Monday, May 11, 2009

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SocialMedia Unveils New Interactive Ads, Scores IDG As Partner Top
Social interaction is one of the driving forces behind the web right now, with Twitter and Facebook both growing at phenomenal rates. But outside of social networks, advertisers have largely failed to get in on the action - on most web pages, banner ads usually consist of a flashy logo and maybe some clever text, without any content that is actually personalized to you . SocialMedia , an advertising company that has largely concentrated on social network advertising until now, is looking to change this. The company is releasing a suite of new interactive advertising products, collectively being called “People Powered Ads” that look to help brands create more engaging ads by tapping into the social power of the web. Alongside the launch the company has announced that publishing giant IDG is its first partner, and that IDG will be rolling out advertising campaigns and selling customized versions of ‘People Powered Ads’ under its own Amplify banner. The first set of People Power Ads revolves around Twitter - a platform that is at once very appealing and terrifying to most brands. The flagship ad unit is ‘Twitter Pulse’, which will display some of the most recent Tweets highlighting a company’s product or brand name (it’s essentially a custom emeddable Twitter Search). For example, Apple could create an ad unit for the iPhone, presenting the five most recent tweets that mention the popular device. This kind of ad can be quite engaging, but it is also scary for brands, as it could potentially display a tweet that is deriding the product. To compensate for this SocialMedia will allow brands to create their own filters to weed out profanity or negative remarks, or to only show tweets from selected users. SocialMedia is also offering a product called ‘Twitter MegaPulse’ that allows brands to create entire microsites dedicated to their customized feeds. And finally there’s ‘Twitter Sparq’, which allows brands to syndicate ads to Twitter clients, inviting users to tweet about a particular product (which would then likely show up in their Twitter Pulse). The second set of advertising is called ‘Friend to Friend’. SocialMedia rolled out a similar product called “Word of Mouth” ads in March, inviting inviting users to interact with ads, which would then be customized with their responses when they were shown to friends. This product does essentially the same thing, but also allows brands to tap into content on their Facebook fan pages. And if a user grants SocialMedia permission though Facebook Connect, customized ads could appear on sites outside of the social network. Finally, there are community products, which aren’t reliant on any outside social networks. An ad unit called the ‘Community Poll’ asks users for input on a topic, and then presents the current results to other visitors. The last product is the ‘Community Stream’, which allows users to leave comments about a certain product or brand (it’s similar to the Twitter Pulse above, but allows visitors who don’t use Twitter to leave remarks. It seems inevitable that the majority of online ads will eventually be customized to suit your personal preferences and those of your friends, and SocialMedia seems to be ahead of the curve in this respect. That said, even with the filter options it will likely still take many brands far longer than it should to warm up to the idea of ads customized with user-input, so it may still be a while before this becomes widespread. And while SocialMedia asks users for permission before sharing their input, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is also some initial backlash as users begin to see their friends pop up more often in ad units. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
NYT Launches TimeReader 2.0: Is It Time To Stop Killing Trees? Top
There are two interesting things about the new New York Times Reader application. First, the company has abandoned SilverLight for Adobe Air, thereby ensuring cross-platform compatibility without that nasty Microsoft aftertaste. Second, the application is great. Full disclosure: I'm a regular contributor to the NYT but I'm not employed by them full-time and act as a freelancer. But I still read the paper every day. Now, for the good stuff. I used the earlier app briefly and put it away. I find that this new version is much cleaner than the earlier iteration. The front page is extremely readable and sections are clearly laid out. The application stores up to seven days of content and includes the crosswords as well as much of the standard print layout. You can't do a full, site-wide search through the app simply because that data isn't there. However, you can read the paper on a laptop. on a laptop.
 
Watch Out Google, Obama's Antitrust Chief Is Looking To Make A Big Case Top
The Obama Administration’s new chief antitrust enforcer at the Department of Justice, Christine Varney, is making it very clear that she is going to be much more aggressive in bringing antitrust actions against large, American corporations. The Bush Administration took a hands-off approach to antitrust enforcement, and that is about to change. Varney needs a high-profile case to make her name, and all indications are that she is eying Google. After all she needs to make an example out of a big powerful corporate “predator” and in this limping econmy there simply aren’t that many powerful companies to chose from. Google, quite literally, is the new Microsoft when it comes to antitrust scrutiny (although, Microsoft itself is also still under the magnifying glass, as is Intel, at least in Europe). Even under the Bush Justice Department, last year Google had to drop its advertising deal with Yahoo because of antitrust issues . Today, Google is dealing with an antitrust investigation over to its book-scanning settlement , the newspaper and magazine industries are rattling their sabers, and every other industry facing disruption by the internet is lining up to blame Google for their woes. Varney will be encouraging competitors of all potential antitrust targets to file more complaints, so you can be sure that anti-Google lobby will grow. Google makes a nice, juicy target and it is one of the few companies with cash on hand to pay a large fine. Google really needs to tread carefully now. It is effectively being treated as a monopoly because of its overwhelming dominance in paid search advertising, which gives it carte blanche to move into other markets with disruptive pricing models (i.e. free). There are many ways an antitrust case could be made against Google (here is one approach ). While more scrutiny is not necessarily a bad thing if it serves to keep Google honest, especially in the areas where it is carving out a natural monopoly for itself in search and search advertising, tying up Google with antitrust lawsuits could do more harm than good. Any antitrust action should really be based on proven consumer harm or predatory pricing, not simply because Google is out-competing other companies. The problem with antitrust lawsuits, particularly in fast-moving industries such as technology, is they take so long to go through the courts that by the time a ruling is handed down the market has moved on (see Microsoft). The market will always do a better job undermining monopolies than the Justice department will. Varney would serve the country better looking at more entrenched industries such agriculture, health care or energy that could use some shaking up. In the technology industry, overturning the status quo is the only way to survive. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Go Nordic With TechCrunch, May 27, Stockholm Top
TechCrunch Europe is putting together a round-table event in Stockholm on May 27. TechCrunchTalk Nordic, at the Elite Palace Hotel, St Eriksgatan 115, Stockholm (3pm to 8pm), will be an afternoon of panel discussions, presentations and pitches followed by a networking reception. We’ll be bringing together the startup, Angel and VC communities together to debate the next phase of the startup world in Scandinavia, Finland and the Baltic countries - which should make for a lively discussion. Please get your ticket here. Our speakers so far include Pär-Jörgen Pärsson from the VC firm Northzone Ventures, and Angel Gambino, formerly of Bebo. TechCrunchTalk Nordic is sponsored by Bloglovin . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Get The Real-Time Twitter Scoop With Twitscoop Top
Twitscoop, a real-time visualization tool that lets you see hot trends and buzz on Twitter, is getting a makeover and adding several useful features that may help you “mine the thought stream.” These features will officially roll out at 8 AM PST. Twitscoop’s algorithm identifies tags and keywords in the Twitter stream and then ranks them by how frequently they appear versus normal usage. Twitscoop detects growing trends in real-time, identifies breaking news and then monitors specific keywords along with graphs that display the activity for any given word on twitter. The results are also displayed in a “Tag Cloud,” where the hotter tags are presented in a bigger front. Besides showing the trending topics on Twitter, Twitscoop, which provides a service similar to Tweetag, Tweetmeme, and Twitturly, also lets you search Twitter messages for trending topics. Twitscoop is becoming a full-fledged Twitter service, adding oAuth to let you sign in with your Twitter account and tweet from the site without leaving the page. Additionally, you will be able shorten urls and tweet searches from the site. The new additions to Twitscoop’s roster of features include a new and improved real-time tracking code and a redesign of the user interface. The right side of Twitscoop’s homepage displays in real-time the words which are “buzzing” right now on Twitter. This tag cloud is updated automatically, with tags continuously appearing, growing, shrinking and finally vanishing. When you hover over a tag, a popup window will appear, displaying the latest related tweets about the tag. If you click on the tag, you open up a search tab within the site which will display all the related tweets along with a custom graph showing the tags’ activity over the past few hours or days. The graph is an interesting feature that isn’t available on most of Twitscoop’s competitors and helps you understand the timeline of a trending topic. On the left side of the homepage, Twitscoop shows general “trends” detected on Twitter. Clicking on any hot trend will open a tab with a snapshot of the corresponding search results by time frame, from 6 hours to 1 day to 3 days. I’m a fan of the way Twitscoop saves multiple searches in different tabs within the site. It makes it very easy to jump from one search to another without having to conduct the search over again. Unlike competitor Tweetmeme, which measures trends and hot topics by links and is also adding innovative features, Twitscoop measure trends by keyword. Tweetag, another tag-based search engine for Twitter that also uses a tag cloud to show results, is also useful but doesn’t include the interactive graphs and in-depth features of Twitscoop. Twitter, which acquired Summize, whose technology currently powers Twitter Search, also features trending topics but doesn’t go into the same depth as Twitscoop either. Twitscoop has lofty ambitions—the site hopes to not only be a go-to application to measure trends and buzz on Twitter, but also wants to be a major Twitter client, albeit a Web-based one. This field is packed with many worthy competitors including Seesmic Desktop, Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, and Nambu. Although it’s doubtful that Twitscoop will be able to take a large piece of the Twitter client pie, the site provides a useful way to find out what’s happening on Twitter that’s buzzworthy in real-time. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Fotomoto Lets Photographers Sell Photos On-Site Without The Hassle Top
A couple lines of code. That’s all it takes for photographers and publishers with large inventories of images to start selling their work on their own websites, thanks to an ambitious fledgling company. You’d think that something so simple could be pulled off by many a startup, but in reality I’m having trouble finding other companies that do it the way the recently launched Fotomoto does it (i.e. the right way). Sure, there are multiple ways for photographers to sell photos on other websites, but that usually requires both them and buyers to have a separate account with the provider of the marketplace service. Fotomoto does things differently: photographers only need to insert a few lines of codes in their website, after which the images on his or her website will automatically be indexed and automatically provided with a ‘purchase photo’ link. Sellers can tweak the settings so the ‘buy’ links appear completely integrated and branded to match their sites’ look and feel, and the back-end of the tool enables them to set the availability next to the sizes and pricing of the photos. When visitors click the link to buy photos, a Fotomoto widget pops up and enables them to instantly purchase images through PayPal (with the ability to pay by credit card coming later this month). There’s also a sharing link, which lets people send the picture to others as an e-card, with the ability to push to social networking and bookmarking services coming in a couple of weeks. You can see the integrated code in action on photo websites daily dose of imagery and Chromasia (under the photos). Photographers and publishers pay a commission when an actual sale takes place, so no paid monthly subscription or anything like that is required for them to start offering this service to their fans. The fee that they pay Fotomoto depends on the printing cost and the price the photo was set to in the first place - the startup asks for a 15% commission fee to cover cost and payment processing fees. Soon, Fotomoto will start offering a number of extra printing services, like postcards, t-shirts, merchandise and the likes which it hopes will drive more sales (and revenue for both them and photographers). It’s also slowly going to make its main site a place where you can discover photos from various photographers and instantly buy them from an iStockphoto-type directory. What I dig about the service is that Fotomoto clients get to dispose over detailed statistics on which photos perform well in terms of view count, orders, etc. which helps them evaluate which direction best to take for commercial success. That’s a really good selling point for starting and established photographers alike, but also for publishers (media groups etc.) who would like to cash in on that part of their content offering that rarely gets brought up in online media monetization discussions. Fotomoto launched about 3 weeks ago and currently has close to 27,000 photos in its database from about 125 photographers, with over 100 orders completed successfully so far. The company was started in October 2008 and raised seed funding to the tune of $300,000 from early-stage financing firm Amidzad Partners and DFJ soon after. It’s currently looking for an additional round of funding together with one of its notable board members, And Wood, former CEO of ShutterFly and also former CEO of PhotoWorks . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Kyte Streams 50 Million Videos A Month. Rolls Out iPhone Apps For MTV, NBA, And Others. Top
In an age when anyone with a video-capable cell phone can have their own TV channel on the Web, it is still the celebrities and rock stars who are getting all the views (just as on Twitter they get the most followers). Kyte CEO Daniel Graf knows this fact all too well. Of the 215,000 video channels on Kyte, nearly all are created by consumers, but only about 1,000 account for more than 90 percent of the mobile videos streamed via the service. And those 1,000 channels are invariably the work of professionals or the cell-phone videos of famous people such as musicians Lady Gaga ( iTunes link ) and Soulja Boy (i Tunes link ) In April, Kyte streamed 50 million videos across the Web, mobile devices, and social networks. Just to put those 50 million video streams into perspective, that is half the number of videos streamed in March, 2009 by AOL, the tenth ranked video site in the U.S. (Hulu, which is No, 3, streamed 380 million videos). Today, Kyte is launching iPhone apps for partners including MTV, the NBA, Spin Magazine, the rock band No Doubt, and the Los Angeles radio station KCRW, which is using the app to highlight videos of bands playing live in its studios. Some of these apps are tailored to specific events such as the MTV Movie Awards and the NBA Playoffs ( iTunes link ). Kyte creates iPhone apps as a turnkey service , with the ability to add different modular features to each app. These features include video shows based on mobile Kyte uploads; blog, news, and Twitter feeds; live chat; a presence indicator showing how many other people are currently in the app; music or video downloads via the iTunes store; location-aware event listings for tour dates and other listings, mobile Web access, and custom modules such as basketball scores Kyte is taking off, but not because of user-generated videos. Rather it is trying to cash in on the premium slice of video content out there, much like Hulu is for Web video. The difference is that Kyte creates consistent branded video experiences across Websites, social networks, and mobile devices. Graf doesn’t see Kyte competing so much against Qik and UStream on the mobile live streaming video front as it does against Brightcove in the enterprise video publishing. Pitches Graf: “We are cheaper than Brightcove and you get mobile as well and Twitter and Facebook.” Kyte wants to become the one-stop shop for major talent and media brands, wrapping their Websites and iPhone apps around mobile video. My problem with the apps is that they are only as good as the content they showcase. The iPhone apps are very consumption-oriented. For instance, Twitter is treated as nothing more than a straight, one-way feed instead of turning letting fans Tweet back from within the app. In the video below, which I took last week when Graf visited my office, he talks about the new iPhone apps, how the Kyte platform ties together mobile, Web, social Networks, and Twitter, and how he sees Brightcove as his biggest competition: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
NBC Invests In Video Search Startup EveryZing And Signs Up As Its Biggest Customer Top
Video search startup EveryZing just landed its biggest fish yet: NBC Universal. Boston-based EveryZing signed a master service agreement with NBC to provide video search and search-optimization technologies across all of its online properties, which include NBC.com, iVillage, CNBC.com, and the websites for Bravo, Sci-Fi, and Telemundo. (The deal does not cover Hulu, which is a joint venture between NBC and Fox). NBC is also investing in the company, leading its latest $8.25 million C round, through its venture capital arm, the Peacock Equity Fund. Peacock Equity put in $3 million of the total, with existing investors Fairhaven Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Accel Partners and BBN Technologies putting up the rest. The valuation was flat with the last $10 million round the company raised in 2007. With the partnership, EveryZing will start powering search across NBC’s sites, starting with CNBC.com in a few weeks. As an enterprise search company, EveryZing offers a universal search box for finding not just video, audio, but also text results within a site or network of sites. After ingesting all of the video and audio content, it uses natural language processing and speech-to-text technologies to create a searchable transcript. As NBC digitizes its vast archive of TV shows, many of which are stored on old videotapes that are beginning to deteriorate, EveryZing can process the video to make it searchable. (The technology originated at BBN). It can also do directed indexing of YouTube videos by ingesting all the videos on certain channels, for instance. As EveryZing creates transcripts for searching purposes, they also become available for contextual ad targeting in and around the videos themselves. NBC.com alone has streamed more than one billion full episodes of TV shows over the past 18 months, it recently announced. EveryZing will also be making available a chromeless, re-skinnable video player that includes the text of all the spoken words in the video, as well as the ability to play both related YouTube and Brightcove videos inside the same player. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
CubeTree Launches As A Facebook + FriendFeed + Twitter For Enterprise Top
As they mature, social networks are increasingly becoming viable systems for information management. We’re seeing this with Facebook, and with FriendFeed and even to some extent with Twitter. The combination of social graph plus information is a powerful one. And that’s exactly why CubeTree wants to port that idea over to the enterprise world. CubeTree’s new enterprise collaboration suite, which is opening to the public tomorrow, has a familiar look: It looks like a cross between Facebook and FriendFeed (more-so before they were both recently redesigned). And that familiarity is part of the idea to getting this to work on the enterprise level. As with other social networks, there are two main components to CubeTree: The Feed and the Profile. But on CubeTree’s feed, instead of seeing updates from everyone in your social graph, you see updates from coworkers. And on your profile page, rather than highlighting pictures or videos of yourself, there is an emphasis on information and documents. CubeTree co-founders Carlin Wiegner (also CEO) and Ross Fubini (also CTO), both formerly with Symantec, recently gave me a walk-through of their product. It’s impressive both in look and feel and scope. They’ve done a great job taking the best parts of the social networks I’ve mentioned above, and putting them into CubeTree with more of a business spin. And I think a lot of businesses may be receptive to that because a lot of their employees have already been trained to use social networks of this ilk, something which Wiegner also pointed out. And in huge companies (the biggest one CubeTree is currently testing with has about 100,000 employees), a network like this can give an employee a face. As you can see in the screenshots, CubeTree places a large emphasis on the micro-updates, just like Twitter. The rationale behind this is that there are often things people maybe want others to know, but don’t want to send out an email to everyone in the company, as Fubini notes. With status updates, employees can give passive updates to coworkers which show up in their stream throughout the day. But that’s not all that goes into the feed, like FriendFeed (and now Facebook), CubeTree can import elements from other social services such as Google Reader shared items, TripIt trips, Salesforce data and others. And just like FriendFeed (and again, now Facebook), anyone can now comment on these items in the feed. But lest you think CubeTree is just a straight knock-off of Facebook/FriendFeed/Twitter for enterprise, there are also several other more unique things it offers. For example, users can upload and share documents, set up goals, set up trip information, create Wiki pages for the company and even create company quizes for others to take. The last one is not what it sounds like, it’s not meant to test others aptitude, but rather fun exercises to get to know your follow coworkers. For example, you may ask a question like “FILL IN THE BLANK loves their iPhone the most.” Other employees then fill in their answers. “People love playing this game,” Wiegner says, noting that it wasn’t originally intended to be used exactly like that. CubeTree also offers a powerful search option to look for things across the network — particularly handy for documents. And there is a “track” option, just like Twitter used to have to alert you when some key word is said. Almost everyone immediately tracks their names, Wiegner and Fubini joked. It’s important to note that social relationships within CubeTree are much like they are on Twitter. That is to say rather than having to friend someone and have them friend you back, you can simply follow anyone in the company you wish. That seems a bit odd since this is an internal company product, so it would seem reasonable that everyone should follow everyone else, but CubeTree wants to make sure users have options still within the company as to how they want to interact with the product. Seeing as CubeTree runs entirely in the cloud, security is an obvious concern, but Wiegner and Fubini, who again both came from Syamantec, placed an emphasis on security from day one and note that CubeTree has passed many leading security tests. That was apparently enough to get at least a few Fortune 500 companies to sign up to test the product out. Right now, the product is being tested with about 100 companies ranging in size from 20 people to 100,000, Wiegner says. There are quite a few competitors to various parts of CubeTree, but the company is convinced that it has the most comprehensive offering across the board. For example, Yammer does the micro messaging aspect for businesses, but doesn’t have all of the other social elements. Then there’s the enterprise wiki work that Socialtext leads the field in, but it too doesn’t have all the other elements. As for pricing, CubeTree has three tiers. The first is the free product which is called “Standard” and offers a company unlimited accounts that are limited to 10 megabytes of storage. The step up from that is “Group,” which for $3 per user per month offers 1 GB of storage and improved security. The third tier is “Enterprise,” which at $5 per user per month offers the best security, storage and management options. One nice thing about the bottom two tiers is that they’re compatible. So basically if you don’t want to buy all your employees the Group package, you can mix between Standard and Group. But if you want to upgrade to Enterprise, your whole network must be running it. There are bulk discounts though over 500 users. CubeTree was founded in 2008 with a seed round by Mitch Kapor and Trinity Ventures . It raised an undisclosed first round in April and will likely look for another round at the end of this year or beginning of next, according to Wiegner. CrunchBase Information Cube Tree Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Jew Haters Welcome At Facebook, As Long As They Aren't Lactating Top
Way more countries have laws against holocaust denial ( 11 or so ) than breast feeding (0), but guess which one is banned on Facebook? That’s right. Pictures of breast feeding babies are indecent, so they’re a no go. But Holocaust denial is totally cool because it fosters open discussion. Facebook wants to “be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones.” Even, apparently, the discussion of the idea that someone might be a “Nigger faggot, Jew nosed cunt.” That’s just one of many hateful messages I found written on a Holocaust denial site on Facebook. Brian Cuban is making the removal of these sites a personal mission . He’s arguing the law. He’s arguing terms of service. He’s arguing common sense and decency. These groups are clearly little more than excuses to spew hatred towards Jews, and Facebook is too timid to do anything about it. The first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. So why is Facebook so willing to take a stand when it comes to hungry babies, but won’t do a damn thing when it comes to the Holocaust. Because they’re cowards. Here’s more open discussion of ideas on a Facebook Holocaust denial group: If Facebook doesn’t want to take a moral or ethical stand on the issue, they can easily make a case that the groups violate their terms of service. These groups violate multiple sections of the TOS , particularly Section 3. There’s an easy way out of this for Facebook, and it also happens to be the right thing to do. Why in the world must they draw a line in the sand and then stand on the same side as Holocaust deniers is beyond me. Update: Up for debate is whether or not this image of Romanian children in Auschwitz, victims of medical experiments, is evidence of the Holocaust, which apparently may or may not have happened. But what isn’t debatable is whether or not this is pornography under Facebook’s TOS. It is. Yes, Facebook, this is the side of the line you’ve chosen to stand on. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
China: Where Patience Meets Speed Top
As readers know, I'm working on a new book about global entrepreneurship that is taking me around the world at the pace of roughly one country per month for the next year and a half. The plan is to focus on several contrasting hot spots for entrepreneurship and revisit them throughout the next year or so to see how the entrepreneurs and economies evolve over that time. But since it's early in the process, I'm still hitting many places for the first time, and it's a challenge. I’m continually throwing myself into a culture and trying to absorb as much as I can from being on the ground, meeting with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and trying to ferret out some TechCrunch-worthy and book-worthy stories. Two-to-three weeks can go past in the blink of an eye, and frequently I leave with more questions than answers. More maddening: That's usually a sign I've done my job. No place should be decipherable in two weeks. Especially not China. China has just exploded with entrepreneurship, funding and economic opportunity over the last five years or so, and unlike most of the world there doesn't seem to be a slow down yet. In 2002, U.S. investors pumped $437 million into China. By 2007 that had grown to $2.8 billion. And last year, it swelled again to $4.2 billion. All numbers courtesy of Dow Jones/VentureSource which should be releasing its first quarter China figures this week. Imagine Silicon Valley in 1999 times a huge sprawling country and population, and that's what I'm wading into for the next two weeks. On one hand, it's exhilarating. In the US, we've all heard so much about the amazing Chinese economic engine, looking on with a mix of terror, greed and awe. It's stunning actually to be on the ground here. But sifting through hundreds- even thousands- of Mandarin-speaking entrepreneurs is also a bit like trying to do an estate sale for Howard Hughes. There are priceless old films, keepsakes from starlets and antique aviator equipment, but also stacks of milk bottles, newspapers and nail clippings—where do you start? This mild panic I'm finding myself in has me thinking a great deal about two characteristics of China that people have been referencing in the last few weeks as I’ve been planning this trip and doing pre-interviews: Patience and speed. They're seemingly contradictory, and perhaps part of that is the collision of tradition and modernity in China right now. It's important to realize that patience isn't the same thing as being slow. It's a mindset thing, not a factor of how fast you are moving. The Chinese people have always known they'd be one of the world's major superpowers, known it with such conviction; they just had to let it unfold. And unfold it has. Even Internet entrepreneurs share this view, as Jack Ma of Alibaba said in this 2000 Forbes interview , “One must run as fast as a rabbit, but be as patient as a turtle.” Interestingly, Ma picks the good attributes of each animal: The speed of the rabbit but not the impatience and cockiness. And the patience of the tortoise but not the slow speed. (One could argue those are traits of large, fat and happy American multi-nationals that both Chinese and Silicon Valley startups seek to out-do.) Ma has also said that employees and customers come first, shareholders second. Why? They're incapable of holding a long term view and he refuses to run his business quarter-to-quarter. For Ma, ten years is a short time. For U.S. investors—even VCs—ten years is a long-term investment horizon. What many U.S. investors find baffling is how that patient mindset co-exists in a world that moves so quickly. Last night I had dinner with several ex-patriot entrepreneurs who said it'd be hard to leave Shanghai now because the speed with which the city runs has become addictive. Every few weeks there are new buildings. The restaurants open and close so quickly, one of the ex-pats says he calls a restaurant before he leaves the house, not to make reservations but to make sure its still there. Another laughed at the idea that he used to think Manhattan was fast-paced. He goes back to visit now, and it all seems the same. I'm not even 24-hours into my adventure in China, but I'm interested to learn more about how these two traits manifest themselves in the startup world here. Already, I'm hearing about a distaste for raising U.S. money because of an insistence on predictable and unnatural growth metrics. My guess is the successful investors will be the ones that yield to the Chinese way of thinking on this, not the reverse. Indeed, a short-term nature of investing is a big part of why our capital markets are broken, and over the last few decades as Wall Street funds and endowments have become the main backers of VCs, that short-term-thinking disease has spread into what used to be a risky but patient asset-class. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Lois Whitman Now An Unwilling Case Study In How Not To Do PR Top
The Lois Whitman how-not-to-do-PR saga continues. She was called out by us and others in December for verbally abusing bloggers and spamming Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporters. Things quieted down when she issued an apology , saying “Official Apology to Rich Brome And All Offended Bloggers -Just posted this on Twitter. Received over 100 emails, most of them angry. They are right. I was wrong. Thank you for the support emails but this is the right thing to do. Amazed by the power of viral marketing and learned a lot. I should take the heat. I love the blogger community and I did them wrong. I apologize.” But now the PRSA , always willing to eat their own, is holding a seminar called Social Media for Skeptics: The Care and Feeding of Bloggers in Colorado. The description: “Pitching a blogger is like pitching a reporter — a reporter who can and will publicize and criticize and rationalize your every word. So, can you pitch a blogger to cover a story for your company or client? Yes! But do it wrong, and you might just end up like Lois Whitman (we'll tell you who Lois Whitman is and what she did at the session!).” Whitman isn’t pleased and has commented a couple of times in the blog post. Screen shot is below. I completely understand Whitman’s desire to leave this whole mess in the past and not to have PR seminars dedicated to avoiding her situation. But her new comments also make it clear that she was never really that sorry for her actions. Rather, she was just sorry she got slammed for it - an important distinction. This is how she now characterizes what happened last December: “The bottom line of my story is that I emailed press releases to a list of high profile bloggers signed up for a trade show. They didnt know their names were being issued to publicists. So I took the heat for an entire industry. Many of them are now closefriends.” Read our post for the real story . We don’t quite see her as the defender of the PR industry. Rather the opposite. I feel sorry for Doyle Albee, who now has to face Whitman’s potent wrath. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Motherlover: The Hilarious, Wildly Inappropriate Mother's Day Viral Video Top
Today is Mother’s Day; have you called your mother yet? Judging from popular topics on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc, you have. So what else is there to do on this fine Sunday? Perhaps watch the latest Lonely Island spoof music video, “Motherlover.” The video, which is the sequel to the viral hit “ Dick In A Box ,” aired last night on NBC in honor of Mother’s Day. It’s already on the web ( NBC , Hulu ), making the rounds, certain to be a viral hit. We’ve embedded it below for your viewing pleasure. Warning : This will almost certainly offend some people - so if you’re one of those people, don’t watch. Happy Mother’s Day! And for our international readers, here’s a YouTube embed (sorry for the spammy overlay, you can turn that off in the lower right corner, I’m looking for a better version): Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Calling All Coders: Journalism Schools Want You To Save The News Industry Top
As newspapers struggle for viability, and media managers attempt to shift presence to the web, a need has arisen for talent with the technical skills of a programmer and the creative skills of a journalist. Over at TechCrunch, we are fortunate to have talented developers who have poured their blood, sweat and tears into making the site what it is today. Northwestern University’s journalism school is offering free scholarships to software developers so they can further hone their journalism skills and possibly integrate the two for a media company down the line (disclosure: I attended this journalism school). The idea of creating programmers who understand journalism is compelling and brings attention to an important trend taking place in the industry. Hyperlocal news site Everyblock and the St. Petersburg Times’ truth finding political database Politifact were both built by developers with journalism backgrounds. Their model falls on the heels of Politifact, started by coder-turned-journalist Matt Waite, which won a Pulitzer Prize this year for national reporting. Some question whether a journalism degree is critical to success as a reporter. A talented programmer certainly doesn’t need a journalism background to create successful digital platforms. And journalism school may be irrelevant for programmers who are more interested in coding than writing. Both sides of the journalism school debate can agree on the definite need for programmers in the news space. As more news publications shift their focus from print to the web, management increasingly feels pressure to to invest in talented coders, sometimes even more so than talented journalists. Northwestern would argue that investing in one group does not need to come at the expense of the other. Perhaps the future of print is in the hands of hackers. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Our Last Post About Twitter (Today — Maybe) Top
If you’ve been reading some of the comments on TechCrunch recently, perhaps you’ve noticed some backlash against our coverage of Twitter. As is usually the case with comments, a small, but vocal minority get all worked up about something and air their grievances — over and over again. And that’s fine. More often than not, the comments are amusing, and sometimes they’re even insightful. We’ve actually already weighed in on the topic of Twitter coverage once before, a few months ago, but seeing as I’m now the primary driver of Twitter stories on the site, I thought I’d take this weekend afternoon to weigh in myself. Simply put, we write about Twitter so often because right now, it matters. From news organizations to movie stars , from earthquakes to fires, from Facebook to Google — everyone seems to be talking about, to or with Twitter . In an era of mass communication, it is the latest medium. And it’s fundamentally changing the ways in which people interact with others using the web. What you may view as a stupidly simple service with no real point, I view as one of the few inspirational products in bleak times. I would argue that Twitter works so well precisely because it’s so simple . It fools some people with its “What are you doing?” question that resides at the top of the page, but Twitter can pretty much be about whatever you want it to be about . That’s why it’s an absolutely brilliant platform for so many new startups to build on top of. And those startups are really the key. They’re what are keeping Twitter so hot right now. Every day, something new launches on top of Twitter; some get coverage, some don’t. Some are silly , some are smart , some might actually work . But overall, the level of activity around the platform is amazing. And that activity, fuels growth and feeds the system full of its most important life-blood: Information. It’s this real-time information that is Twitter’s most valuable asset. And it’s information that Twitter will soon begin mining in more interesting ways with its search product — which should be useful to a lot of people. And it should lead to even more innovation and more startups. Stop and think for a moment about any one startup that has had such an impact on other startups. There aren’t many, and there really hasn’t been one for a while. I suppose you could throw Facebook in there, and before that obviously Google. But really, there aren’t too many companies in general that are changing the ways others do things, the way Twitter is right now. And that’s why I think it’s worth writing about so often. It’s not just about Twitter, the product, it’s also about Twitter, the idea. And Twitter, the catalyst of change. Twitter has shaken shit up in the industry. And it’s exciting as hell when a company does that, because the subsequent chaos almost always breeds cool new things. And “cool new things” is what technology is and always has been about. And if you’ve been paying attention, Twitter is hardly the only thing in technology to have gotten a lot of hype and draw complaints for getting too much coverage in the past few years. We saw it with Google, we saw it with Facebook, we saw it with the iPhone and then we saw it again with the App Store. What do all of these things share in common? They all shook shit up. They were all great products, all became very popular, and all caused industry shifts. Twitter is just the latest of these. But it won’t be the last. When that something new comes along, we’ll be on it, covering it relentlessly too. Because these things matter, because we’re passionate about them and because the vast majority of readers do care. And at least we’re not gushing over the people behind the scenes at Twitter as they go out drinking at night, like The New York Times did today. Not yet, anyway. [photo: flickr/ ndanger ] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Layoffs Hit MySpace Top
MySpace has let go of as many as 45 employees in the last week, we’ve confirmed. Sources close to the company say that the exact figure may be smaller, but that MySpace has definitely laid off a significant number of people. MySpace has refused to comment on the matter, so it isn’t clear if this was the result of a canceled project, general layoffs, or performance-based cuts. A source says that early signs indicate that the open positions will not be filled by other employees. The news comes only a few weeks after MySpace suddenly dropped founding CEO Chris DeWolfe and brought on a new executive team led by Owen Van Natta . It’s unclear if the cuts are directly related to decisions made by the new team or if they were already set in motion prior to DeWolfe’s departure. In any case, we’ll probably hear about more restructuring as Van Natta and team slash the projects they don’t want to continue pursuing. Last July MySpace was rumored to have laid off as much as 5% of its workforce, though the company later said that the cuts were performance based and amounted to “less than 5%” of the company. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Rampant Piracy Will Be The Kindle DX's Savior Top
Earlier this week, we got our first glimpse of the Kindle DX, Amazon’s upcoming E-book reader that has taken the original Kindle’s nearly prohibitive $359 price tag and bumped it up to an even more exorbitant $489 for good measure. Granted, the DX has one major improvement: a bigger screen that makes it suitable for textbooks, professional journal articles, and even newspapers. I’ve spent the last few days mulling over the future prospects of the new device, and up until a few hours ago my forecast was looking pretty grim. But then a lightbulb went off over my head: pirates are going to save the Kindle DX. But before I get to that, let’s address why the Kindle DX is poised to fail. The Newspaper Strategy Three major newspapers have banded together for an experimental trial run on the Kindle DX, offering cheaper long-term subscriptions to customers in return for the fact that their distribution costs will be next to nothing. The newspaper angle might be attractive for a few people, but I’m not convinced that it’s actually going to sell many Kindle DX’s - at least, not without the newspapers subsidizing the device’s cost as part of a subscription plan. Over $500 after taxes, plus paying for the newspaper subscriptions themselves, for convenient access to content that is already available for free online? I just don’t see it happening. Kindle DX As A Textbook Reader The other big marketing angle for Amazon is that the Kindle DX is the ultimate textbook reader. This sounds great in principle: students won’t have to lug around massive tomes between classes, and their books may even be slightly cheaper to boot! Unfortunately, for anyone who has ever actually used a Kindle, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t going to be as amazing as it sounds. Sifting through an E-book looking for a certain passage or image when you don’t know its exact page number (some call it ‘random access’) is a strange and unnatural experience. The Kindle sort of makes up for this by offering text search, but this is only helpful if there’s a proper name or unusual vocab term that you can remember in the passage. But the Kindle’s real weakness is its highlighting and annotation functionality. In a real book, you can mark up your textbook and make notes to yourself in the margins. The Kindle lets you highlight and take notes, but the interface is painful to use with any kind of frequency - E-ink doesn’t lend itself well to quick navigation, nor does the Kindle’s joystick/button interface. From a student’s perspective, the Kindle is badly in need of a touchscreen. And while some students may initially grab the Kindle DX as soon as it comes out for the ‘cool’ factor, practicality (and cost) will rule it out for most of them. Unless.. Pirates To The Rescue College textbooks are really expensive. As in, $300+ per quarter (a small fortune for someone with little to no income) for a set of books that you may only occasionally look at and will have no use for three months down the line. If you’re thrifty you can sell those books back to your school and get doubly screwed when they fork over a laughably small return. Selling them online through services like Chegg usually yields better results, but for whatever reason most students still don’t use them. So why don’t these students, renowned pirates as they are, simply copy the books? Well, textbook piracy already exists. If you know where to look online, you can find many novels and textbooks scanned in their entirety as PDFs. But until now, pirated textbooks were more trouble than they were worth. Reading them on a computer screen is a pain for obvious reasons. The alternative, printing out hundreds of pages at a time, results in an unwieldly mess that also stands out like a sore thumb whenever you pull it out in class. The Kindle DX changes that. Just find the book you want in PDF form, upload it to your Kindle over USB, and you’ve got a perfectly readable and convenient textbook. Sure, students will have to deal with the usability issues I raised above, like slow highlighting. But these books, frustrating as they might be, will be 100% free . That’s $300 per quarter in extra beer money. Most obstacles and morals fade quickly in the face of that much alcohol. Now, this is an issue we’ve brought up before when the original Kindle came out, and it hasn’t really been a problem. But most of the books people have been buying up until now are available for a mere $9.99 from Amazon. For most people, the motivation simply isn’t there to figure out how to pirate a book. But when you’re faced with a price tag of around $70 per textbook there’s a far greater incentive to find a workaround. It’s easier to find pirated files on campus too - students will be surrounded by classmates using the exact same textbooks so there’s a better chance someone will have a pirated digital version. And there’s always the resident friendly geek down the hall ready to help with any tech support issues. So the Kindle DX may wind up selling well to Amazon’s chagrin. Amazon is really in the business of selling ‘the blades’ - it cares more about selling books than it does about selling devices (this is why Amazon offers an E-book reader for the iPhone too). Then again, it might just work out for the company after all. Students may take the time to pirate expensive textbooks, shortchanging their publishers. But a New York Times Bestseller? Why, I’d save myself the trouble and just buy it for $9.99 off Amazon. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Animoto Gives Procrastinators A Last-Minute Mother's Day Gift Top
Mother’s Day is just around the corner and those of you who are on top of your game have probably already sent a card and arranged to give your mom a thoughtful gift of flowers, candy, or a gift certificate to a spa. For those of you out there who have done none of the above, Animoto, a startup that automatically generates high quality slideshow/music videos from a set of photos, offers you the ability to make a heartfelt video greeting that would warm any mother’s heart. The site features a Mother’s Day card that allows you to submit a handful of photos to automatically create a sentimental video-slideshow set to your mom’s favorite music. It’s an easy, quick and and innovative way to show your Mom how much you love and value her on Mother’s Day. Animoto, which launched in 2007, also helped users make creative slideshow greetings cards on Valentine’s Day and and over the holiday season. Animoto offers a nifty service and does a nice job of spicing up photo albums, with little effort needed on the users' part. Competitors include RockYou and Slide. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Sobees Latest Horse To Enter The Twitter / Facebook Desktop Client Race Top
For a while now, we’ve been tracking a number of companies who are hard at work trying to build the ultimate social networking desktop app. We’ve talked about TweetDeck , Twhirl / Seesmic Desktop , AlertThingy , and there are many more especially if you also include the ones that focus only on Twitter ( Tweetie , Nambu , Twitterific , etc.). Another horse in this race that barely gets a mention is Sobees , probably in big part because of the fact it’s only available for Windows users (with the latest .NET framework, moreover), although it doesn’t really deserve to be below the radar this much at all. We covered the company’s social network aggregator when it entered public beta, and wrote that they were aiming to attract a mainstream audience for their software, which enables users to manage a fairly wide variety of web apps and social networking services from their desktops. It’s a nifty companion that plugs into Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr, YouTube and many more web services, but I’ve always felt it was far too overloaded with features for me to use it on a daily basis. So I was interested when the company set out to build a stand-alone client for Twitter, Facebook and Twitter Search. And just as they were working on that, Facebook launched its Open Stream API so they made thankful use of it quite rapidly and converted the API to .NET and integrated the stream into the new client. The software is now in alpha and publicly available under the name bDule , and it’s definitely worth checking out even if you only use one of the two services it supports. Soon, we’ll do a feature-by-feature comparison for all the existing social desktop applications, but for now let me just say Sobees is very much worthy of being included whenever someone talks about Facebook / Twitter clients. As mostly all of the apps mentioned on top bDule is a bit of a memory drain, and at times renders a bit slow, but the UI is really well thought-out (love the different templates you can switch to in just one mouse-click) and it does what it’s supposed to do really well. Too bad it’s Windows / .NET only, because I’m sure there’s an audience out there that’s looking for just this type of app. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Hackers Temporarily Seize Control Of Google Morocco Domain Name Top
Google.co.ma , the domain name for Google Morocco’s search portal, was taken hostage by hackers earlier today reportedly for several hours before the problem got fixed (it’s working fine again now). We got a bunch of tips about it, and the situation lasted long enough for lots of people to take screenshots of the website the domain name briefly pointed to due to the hack. You can find loads of screenshots here and here , but the main domain name pointed to the website shown on top of this post. There’s a bit of confusion about how the hack was performed exactly, but it appears as if the hackers found a way into NIC.ma , which controls the DNS for the country, and targeted the Google domain name especially. The domain was pointed to a different server, and the web page above was shown when people tried to access the search engine. Google apparently at one point automatically relayed visitors from Morocco to Google.com instead of Google.co.ma, but it took a while to get the latter functioning correctly again. PAKbugs.com leads to a forum where Pakistan hackers hang out, and the names on top of the web page above are all members of the message board. They’re being proud of it here . This website (in French) claims that this isn’t the first such incident this year, as apparently the websites for Google Algeria and Google Puerto Rico were taken hostage by hackers last month too. (Via ArabCrunch ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Hand Shaking Is So Medieval. Let's End It. Top
Every once in a while we go on a little rant here about something that bugs us. In the past we’ve done hit jobs on email , voicemail and business cards at various times. But there’s one thing that bugs me more than all of those things put together - the ubiquitous hand shake. I’m not just talking about the sweaty palms handshake, which sends shudders down my back. I even take issue with the firm and dry handshakes that we engage in every day. I’d like to see the ritual ended. Hand shaking goes back a long, long way. Wikipedia says it was practiced as far back as the 2nd century BC. The story I’ve always heard is that shaking someone’s hand shows that you hold no weapon. Since most people are right handed and would hold a knife in that hand, we shake right hands. Whatever the reason for hand shaking, it isn’t needed. Like the Qwerty keyboard (which is designed to slow us down so that the typewriter doesn’t jam), it’s a relic of an older time that’s not only no longer needed but actually causes inefficiency. I can live with the keyboard. But I’d rather not have to catch another flu or cold from a hand shake. The fact is that hand shakes spread germs. You shake someone’s hand and then touch your nose or mouth and you can get sick. I don’t like getting sick. But to turn down a hand shake is such an insult that there’s little choice. The hand is out there, in front of me waiting, so like everyone else I grasp it. Whenever I do shake a hand I’m completely aware of it, can’t stop thinking about it, until I can wash my hands. Sometimes in a meeting I’ll shake hands all around, then excuse myself to the bathroom to wash my hands, then return. It draws attention, though, and people have pointed it out to me as odd. My response is that it’s nothing personal but I don’t want to get sick. If I get sick I have to take time off and it hurts my business. And there’s a good chance I’ll get other TechCrunchers sick, too, which is doubly bad. Anyone who pays attention knows that most people don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom, which should be a criminal offense. Probably ten times a week I don’t shake hands with the excuse that I’m “coming down with something,” even though I’m not. So let’s start a new trend - not shaking hands. You can do a fist touch instead. or a solid, respectful head nod. I’ll even start bowing if I have to. Fox has a couple of other options , but I absolutely refuse to engage in an elbow bump. Other than that I don’t really care. But just like I don’t swap spit with everyone who walks into a room, I’d prefer not to swap germs via the ancient but disgusting habit of shaking hands, either. Deal? Thanks to Laura Boychenko for researching hand shakes for me. It’s a fascinatingly heathen practice. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Notify.me Brings Instant RSS Updates To Yet Another Browser Toolbar Top
Notify.me , a service that delivers instant notifications on your favorite topics the way you would like to receive them (i.e. by SMS, e-mail, IM, desktop app or on the web), is adding a new feature next week that should make its die-hard users primarily very happy. The rest of the world will probably care much less. It’s not that Notify.me at its core isn’t useful, albeit not very unique. For a lot of people, instant updates for anything that has an RSS feed (not only blogs or news sites, but also classifieds listings, for example) with the ability to filter incoming by keyword makes sense, particularly if they need a lot of control over how the updates get delivered based on what the source is. Yet I can’t help thinking that the latest feature the startup is releasing, a browser toolbar, has ‘overkill’ written all over. What the toolbar does is bring Notify.me’s core functionalities to a persistent toolbar whenever you’re browsing the web. Users can set delivery methods and filter rules directly from the toolbar, and the company has also integrated Ping.fm (which it recently partnered with ) and AddThis directly to the toolbar so you can easily share and bookmark websites you’re visiting on a wide variety of social networking services. Personally, I wouldn’t use this service as I would find it incredibly annoying to constantly have a toolbar on my screen that’s not only persistent but also pings me with new notifications every so often. There’s an abundance of new toolbars launching nowadays, and somehow I don’t think that’s what the next web is all about (quite the contrary, actually). I would love to get your thoughts on this as well. Similar services include Yotify and Notifixious . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
TwitDoc: Proving That Every File Format Will Eventually Be Shareable Over Twitter Top
Twitter is quickly turning into the media sharing platform of choice for many people, despite the fact that it, uh, doesn’t have any actual media sharing functionality. But a variety of services are popping up to fill the need, including countless Twitter-specific sites for sharing images , music , and video . Today TwitDoc is launching what appears to be the first service for sharing documents over Twitter, bringing support for PDFs, Microsoft Office Documents, and a bunch of other file formats. The site has integrated with popular document sharing hub Scribd to make the process as painless as possible - it only takes around 20 seconds to send a document, and you don’t have to sign up to get started. To use the service, you enter your Twitter user name and password, choose the document or photo you’d like to send out, and add any text you’d like to include alongside the document’s link. Hit upload and you’re done. It’s a handy tool, but I doubt it will reach the same level of popularity as TwitPic and its ilk - most people simply don’t have as many documents that they’d like to share with all of their Twitter followers. Still, it will definitely be helpful for sharing reports you find interesting, or scanned images that wouldn’t be readable if they were shrunk and compressed (which some image services do). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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