Saturday, April 25, 2009

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Steve Jobs On The Value Of Stock Options Top
On March 18, 2008, Steve Jobs was deposed by the SEC during its investigation of Apple’s stock option backdating scandal. The deposition was never made public until Forbes published it on Friday, after obtaining it through a Freedom of Information Act request. (Full deposition embedded below) Jobs explains his reasoning for why he asked the board for mega grants of options for both himself and his top executives, but claims ignorance of the mechanics of how that was done after the board approved the grants themselves. (It was the falsifying of board minutes for a meeting that never occurred, not the backdating per se, that got Apple’s former general counsel Nancy Heinen into hot water with the SEC—this deposition was for a case against her). There aren’t too many revelations on the legal front in the document. But the document provides the first detailed account of the incident from Steve Jobs himself in his own words. What comes through in the deposition is how Jobs sees himself and his’ fierce loyalty to those who work for him. For instance, after selling NeXt to Apple in 1997, his initial reason for acting as a consultant was to get “some of the NeXt people into some jobs where they could help Apple.” He himself was reluctant at first to take on the CEO role at Apple because he didn’t want the people at his other company, Pixar, to “think I was abandoning them.” Then when it came time to reward his “ultra key” executives with one million options each, two of them were from NeXT. While he was taking care of his top lieutenants by trying to “surprise and delight them with what a career at Apple could be”, he was “hurt” that Apple’s board didn’t do the same for him. So he had to have a little talk with them about swapping his 20 million then-underwater options for 7.5 million new ones, which they did. I’ve excerpted some of the juicier bits from the deposition below. Some names were redacted in the original, but I’ve reinserted them in brackets where it is obvious who Jobs is talking about I’ve also bolded some parts for emphasis. (In the transcript, “A” is Jobs). 1. On coming back to Apple and becoming CEO in 1997: Q: And I guess, just to go back in time then, I want to just try to understand a little bit the transition from having the title consultant to becoming CEO. Could you just describe that transition for me? A: Well, when Apple bought NeXT, Apple was pretty messed up . It was pretty easy to see. And I was trying to help in my arm’s length role. I was trying to help Apple by getting some of the NeXT people into some jobs where they could help Apple, and that’s pretty much all I was doing. . . . Q: Okay, Did the board in fact fire [Gil Amelio] the following week? A: Yes. Q: And did you take on the role then as CEO? Jobs: Well, no, I did not. I was very concerned that Pixar was a newly public company with shareholders, employees, and I felt that - - to my knowledge there had never been a CEO of two public companies before. So I felt if I took the job, the Pixar shareholders and employees would think I was abandoning them. Q. Mm-hmm Jobs. And I decided I just - - that I couldn’t do that. So I took the title of interim CEO and agreed to come back for 90 days to help recruit a full-time CEO. Q. How did that recruitment effort go? A. I failed. Q. And when you say you failed, is it that you didn’t find anyone that you thought would be suitable to take on the role? A. Yes. Apple was not in good shape and everybody knew it and the kind of candidates that we were being offered up by the headhunters were not very talented. Q. Okay. In other words, not the sort of people who could turn Apple around? A. Yes. Q. Okay. So after that 90 days, what happened next? A. Well, it just kind of slid into the fact that I stayed. I kept the interim CEO title for quite some time, a number of years. 2. On the origins of the 4.8 million-share mega grant to Apple’s top executives: A. Apple was in a precarious situation in that we’d, you know, had the internet bubble busting, and I thought that Apple’s executive team and the stability of Apple’s executive team was one of its core strengths. And I was very concerned because Michael Dell, one of our chief competitors, had flown Fred Anderson, our CFO, down to Austin, I guess, him and his wife, I think, to try to recruit him . And I was also concerned that [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] two very strong technical leaders, were also very vulnerable. So I was very concerned that Apple could really suffer some big losses on its executive team with the business environment we were in and the competitors coming after our people. . . . Well, I talked with the board almost every meeting about, you know, key personnel, because I think that’s the key asset Apple has, is its talent . . . Q. All right. And who did you consider to be these ultra key people? A. [Timothy Cook] who at the time I think was our Executive Vice President of Operations, maybe sales and operations, actually. Fred Anderson, our CFO. [Jon Rubinstein] head of hardware. [Avi Tevanian] head of software. Who am I forgetting? I think those were the four key ones. Two of those ultra key people, Rubinstein and Tevanian, came from NeXT. Jobs helped them get hired by Apple after the sale of NeXT in the first place, and then rewarded them down the line with options on one million shares apiece. Today, Rubinstein is competing against Apple in his role as the executive chairman of Palm, which is backed by Silver Lake, where Anderson is a partner. That’s gratitude for you. 3. On the question of whether Apple was trying to pick a grant date for the options to maximize the return to the executives, Jobs tries to dismiss how important a role that played in the process. Q. And sort of in this framework of options being, in part, a retention tool, is the idea to try to get a lower price so that there is the potential to maximize one’s profits on the options? A. You know, this has come up before. I have to tell you, for these options to be worth anything, the stock has to go up so much compared to a dollar or two at the beginning . . . And so if these guys were going to realize the kind of money they could make elsewhere by staying at Apple, you know, they were going to have to make tens of millions of dollars. These guys are really senior guys. Several of them, you know, could be CEOs of a few big companies and a few medium-size companies. So for them to realize that kind of a gain here, it’s a lot more than a small variation in a strike price. Nevertheless, with one million shares each, every $1 increase translated into a $1 million gain and a million dollars is still a million dollars. But Jobs wasn’t just rewarding his lieutenants, he was trying to keep them. The “mega grants” were designed to be one big grant instead of smaller grants every year. 4. Jobs explains the reasoning behind his compensation strategy: One of the things that I felt was that rather than giving them shares once a year, as is common in some companies, I would rather give them four years’ worth of stock upfront. . . . the key thing is if the stock goes up, which we always hope it does, then the golden handcuffs are dramatically increased , which is what I was hoping would happen. And on the subject of his own grant of 7.1 million options at the time, Jobs says that he negotiated so hard for it because he felt he wasn’t getting the recognition he deserved: Q. Could you just tell me a little bit about the process of how this all came to be? A. Well, it was a tough situation, you know. It wasn’t so much about the money, because a very small percentage of my net worth is from Apple. Q. Okay. A. But everybody likes to be recognized by their peers , and the closest that I’ve got, or any CEO has, is their Board of Directors. And as we’ve seen in the discussions of the past hour, I spent a lot of time trying to take care of people at Apple and to, you know, surprise and delight them with what a career at Apple could be - - could mean to them and their families. And I felt that the board wasn’t really doing the same with me. Q. Right. A. So I was hurt, I suppose would be the most accurate word , and, you know, the board had given me some options, but they were all underwater. They weren’t underwater necessarily because of our performance, but, you know, the bubble had burst in the dot-coms, and here I had been working, you know, I don’t know, four years, five years of my life and not seeing my family very much and stuff, and I just felt like there is nobody looking out for me here, you know. Q. Right. Okay. A. So I wanted them to do something and so we talked about it. Steve Jobs Deposition Publish at Scribd or explore others: Taxes & Accounting Business & Law backdating stock options Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Former AOL Exec Mike Jones May Become No. 2 At MySpace Top
One thing MySpace has is a lot of holes in the executive ranks. Founding CEO Chris DeWolfe has been hurriedly replaced by Owen Van Natta (our thoughts on that are well known). But cofounder Tom Anderson is no longer President and head of product. And last month three of the top (and most capable) execs (COO, SVP Product Strategy and VP Technology) left to start their own company . More MySpace execs will soon be leaving, voluntarily or not, as Van Natta fills the gaps and adds loyal lieutenants. The first announcement will likely be a replacement for the COO spot, who will be the no. 2 exec at MySpace. A number of current MySpace execs are hoping for the job, particularly Jeff Berman , president of sales and marketing. But our understanding is that the COO spot is definitely going to an outsider. The most likely candidate, we’ve heard from sources, is former AOL exec Mike Jones . Jones’ company, Userplane , was acquired by AOL in late 2006. And Jones worked closely with former AOL boss Jonathan Miller , who is now overseeing all of News Corp.’s digital assets, including MySpace. Jones is a well respected executive who has proven product experience (something sorely lacking at MySpace). If he joins, he’ll likely become a valuable asset to the company. He’s a smart pick if MySpace can get him, and frankly would have been a much better choice for the CEO spot than Van Natta. Like Van Natta, though, Jones already has a day job. He left AOL to start Tsavo in August 2008. Tsavo was in the news again this last February . News Corp. hasn’t responded to a request for comment, nor will they. More surprising, Jones, who is a personal friend, hasn’t taken any of my 15 calls today, or responded to voicemails or emails. That means he is either on an airplane, or he’s avoiding me like the plague. Until we get further confirmation, we’re categorizing this as a rumor. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Owen Van Natta's Infamous Tenure At Project Playlist Top
One of the many unsavory aspects of the hiring of Owen Van Natta as the new CEO of MySpace : the rewriting of recent history around Van Natta’s involvement in Project Playlist. The communications group at News Corp. (MySpace’s parent company) is busy spinning Van Natta’s departure as a simple transition from one job to another, but that’s far from the truth. Nor does their story take into account the sad state of the company that he ran for just a few months before leaving for greener pastures. Here’s how News Corp spins this: This is a natural changing of the guard as a CEO of a small startup takes a bigger job. There was an orderly transition, and Project Playlist has a new CEO with great experience. Nothing to see here, please move along. Here’s the real story: Van Natta joined Project Playlist in November 2008 , just about five months ago. He told investors and employees he was in for the long haul. And he hired an executive team under him that came with his promise that he’d lead the company to a win. Bob Pittman invested in the company, he told recruits, which is true. But he also let rumors that the company raised $20 million in new funding fly. In fact the company raised much less than that. And Van Natta also underplayed the problems with labels, suggesting that deals were imminent and the litigation was going to be settled. And now that Van Natta has abandoned the company, they’ve had to scramble to find someone to run the company. That’s why John Sykes, who was already a board member, was forced to step in. In fact, we’ve heard, Van Natta’s playing down of the music label litigation led directly to the downfall of the company. The labels complained to MySpace and Facebook and threatened to sue them as well if they didn’t ban Playlist from their social networks. Both companies backed down quickly, and Playlist lost their main channels of distribution. MySpace banned them on December 19, Facebook followed on December 23. If Van Natta had made fewer bold statements, sources close to the labels say, those threats against MySpace and Facebook may have never been made. Project Playlist traffic has plummeted since Van Natta took over the company. In October 2008, the month before he joined, 704,000 people visited the site from the U.S, according to Comscore. In March 2009 it had fallen to just 234,000. Page views also fell dramatically, from 9.6 million in October to just 6 million in March. Here are the traffic charts (unique visitors on top, page views below): If Van Natta hadn’t ruffled so many feathers at the labels with his promises that litigation was nearing settlement, it’s likely the pressure on MySpace and Facebook would never have materialized, say sources, and traffic would have continued to climb. At this point Van Natta likely wants everyone to simply forget about his infamous tenure at Project Playlist and focus on his more recent jobs at Facebook and Amazon. He doesn’t list the company on his LinkedIn profile at all (although he’s had five months to update it). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Twitter's Real Edge: It's not Scary Top
When I was writing my last book , I used to go run at the gym for about an hour every morning to clear my head. The TVs were always set on ABC, so I’d zone out to either “Live with Regis & Kelly” or “The View”–two shows I’d never watched before. I was always struck by the constant fear mongering about the Internet, particularly on “The View.” It seemed every day there was a story about pedophiles patrolling MySpace, ex-wives putting retaliatory dirty-laundry-airing videos on YouTube and 20-somethings getting fired because of college keg party pictures on Facebook. The message to housewives was loud and clear: DO NOT LET YOUR KIDS USE THESE HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE SITES! Yesterday after a pretty brutal morning, I found myself sitting on the couch, flipping channels for a little background noise and settling on my old jogging buddy “The View.” Mainly because Lil’ Wayne was the guest and the combo of my favorite saucy rapper and ultra-right-winger Elizabeth Hasselbeck sounded TiVo-worthy. It was the first time I’ve watched the show in at least a year. Imagine my surprise that Joy was texting away on her Blackberry while on air, and a conversation about a study that showed good friends could help you live to 100 years old immediately brought up Twitter. “This is why I am on Twitter ,” Joy said, “We’re all on it now except for Whoopi…We like to have all these friends. It’s like a community of people who are interested in you.” Nods all around. Turns out– as I learned from “The Soup” on Friday night–they’ve been talking about it all week, as has every other Oprah-wanna-be. Yes, even Tyra. (See video below.) Wait a minute, ladies. Wait. One. Minute. You’re telling me that you are blasting your every move out to a bunch of strangers’ mobile phones, and there’s no fear of stalkers, crazed fans or psychos? Not even from Elizabeth? I had to check to make sure I was really watching “The View.” It’s easy to dismiss this as yet more celebs jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. But that masks the really remarkable thing Twitter seems to have pulled off. It has seemingly side-stepped the whole fear-of-technology mania that usually plagues most social media sites as they start to tip mainstream. There was that little report about terrorists using it and that was pretty much it. Throughout 2007 I heard these same ladies make the argument that spending all this time on MySpace and Facebook was eroding kids’ abilities to make friends. Now just two years later, the same people are equating Twitter with real world friendships. What gives? Is it that everyone has finally gotten used to the idea of real world and digital friendships overlapping? I doubt it. Because you still hear fear mongering with a lot of the other sites. There’s just something about Twitter that’s less scary. And that may prove its biggest strength and differentiator. I think part of it is how simple the site is to use, the flexibility of using it via the web or mobile, and the relatively low barrier to that “a-ha!” moment. You know, the mini-endorphin rush you get from knowing what your friends are doing at any moment, or for a celebrity, hearing from fans in a more direct, more immediate way then you could before. But that’s only part of it. I think the key to Twitter’s mainstream celeb success has been the asynchronous, non-committal nature of the site. As Facebook and MySpace grew, we all experienced that social pressure akin to seeing someone on the street that you know, but don’t want to talk to and wondering how you can politely avoid them. Most people who indiscriminately add “friends” just because they asked don’t wind up really using Facebook to connect with actual friends, because they don’t want to over-share photos, contact information, or videos with “friends” who are essentially strangers. But on Twitter, the personal information is contained by the restraints of the site itself. It’s just short text updates, unless you chose to link to a picture or video. People feel like they know you, while you actually give up very little personal information. You get intimate connections with as many people as you want, but on your own terms. People can follow you, without you following them. You can still see what people you aren’t following are saying about you and respond, or not. And you can add someone for a bit, then unfollow them, frequently without them noticing while they still follow you. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn CEO and uber-Web 2.0 angel a few weeks ago. He pointed out that lifecasting never took off in a big way because it was originally conceived as video. Many people don’t want to show that much of their lives, and most friends just don’t have the time to watch. It’s not that people don’t care, it’s just that sometimes we’re not great editors. We tend to think we’re more interesting than we really are. But Twitter is noncommittal, bite-sized lifecasting in a manageable text form. It’s similar to how I refuse to check one long rambling voice mail, but I’m happy to scan hundreds of texts or emails. Hoffman compared it to the difference between watching a vacation movie of your friend sitting on a boat in the water for an hour, versus reading one 140-character Tweet that your friend was sitting on a boat enjoying the sun. Ironically, the asyncronicity of Twitter was hotly contested by a lot of early adopters who pressured the Twitter team heavily to change it to an auto-follow model. Evan Williams & crew always held out, convinced it was of key importance to how the site would grow and scale. Looks like they were right. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Googler Defects To Twitter, He Tweets Top
Last month, Douglas Bowman, the design lead at Google, left to become the creative director at Twitter. Today, a former co-worker joins him. Dustin Diaz, who was an engineer working on Gmail, resigned from Google and announced he was taking a job at Twitter, on Twitter . “It’s kind of shocking we couldn’t keep him,” another Googler tells us, calling Diaz “one of the best frontend developers around.” But of course, Twitter is the hot new company, just like Facebook was months back when it was stealing employees left and right from larger companies — like Google. As he famously blogged about, Bowman took exception to some of the mentality surrounding design at Google, and cited it as a reason for leaving. As a frontend engineer, it’s certainly possible Diaz felt similar. He did, after all, author a book called “ Pro JavaScript Design Patterns .” Or, as I said, maybe he just wanted to go work for the hot company. Update : Diaz was nice enough to tweet us a picture to use representing his move. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Dropbox: Now Effortlessly Syncing Files For 1 Million Members Top
Dropbox , the Y Combinator and Sequoia-funded file synchronization startup that makes it easy to share files across multiple computers at once, just hit a major milestone: it now has over 1 million members. And as the graph below shows, much of that growth has come in the last few months, with over 900,000 signups since the product’s public debut at TechCrunch50 last September. We don’t hear about Dropbox too often (it seems that they’re a bit too secretive for their own good at times), but their product rocks, and is gaining fans quickly. We’ve been using it around the TechCrunch office for over a year now to collaborate on group projects and keep key files handy regardless of which computer we’re using. And we’re not alone - I often hear about other startups that are using Dropbox for their own projects, including Facebook’s Dave Morin . Dropbox is going to be introducing a few key features soon, too. One of them is Peer to Peer sharing, which will allow users on the same network to share their files directly through their routers, without having to first upload them to Dropbox’s servers. The service’s web interface also just got a UI refresh, though many people simply use the folders that the Dropbox application integrates directly into your desktop. CEO Drew Houston wouldn’t talk about how many of Dropbox’s users are paid (the service offers a free version with a limited amount of storage), but he says that the site’s referral program has been driving signups, with the service seeing around 22-25% growth month over month since launch. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Creepy Alert: Isthisyourluggage.com Top
If you’ve traveled enough, there’s a good chance you’ve lost your luggage before. Sure, it’s annoying as hell, but most people get it back within a few days. However, some people, for whatever reason, never claim their lost luggage, and the airlines then auction it off for charity. That’s where isthisyourluggage.com comes in. The site, run by some anonymous person, collects this auctioned off luggage, and takes pictures of it to put on the site. Yes, this person opens the lugguage, takes out all of the items, and photographs them. Yes, this is creepy. But it’s also a great web oddity. The main page of the site features pictures of each suitcase, you can click on any of them and get taken to a page that shows the pictures of each item inside. If you click on this picture, it zooms in, giving you a closer view of the items. I haven’t noticed anything too out of the ordinary, though one bag has a sort of strange nurse’s outfit, which may or may not double as a stripper outfit. At least the creator of the site is honest. As they write on the about page, “I GO TO THESE AUCTIONS AND BUY THE CASES SO I CAN PHOTOGRAPH THEM FOR MY WEIRD VOYEURISTIC PASSION.” [via twitter/mbaratz ] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Show Your Best Talent, Win A Ton Of iPhone Apps Top
Last week, we held an absolutely massive iPhone App Giveaway spree . Over a span of about 12 hours, we gave away hundreds and hundreds of promo codes across 50+ different iPhone applications. It was a blast, but all good things must come to an end - but it’s not over just yet. Throughout the competition, we hung on to one promo code for each app. We’ve taken all of these promo codes and put them together, forming one ridiculously huge omega-prize. One lucky person is going to take home a copy of every application we gave away that day - plus more. That’s dozens upon dozens of applications, worth hundreds of dollars in all. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Following Their Massive Layoffs, Hi5 Gets A New Leader Top
Last month, the social network hi5 cut a large percentage of its staff following a new round of funding that didn’t materialized . Now, the self-dubbed “world’s leading social entertainment web site” is getting a new leader at the top. Bill Gossman, formerly the CEO of the online advertising service Audience Science, is taking over as CEO of Hi5. Grossman was brought in by Hi5’s largest shareholder Mohr Davidow Ventures, where Grossman was a former partner and is a current executive in residence. In the release (below) you can read between the lines to see where Hi5 is looking to head as it continues on at a smaller size. The site, is now focusing on forms of entertainment like casual gaming and micro-payments. Hi5 also recently partnered with Paymo to power mobile payments for virtual goods. Gossman, who obviously has experience in monetization, will now try to monetize hi5. The company’s former CEO, founder Ramu Yalamanchi, will stay on and take the roll of Chief Product Officer. With nearly 60 million active users, the service has a good sized audience, but it’s long been far behind the big boys in the social networking space, MySpace and Facebook. Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide with 294.7 million unique visitors, with MySpace is coming in second with 125.7 million unique visitors. hi5 gets about 63 million monthly unique visits worldwide but only 3.7 million of those are from the U.S., according to ComScore's March stats. And the problem with its audience is that a good chunk of it is in countries where it will be hard to attract advertisers, as VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon notes . Below, find the press release: San Francisco, CA; April 24, 2009 — hi5, the world's leading social entertainment web site, today announced the appointment of Bill Gossman as CEO to lead the company through its next phase of growth. Ramu Yalamanchi, founder and CEO since the company's inception in 2003, will assume the role of Chief Product Officer to lead the company's product strategy in the social entertainment space. This change augments the hi5 executive team with seasoned leadership, particularly around monetization of the company's huge global audience of over 60 million monthly uniques. As the former CEO of Audience Science, Bill brings considerable expertise in online advertising, behavioral targeting, and other forms of audience monetization. He has also built and led several companies through similar stages of their organizational growth. "The founding team at hi5 has built a tremendous asset in one of the world's largest online communities, and a truly global distribution and monetization platform for games and other social entertainment content," said Gossman. "I'm excited to be joining the organization to help leverage that asset by focusing on our continued leadership in the social entertainment space and building a scalable, highly profitable business." As Chief Product Officer, Ramu will focus his operational responsibilities on leading the product and engineering organizations to deliver innovative, world-class features that differentiate hi5 in the social entertainment space – particularly extending hi5's successful micro-payments infrastructure and maximizing that revenue stream for the business. "It is great to have Bill joining hi5 at this exciting stage of our business," said Yalamanchi. "We have been incredibly successful in building a huge global audience and pioneering the social entertainment space. Bill brings highly applicable, stage-relevant leadership experience, particularly in monetizing online traffic and building scalable sales organizations, that will help take our company to the next level." With over 25 years experience leading high-growth organizations in the digital media space, Bill helped pioneer the behavioral targeting category at Audience Science and is an expert in monetizing online audiences. His previous positions include CEO of Sabrix and founder and COO/CFO of @mobile, a wireless Internet software company sold to Software.com for $400 million. Bill is a former partner and current executive in residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures, the lead investor in hi5. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Wolfram Alpha Getting A Public Preview On Tuesday Top
When it was first unveiled in March, Wolfram Alpha , a new type of search engine created by computer scientist Stephen Wolfram , got a lot of buzz. Naturally, some people threw out the “Google killer” title — but it seems to be a different beast, as it’s all about knowledge search. That is to say, you ask a question, and you get an answer — with Google, you ask a question and you get a link to a bunch of documents. That may sound a bit bland, and simplistic, but the select few who have seen it, seem to think it works really well and could be a game changer . The rest of us won’t know for sure until May, when it’s scheduled to launch. But if you want to catch a glimpse of how it will work, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard is hosting a webcast on Tuesday of an event with Wolfram and Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard. The sold-out event will be streamed live on the web at 3PM EST this coming Tuesday on this page . And Harvard is calling for web users to participate in the preview by submitting questions, by @replying or direct messaging BerkmanCenter on Twitter during the event, or joining their IRC chat. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
AOL's Secret Love(.com) Top
AOL has a new content site in open beta called Love.com - it’s been live since early this month but hasn’t attracted any press attention to date. AOL hasn’t announced it, and it isn’t linked to from any other AOL properties. But it’s already a vast site covering 350,000 topics that attracts 100,000 unique visitors a week through search engine links and word of mouth on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. The site has a home directory at love.com, and topic sites are organized under subdomains. Current content on literally anything you can think of (or at least that I could think of) is there: dogs , The Beatles , sex , money , rock and roll . Hamsters . Barack Obama . You get the picture. Search engines love this stuff. The site is built under Bill Wilson’s new MediaGlow division, which is building new content brands distinct from AOL itself. The content is all automated, with main articles pulled from third party sources via Relegence, videos from YouTube, Twitter messages linking back to individual pages, and links to major news sites. All of this is automated and requires very little human involvement. Right now AOL isn’t saying much about Love.com, other than they plan to roll it out officially sometime later this year, and that the goal is “to create sites with content on any topic that people love.” Love.com is described on the MediaGlow site as “The Love.com Network covers all the topics you love, all under one big roof, with hundreds of thousands of topic blogs to suit fans of all things.” Eventually, we hear, users will be able to create a customizable home page which brings in content from specific topics they want to track. Love.com originally launched in 2003 as a personals site. it was later changed to simply redirect to Match.com, which has a long term partnership with AOL. More on AOL employee Frank Gruber’s blog . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Dear Owen: Good Luck With That Top
Just how big a task does MySpace’s freshly appointed CEO Owen Van Natta have in front of him? Let’s take a quick peek at the latest global traffic stats from comScore which just came out today. On a global basis, Facebook attracted more than twice as many visitors in the month of March as arch-rival MySpace. Facebook had an estimated 294.7 million unique visitors in March, 2009 on a worldwide basis, compared to 125.7 million for MySpace. While Facebook gained 19 million visitors during the month, MySpace gained only 2 million. In terms of pageviews, MySpace has seen a drop of 20 percent since January (to 37.9 billion), whereas Facebook has seen growth of 22 percent in the exact opposite direction (to 87.3 billion). And while MySpace is still bigger in the U.S., Facebook is closing that gap fast. Owen Van Natta must figure out some way to reinvigorate MySpace and keep it from languishing its way towards mediocrity. Maybe the answer is to turn MySpace Music into the new engine of growth for the entire social network or focus on some other niche where MySpace can win. But if Van Natta’s ambition is to retake the top spot in social networking, well, good luck with that. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
A Sign Of Things To Come: Naked Pizza Erects Twitter Billboard Top
It was only a matter of time. Naked Pizza , a uniquely healthy pizza joint in New Orleans, has replaced its “call for delivery” billboard in favor of something a bit more unorthodox: its Twitter handle. The restaurant now features a large Twitter bird above its storefront, inviting passersby to follow ‘ NAKEDpizza ‘ for special deals. Aside from being among the first brick and mortar businesses to so prominently feature its Twitter handle, Naked Pizza is notable for a few other reasons. Its menu was created to offer the “world’s healthiest pizza”, with each slice only weighing in at a fraction of the calories and fat of standard pizza, while still tasting delicious, according to Yelp reviewers . Oh, and Mark Cuban just partnered with the company to turn it into a national franchise. To be honest I was skeptical of the sign at first (it’s fairly easy to Photoshop the Twitter logo onto a billboard), but I’ve confirmed with the New Orleans sign company that installed it that it’s real. And while it’s still a pretty strange sight to behold, it makes perfect sense. With the growing ubiquity of smart phones, free 411 services, and Google Local on the computer, looking up a restaurant’s phone number is trivial. And phone numbers only form a very fleeting bond with the business, anyway. But if a business can get a customer to add their Twitter handle, it gets a free channel to constantly remind them that they exist. By tweeting out promotions a few times a week, Naked Pizza will maintain a presence in the customer’s consciousness, and the customer gets a chance to score some cheap pizza. This isn’t the first time Twitter has been featured on a billboard. Just last week, Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter handle was displayed on thousands of digital billboards across the country in support of his quest for 1 million Twitter followers. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
NYC's Pogby Aims To Become The OpenTable For Events Top
Why is it that you can book a table at a fancy restaurant through OpenTable, but you can’t book the bar for a corporate party? That is the question that a startup in New York City called Pogby is trying to answer. Barely in beta, Pogby is an event booking service founded by Joshua Gooch, who used to run JetBlue’s Website and helped build its TrueBlue customer loyalty program. Pogby aims to become the OpenTable of events, where corporate event planners and others can find and book venues for parties. Pogby is one of the finalists competing in a startup competition at NYC Entrepreneur Week, where I was a judge today. The site is really not much more than an online demo right now, with only a half dozen venues in New York City on the site. But Gooch and his VP of sales Duane Lawrence plan to sign up 50 to 100 restaurants, bars, and other event spaces in short order. They are focusing on New York City to prove the concept. (This is really early stage—the company is still looking for seed funding). Each venue on Pogby gets its own page with pictures for each available event space, along with a calendar showing availability and a booking engine. Gooch knows a lot about reservation systems from his time at JetBlue, and you can see some of the design influences on Pogby. it’s a fairly simple concept. Find a venue, check pricing and availability, and book online. Pogby plans to charge venues an 8 percent commission fee for any bookings and eventually will introduce a $99/month subscription fee. A typical event can cost $4,000 or more, and event spaces typically go unused 70 percent of the time. So any extra events a restaurant or venue can capture is worth the fees. Why hasn’t anyone done this already? There is an obvious need for this service. Pogby however faces a few challenges. First, it needs to sign up a critical mass of popular event spaces before anyone will take it seriously. Second, it needs to make it easier for venues to sign up themselves in a self-serve fashion (this is coming, but to appear on the site right now involves too many manual processes). Third, it needs incentives to prevent people from looking up availability on the site and then calling up on their own to strike a better deal. (A discount would be good). Fourth, it needs to give event planners a way to negotiate prices and other terms on the site. Fifth, it needs to look beyond New York City. But the biggest threat might come from OpenTable itself, which could add event booking a sa feature fairly easily since most of its restaurants rent out spaces for parties as well. Until they do, Pogby has an opportunity to carve out a niche for itself. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Celebrities + Twitter + A Good Cause = A Retweet Explosion Tomorrow? Top
The race between actor Ashton Kutcher and CNN to a million Twitter followers at first seemed to be little more than an exercise in online vanity. But then it transformed into a race to help out a cause, Malaria No More , in a meaningful way. But really, why does anyone need a race to do that? With that in mind, tomorrow, Kutcher , with his nearly 1.4 million followers , and Digg’s Kevin Rose , with his over 500,000 followers , along with other notable users plan to use to Twitter as a platform to further the cause. The message they will send out is simple: “Every 30 seconds a child dies from Malaria. Nets save lives. Support World Malaria Day = http://bit.ly/30Io8 ” Just from those two users, the tweet has the potential to be seen nearly 2 million times on Twitter. But the real power will come when people start retweeting the message. Savvy Twitter users will know that retweeting (copying a message to all of your followers that someone else sent) has become the key to sending a viral message on Twitter. And given the celebrity angle, mixed with a good cause, I think it’s a pretty good bet this may be one of the most retweeted messages ever for the service. And we’ll play along, because it is a good cause . And if you feel like doing your part, send out the message above tomorrow as well, or retweet it. More importantly, if you’re able, donate to the cause to buy nets to help save children in Africa. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The Evolution Of Twitter Spin-Offs: Twitter Begat StockTwits Begat Chart.ly Top
It was only a matter of time before an app was was built to support another app that was built for Twitter. Chart.ly is a stock charting app to be used directly in conjunction with another Twitter app, StockTwits. Chart.ly lets Twitter users upload and share stock charts via Twitter and StockTwits. It’s kind of like TwitPic for stock charts. Chart.ly lets you upload a chart of a particular stock with stock symbol and tags, and lets you include a tweet about the chart. This is then broadcast to your Twitter account and to StockTwits, which is a community for Tweets about stocks and investments. You can also see the most popular charts that have been uploaded on the Chart.ly site. Chart.ly has collaborated fully with StockTwits. In fact, StockTwits and Chart.ly creator Adarsh Pallian share ad revenue from Chart.ly (StockTwits owns 80% and Pallian owns 20% equity and revenue share). The frustrating part about the site is that it doesn’t let you create charts for stocks—you have to generate a chart independently and then upload it onto the site. You can get a stock chart from sites like Finviz.com or Wikinvest.com and then upload, but it would be easier to do everything in one place. Pallian says that the site is going to launch the ability to create your own chart within Chart.ly and tweet about it directly in the next few weeks. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Most G1 Owners Love Apps — But Not All Top
Some numbers we published yesterday showed that while iPhone owners (not surprisingly) love to download apps, owners of other smartphones do not. As we noted, the numbers seemed a bit incomplete since the Android platform wasn’t represented. We asked Compete , which took the survey, to send those our way. To be clear, the sample size is “very small,” but it’s somewhat interesting none the less. Sure enough, Android users do seem to enjoy downloading apps more than all other smartphones aside from the iPhone. But interestingly, there were some G1 owners who had downloaded zero apps. Even though a lot more iPhone owners showed up in the survey, there were none that said they had downloaded zero apps — whereas that was a popular number with the other smartphones. Also worth noting is that 43% of G1 owners surveyed said that all of their apps were free. That’s perhaps not so surprising since the Android Market only launched paid apps two months ago. Still, it would seem that paying for apps isn’t as popular in the Android market as it is in the App Store. That is something that a few developers have complained about to me as well. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
News Corp Pulls The Trigger: Owen Van Natta Now Runs The Circus. Err, MySpace Top
They pulled the trigger: Owen Van Natta is now the CEO of MySpace and will report to Jonathan Miller , the new CEO of Digital Media for News Corp. Van Natta is a former Facebook and Amazon executive who, until today, was the CEO of a decidedly unstable music startup called Playlist. He’s got the resume to run MySpace, but as we said yesterday there are some serious questions around whether he’s the right guy. He still owns a significant part of Facebook and he’s clearly leaving Playlist, and the executives and investors he brought on board, in a bad situation. He joined that company just a few months ago. The rumor is that they’ll now be forced to shut down, although Playlist announces in a separate release that board member John Sykes, a cofounder of MTV, will take over as CEO for now . This has been a dramatic week for MySpace, and the situation probably couldn’t have been handled more poorly . One person close to the situation described the firing of DeWolfe and the hiring of Van Natta as resembling “retarded drunk people riding bumper cars.” We broke the news that News Corp. was looking to replace founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe on Tuesday. Later that day we confirmed the news. On Wednesday News Corp. issued a short press release that DeWolfe was leaving and that cofounder and president Tom Anderson would be moving to a new role. We published a short list of possible candidates for the new CEO, which included Van Natta. Negotiations were concluded yesterday, we’ve heard from a source close to News Corp. During all this time very little news has made its way to MySpace, and even the executives were left completely in the dark. Yesterday an executive of the company asked me if I’d heard any news and whether he was on the list to be terminated. That’s a sad situation. “The clowns have taken over the circus,” he said. More. Much more, on this story later. The full press releases of both announcements are below: News Corporation Names Owen Van Natta Chief Executive Officer of MySpace ______________________ Los Angeles, CA, April 24, 2009 – News Corporation today announced the appointment of Owen Van Natta to the role of MySpace Chief Executive Officer effective immediately. Mr. Van Natta will be based in Los Angeles and report directly to Jonathan Miller, News Corporation's CEO of Digital Media and Chief Digital Officer. A highly-regarded digital executive, Mr. Van Natta, 39, previously served as Chief Revenue Officer and Vice President of Operations for Facebook, where he helped negotiate Facebook's $240 million investment from Microsoft. Earlier, he served as Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development for Amazon.com. Most recently, he was the CEO of Playlist, Inc., an online music company. "Owen combines a deep understanding of social networking, a keen business sense and the operational experience to guide MySpace through its next phase of growth. I'm confident his leadership will be an invaluable asset," said Mr. Miller. "I plan to work closely with Owen to shape our long-term vision around this vibrant community that already attracts more than 130 million users worldwide." "I'm thrilled to have the privilege to pilot MySpace in what is sure to be an incredibly exciting and rewarding next chapter for the business," said Mr. Van Natta. "I feel honored to build upon the immeasurable achievements of the MySpace founders and look forward to working with Jon and the MySpace team to meet the challenges and make the most of the opportunities before us." While serving as Vice President of Operations and Chief Revenue Officer for Facebook, Van Natta focused on revenue operations, business development, strategic partnerships and technical operations. As Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon.com, he managed global marketing programs and strategic partnerships. He was also part of the founding team of A9.com, the Amazon.com search company, and was responsible for site operations and sponsored-link advertising. Owen earned a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Playlist Names Board Member and Veteran Media Executive John Sykes as CEO MTV Co-founder and Former VH-1 President Replaces Owen Van Natta Palo Alto, Calif., April 24, 2009 – Playlist, the leading social media network where over 43 million music fans discover, create and share playlists, announced today that Board Member and industry veteran John Sykes has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer. As a Co-founder of MTV, President of VH1, and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting, Sykes brings extensive operating experience and industry relationships to the company as it partners with the music industry to provide advertising, subscription and e-commerce services to music consumers. Owen Van Natta will serve as an Advisor to Playlist. "John was a pioneer of the MTV revolution that forever changed the music industry landscape by giving fans a whole new way to discover and enjoy music," said Bob Zangrillo, Chairman of Playlist. "Playlist looks forward to leveraging John's tremendous track record operating media businesses and deep relationships in the music industry as it builds out the world's premier social media service." "Creating and sharing playlists has become a phenomenon in our culture. With over 43 million registered users, Playlist is the number one site where fans go to discover, share and enjoy their favorite music," said John Sykes, CEO of Playlist. "Leveraging our newly forged partnerships with the music community, we can now offer consumers deep access to their music and provide the industry with powerful new revenue streams." Playlist, one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet, continues to establish partnerships with the entertainment industry in an effort to offer a comprehensive collection of content that can be discovered, shared and monetized at www.playlist.com. About Playlist With over 43 million registered users, Playlist is the number one site in the nation where consumers discover, organize and share their favorite music across the social Web. The company leverages over 50 million user created playlists to help media companies and the record industry virally promote, distribute and monetize their content. The company is based in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, visit www.playlist.com. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
TechCrunch Comes to China Top
As regular readers know, I'm working on a book about global entrepreneurship and taking TechCrunch readers along with me. By that I mean, I’ll be blogging about cool companies I find, not that I’m actually chartering a plane for all of you. Sorry, but, you know, it’s a recession. Up next: China. I'll be in Shanghai and Bejing May 9-22. It's my first trip to China, and I have a long list of potential companies and investors to meet, but I want to make sure I'm not missing any gems. So if you know any such gems, local venture capitalists, angel investors or anyone with an interesting entrepreneurial story please email me at sarah(at)techcrunch(dot)com or leave it in the comments. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Friday flood of news about MySpace and Twitter. (PS: This has to be the shortest post I’ve ever written.) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Project Playlist Fills CEO Void With MTV Co-Founder John Sykes Top
Hot on the heels of the announcement that Owen Van Natta is unceremoniously leaving Project Playlist to run MySpace, Project Playlist has announced that John Sykes will be stepping in as CEO. Sykes is a co-founder of MTV, former president of VH1, and former president of Infinity Broadcasting, one of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the US. Sykes has been a boardmember at Playlist up until this point. Project Playlist is a decidedly troubled company. After showing very impressive traffic numbers late last year, Playlist saw its traffic plummet after its embeddable playlists were removed from both MySpace and Facebook, which were threatened with lawsuits by the major music labels. Under the guidance of Van Natta, who only joined the company in November, the company had been making some headway with music industry. With his extensive background in the music industry Sykes may be able to keep Playlist on the right track, but Van Natta’s abrupt departure isn’t exactly a vote of confidence in the company. Full press release below: Palo Alto, Calif., April 24, 2009 – Playlist, the leading social media network where over 43 million music fans discover, create and share playlists, announced today that Board Member and industry veteran John Sykes has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer. As a Co-founder of MTV, President of VH1, and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting, Sykes brings extensive operating experience and industry relationships to the company as it partners with the music industry to provide advertising, subscription and e-commerce services to music consumers. Owen Van Natta will serve as an Advisor to Playlist. "John was a pioneer of the MTV revolution that forever changed the music industry landscape by giving fans a whole new way to discover and enjoy music," said Bob Zangrillo, Chairman of Playlist. "Playlist looks forward to leveraging John's tremendous track record operating media businesses and deep relationships in the music industry as it builds out the world's premier social media service." "Creating and sharing playlists has become a phenomenon in our culture. With over 43 million registered users, Playlist is the number one site where fans go to discover, share and enjoy their favorite music," said John Sykes, CEO of Playlist. "Leveraging our newly forged partnerships with the music community, we can now offer consumers deep access to their music and provide the industry with powerful new revenue streams." Playlist, one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet, continues to establish partnerships with the entertainment industry in an effort to offer a comprehensive collection of content that can be discovered, shared and monetized at www.playlist.com. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Twitter Eats World: Global Visitors Shoot Up To 19 Million Top
Twitter’s march towards world domination continues apace. This morning comScore released its global numbers for March, 2009. Worldwide visitors to Twitter.com increased 95 percent in the month of March from 9.8 million to 19.1 million, according to its estimates. This compares to 9.3 million visitors in the U.S. alone . These numbers only count visitors to Twitter’s Website, which is not the same as active users and also does not include people who interact with Twitter via desktop or mobile clients (a large portion of users). But the comScore numbers provide a good proxy for Twitter’s overall growth, which was helped recently by Ashton Kutcher’s race with CNN to one million followers, and Oprah’s subsequent adoption of the service. If Twitter can keep this rate of growth up, it should cross 50 million visitors by summer. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
AlertFox Launches Powerful Web Application Monitoring Tool (Freebies Here) Top
Most web application developers have been there: your monitoring system shows nothing but green lights, yet the app is down or not functioning the way it should. Traditional web monitoring services often don’t dig deep enough to detect glitches in the application code, and database or find that problems arise with bugs in Ajax, Flash or Silverlight front-end applets. German startup iOpus is today unveiling the public beta of a product it claims offers a solution for many a developer or website owner who would like their monitoring services taken up a notch. Enter AlertFox . (free Pro accounts for 100 users, see below) What AlertFox does is provide in-depth monitoring of rich internet applications (RIAs), offering a potential solution for many SaaS and Web 2.0 web service providers out there who are not satisfied with a simple uptime checker that only provides superficial information without detecting the root cause of problems. AlertFox runs directly from the browser (with support for both Firefox and Internet Explorer) and is capable of keeping tabs on the functioning and performance of sites built with ActiveX, AJAX, Flash, Flex, complex HTML or Silverlight technology. Another aspect that sets AlertFox apart from most traditional monitoring services is the real-time monitoring of transactions, e.g. the entire checkout process for an e-commerce store instead of only its uptime. This should come in handy for online businesses for which a smooth buying and selling process makes all the difference in the world. The company is following the freemium approach for its business model, which is subscription-based and as far as I can tell extremely moderately priced. Users can get started with a free account, which covers worldwide monitoring and other basic features but only supports one user and use within the Firefox browser. You’d need to sign up for a Pro account (starts at $49 per month for the time being as a promotional offer) for transaction monitoring with both Firefox and Internet Explorer, support for up to five users and 100% monitoring of Flash, Ajax and Silverlight applications. We’d love for you to take it for a spin and tell us if it lives up to its promise, so we’ve arranged for the company to give away 100 free Pro2 accounts, valid for two years. All you need to do is quickly sign up for a free account and send an e-mail to techcrunch-at-alertfox-dot-com. The first 100 readers to do that will be upgraded without charge, and are expected to come back and share their experiences in the comments. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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