choose from. Join our growing community now. Kerio Innovating in Internet security since 1997, Kerio Technologies, Inc. provides Internet messaging and firewall software for small-to-medium sized businesses and organizations worldwide. Kerio is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has offices in New York, Germany, United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Russia. Kerio is a member of CalConnect, a calendaring and scheduling consortium, and a premier member of the Apple Developer Connection. The company has 4,400 channel partners in 108 countries. Technology partners include McAfee, Inc. (NYSE: MFE), IBM Corporation (NYSE: IBM), and Notify Technology Corporation (OTCBB: NTFY). Learn10 Learn10 is a system for language learners which enables members to quickly develop a durable learning habit. They create fresh, new content every day, limited to the length of a text message. This is distributed across the web and beyond via a popular Facebook app, widget, email, iPhone webapp, Twitter feed, affiliate ‘adverts’, as well as competitions, windows screensaver & Seesmic videos . Learn10 creates user engagement in learning by encouraging cooperation and competition between learners in a mix of free and premium flavours. Learn10 is the work of a European team of four, split between Birmingham, UK and South Bohemia, CZ. It is inspired by the efforts of three of the founders to learn Czech, and informed by experience in advertising research analysis & English teaching. With 27,000 members this self-funded project is one year old. After extensive testing based on the prototype - LearnItLists - they have re-branded to Learn10 and are ready to launch. TasteKid Tastekid is a recommendation engine that lets you discover music, movies, and books. CNET recently ranked TasteKid as one of the 10 best movie sites. WebExpo 2009 Biggest Central European conference about web development and business on internet. From web frameworks, agile management through UX and webdesign to startup contest and marketing insights. In Prague, October 16-18, 2009. Wirenode Wirenode is a mobile marketing platform. It allows individuals and companies to create mobile friendly websites very easily and use them for promoting their business. So far, more than 20000 mobile websites were created. The pages created in the Wirenode platform is used by companies such as European Directories, Vodafone, Telefonica O2, Ford, Reebok or Air France. Zeality Zeality.cz is an online map-based service for real estate search. It offers relevant data for each property, such as nearby points of interest and travel times. Zeality.cz targets Prague at the moment and will cover other cities soon. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Report: Founders Want To Buy Skype Back From EBay Top
As the New York Times reported, Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, are in talks with several private equity firms and are amassing their own financial resources to make a bid for the internet phone business. eBay bought Skype from Zennstrom and Friis for around $3.1 billion in 2005. We reported last year that eBay would be willing to sell Skype if the company couldn’t support eBay’s core ecommerce business. eBay has been having trouble finding ways of using Skype across its other products. eBay removed Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom in October 2007, reportedly due to frustration at the financial performance of Skype. Ebay also negotiated down the huge earnout due to Skype stockholders and took a $936 million one-time loss around the transaction. As we wrote last spring, a sale was projected to be likely late last year or in the first half of this year. Of course, with the economy in such poor condition, the sale was probably put off momentarily. There was something brewin g between Google and Skype last spring, but nothing came of it. Google recently launched its own voice product, Google Voice (formerly Grand Central). Skype recently launched a nifty iPhone app, which was downloaded 1 million times in the first two days of its release. Skype recently made a move to be a player in the enterprise space, but it wasn’t clear how much of a money-maker the new service would be. There’s no doubt that Skype brings a lot to the table but eBay was probably just not the right buyer. Skype’s scalable technology and a proven platform in the VOIP, VOIP2POTS and P2P Video is impressive to say the least. The service currently has more than 405 million registered users. Following their respective departures from Skype, Zennstrom and Friis formed VC firm Atomico and founded online video/TV site Joost. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
President Obama, Where's Our CTO? Top
President Obama incorporated technology into his election campaign in an unprecedented way, became known as the YouTube president within the first week of being elected, and seems to be forward thinking in his views on innovation and technology, which is why we endorsed him last year. But now we are almost four months into his tenure as President and leader of the free world, and the Obama administration has yet to name a Chief Technology Officer. They have, I should note, appointed a Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, the former CTO of Washington D.C., whose office is being investigated by the FBI for bribery and money laundering (which apparently occurred when he was the boss). Still, it’s confusing as to why the President is taking his sweet time to appoint a CTO, when there are clear issues that a CTO could be working on. For starters, there are tech-centric issues like the FCC’s National Broadband Plan to give all American’s high speed internet access, and the DTV Delay Act, which was signed into law in early February. There’s the Open Government initiative, through Change.gov, which seems to be in a stalemate. And certainly a CTO could lend his or her expertise and leadership in incorporating technology into the President’s health-care, education and energy initiatives. Take a look at the technology issues page of the White House’s website for a more extensive to-do list awaiting our future CTO. And there’s definitely no dearth of talent for this position. The names that have been bandied about for the position even before President Obama was victorious in November include Bill Gates, Microsoft founder; Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s CTO; Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and longtime Obama supporter (but he apparently said no to the job); Vint Cerf, the so-called “father of the internet” and VP at Google; Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law professor and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society; Ed Felton, Princeton computer science professor and founder of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy; Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO; and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO. Perhaps the Obama administration is being extra careful not to make another “Kundra” mistake and is carefully evaluating the backgrounds of each candidate. But this should hardly take 5 months. Regardless of what the holdup is, we need someone with true technology smarts in the White House soon. I mean, how hard can it be to find a technology exec that has paid his or her taxes? Give us your favorite candidates for America’s CTO in comments. Or take our poll. Who should be the CTO of the USA? ( online polls ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Current TV Cancels $100 Million IPO Top
Current Media , the media company backed by former Vice President Al Gore, has cancelled the $100 million IPO that it originally announced in January 2008. In a document submitted earlier today, Current TV attributed the IPO’s cancellation to the current economy: In light of current market conditions, the Registrant has determined not to proceed at this time with the public offering contemplated by the Registration Statement. The Registrant hereby confirms that no securities have been sold pursuant to the Registration Statement and all activity regarding the proposed public offering has been discontinued. The Registrant hereby informs the Staff that it may undertake a subsequent private offering in reliance on the safe harbor set forth in Rule 155(c) promulgated under the Act. The media company is best known for cable channel Current TV, which is broadcast internationally to 59 million homes with markets in regions including the United States, Italy, and the UK. Current also has a strong web presence, tapping into popular social media services like Digg and Twitter for special events like the 2008 presidential election . The network’s social media efforts during the election were deemed a success by the company, but it was still hit by layoffs in November, when it said that the IPO was being “put on hold”. Current says that there have have been no further layoffs since then, and that the direction of the company has not changed. Via PEhub Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Elevator Pitch Friday: Smallaa Lets You Sort Your Activity Stream By Topic (Invites) Top
It is becoming clear that activity streams are taking hold as the default communications interface across a wide variety of social networks and media, from Twitter to Facebook to FriendFeed to Bebo and beyond. Yet the more people we try to keep track of in one consolidated feed, the more noise we have to deal with that increasingly threatens to drown out those golden information nuggets we all seek. So it is appropriate that today’s Elevator Pitch comes from Smallaa , a startup that aims to help people sort and categorize their streams by interests. Smalla is still in private beta, but TechCrunch readers can sign up with the promotion code c3p0 . When you sign up, you can bring in your FriendFeed stream. (Integration with Facebook is scheduled for April 23, and then Twitter will come after that). Your regular FreindFeed stream appears in a column on the right. You also pick what interests you want to follow. For instance, I picked “Internet Startups,” “Technology,” “Google,” and “Unusual Things.” I could have also picked “best Photos,” “Pets,” “Formula 3 Racing,” “home,” or I could have created my own topics. Those selections create an interest stream on the left. This is the main Smaalla stream. There are two ways you can inject something into the Smallaa stream. You can add it directly as a comment, link, video, or picture and assign it to an interest category when you place it into the stream. (Smallaa asks “What’s going on in your interests?” That could probably be clearer. A simple, “What are you intersted in?” would do.) The second way to inject items into the Smallaa stream is to assign them directly from the FriendFeed stream on the right (which will expand in the future to include Facebook and other streams as well). For instance, Robert Scoble just wrote a post and did a video trying to explain why Mike is wrong about FriendFeed because of its superior mechansims for picking out signal to noise compared to Twitter. Scoble is particularly enamored with FriendFeed because he can pick out what’s interesting based on how many comments an item gets or how many people liked it. Yet with Smalla, I can simply grab the link to Scoble’s post from my FriendFeed stream and assign it to my “Technology” interest in Smallla. I trust what Scoble has to say about technology, so I pay attention to that, but I can ignore his comments about how awesome it is to live in Half Moon Bay. Now, everybody in Smalla following with an interest in technology will see that link to Scoble’s post and any comments I have about it (unless they choose to view only items from people they follow in Smalla). The relationship between Smallaa and other services is reciprocal. When I add a post to Smallla, it appears in FriendFeed as well. And whenever you assign an item from a friend in another service, it prompts you to invite them to follow the particular interest you are assigning their item to in Smallla. Finally, as another way to figure out who to pay attention to, for each item in your Smallaa feed, it shows you how many people are following the person who posted it in that category . So again, to pick on Scoble, he might quickly gain the most followers in technology but not so many in fashion. Hopefully, this would create a reinforcing feedback loop which would encourage Scoble to write and share more about technology and less about his favorite pair of pants. Or as Smalla CEO and founder Tim Lai says in the Elevator Pitch video below, it would be great to follow what Bill Clinton has to say about “politicians or giving public speeches without ever being distracted if he has anything to say about honesty and family values.” Lai built and sold his first software company in Hong Kong, an enterprise document management company called Paradigm, before moving to California. He has invested $3 million of his own money to start Smalllaa. His pitch would probably have been less confusing if he explained why he is sitting in a racing car at the beginning, but he comes around to that in the end. If you would like your startup to be featured on TechCrunch, submit your Elevator Pitch . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Tesla's Elon Musk Calls NY Times Writer Stross "A Huge Douchebag…And An Idiot" Top
Undoubtedly Tesla isn’t going to be happy about this video getting attention, but I think it’s awesome to see CEO Elon Musk take a stand against the company’s many detractors. Last November New York Times writer Randall Stross trashed Tesla as a rich man’s car that the government should shun. "Only the Rich Can Afford It. Should Taxpayers Back It?" he wrote. Later, the article was much edited after well deserved criticism . Stross also corrected errors suggesting that Tesla’s loan requests were for the $109,000 Roadster, when in fact they were to be used for the $50,000 Model S , their most recent and much more affordable all-electric car. That rewriting, though, apparently hasn’t appeased Musk. In an interview last week (video above) with Yahoo TechTicker, Musk calls Stross a “huge douchebag…and an idiot” (skip to the 40 second mark) and says "What is he doing picking on an electric car company? Why would he pick on the little guy who is trying to do good when you've got egregious waste of money in the tens of billions occurring in Detroit?" Musk also points out that Tesla investors only make money if the loan is repaid, and that Tesla has applied for just 1.5% of the $25 billion appropriation. Nicely done, Mr. Musk. I'm definitely going to buy one of your cars. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google Earth Flythroughs Come To The Browser Top
Earlier this week the Google Earth team released a new plugin that allows users to view Google Earth tours directly from their web browsers. These tours, which were introduced in the 5.0 release of Google Earth in February, allow users to create virtual flythroughs through any location on Google Earth, which can lead to some pretty impressive results. Google has compiled a handful of the best tours in this gallery , which includes a reenactment of the historic Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson and a whirlwind tour through San Francisco. The plugin weighs in at a hefty 30 MB (80 megabytes after installing on a Mac), so it can hardly be considered lightweight. But the functionality is impressive, and could definitely be used in a variety of innovative ways now that the tours have been freed from the Google Earth desktop client. I image news organizations could use the tours to help liven up online reports (tours can include audio voiceovers), and travel companies could use them to help showcase where their tour packages will take their customers. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Veoh's Hail Mary: Spreading Video Search Across The Web With Video Compass Top
As video sites on the Web struggle to find a business model that will pay their mounting bandwidth and storage bills, many of them are trying to reinvent themselves. Veoh , which has raised a total of $70 million, had to cut 35 percent of its staff earlier this month and the site seems to be losing steam. Unique visitors are down 18 percent from their high a year ago to 15.2 million worldwide, and users of its desktop app VeohT V are down 40 percent to 7.2 million worldwide, according to comScore (see chart below). Founder Dmitry Shapiro is now back as CEO and he is pouring the company’s remaining energy into a new product launched six weeks ago called Video Compass (read our review) . Since launch, it has been downloaded 800,000 times, and is currently being downloaded at a rate of 25,000 a day. Video Compass may amount to a Hail Mary pass to try to save the company. It is an attempt to spread video search across the Web by bringing you search results when you don’t even know you are looking for videos. The way it does this is through a browser add-on for Firefox and Internet Explorer that is triggered whenever you do a search on a growing list of sites, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and even YouTube. In the past few days, it just added Twitter Search, MySpace, Hulu, DailyMotion, and Metacafe. Up next will be Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook. Whenever you do a regular search on these sites, a ribbon with Veoh video search results pops down triggered by the same keyword you are searching. For instance, if you are searching for “police” on Amazon, a bunch of Police music videos appear along the top ribbon, along with some car chase footage. You can cycle through the videos by clicking an arrow to see more results in the ribbon or you can click on related tags along the top (”Sting,” “crime,” “japanese police”) to refine your search. If you click on any of the thumbnails, a semi-transparent player opens up and lets you watch it in-situ, without necessarily going to Veoh.com. When you are done, you close the window and you are back at where you left off. I’ve been testing Video Compass for the past few days, and the video results pretty decent. I find them to be a bit redundant on other video sites such as YouTube, but they can sometimes offer better results on narrower video sites. For instance, try searching for “Moldova” on Hulu and you get one result, whereas the Veoh Video Compass bar turns up plenty of protest videos. And do a search on Twitter and it adds a whole different dimension to your search. Even searches on Google bring up more video results than occur naturally. And you can always turn it off if it starts to annoy you. The big question is can Veoh create a business around a browser add-on? That all depends on how much of a habit people make of clicking on the Veoh video results and how good they are. Veoh has developed its own behavioral targeting technology which generates both video recommendations and helps target advertising. Shapiro tells me: Today we are doing a pretty good job monetizing Veoh.com. We serve pre-rolls (at high CPMs), mid-rolls, overlays, and targeted display units. Our behavioral targeting engine lets us get higher CPMs than our competitors, while selling out more inventory. While I can't share the exact numbers with you, I can tell you that our quarters are in the millions and every quarter has been a record quarter, although we are not cash flow positive yet. With Video Compass, he can promote content from partners directly in the toolbar when people are conducting associated searches elsewhere on the Web. Movie trailers would be one obvious type of content to promote, but sponsored video ads of all stripes could be placed in both the results or during playback. There is also a lot of empty real estate around the player that can be filled with ads in the future. Finally, Shapiro is working on ways to drive users back to Veoh.com where the monetization model is more clear. So he is not giving up on his destination site entirely. Relying on people to download his add-on, however, is a risky strategy. Not only does it require people to go out of their way, as more and more browser add-ons adopt similar triggering mechanisms, conflicts could emerge. For instance, Glue has a similar user interface, although it is not triggered by searches. But you can imagine a time when two different add-ons are both triggered and either one cancels out the other or the top of the browser becomes a mess. This is essentially the same problem people have with the new Diggbar and other Website framing mechanisms. They can create a lot of clutter instead of helping you cut through it. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
When Will Apple Hit 1 Billion App Downloads? Top
Apple is really, really close to hitting 1 billion app downloads across the world, according to its new countdown page. If you download an app, you’ll be enrolled in a contest to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. TechCrunch is holding its own contest in honor of this occasion. Whoever guesses when it will hit one billion, and is closest in minutes and seconds will get free TechCrunch T-shirt. Leave the guesses in comments; we’ll contact the winner. Apple also featured the all-time top 20 apps, both paid and free. Top 20 All-Time Free Apps : 1. Facebook 2. Google Earth 3. Pandora Radio 4. Tap Tap Revenge 5. Shazam 6. Pacman Lite 7. Backgrounds 8. Touch Hockey 9. Labyrinth 10. Flashlight 11. Urbanspoon 12. Movies 13. iBowl 14. Lightsaber Unleashed 15. SOl Free Solitaire 16. MySpace Mobile 17. Virtual Zippo Lighter 18. The Weather Channel 19. BubbleWrap 20. Remote Top 20 All-Time Paid Apps : 1. Crash Banidcoot 2. Koi Pond 3. Enigmo 4. Bejeweled 2 5. iBeer 6. Moto Chaser 7. Pocket Guitar 8. Flick Fishing 9. Tetris 10. Texas Hold Em 11. Super Monkey Ball 12. Pocket God 13. Cro-Mag Rally 14. Ocarina 15. Fieldrunners 16. iFart Mobile 17. Touchgrind 18. iHunt 19. iShoot 20. Monopoly Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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