Wednesday, May 20, 2009

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Twitter Shies Away From Advertising…For Now Top
Biz Stone, in a blog post today, showed a little insight on Twitter’s stances on advertising. There’s been a lot of speculation on how Twitter should and could advertise but Stone lays out a few ways where Twitter could monetize via ads and commercialization and where the micro-blogging service would prefer to stay away from ads. First, Stone says that Twitter sees the inherent value of commercial use of twitter, noting that Twitter is providing enterprises and individuals with viable uses that could be enhanced. Initial ideas for Twitter support for commercialization include account authentication, management tools, and discovery mechanisms. Stone doesn’t find the idea of selling banner ads on Twitter very compelling, but acknowledges the marketing value of twitter in connecting businesses to consumers and is looking to explore this particular avenue. The best discovery mechanism is search and the obvious business model in search is advertising. But Twitter doesn’t have to make money yet, so it is not ready to commit to a revenue model and clearly wants to take the time find its own way. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Health Community Trusera Officially Closes Its Doors Top
Trusera, a health 2.0 community where users can share their stories about how they've dealt with health conditions, is officially closing its doors on May 27, according to a blog post on the site. We originally reported on Trusera’s possible shutdown in March, when the startup was nearly out of money. Founded by former Amazon exec Keith Schorsch , Trusera launched almost a year ago. Trusera sought to bring users together who were suffering from similar health conditions. The site also took other personal information into account when connecting people, including a user's hobbies, location, and age. Trusera would then match people up according to all of these factors and allowed users to receive email updates whenever a new match submitted a story or tip, which meant that users didn't have to worry about constantly searching the site for new information. In the blog post, Trusera’s site manager wrote that the startup had run out of funds and could not sustain operations. Although the site was innovative and had steadily attracted a growing and dedicated set of users over the past year, it was still a small community. The health 2.0 space is a competitive landscape to survive in—there are a number of websites, including Medpedia and PatientsLikeMe, devoted to online forums for people to share their health-related stories. After the close, Trusera will keep a landing page with information about the site and its mission but will disable all other functionality. Trusera says that the content of site will be secured so that it can be preserved in the event that the startup is able to raise additional funds in the future. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
YouTube Offers Brand Partners Another Carrot: Google Analytics For Their Channels Top
YouTube, a site that was once notorious for pirated content and user-generated videos that were practically useless to brands, has made great strides in the last few years as it looks to appeal to its growing number of advertisers and content partners. Today the site is adding a new feature that makes the platform even more useful, adding Google’s powerful (and very popular) Analytics reporting to YouTube brand channels, adding some credence to YouTube’s claim that it’s the “world’s largest focus group”. Before now brands (and general users) could keep tabs on how their videos were performing using YouTube Insight, which has some basic demographic information, tracks a video’s popularity around the world, and shows how your video is being rated by other users. But when it comes to more powerful tracking that’s useful to major websites and brands, it falls short. YouTube says that the addition of Google Analytics will allow them to track far more, with “reporting on their channel as if it were their own site”. From the new YouTube Biz Blog : While all uploaders can still use YouTube Insight to learn detailed information about their video views and user engagement, now advertisers and partners with brand channels can get even more information about their audience. Brand channel owners can track metrics such as how long visitors stay, repeat visits, bounce rate, and page views per visitor. For those who want to tailor their videos to a specific audience, Google Analytics also provides data about where viewers are located geographically, and what languages they speak. At this point it looks like the new feature will be limited to major brands and partners, and it’s not clear if it will be released to a more general audience. Most people probably wouldn’t care about such specific analytics, but I’m sure quite a few major YouTube users who aren’t necessarily large brands would be interested. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Village Voice Media Sites Now Get 40 Percent Of Traffic From Blogs; Planning Local Ad Network Top
The future of the weekly city paper is the daily blog. Hints of this future can already be seen at Village Voice Media , which owns and operates 15 of the top weeklies in the country, including the Village Voice , SF Weekly , and LA Weekly . Bill Jensen, the director of new media who oversees all the Village Voice Media sites tells me that 40 percent of pageviews comes from the blogs on the sites, up from 20 percent a year ago. Some of the more popular ones include columnist Michael Musto’s blog , Nikki Finke’s Deadline Holywood Daily , and Topless Robot. Of course, the sites feature music listings, restaurant reviews, and articles from the print editions as well, but the blogs are driving an increasing portion of the traffic. The online and print newsrooms are combined and everyone is expected to post on the Web. Long gone are the days when a music reviewer could attend a rock show and turn in his copy three days later. “I don't care how drunk you are,” says Jensen, “you post by 9 AM.” The weeklies are essentially guides to local nightlife, and nearly all of the advertising is from local businesses (restaurants, bars, concert venues, clubs, local shops). In fact, 90 percent of the online ads across the network are local. Jensen wants to parlay this strength in local advertising, along with the company’s army of nearly 300 ad sales people across its 15 markets, into a local ad network of sorts for blogs which cover similar topics (food, music, gossip). He’s already signed up New York city real-estate blog Curbed , foodie blog the Eater , and music site Wolfgang’s Vault to sell some of their ad inventory. And he is looking to sign up more. Village Voice Media is getting $7 to $12 CPMs for local ads and $14 CPMs for geo-targeted ads. How much of that participating blogs will get, Jensen wouldn’t say. But not only can Village Voice sell inventory on a blog that writes only about Phoenix restaurants, but it can also show ads from Phoenix advertisers only to Phoenix readers on blogs with a national appeal, such as Topless Robot, which is a more general-interest tech blog. According to Jensen, Village Voice Media is on track to bring in $20 million in online revenues this year, nearly double from 2008. Although this represents only a little more than 10 percent of the company’s total revenues, it is growing fast. Local ad revenue alone grew 140 percent last year. Content pageviews across the network are on track to top 500 million this year, versus 318 million last year. (Or, an average of 42 million pageviews a month). Total pageviews for the year are on track to hit 4 billion, with the vast majority of that coming from Backpage , its network of online classifieds that is trying to not be crushed by Craigslist. (Backpage is a fraction the size of Craigslist, but it is actually doing okay). Village Voice is also partnering with local social recommendation site LikeMe , which uses Facebook Connect and asks you to take a survey of local restaurants and hotspost that you like to offer up recommendations of what other people who like the same places also like. Local online advertising is a nut everyone from Google to Yahoo to the national newspapers are trying to crack. The Village Voice, however, has the feet on the ground in its local markets to sell ads directly to businesses who are still not online. How far it can extend a local-ad network beyond its own sites and topically-related blogs is unclear, but these days in the newspaper industry any extra source of revenues that is not tied to print is something to nurture. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
New Zealand Telco Seems To Further Verify New iPhone — On Twitter Top
Yes, there is very likely a new iPhone coming very soon. Probably to be unveiled at WWDC and launched sometime in July. But it's easy to forget those are all still rumors because Apple obviously won't comment on anything and so the information is based on leaked reports, second-hand whispers, inferences and digging through software code. But it's one of those situations where there is almost too much smoke for there not to be a fire. The latest bit of smoke comes compliments of Telecom New Zealand's official Twitter account. "We are in negotiations with Apple... we are very focused on the 3rd gen iPhone.. we will keep u updated," a tweet reads. Another Twitter user asked for clarification if that meant the iPhone 3G or a 3rd version of the iPhone, and the account responded with "Correction, we did not say we're launching iphone, all said was that we're talking to Apple & we're focused on 3rd version." So while they denied an imminent launch on their network (because the iPhone is only on Vodafone in New Zealand right now), that does seem to confirm that they did mean a 3rd version of the iPhone -- which would be the next iteration of the iPhone, following the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G.
 
A Stroll Through Facebook's New App Directory Top
Verified Applications on Facebook — Recommendations from Sandra Liu Huang on Vimeo . As we predicted last night, Facebook’s new application directory and Verified Apps program are now live. We knew about most of the features that were coming with this release, but this is the first time we’ve actually gotten to see what they’ll look like. So what’s new? The new directory allows users to sort through apps using a number of new categories, including browsing through applications that live off-site (presumably through Facebook Connect), desktop applications, and iPhone apps that use Facebook Connect for iPhone. At the top of the directory is a section for featured items, where Facebook staff can feature some of their favorite applications even if they aren’t the most popular (a similar strategy has been adopted by Apple’s App Store). Also new is a feed that is incorporated into the directory itself. At the bottom of the page, you’ll notice an area called “Recent Activity From Friends”. This includes updates from all of the third part applications your friends are using, the idea being that it will help you discover new applications that you might be interested in. Given that some of these items are likely appearing in your main News Feed these might be a little redundant, but it should be helpful nonetheless. Application pages have also been updated to function like standard Facebook “Pages”. This means that users will be able to become ‘fans’ of an App and receive updates from it in their News Feed. Finally (and what is perhaps the most important addition) are the Verified Apps. The green checkmarks that denote a Verified App are unobtrusive, appearing next to the star rating of an app (I suspect they may be even a little bit too easy to look over). But even if users don’t notice them at first, it might not matter much, because Facebook is clearly favoring them when it presents applications in the directory. Verified Apps get priority in the prominent “Applications You May Like” section, which is sure to drive quite a bit of traffic. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Report: iPhone Applications Are Getting Cheaper Top
Distimo , a young Dutch company that is entering the slowly but surely saturating market of mobile application distribution and monitoring services, has just released an interesting report about Apple’s App Store. It contains some noteworthy findings about iPhone app pricing and the significant influence prices have on ranking. Eventually, Distimo aims to release market-wide data on all application stores (Android, Blackberry, etc.) on a monthly basis, free of charge for broad reports on the U.S. and as a paid service for people who would like to get some insight into what’s happening in other countries or specific verticals. They’re starting with the grand daddy of all app stores, Apple’s, and deliver some interesting findings in a first report based on publicly available data for the month of April, 2009, which you can download here . We got a first look at it, and the key findings we took away from the report are the following: 1) iPhone app prices are dropping Data for only one month may be insufficient to make any final conclusions, but Distimo has been comparing the pricing for the 100 most popular iPhone apps for a while and found prices are clearly going down. The startup expects that trend to continue in the near future, too. As for the numbers: in April, the total combined price of all apps in the Top 100 decreased from $265 to $244, or down 7.9%. The biggest driver for the average price drop was the increase of $0.99 apps, with 53 carrying that price at the end of the month compared to only 42 on April 1. 2) Entertainment and Communication apps are most popular No real surprise there, although I still think the iPhone is an excellent device for business purposes too. What I thought was noteworthy was that the rankings for the top 100 applications, both free and paid, change every single day , which means it’s an extremely volatile marketplace. The categories Games, Social Networking and Entertainment were most popular in the free app section, with three, two, and two apps in the top 10 list, respectively. For the paid section, games were even more popular with 5 out of 10 apps in the Top 10 for that category. Top 5 free apps: Skype, Facebook, iFighter Lite, Pandora Radio, iHandy Level Free Top 5 paid apps: Flight Control, Pocket God, ParkingLot, Flick Fishing, MLB.com At Bat 2009 3) Paid apps maintain higher ranking longer Distimo found it was hard for both free and paid apps to maintain a high ranking, but paid apps seemed to be more able to do so than free applications. The most popular paid app (Flight Control) maintained the number one ranking 22 days in a row, while the most popular free app (Skype) was only able to maintain the number one ranking 7 days in a row. 4) Nearly a quarter of all apps got updated during the month of April From all the free and paid apps that have been in the Top 100 in April, 83 apps released an update during the same month. That represents 24% of all apps that were in the Top 100. 5) lower price = higher ranking (and vice versa) Distimo analyzed the rankings and prices of the three most popular apps with price changes over time, giving insight into the price elasticity. The first app that was looked at was Zombieville USA (first graph). From the 1st of April, its rank decreased steadily, from No. 4 on April 1st to No. 8 on April 11th. On April 12th, the price of the app was lowered, from $1.99 to $0.99. This had an instant effect on the ranking; it increased from No 10 on April 12th to No. 5 on April 14th. The graph of Fieldrunners (second graph) shows a similar effect. Similar story for the Bowman app (third graph). The price of this app was raised, from $0.99 to $1.99 on April 22nd. The app lost its No. 5 ranking instantly, decreasing to ranking No. 49 in the Top 100 on the 30th of April. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Foonz Finally Stops Ringing Top
Okay, this one took a little longer than I predicted , but VOIP service Foonz is suspending its service. More than a year ago, its chief marketing officer decided to shift focus to another startup. That wasn’t a good sign. Foonz has been using up its minutes since then. Today, its users received the following notice that the service is being suspended: Temporarily Suspending Foonz Service May 20, 2009 Greetings- We regret to inform you that as of May 22, 2009, we will temporarily suspend the free Foonz service. We are disappointed that we have to do this, but we are unable to maintain our relationship with our current telephone carrier, and we have not yet been able to arrange for a new vendor. We are working on an alternate solution, and we are hopeful that we will be resuming the service in the near future. Your account data will be maintained throughout this transition. In the mean time, please let us know if we can be of any assistance during this service interruption. The Foonz Team info@foonz.com Maybe Foonz will strike a better deal with another carrier and the suspension will truly only be temporary. But giving away free conference calls just doesn’t pay. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Roger McNamee Invests In The Stimulist, News Site For The Obama Generation Top
MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson noticed during the presidential campaigns and election of President Obama last year that a new generation of media consumers had emerged. The “Change Generation,” Watson calls it (wonder where he got that name from), is educated, edgy and curious about the world and news, and in contrast to the yuppies from 20 years ago, doesn’t find news solely in the New York Times or on CNN. This generation cares about pop culture, social activism, fresh opinions and of course, change. So Watson has created a news and opinion site, called The Stimulist, which launched last week, that caters to the this generation, and found a high-profile lead investor to boot, Elevation Partner’s Roger McNamee. Yup, the same McNamee who recently stepped down from Forbes Media’s board . The Stimulist breaks slightly from the format of most news sites and blogs by limiting its content to only six features per day. Taking inspiration from the news briefing that President Obama gets each morning from his staff, Watson’s site features “The Daily Six: Six Things You Should Know Today.” These include: News We Like, a roundup of hot topics in the news; Kind of a Big Deal, a daily profile of a rising star (for instance, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was profiled ); Idea To Consider; a thought-provoking piece intended to start conversations (Yesterday’s was “Resolved: Marijuana Will Be Legalized” ); Good Sh*t, a recommendation of a fresh, “cool” place to go or something to do; Flashback, a historical anecdote that will shine extra light on a current event ( “The Five Most Shocking Justice Appointments” was featured earlier this week); and The C Note, Watson’s place to share his original opinions and thoughts. Watson says all content is original but the stories link to other news sources. He maintains that though there are a limited amount of daily articles on the site, the Stimulist will be alluring to readers because it is simple, easy to read and people won’t get lost on the site. The Stimulist is being positioned as an ideal read for a coffee or lunch break from work. A tremendous amount of thought went into the design and aesthetics of the site, Watson says, with the idea that the “change” generation would appreciate a streamlined site that isn’t overwhelming. The Stimulist’s competitors are the Huffington Post and Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast, which is a daily mashup of cultural and general news. Both, however, are aggregators of news from elsewhere and thus have much more daily content than The Stimulist. But Watson says sometimes less is more. The site itself is lean, but the startup already has six staff members (which seems like a lot to produce only six posts a day). Watson is careful to make the distinction that this site is geared towards the change generation, which he estimates in the twenty-something to forty-something age demographic. But last week, an 80-year-old gentlemen wrote Watson, saying that he’s as much a part of this generation as a 25-year-old. So maybe it is more of a state of mind. But do you have to be an Obama supporter to qualify? Although Watson hopes to become the “first and favorite” source of news for this generation (regardless of age), I think that The Stimulist is more similar to a daily digital magazine catered to a web audience with short-attention spans. It’s a great place for readers to stop off and take a quick read of current perspectives and leave feeling a little bit more educated for the day. But can it become a daily habit for enough readers to make it last? The rule of thumb in online news is that traffic rises with the number of stories posted per day because not everyone is interested in each story. The more stories there are to choose from, the more readers who show up. Watson thinks he can buck this trend. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Loop'd Raises $800,000 To Grow Social Network For Action Sports Top
Loop'd Network, an online network for action sports like surfing and snowboarding, has secured an $800,000 in an undisclosed round of funding from investor Tech Coast Angels and existing private investors. Loop’d, which currently has 500,000 members, says it will use the new funds to development an ecommerce and social merchandising strategy. Loop’d’s platform is a social network for athletes to promote themselves and and participate in a network of online communities based around action sports. Loop’d lets also members connect with brands, including Monster, Oakley and PacSun, for sponsorship. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Craigslist Sues South Carolina Attorney General McMaster; Asks For Restraining Order (Updated) Top
Craigslist is suing South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster in the state’s federal court, seeking declaratory relief as well as a restraining order with respect to criminal charges he has threatened against the company and its executives. The company is raising the gloves because it refuses to shut down its operations in South Carolina, claiming it’s in full compliance with all applicable laws and has already done enough by removing its ‘erotic services’ category . Guess who we’re rooting for here? (Hint: We’ve encouraged the executive team at Craigslist to stand firm from the get-go). After all, our own poll shows that given the choice between keeping Craigslist or South Carolina, most of you would choose Craigslist . That is not too surprising. But even some people in South Carolina say Craigslist is more important than the state. And don’t forget the all-important “McMaster, stop abusing your power” Facebook group . Facing certain prosecution, Craigslist decided to strike first with its own lawsuit. In a blog post , amusingly tagged ‘harrassment’ (sic), that went up earlier this morning, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster writes: Two weeks ago Mr McMaster presented craigslist with an ultimatum, "to remove the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material" within ten (10) days." "If those South Carolina portions of the site are not removed," McMaster said, "the management of craigslist may be subject to criminal investigation and prosecution." In addition to being unwarranted by the facts, legal experts agree that the charges threatened represent an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech, and are clearly barred by federal law (sec 230 CDA). Interestingly, if you read Mr McMaster's ultimatum carefully, you'll note that the only way to definitively comply with it is to take down the craigslist sites for South Carolina in their entirety. The open architecture of craigslist, quintessential to the value it provides for users, simply does not allow for the absolute prevention of solicitation or pornography, with respect to any of its categories and functions. Usage of craigslist in South Carolina has exploded over the last two years, with some cities experiencing 2000% growth. South Carolinians clearly value craigslist services, and appreciate finding jobs, housing, automobiles, for sale items, friends, romance, community information, local services, event listings, and just about everything else they need in their everyday lives, all in one place, and all for free. We say just go ahead and shut off South Carolina from Craigslist. Update: the Attorney General’s office says this is good news . McMaster Statement On Craigslist Legal Action COLUMBIA, SC – "The defensive legal action craigslist has taken against the solicitors and my office is good news. It shows that craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time More importantly, overnight they have removed the erotic services section from their website, as we asked them to do. And they are now taking responsibility for the content of their future advertisements. If they keep their word, this is a victory for law enforcement and for the people of South Carolina. Unfortunately, we had to inform them of possible state criminal violations concerning their past practices to produce a serious response. We trust they will now adhere to the higher standards they have promised. This office and the law enforcement agencies of South Carolina will continue to monitor the site to make certain that our laws are respected." Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
T-Mobile Lets Consumers Put Its Pricing To The Test, Courtesy Of BillShrink Top
T-Mobile USA announced today a new campaign dedicated to helping people save money on their wireless service, and the carrier is not only using the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones as the face of the campaign again, they’re also giving a huge vote of confidence and a heap of exposure to Redwood City, CA-based startup BillShrink . BillShrink launched in April 2008 as a way for people to compare the value they are getting with their current wireless provider against other national carriers. It has since raised an additional $8 million on top of a $1 million round it secured back in 2007 and expanded its technology to other products and services, like helping you find the cheapest gas in your neighborhood or the ideal credit card based on your profile. People can now visit the T-Mobile website or one of its retail stores for a so-called “Mobile Makeover”: free, unbiased and personalized savings recommendations for wireless plans, powered by BillShrink. That’s a big boost for the fledgling company, especially considering the first television spot featuring Zeta-Jones will air tonight during the American Idol season finale on FOX (that’s a lot of eyeballs). It’s also a bit of a risk for T-Mobile, although they seem pretty confident of the outcome of the comparison engine: “Providing great wireless coverage at a great price is at the heart of what T-Mobile offers,” said Denny Marie Post, chief marketing officer, T-Mobile USA, Inc. “We’re so confident that T-Mobile provides the best overall experience for a majority of Americans, we’re willing to put our value to the test by pointing people to an independent source. And while we may not come out on top each and every time, we believe a majority of people will see T-Mobile offers them the value they want, and the best experience in wireless.” Billshrink is headed by CEO Peter Pham , a former Photobucket executive who joined the company in February last year. (Via Trading Markets ) Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Open Source Developer Intends To Block Belgian Government From Using His Technology Over Tax Dispute Top
Open source developer Bruno Lowagie is about to set a remarkable precedent in the F/OSS world by restricting any government body in his (and my) home country, Belgium, to use any product that makes use of technology originally developed by him. More specifically, this concerns iText , a free and open source library for creating and manipulating PDF, RTF, and HTML files in Java (also ported to the .NET Framework under the name iTextSharp). iText is embedded in many products and services, including Eclipse BIRT, Jasper Reports, Red Hat JBoss Seam, Windward Reports, etc. and used by major companies like IBM, Adobe and Google. iText is distributed under the Mozilla Public License with the LGPL as an alternative license, but it is also available through a commercial license, distributed by iText Software. Pretty soon, these licenses will be updated, and Lowagie is now pondering about adding an additional restriction of usage for the product referred to as ‘The Belgian Restriction’ (Dutch): no official government-related institution in Belgium will be allowed to use iText in any of its applications and systems for any version after iText 2.2.0. The restriction would include any third-party application that makes use of iText too, which means there are a lot of government bodies who would be forced to rewrite or downright replace essential systems to keep on functioning properly (from a technical standpoint, that is). On the other hand, it could also lead to iText being barred from future Linux distributions because of the built-in restriction. The reason for all this ruckus? Apparently, Lowagie has been forced to cough up nearly 10,000 € over the past few years simply because he’s running been Google AdSense ads on his personal website, which the government erroneously classified as income from corporate activities. He’s been fighting over this for quite a while, but the situation hasn’t been resolved yet so this is another way for him to draw attention to the whole thing. Lowagie points out that iText will still be available under MPL and claims he would be willing to lift the restriction if the dispute were resolved in due time. He added that he’s not only doing this for personal attention but also to poke third-party developers who (ab)use the iText license in dubious ways. Some commentators are pointing out that this restriction threat sends out the wrong message about the concept of open source, and that this could actually lead to less trust in F/OSS technology from both governments and corporations. I can’t say I disagree with that, but it proves how desperately Lowagie is trying to reverse the decision made by the local IRS, and I happen to have a thing for people who stand up for something. What do you think? Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Decisions For Heroes Like A BaseCamp For Mountain Rescuers Top
There are not many startups that set out to save peoples lives - unless you count the generic use of things like Twitter to get the word out fast about an earthquake or some other life-threatening event . But then again there aren’t that many aiming for the extreme niche of mountain rescue teams. But Decisions For Heroes , which just launched, is aiming to do just that, and it just goes to show how far the application of social data to a problem can reach. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Amazon Updates The Kindle App To Be More iPhone-ified Top
As a Kindle owner, I love the fact that Amazon released an iPhone app to allow me to continue reading my content even when I don’t have the actual Kindle with me. Of course, the experience of reading on the iPhone’s much smaller and back-lit screen is worse than on the Kindle, but Amazon has made it a bit better with the new update it just rolled out. The new 1.1 version of the Kindle app [ iTunes link ] allows users to read in either portrait or landscape mode. You can also now switch between different background color/text color combinations to make reading easier on the eyes. And turning pages is now easier with tap support and you can now use the multi-touch pinch to zoom in on images. Basically, Amazon has iPhone-ified the Kindle experience. My favorite thing about the landscape/portrait mode is that while you rotate your iPhone to switch between the two, there’s a lock icon in the lower right hand corner to easily disable this rotation. I wish every app on the iPhone had that, as I cannot stand when things rotate even though I didn’t want them to. The background options of black or sepia along with the standard white is also a nice touch, as it can be hard to read on the white when the screen is fully illuminated. A couple of weeks ago, Amazon revamped its Kindle book site to be better suited to browse and shop from the iPhone. Now, it seems that the app is already benefiting from Amazon’s recent purchase of the company behind the popular Stanza book-reader app. With this latest update, the Kindle app now shares many of the same features. CrunchBase Information Amazon Kindle iPhone Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Former MySpace Execs Get Funding For New Venture; Some Details Leak Top
Remember when MySpace lost three key execs before the whole chaotic reorganization ? They announced their departure in March. And we’ve now confirmed that they are closing a substantial round of funding, even before they’ve picked a final name for the company. The company, whatever it will be called, was founded by Amit Kapur (MySpace COO), Steve Pearman (MySpace SVP Product Strategy) and Jim Benedetto (MySpace VP Technology). The company is now backed by August Capital and Redpoint Ventures , who jointly funded a roughly $10 million venture round. David Hornik from August and Geoff Yang from Redpoint have joined the board of directors. What do we know so far about the company? Not a whole lot except that Redpoint and August are rumored to be “very excited” about it. The company is supposedly targeting the message board/Internet forum space with technology that aggregates content and serves advertising against it. Real time search ( bingo! fundable! ) may be part of the business plan as well. Whatever this thing is called, and whatever it does, I know one thing - I like the team. These were three of the most respected and creative execs at MySpace . Keep an eye on them. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Freemium Model And A Desktop App Get The Thumbs Up With Pandora One Top
You’d be hard pressed to find someone who tries the online streaming radio service Pandora that doesn’t like it. In fact, some users like it so much that they actually ask for ways to pay the company, to make sure it stays alive (something that has been a question mark given the oppressive Internet radio licensing costs). And while there has been a limited subscription version for some time, Pandora has never proactively promoted it. But starting tomorrow it’s taking the freemium model seriously, with the launch of Pandora One . The most obvious feature of Pandora One is the removal of ads from the site (this was the only feature of the previous subscription version) — that means not only the ads on the page but the in-stream audio ads as well. And there are five other keys to Pandora One that you get with your $36-a-year subscription price: The biggest one is access to a very solid Pandora desktop app . The others include high quality streaming, a personalized look, a mini player and extended player timeouts. All of those should be fairly straightforward, but just to hit on some of the key points: With its new desktop app, you no longer have to keep Pandora open in a web browser to enjoy it. And you can still do all the same voting/bookmarking/skipping that you do on the site from within the app. You also have access to all of your stations and can create new ones. The app is built on Adobe’s AIR platform, so it will work on either a Mac or a PC. Note : Pandora did try to release an AIR app once before, but it was basically just the Pandora web version ported to AIR — complete with ads. We didn’t like it too much , and neither did Pandora, which killed it. This new one is a lot like the iPhone app, which is to say, awesome. Pandora One will enable streaming of music over the web at 192Kbps — that’s by far the best quality you’ll find when it comes to streaming music on the web, Pandora CTO Tom Conrad tells me. For some perspective, that’s higher quality sound than iTunes used to sell its music at, until recently when it upgraded all its tracks to the iTunes Plus format. And if the 192Kbps stream is proving too much for your Internet connection, you can always take it back to regular quality. With no more ads, Pandora’s background would look pretty barren. That’s where the personalized look features come into play. Basically, you can select from a handful of different nicely designed backgrounds ranging from feminine to masculine. Extended player timeouts means that you can leave music streaming on your computer for up to five hours now without worrying about Pandora cutting off your stream. With the free version, Pandora would stop music after an hour of inactivity — they did this because it obviously costs them money to stream the music and sometimes people leave their computers with the site still open. But this longer time out is great if you actually plan to leave the site open while you’re doing something else. The ad model is of course what keeps Pandora alive. And it’s actually doing very well. Pandora is coming off of its biggest ad sales quarter in the history of the company, Conrad tells me. Ad sales were up 80% over the year ago period and the company is tracking to make $40 million in revenue for the year — which would double last year’s total. More importantly, it means that 2010 could be the first profitable year for Pandora, according to Conrad. Of course, that doesn’t matter if the lingering online streaming radio royalty issue isn’t resolved, but that could be coming shortly as well. “We’re optimistic about the prospects of a resolution in relatively short order,” Conrad tells me. So things are looking up and up for Pandora, but at the same time, the company, which has always focused on being a sustainable business (unlike some of the other music startups out there), feels the time is right to branch out a bit. It’s affiliate sales model (which lets users of Pandora buy music through iTunes or Amazon), is already proving to be a nice little secondary model — one that is growing thanks to the iPhone . But it’s the freemium model that could really be a more significant source of money. The reason is that while the company knows that it will always be just a very small percentage of its user base that will pay for the service, that small percentage is actually a lot of people given Pandora current usage numbers. Right now, Pandora is seeing 10 million monthly users on its website, and it has 5 million members using the iPhone app and another million now using the BlackBerry app (it’s the leading music app on both platforms). If just 3 to 5 percent of its audience signs up for Pandora One, that’s not an unsubstantial amount of money for the company. Other services in the space have played around with this model as well. Notably, Last.fm has a monthly subscription option — but it also requires that all users not in the U.S., UK or Germany pay a fee to use their service. Of course, Pandora is currently only available to users in the U.S., so it doesn’t have to worry about some of the tricky advertising situations around the world. In terms of how Pandora One will affect the company’s popular iPhone app, premium subscribers will also have ads turned off in the app as well. Unfortunately, the 192Kps streaming quality is limited to the web version and the desktop app only right now, though Conrad says it’ll look into possibly giving premium users on the iPhone the ability to stream high quality over WiFi. Likewise with the BlackBerry app — and Pandora will have an app ready to go for the launch of the Palm Pre on June 6 , Conrad says. It’s worth noting the that desktop app is a feature that was added at the last second when Pandora’s lawyers informed them they had to disable another planned feature from Pandora One: The ability to see the next artist set to play if you skip a track. Internet radio’s often odd rules prohibit you knowing what song is going to play next, but what’s amusing here is that Pandora was only going to show the next artist — not the actual song — but apparently that’s a no-no as well. So instead we get something much cooler: The desktop app. Conrad and his team were planning to launch the desktop app in a few weeks anyway, but hunkered down the past week to get it done in time for this launch. I’m playing with it right now — it will definitely rival iTunes as the source of music constantly playing on my computer. And unlike quite a few other AIR apps, Conrad assures me that it has none of the memory leak and CPU-usage problems. Sadly, you will have to sign up for Pandora One to use the app. And while the company isn’t expecting too much, that may just be the leading perk that gets people to sign up. For roughly 95-97% of Pandora users out there, this news about Pandora One may not ultimately mean too much. You’re likely to continue to use the service exactly as you have been — for free — and Pandora’s fine with that given how well ad sales are going. But for the other 3-5%, Pandora One will undoubtedly be a must-buy as $3 a month is nothing to wipe out ads, get higher quality and a nice desktop app, if nothing else. And yes, if you happened to be one of the people that actually had the subscription version of Pandora before, you will be upgraded to Pandora One with your membership. CrunchBase Information Pandora One Pandora Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook Verified Apps Rolling Out Tomorrow (Update: Are Now Live) Top
We knew it was coming, but we weren’t sure when. We’ve gotten word that Facebook’s Verified Apps initiative, long awaited by developers since the program was first announced last year, is finally ready for the masses. Developers are getting notified that their approved applications will soon be highlighted with green check marks next to their names starting today. Update::The new application directory is now live. Here are some of the other details we’ve gathered: In thanks for their participation in the platform (and likely because of the long wait), developers are receiving extra Facebook advertising coupons. While an application’s Verified status lasts for a year, Facebook will be continuously monitoring Verified Apps for any deviation from the program’s requirements and Platform’s Terms of Service Facebook will be heavily marketing the Verified Apps program. The company will be rolling out a video to Facebook members describing the benefits of the program and approved applications, and applications will be prominently featured in the Facebook application directory. The purpose of the Verified Apps program is to help Facebook highlight the cream of the crop of Facebook Platform, which has previously had issues separating the good applications from the bad. Developers pay a $375 annual fee to participate, and in return they’re given a badge meant to inspire user trust, as well as priority placement in the application directory. Verified Applications on Facebook — Recommendations from Sandra Liu Huang on Vimeo . Now that the directory is live, it will be up to Facebook to convince users why these approved applications are better than others. That may not be as easy as it sounds (especially if some of their favorite apps aren’t granted approval), so expect a heavy dose of “educational” advertising and promotion as Facebook brings everyone up to speed. Verified Apps will play a key role going forward for Facebook Platform, especially once Facebook’s payment system goes live and users have to decide where they should be comfortable spending their money. Thanks to “Kilgore Trout” for the tip. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
BitAuto: A Chinese Canary in an Online Ad Coal Mine Top
The hardest thing about being an American journalist in China is discovering local entrepreneurs. Part of the reason is that there is just so much going on. There are so many intriguing expats and returning Chinese nationals in Beijing's start-up scene, you could spend months just meeting with them. But the bigger challenges are the language and cultural barriers. China has no shortage of fascinating local entrepreneurs, it can just take some time for Americans– with very, very poor Mandarin– to find them. Local entrepreneurs will definitely be a bigger focus in my next trip to China, as will seeing some more of the country. And, ahem, learning a bit more Mandarin before I arrive. But as a sneak preview, I had a meeting yesterday with William Bin Li, the 35-year-old founder of BitAuto . Like most local entrepreneurs he’s squarely focused on China’s massive domestic market, and local guys like Li will always have a leg up on returning Westerners zealously eying that same prize. BitAuto is like Cars.com, AutoTrader and Consumer Reports rolled into one and sitting smack dab in the massively growing Chinese auto industry. It operates a Web site that sells new cars, one that sells used cars, and is also powers the auto verticals of major Chinese portals like Tencent, Sina, and even Yahoo. It also produces a one-hour-per-day car-themed radio show that's syndicated on 200 stations, a car review magazine, and a one-hour-per-week car-themed TV show that's syndicated on 20 stations. And if that weren't enough, a sister company places $400 million RMB (roughly $56 million) in car-related advertising around the Web every year. I asked Li why not focus on just one of those major categories and he replied, "This is China." By that he explained, through a translator, that in China car adoption, Internet adoption, online ad markets and car-related media were all growing from a standing start at the same time. So there was no dominant entrenched leader in any of those categories. Why not take on all of them? Li is plenty ambitious. He started his first business doing Web hosting in 1996 while a student at Beijing University, studying computer engineering. At 20, he was part of the original team at DangDang, known as the Amazon.com of China. In 2000, he founded BitAuto. He got a $1.5 million investment from a state-run car dealer and started to build out his team. Then the Internet bubble burst. (Yep, the whipsaw was the same over here.) Li’s backers didn't want him to spend the money, but trouble was, he'd burned through $600 million of it. So he took out a personal loan and gave the whole amount back. (And took back 100% ownership of the company in the process.) Li and six other guys worked without pay out of Li's apartment for the next four years or so. To pay the bills, they came up with an OpenTable-like inventory software program for car dealers, followed by an ad serving product for dealers advertising online. That got them about $500,000 in revenues through the end of 2004— enough to stay afloat. By then the Chinese car market was surging, the Internet was hot again, and the market was finally ready for what Li had set out to build back in 2000. Fast-forward to today: Li has raised about $30 million from Lenovo's venture arm, Nippon's venture arm, and DCM's China office. He admits he was way too early back in 2000. Not only was the consumer Internet more nascent, but there were only half a million cars in Beijing and only 5 million in all of China. Today, there are 3.6 million cars in Beijing and 40 million in all of China, and the market is still growing at a rate of between 20%-30% per year. And while people are fond of saying online advertising isn't a real business yet in China, automobiles are the number one category of spending, to the tune of 1.3 billion RMB a year. For such a young online ad market, that number holds up surprisingly well next to 5 billion RMB spent on newspaper car ads and 4 billion RMB for television. I asked Li why and he said that car dealers have told him that their customer surveys have shown that more customers learn about different car brands online than on any other single medium. In addition, the demographics of people in the market for new cars dovetails nicely with the people who are using the Web already in China. There are clearly some risks to Li's business. He's trying to do a lot at once, and many Web companies succeed when they focus. (Ahem, Google.) He's managing a whopping 1,200 employees throughout China. Much of his time is spent building out a local sales force for the huge country’s fragmented market of auto dealers. That's about double the employees of Facebook, for some perspective. Needless to say, the company isn't profitable yet, but so far 60% of its revenues come from the seven largest cities, so a far-flung sales force in second and third tier cities could yield substantial growth over time. And because BitAuto gets a lot of traffic by powering the auto sections of major portals, its own brand isn't as prominent in China as Li would like. But Li has conviction. Like a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs, when his company stumbled he didn’t just scrap it and move on to the next idea. This was it, and he'd CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Footbo Raises $1 Million For Social Network Focused On The World's Most Popular Sport Top
As the world’s most popular sport, soccer (or football as it is called in most of the world) has no shortage of devout fans, and with the World Cup coming up in just over a year, that popularity is set to skyrocket once again. So it’s no surprise that social networks dedicated to the sport have emerged that are looking to capitalize on this massive market. One of these is Footbo , a soccer-centric social network that has just closed a $1 million funding round from Pitango Venture Capital. Since launching last June, the site has built up an international audience of 240,000 across English, Spanish, and German-speaking countries. The site has also recently implemented Facebook Connect, and is working to further increase exposure through a number of widgets . While Footbo is touted as primarily a social network, it offers a handful of major interlocking components. Its social network includes standard functionality like allowing users to connect with friends, participate in groups, and message each other. There’s also a collection of data and statstics of professional teams from 70 international leagues, including scores, standings, and fixtures (schedules). The site also has over 50,000 team and player profiles. Users can interact with this data through prediction games (which have also been integrated into Virgin Media ), customized news feeds, and subjective grading of how their favorite teams fare during a game, which they can then compare to other users. Users can also add their own content, including blogs and wiki pages revolving around players and teams. Members can also use the Footbo platform to create their own teams and leagues for recreational play. Footbo competes with a number of other soccer-centric sites, including ESPN’s Soccernet . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Tipjoy Makes A Useful Premium Twitter App To Test Its Payments API Top
Say you have a group of individuals who all want to tweet from one account — right now, that’s a pain. You have to give everyone the password to the one account and have them log out of their own account and into this new one to use it. And even then, how do you know who is sending what tweet? You’d have to manually insert your own Twitter name at the end of your post or something along those lines. Now there’s a much easier way, and it comes thanks to a demo app. Tata-tweet allows you to feed multiple Twitter accounts into one feed. When you do this, it will auto-append the name of the person tweeting to the end of the message. That means no more logging out from your account to send from the group account — and no more having to copy and paste the tweet if you also want to send it from your own. You can see this in action on the Y Combinator’s founders group account . But there’s a slight catch: Using this app will cost you $0.99 a month. Yes, it’s a premium Twitter app. While those are a dime a dozen on platforms like the iPhone, they’re not so common on the web. And a monthly payment one is almost unheard of. But Tata-tweet is able to do it thanks to Tipjoy’s Twitter Payments API . This service extends Tipjoy’s social micropayment structure to the red-hot Twitter platform. And Tipjoy created this app to show exactly how it will work. Pipping your accounts into Tata-tweet is easy, but you will have to have a group account set up that all of these tweets will be sent from. Once you have that, you click on the sign-up button and your TipJoy account is billed. It doesn’t require a credit card because TipJoy assumes that you’re good for the money. A word of caution: TipJoy will tweet out that you owe $5.94 (you have to sign up for 6 months at a time) for creating the new group account. Tata-tweet is entirely open source, and you can grab the code at github . Tipjoy is running a contest through June 1 for the best apps created using this new Twitter Payments API — and according to TipJoy co-founder Ivan Kirigin , there are already plenty of good ones since Twitter is featuring it in the gadget box on the main Twitter homepage. Kirigin bets that a lot of premium Twitter services will start popping up soon to make money on the popular platform. Yes, that will probably happen before Twitter actually makes any money. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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